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SCHILLER INSTITUTE
Music News
In This Section:

Work begins on the Pythagorean Comma as a non mechanical concept--September, 2006
East Coast LYM Sings The Battle Cry of Freedom in Washington, DC, at October 2005 webcast
Midwest LYM Sings Spirituals (Audio File)
Maestro Briano Trains the LaRouche Youth Movement in Bel Canto Singing
Sylvia Olden Lee Memorial
Remembering William Warfield
German Text/English Translation of Bach’s Motet Jesu, meine Freude
Interview with Lee Soo-in Korean Master Composer
Philadelphia Quartet Forms LaRouche Jubilee Quartert, 9-01-01

To Revolution in Music Page

La Scala Theater in in Milan Ends Verdi Year with Otello in the Verdi Tuning, 12-7-01
"Viva Verdi!" Schiller Institute Concert in the Mexican City of Leon, 11-27-01
NYC Lecture Concert Challenges Musical Axiomatic Assumptions -7-29-01
Mexican Children's Chorus to Europe 6-10-01
Coro De Ninos Del Instituto Schiller De Sonora
Bellini Opera Performed in Parma at Verdi Tuning -3/7/01

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LA SCALA THEATER IN MILAN
ENDS VERDI YEAR WITH OTELLO
IN THE VERDI TUNING

December 7, 2001

MILAN, Dec. 7, 2001 — According to the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire. Reporting on the dress rehearsal, with Placido Domingo in the main role, Avvenire writes that "satisfied by the dress rehearsal and the warm reception he had, Domingo then spoke about going back to the Verdi tuning, and Muti's decision to lower the tuning at La Scala to A=436, as opposed to the usual A=442, a decision which Maestro Muti took based on some Verdi letters.

"Actually," Domingo said, "it would have been better to lower it to A=432, as Verdi himself demanded. Why should we singers suffer? Lowering the tuning allows singers to save their voices, but A=436 does not help much, except the color of the voice gets better."

© Kathy Wolfe
Placido Domingo, with Schiller Instituture Music Manuel in 1996.

"The decision to lower the orchestra tuning involved a series of adaptations for the instruments and a bigger commitment from instrumentalists. The most involved were wind instruments. Some orchestra players said they were very happy of this new Otello because the 'sound is fuller, has more body and is less pushed,' although for other players 'playing both at La Scala and at other orchestras, this change involved some problems.' Some others said instead that 'this sound is not natural, because we are not used to it'."

Friday was the premiere at La Scala. Placido Domingo was among the first opera singers to endorse the Schiller Institute campaign to go back to the Verdi tuning back in 1988, when the Institute had its first international conference on the Verdi tuning at the Casa Verdi in Milan. At that time also conductor Riccardo Muti was informed personally about the initiative by Schiller Institute's Liliana Gorini. Domingo also endorsed the publication of the Schiller Institute Manual on Tuning and Registration, which reports his endorsement on the cover in the Italian edition "Canto e Diapason".

Although he refused to adopt the Verdi tuning in Verdi's birthtown Busseto, where La Scala took over part of the program in the Verdi year, apparently Muti got enough pressure from the campaign in favor of LaRouche's Busseto project to try some "compromise solution" at La Scala in the last performance of the Verdi year. LaRouche's proposal to have an opera in the Verdi tuning to celebrate the Verdi year had been endorsed by many famous opera singers, among them tenor Carlo Bergonzi, who has a Belcanto Foundation in Busseto, soprano Mirella Freni, basso Ruggero Raimondi, and tenor Luis Alva.

Chart of the Six Registers of The Human Singing Voice
Brief History of Tuning
Verdi Articles:
Simon Boccanegra
Verdi and Schiller

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"VIVA VERDI" CONCERT IN MEXICAN CITY
OF LEON, GUANAJUATO

November 27, 2001

More than 1,000 people attended the "Viva Verdi!" concert organized by the Schiller Institute in the Mexican city of Leon, Guanajuato, November 27, 2001, in the theater of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS).

The extraordinary attendance was due to the great amount of interest awakened in the population by the announcement that the concert would be performed at the scientific tuning that Verdi defined. The newspaper "A.M.," the most important in the state, commented days before the event that "of all the concerts to commemorate Verdi this year, this one comes closest to the original intention of the great opera creator, to be held Tuesday the 27th at the tuning of 432 Hz. The return to classical tuning is one of the great artistic crusades on an international scale, being conducted by the Lyndon LaRouche-founded Schiller Institute."

