All improvement in the political sphere is to proceed from the ennobling of the character—but how, under the influence of a barbarous constitution, can the character become ennobled? We should need, for this end, to seek out some instrument which the State does not afford us, and with it open up well-springs which will keep pure and clear throughout every political corruption.

I have now reached the point to which all the foregoing considerations have been directed. The instrument is the Fine Arts, and those well-springs are opened up in their immortal examples.

—Friedrich Schiller
On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Ninth Letter

by Dennis Speed and Diane Sare

I do not like to talk about my mass, or, generally, about myself, but I believe that I have treated the text as it has seldom been treated before.

—Ludwig van Beethoven

June 18—Although the June 12 United States/North Korea Summit in Singapore was still two days away, the intention of the Schiller Institute’s June 10 concert, entitled Dona Nobis Pacem: 1968-2018, prepared the 450 persons in attendance, and the 150 choral and orchestral members performing, not only for that impending, successful shift of history, but for the possibility of similar changes in the immediate future. The revolutionary thinking required to make such breakthroughs is the subject of Beethoven’s Mass in C Major. The Schiller Institute NYC Chorus and Orchestra has begun a study of this work, and presented its preliminary findings on it in performance.

Featuring the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus
Sunday, June 10, 2018, 4:00 p.m.
St. Anthony of Padua Church
154 Sullivan Street
New York, New York 10012

by John Sigerson     

The prospect of ending the senseless decades-long stalemate between the two Koreas, and of finally bringing the world’s two most populous nations, China and India, into a bond of friendship and cooperation based on economic development and the elimination of poverty, cannot but warm the hearts of all men and women of goodwill, pointing a way to a New Paradigm of peaceful relations among nations, based on what uniquely distinguishes man from beast, namely man’s creativity and high purpose to improve and enrich the lives of everyone on (and above) this planet.

July 3—Initial coverage follows, of the historic events which took place in New York City on June 29 and 30 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sylvia Olden Lee. It includes a brief synopsis by Dennis Speed of the significance of the events. 

By Dennis Speed

Justice, truthfulness, and those creative powers by means of which we may discover valid, revolutionary principles of our universe, form a seamless whole, in which Classical culture, morality, and physical science are united by a common passion for universal justice and truth. Where are the men and women fit to lead us in the pathway toward safety, the pathway toward rule by the principles of truth and justice, not ‘popular opinion’?

—Lyndon LaRouche, “The Substance of Morality,” 1998

Jan. 24, 2017—“Strength To Love”: A Unity Concert—A special tribute in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the future, was the name of the flagship event which culminated a two day “congress” held by the Schiller Institute, in collaboration with The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture.

A truly beautiful and world historic event took place Saturday at the Tear-Drop Memorial in Bayonne, New Jersey. The Schiller Institute Chorus, following their performance of the Russian National Anthem at the Russian Consulate in Manhattan last week in memory of the 92 victims of the Tu-154 crash, and especially the death of 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, organized a similar, broader event at the Tear-Drop Memorial, donated to America by the Russian government to honor those who died on 9/11. Attending and/or speaking at the event were representatives of the Russian Mission to the UN, the NYPD, the Bayonne Fire Department, the Bayonne American Legion, the 9-11 Families United for Justice Against Terror, and the Schiller Institute, who sang and/or spoke, in a winter storm, about the necessity of the people and governments of Russia and America to unite in honor of the deceased, while demonstrating that the common, human emotion that unites us to mourn those who have been taken from us, can and must also unite us in creating a better future for Mankind.

[The following statement was issued by International Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche on December 30, 2016 and received at the Russian Consulate in New York that afternoon, and also sent on request to TASS.]

by Dennis Speed

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
                                     —St. Paul, Ephesians 6:12

Dec. 20—The 700-plus people that gathered at St. Joseph’s Co-Cathedral on Dec. 17, 2016 for the “Holiday Unity Concert” sponsored by the “Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture,” responded both to the idea and the execution of this latest in a series of “experiments with truth” being conducted in the context of the evolution of Lyndon LaRouche’s Manhattan Project. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder and head of the Schiller Institute, in a presentation made the afternoon prior to the evening musical performance by the Schiller Institute New York Community Chorus and the New England Symphonic Ensemble, stressed the strategic and moral necessity of such events: “I think we have to introduce a completely different level of thinking into the political process, which is why the performance of the Messiah and a long series of other concerts is so important.”

[This article was written by Dennis Speed and originally published in the September 23, 2016 issue of the Executive Intelligence Review. Click here for PFD version.]

SEE ALSO:  "SCHILLER INSTITUTE NEW YORK CITY CHORUS LEADS 'LIVING MEMORIAL' TO VICTIMS OF 9/11"

 (CLICK HERE FOR 9-11 "LIVING MEMORIAL" MOZART REQUIEM CONCERTS PHOTO ALBUMS)

The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil and domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.

                                               —Percy Bysshe Shelley
                                                   “A Defence of Poetry”

Sept. 20—The 3,000 people that participated in one or more of the “Living Memorial” concerts held in New York City Sept. 9-12, experienced Percy Shelley’s hypothesis first hand. The “awakening and enlarging of the mind itself,” in confronting the crime of Sept. 11, 2001 through the mind of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem, was a successful thought-experiment that demonstrated the existence in the human soul of what the poet Friedrich Schiller has referred to as the quality of the Sublime.

Click here for 9-11 Living Memorial Mozart Requiem Concerts Photos

On the 15th Anniversary of the terror attack on New York City and Washington DC, the Schiller Institute, founded by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, intervened across the five Boroughs of New York  and into New Jersey to lift the remembrance of that tragic day to a higher level, a "Living Memorial," through the use of great art to lift the minds and souls of all men and women away from fear and thoughts of vengeance to that of creativity and the future of Mankind.

Three performances of the great Requiem Mass by Amadeus Mozart were performed in New York City by the Schiller Institute New York City Chorus, with full orchestra, sponsored by the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture, on September 9th, 10th and 11th, in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. A fourth performance was held on Monday night September 12th in Morristown, New Jersey,  home to many families who lost loved ones on 9/11.