"... a great composer and a great performer, in music, composes a poem, or a piece of Classical music, as if at an instant... You don't know a musical composition, unless you know it as a single act of thought." (SCHILLER INSTITUTE Labor Day Conference, September 1-2 2001, Open Discussion with Lyndon LaRouche)

The musician, who has spent hours laboring over the complexities of his Mozart piece, should know that Mozart himself said that he composed in precisely this way. ¹
      The solution to this apparent riddle, is that every great work of Classical composition is defined by a single, metaphoric idea, which takes the form of a paradox. The human mind always recognizes a paradox as a One; you cannot subdivide a paradox. [see Box One] The musical paradox does not lie in the melody, the harmony, the rhythm, the vocal registration, or any other feature that can be analyzed formally; these are just features of the language of Classical musical composition, with which the idea is expressed. The problem that we face in discussing it, is that for over a century, this language has been a dead language, lost to the culture. So, we need assistance in making intelligible the expression of an idea, which for the Classical composer and his contemporaries, were second nature.
      Fortunately, LaRouche has provided us with the necessary assistance. In the early 1980s, he proposed to the members of his association that they study the German art song or Lied, as a Rosetta Stone to unlock the mysteries of the language of musical composition. In the successfully composed Lied, the composer takes a Classically-composed poem, identifies the defining metaphor, and amplifies it by "translating" it into the musical language, so that the poem may be sung with the added power of the method developed by Bach and his successors.

LAROUCHE ON AMBIGUITY       Early during the 1948-1952 interval, my attack on the fallacy of Wiener's, and also John von Neumann's work, was enriched by reflection upon my earlier attraction to William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity. From my special standpoint, I saw flaws in some aspects of Empson's work, but, that taken into account, it was a very good, mature, and searching piece of scholarly work. I recapitulated what I gleaned from him, by working from the standpoint of the notion of cognitive processes which I had acquired in the course of my adolescent and later pro-Leibniz attack on the absurdities of Kant's Critiques.       A truthful ambiguity, whether in the description of a rigorously defined experimental subject-matter, or in the composition of Classical poetry, has the characteristic significance of betraying the shadowy, but efficient existence of something which, in reality, exists outside the scope of a statement lacking that ambiguity.       The physical principle of ambiguity is beautifully illustrated for study, as I did during 1947, by seeking to identify the physical distinction, on principle, which sets the greatest Classical Greek sculpture from the archaic. I began to equate this, already, then, to the roles of the subjunctive, irony in general, and metaphor in particular, in poetry, drama, and Classical song-settings of poetry. This came to serve as an integral part of my reaction against Wiener's radically reductionist notion of "information theory."       There is a recognizable element of imbalance in the Classical piece. It is not an arbitrary imbalance, but, to succeed, must be credibly a body caught in mid-motion. The same is the case in Bach's method of well- tempered counterpoint, in which the development of the entire composition expresses a single conception of contrapuntal development in mid-motion. In Classical poetry, it is irony, ambiguity, especially true metaphor. All Classical ambiguity is truthful, not arbitrarily fanciful; it expresses a true paradox, for which the mind must supply a solution. It is Classical art, only to the degree that the solution to the paradox, is of the quality of a truthful act of cognition.       Try an elementary, but crucial sort of experiment. Take a mathematical expression from the domain of mathematical physics. Now, think of describing the corresponding physical process as such, which leads from an initial experimental form of ontological paradox, through the generation of an hypothetical solution, to the experiment which expresses the proof of that hypothesis. Now, express that process, as a physical, rather than mathematical form, in poetry, or prose. Best of all, if you have the skill for it, compose a compact Classical form of poem, which presents each and all phases of that paradox, hypothesis, and proof. Add nothing not relevant to that mission. No symbol- mindedness, please! No frosting on the cake! If you succeed in that mission, you will probably understand the principle of metaphor as I do. Focus on the essential cognitive feature of that representation: the paradox, as I have referenced the relatively simple, but richly devastatingly significant case of Fermat's paradoxical juxtaposition of reflection and refraction.       The relative fault in the mathematical formulation, is that, when applied according to today's generally accepted classroom tradition, it lacks poetry. It lacks the obligation of the poet, to embed a truthfully stated ambiguity in the composition. It fails to compel the mind to capture the image of the idea in mid-motion, the form in which all true ideas exist. "Q.E.D." is a lie, if it is claimed on the basis of what can be demonstrated at the blackboard.       For example, the danger to the student's (and teacher's) mind, in at-the-blackboard mathematics, even mathematical physics, is that the victims lose sight of the reality of the matter, in their zeal to find a deductive or similar form of literal meaning. An elementary example of this, is the attempt to teach at-the-blackboard Euclidean geometry, in which no physical action is taken into account. Kepler's observation of the "equal time, equal areas" definition of the planetary orbit, and of the harmonic ordering within the array of Solar orbits, are examples of an ironical evidence of the existence of an underlying physical principle governing the way the geometry of the situation unfolds. The function of the catenary as the relevant model for isochronic action, is among the best pedagogical exercises for showing the relationship between universal principles of geometries (e.g., orbits, cycles) and physical action.       Ideas are communicated only as what is not said. They are imparted, as Plato's Socratic dialogues do: as the stimulation of the creative (cognitive) powers of the mind, by posing an ambiguity which impels the mind to generate the idea which replaces the ambiguity as such.       The point being developed should be restated for physical-science practice as follows. The characteristic activity of competent physical science, is the discovery of verifiable hypotheses which are generated as solutions for experimentally defined ontological paradoxes. This is the characteristic of an original discovery; it is also the characteristic of the individual's reenactment of a valid discovery of a universal physical principle. When we describe this characteristic feature of scientific activity to a Classical poet, such as a Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Goethe, Schiller, or Heine, his comment would be: "Aha! We Classical poets call that the principle governing irony and metaphor!" --from "Economics: At The End of a Delusion"