The concert was advertised also by the newspaper El Sol de Leon, Channel 11 of Television, Radio Formula, Radio Promomedios Leon, and Radiorama Bajio.

The musical program was performed by the "Classical Ensemble" Quartet of Guadalajara, and by baritone Antonio Hermosillo. Performances included Bach's Aria No. 3, the first of the Haydn Quartets, K.387 by Mozart, and the Sonata No. 6 by Rossini. In the second half of the event, they performed the prelude to "La Traviata," "Eri tu" of the opera Baile en Mascara, "Per me giunto" of Don Carlos, "Il balen del suo sorriso" from El Trovatore, and "Di provenza il mar" from La Traviata.

The concert was opened by Zaid Jaloma, who presented the initiative of Lyndon LaRouche to return reason in scientific tuning, given that this moment of crisis brings forth individuals with sufficient depth and seriousness to delineate a new geometry, to produce a new renaissance. LaRouche's historic intervention in the events of Sept. 11 demonstrates the level of commitment to the truth required at this moment in history, she said.

During the intermission, Maestro Ramon Becerra explained to the audience why lower tuning was necessary, not only to respect the structure of song, but for the special beauty and vibrato achieved with C-256. Baritone Antonio Hermossillo commented during an interview later how surprised he was to be able to sing roles from different operas in one concert, without the usual effort required, and he praised the efforts of the Schiller Institute to honor Giuseppe Verdi as he deserves. There have been many concerts to honor the Italian composer, he said, but none like this.

Angelica Lopez was interviewed by El Sol de Leon and by Television Azteca, which reported the next day, both in the afternoon and evening news program, on the concert held at Verdi's original tuning.

At the end of the concert, attendees were very happy, wanted more information about LaRouche and the Schiller Institute, asked where to get a video, and so forth. People came from all over the region to attend this extraordinary concert.


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MEMBERS OF THE SCHILLER INSTITUTE'S
CHILDREN CHORUSES ATTEND EUROPEAN FESTIVAL

June 10, 2001

Nine members of the Schiller Institute's children choruses have been selected to form part of the all-Mexico Children's Chorus of Mexico that will participate in the international ``Children of the World in Harmony'' festival, which will take place July 16-18., 2001, in three European cities: Hamburg, Budapest, and Prague.

There are Schiller Institute children choruses in Obregon, Mexicali, and Mexico

© EIRNS
Schiller Institute Childrens Chorus shown in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico.
City. To raise funds for the tour, the Obregon choir, which is sending the largest contingent from the Schiller Institute (5 of the 9) to Europe, held two successful ``Summer Concerts'' on June 7--one in the afternoon, mainly for children, and one in the evening, for adults--with a total attendance of 1,600 persons, including a personal representative from the Governor of Sonora, and which received rave notices.

Choir director, Ana Linda Ruiz, was also interviewed by the local daily, Tribuna del Yaqui. In the interview, which took up a full-page of the newspaper, she credited Maestro Alfredo Mendoza for the inspiration and support which made possible this children chorus.

Revolution in Music

INTEGRANTES DEL CORO DE NINOS DEL INSTITUTO SCHILLER DE SONORA, SELECCIONADOS PARA PARTICIPAR EN EL CORO DE NINOS CANTORES DE MÉXICO QUE IRA A EUROPA.


México, 10 de junio--Cinco integrantes del Coro de Niños del Instituto Schiller de Sonora, fueron seleccionados para participar en el coro nacional Niños Cantores de México, que representará al país en el festival internacional ``Niños del Mundo en Armonía, Europa 2001'', que tendrá lugar del 16 al 28 de julio en Hamburgo, Alemania, Budapest, Hungría, y Praga, República Checa. Los Niños Cantores serán la única organización coral latinoamericana en el festival. Los niños del coro del Instituto Schiller que fueron seleccionados son: Christian Emanuel Borgaro Milln, Luis Antonio Borjn Gutiérrez, Mariana Carrasco Luzanilla, Alberto Ruz Domínguez, y Jesús Ariel Zazueta Vúlez.

Mas articulos escrito en español

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PARMA CELEBRATES BICENTENNIAL
OF VINCENZO BELLINI
WITH PERFORMANCE OF "NORMA" AT A=430 HZ

March 7, 2001, from Corriere della Sera,

The opera was performed on March 7, in the context of the Verdi festival. "We want to explain that Verdi is not born out of nothing," said artistic director Bruno Cagli. "There is a great tradition which precedes Verdi, of which he is a son." The idea was to perform Norma as close as to the original "sound" wanted to Bellini, hence the lower pitch, and use of original instruments.

