INTERVIEW: SPEED AND SIGERSON

LaRouche’s Beautiful Music of Freedom, June 9, 2019

This is the edited transcript of an exclusive interview conducted June 9, the day after the Schiller Institute’s three-hour memorial program for Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2019) under the title, “Triumph of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.” on June 8. The video of the memorial has now been made available by the Schiller Institute.

EIR: This is Robert Ingraham with EIR and I’m speaking with John Sigerson, the National Music Director of the Schiller Institute, and Dennis Speed, who moderated the Memorial for Lyndon LaRouche in Manhattan, which took place yesterday.

What was the objective in setting up this memorial?

Dennis Speed: We called the memorial “The Triumph of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.” We knew that because of the sudden death of Mr. LaRouche in February many people who might have wished to gather to pay honor to him, were unable to do so. We had an international conference of the Schiller Institute which happened only a few days later, but it was clear that something more should be done. And so, this was a way of giving an occasion to those who could not participate in February to pay their respects. It also gave us an ability to take a look at Lyndon LaRouche’s life, and discover many elements that were either forgotten, or simply hidden in some archives.

For example, we discovered many unpublished documents written by LaRouche, and also speeches, some of which were captured on video that we are now going to be able to make available. Our idea is to begin a process to establish the basis of an evaluation of LaRouche that is actually commensurate with his role as the chief intellectual figure, certainly American intellectual figure, of the latter half of the 20th century and early part of the 21st century.

I think the most important thing to say, otherwise, is that the unrecognized significance of what he meant to ideas, not merely in terms of what his campaigns for the Presidency were doing, but his just overall meaning as a thinker, is something that we think we got across, judging from the response of people who were there. There also seems to be a great amount of interest in assisting in the project of compiling LaRouche’s work and spreading it. So, from my standpoint, at least, that was what we seem to have accomplished.

EIR: In watching the event live, it was obvious to me that the whole was very carefully composed—the video clips, the musical pieces, the speeches, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s speeches. Can either of you say more about the intention that went into composing the memorial, how you wanted it to be?

Musical Works and LaRouche’s Ideas

Sigerson: Well, I can say that we had the idea of arranging the program in such a way that each of the three sections was organized around the performance of a major work of Classical composition that was extremely important in the development of Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas, but also in the development of the organization that he founded around those ideas.

The first section was organized around the Bach motet, Jesu, meine Freude, which played a critical role in the development of the LaRouche Youth Movement during the early part of this century. The second section was organized around one of the key Beethoven sonatas, the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 69, which introduced the idea of Motiführung, or “motivic thorough-composition,” a concept originally suggested by LaRouche’s close friend, Norbert Brainin, the first violinist of the legendary Amadeus Quartet. The opening bars of that sonata are identical to those of the piece we had performed just before, by Johannes Brahms [“Dem dunkeln Schoß der heil’gen Erde”], written upon the death of his close friend and collaborator, Clara Schumann, which has the exact same motivic development in it.

So, we had that theme implicit in the selection of those pieces. And then also in the last section, we also had some very critical pieces that I and others sang, which were German Lieder. We had the entire audience sing the Ave Verum Corpus of Mozart, which was, for me, one of the high points of the event.

We organized the entire event around those musical ideas, without having to say too much about those ideas per se. But I will just say, in adding to what Dennis said earlier, in bringing together LaRouche’s works, his written works, and his speeches, I have begun the process of working through many memoranda, private memoranda, public papers or limited-circulation papers—I never cease to be astounded at the depth of the discussion, much of which, I must admit, passed me by at the time when I first read them.

And so, I just want to underline what Dennis said, which is that it’s extremely important for all of us, both within the LaRouche organization, people who have been associated with LaRouche, but also people who have never met this wonderful person, that we disseminate as quickly and as widely as possible the full breadth of LaRouche’s ideas on music, on economics, on science, as much as possible.

Speed: I would add the following: In the composition of the memorial, we tried to allow Lyn to speak for himself, as much as possible. And actually prior to both of the major works that John referred to, the Jesu, meine Freude and Beethoven’s Opus 69, we showed video clips of LaRouche speaking, in the first case, about his own experience in hearing a rehearsal and then a performance of the Bach motet in Leipzig, with the St. Thomas Boys’ Choir. And then, we showed a video of him alluding to motivic thorough-composition as well. So that the living Lyndon LaRouche, as a living individual, was present to the audience in a way that I think people appreciated.

The other element was that we wanted to make sure that the LaRouche case was an integral part of our memorial. The injustice of the case, the fact that prominent individuals, such as the former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, spoke out about that injustice back at the time in the 1990s in particular. That that crime against LaRouche was most tragic for the American people, as was underscored by remarks made by both LaRouche’s attorney, Odin Anderson, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and this was in video from 1995.

So the purpose of the thorough-composition of the memorial, was to allow people to see LaRouche from different standpoints, but actually to experience the singular theme in LaRouche’s own words of his mission. And that mission was to stand up for human creativity, despite whatever attempts to silence him threatened his very physical existence: He just wouldn’t back off his intent to tell the truth. We talked about him, we referenced at one point, LaRouche as the character Don Florestan in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, that he chose to speak the truth and “chains were his reward”—but he was never silent. He was railroaded, but never silenced.

EIR: We had a satellite showing in Oakland, California here, which I attended. Afterwards, a lot of people talked about the clip of Lyn speaking to the Pakistani organization in New York. People were also very moved by the testimony of Odin Anderson, Ramsey Clark, and Helga, in front of the Commission of Inquiry. I think hardly anyone had seen these clips before, at least the people in the audience. They were affected quite strongly.

John, is there anything more you want to say about the musical works themselves, or the performances?

Working ‘Between the Notes’

Sigerson: In preparing to perform the Jesu, meine Freude, we attempted to do, I think, a better performance, a performance more appropriate to Lyn’s conception of the piece, than we had ever done before, and I think we succeeded. We had three days of intensive rehearsal with people who had worked with LaRouche for many years; many of them had sung this piece many times before, but were scattered all over the country, and we brought them together for this event. We were able to achieve a vocal transparency we had never done before, and I think the audience was very appreciative.

However, I think that we have still only scratched the surface of “working between the notes,” as LaRouche constantly emphasized to us—and continues to emphasize to us. This requires a kind of control of vocalization, which represents a standard which we have to strive to live up to, not just in our own work, but try to spread; we need to spread that standard throughout the entire world of music and art and other artistic endeavor. It’s an extremely high standard which, if kept to—and it’s a universal standard—and if we keep that, this gives us one of the most important elements in being able to actually achieve the kind of dialogue of civilizations that Helga Zepp-LaRouche is now emphasizing, as absolutely necessary for the future survival of humanity.

Speed: Let me add one thing, on the musical side: People have to experience the memorial. There’s really no way for us to put these ideas into words. That’s why we did it the way we did. As we look further into the archives, and listen to old recorded conversations and discussions, we’ll probably find enough there to be able to do a two-day symposium, just on Lyndon LaRouche and music. You could probably do several such, and we will probably be called upon to do it. Primarily, because Mr. LaRouche was the catalyst for the creation of the book, A Manual on the Rudiments of Tuning and Registration: Introduction and Human Singing Voice, which appeared in 1992.

Many of the documents, discussions, and other material that went into it had been completely unavailable; and now all of this can be made available. And it may be interesting for us to try to circulate some of this material, including to professionals, to provoke them to take up the challenge of furthering work that LaRouche began, work which, if investigated, and if mastered, completely will revolutionize Classical music practice, all music, in the United States and throughout the world.

That People Could Be Free to Improve Humanity

So, when you’re talking about Lyn, and you look in his work, the density of ideas, that for example, you hear in something like the 12 minutes of the speech to the Pakistani organization, which is what that is, the 12 minutes that he spent there is equivalent to what others don’t get to in months or years. Look at the question of composition. One of the things that people will be struck by, in watching the memorial—watching it from beginning to end—is the density of ideas in LaRouche’s presentation, and the clear way in which they’re enunciated. So that this notion of motivic thorough-composition that John referred to, is something that LaRouche practiced, both in his own thinking and in his own presentations.

So, I think one of the things that may be interesting for people to think about, is, don’t just think about the music as being what you hear when the chorus is singing, or the instrumentalists are performing. Think about the music as something that you’re hearing largely in the voice of LaRouche himself and it will create a kind of different experience, of the memorial as a whole. I think we achieved that, and I think it’s something that hopefully is reproduced in the recording.

EIR: Is there anything else either of you would like to add by way of closing observations?

Sigerson: In reviewing some of LaRouche’s documents from the early 1980s, I came upon a short item in which he said that even before he founded our organization, the LaRouche organization, he always believed and insisted that the universe is ontologically transfinite: That is, that the physical domain that we live in, is a reflection of a higher domain of the actual universe.

And this is indicated in many ways, for instance, by the fact that we can only construct five regular solids, in our space. But that this means that our particular space of sense-perception that we have, is bounded by a higher order of universal lawfulness. His work, in so many domains—in the domain of economics, in the domain of physics, in the domain of music—was to find the invariant quality which allows one to touch that domain of the ontologically transfinite. And if you don’t understand what I just said, that’s the reason why we’re going to be issuing a lot of these papers by Mr. LaRouche, so that you can get your head around that. [chuckles]

Speed: Let me close with some words to those of you reading this interview. Join our choruses—we’re forming them all over the country. Our Manhattan Project aims to incorporate as many as 1,500 people into choral activity on a regular basis. Join our Committees of Correspondence which are being formed as a way of letting people come into a process of dialogue of discussion of great ideas, and elevate, therefore, the general discourse in the nation on matters which are important to a continuation of this civilization and this nation.

The thing that LaRouche insisted on, and he insisted on with a lot of us, was to “have fun,” but to have fun by challenging and destroying the stuffy, stolid, blocked, and banal authorities that haunt the mind. It was that, that caused him great animosity. But the other thing that caused it was his love of humanity, his belief that poverty of the mind was intolerable, unnecessary, and was the great evil. And if you could destroy the poverty of the mind, then the poverty that we see globally, expressed economically, physically and so on, was something that mankind would easily and readily overcome.

So this notion that he believed in, that people could be free, and that the idea of the education of the emotions and the development of the mind, to change humanity, to improve humanity, and to make oneself the vehicle for that improvement of humanity, that’s what we hope the memorial, when people see it, provokes in them.

EIR: Thank you both.