"The performance at that time wanted all the musicians to be visible, Tterefore, the orchestra pit has been almost eliminated, raising it up meter. The sound impact will be totally different," writes Corriere della Sera. "It will be much richer and velvet-like,"
Cagli says. "What will be surprising," says soprano June Anderson who sings the title role of Norma, ``will be the quality of the sound, its sophistication (raffinatezza) which will be exalted by he fact that we have a soloists' orchestra."

"The pitch changes too," Corriere writes. "The pitch had remarkable oscillations during the past. At the time of Bellini, the pitch was slightly lower, 430 instead of 440, and it supports singers, avoiding efforts." However, June Anderson recalls that at the 1831 premiere, the famous "Casta diva" aria "was not in F , as we always have sung it, but in G, therefore higher." The other dramatis personae are: Ivan Momirov (Pollione), Daniela Barcellona (Adalgisa), and Ildar Abdrazakhov (Oroveso).

Revolution in Music
Motivic Thorough Composition in Poetry
Verdi Tuning Page

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Lecture-Concert Challenges " Music Mafia"

July 31, 2001 by John Sigerson

Over the weekend of July 28-29, the Schiller Institute held the second in a series of lecture-concerts in New York City. The aim of these events, is to recruit the best of the lost souls populating the "Big, Rotten Apple" into a movement that can challenge a music mafia--a mafia that has nothing left to offer them, but "hip-hop," and perhaps a few Classical pieces here and there, performed so poorly that they might as well be "hip-hop."

The attentiveness of the audience at the Saturday lecture and Sunday concert, left no doubt that there is a great thirst for Lyndon LaRouche's revival of the standards of Classical poetic and musical composition--not only for the purpose of morally uplifting listeners who have been dragged down into a sea of moral and spiritual banality, but also to challenge performing musicians and composers to live and sing their music on the level of Platonic ideas, and not to settle for anything less than that.

At the lecture, pianist and chorus conductor Jerry Pyenson introduced the concept of the Bach-Mozart-Haydn "musical revolution" with a sample from J.S. Bach's "A Musical Offering," and also a song by Franz Schubert, "Litanei," which reflects the same rigorous principles of motivic thorough-composition.

Fred Haight followed with an introduction to Johannes Brahms's Fourth Symphony, proving that the first bars of the symphony's second movement cannot possibly be grasped according to the formal rules of classroom musicology, which insist that every melody must belong to a single key or scale. On the contrary, Haight showed, Brahms deliberately composed these bars in a "keyless mode," which gives rise to a paradox in the listener's mind, whose creative resolution is the work of the entire symphony.

The present author, co-author of Book I of the Schiller Institute's "Manual on the Rudiments of Tuning and Registration" (now, unfortunately, out of print), presented the highly political background of Robert Schumann's song cycle "Dichterliebe" ("Poet's Love"), which is based on a collection of "poison poems" by Heinrich Heine. I showed that any competent performance of this work must force the audience out of any Romantic "feel-good," "warm and fuzzy" feeling that they may otherwise be inclined to relapse into when listening to "beautiful music." I performed the entire 16-song cycle, with the assistance of pianist Gwendolyn Bynum.

The concert, entitled "Songs of the Classical Anti-Romantic Era from Bach to Verdi," was held at Cami Hall, a small recital hall directly across the street from Carnegie Hall. It consisted of solos and duets performed by bel canto singers--all of them strong--accompanied on some pieces by pianist Gwendolyn Bynum, and on others by the irrepressible Sylvia Olden Lee, who has become a legend in her own time, encouraging and promoting African-American singers, many of whom, to this day, remain victims of the cultural mafia's inhering racism.

Highlights: Soprano Elaugh Butler sang "Sommi Dei" from Handel's "Radamisto." Baritone Andre Solomon Glover presented J.S. Bach's cantata "Ich habe genug" ("I have had my fill"). This author, a tenor, sang selections from Schumann's "Dichterliebe." Tenor Gregory Hopkins performed Franz Schubert's extended song with variations "Auf dem Strom" ("On the River"), in duet with Linda Blacken on the French Horn. And soprano Elizabeth Lyra Ross offered a bravura performance of "Tu che la vanita," Elisabetta's aria from Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Don Carlo."

The singing was excellent, marred only by the fact that the piano had not been tuned at the natural pitch of C=256 Hertz; this muddied the voices' registral clarity, and narrowed their otherwise broad palette of tonal colors.

For further reading:

Fred Haight's article in FIDELIO
Revolution in Music
Motivic Thorough Composition in Poetry
Verdi Tuning Page

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