     Obviously, no competent poet sets out to compose a poem with the idea in mind to use a specific rhyme scheme, or a particular number of verbs, or a metric pattern -- these are predicates, dictated by the central idea, which comes first. (However, as LaRouche has noted, it is a preoccupation with these epiphenomena, rather than the central idea, which prevents Baby Boomers from effectively reciting poetry; instead of the idea, one hears the "sing-song" effect of a fixation on the formal aspects.) Composing a poem is done "from the top down." Musical composition is no different. As LaRouche recently said, in a conference call on the topic of Brahms' "Vier ernste Gesänge": "It is something in which you start from the objective of conveying important ideas, ideas corresponding to, or equivalent to, universal physical principles; then you turn to your palette, what music can do: you turn to the Bach counterpoint conception, of well-tempered counterpoint, and what comes out of it -- because you use that because the essence of the Bach counterpoint, is irony, it's ontological paradoxes, using the paradoxes inherent in music, in bel canto music; using those paradoxes, as counterpoint, in order to create the tension, which builds up to successions of such paradoxes, to a musical idea, of a whole composition. Now, having developed that technique, you then go back, from the idea to be expressed, and you bring all that you've discovered about music, from that standpoint, to bear on a composition."
      However, the spoken language of the poem is not so opaque to the present-day culture, as is the language of musical composition. Consequently, the manner in which one proceeds from the defining idea, to the execution of the poem, is less mysterious to the present-day student of composition, than it is with music.
      There is one last hurdle to be overcome, in using the Lied as a Rosetta stone -- the greatest examples all use texts in German. However, with a good translation, we can work around this, for the non-German speakers.
      So, let us take two examples. We'll examine two miracles of brevity and clarity, "Meeresstille" by Goethe, and "Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht", by Heine, and then, their song settings by Schubert and Brahms, respectively.

Meeresstille Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser, Ohne Regung ruht das Meer, Und bekümmert sieht der Schiffer Glatte Fläche rings umher. Keine Luft von Keiner Seite! Todesstille fürchterlich! In der ungeheuren Weite Reget keine Welle sich. (literal translation) Deep stillness reigns on the water; Without motion rests the sea, And, distressed, the sailor gazes about At the smooth flatness all around. No breeze from any quarter! Deathly stillness, dreadful! In the enormous expanse Not one wave stirs. (verse translation) Deepest silence rules the waters, Not a motion stirs the sea, And the sailor views the glassy Surface so uneasily. Not a breeze from any quarter, Dreadful silence, still as death. In the vast, appalling distance Not a ripple shows itself.

Goethe has created here a very simple and elegant paradox; he depicts a scene which, on the naive sensual level, conveys a beautiful serenity, but which simultaneously implies, for the sailor, a slow death by hunger and thirst. It is a clear reflection of what Friedrich Schiller describes in his essay, Vom Erhabenen (Of the Sublime), where he examines the capacity that poetry has, to evoke the human mind's freedom to confront mortality. Schiller writes: "With the initiation into the mysteries of the ancients, especially great store was set by a frightful solemn impression, and to that end one also availed oneself especially of silence. A deep stillness gives the power of imagination free latitude, and raises the expectations of something frightful to come. With the practice of devotion, the silence of an entire assemblage is a very effective means, to give vitality to fantasy and put the heart in solemn spirits. Folk-superstition itself makes use of the reveries thereof, for as everyone knows a deep stillness must be observed, when one has a treasure to exalt. In the enchanted palaces, that are found in fairytales, a deathly silence reigns, that arouses dread, and it belongs to the natural history of the enchanted woods, that nothing living stirs therein. Also solitude is something frightful, as soon as it is sustained and involuntary, like for example an exile to an uninhabited island. A vast expanse of desert, a lonely, many-miles-long forest, wandering astray on the boundless sea, are clear conceptions, which evoke dread, and may be employed in poetry toward the sublime. But here (with solitude) there is nonetheless already an objective basis for fear, because the idea of great solitude carries with it the idea of helplessness as well."

Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, Das Leben ist der schwüle Tag. Es dunkelt schon, mich schläfert, Der Tag hat mich müd gemacht. Über mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum, Drin singt die junge Nachtigall; Sie singt von lauter Liebe - Ich hör es sogar im Traum. (literal translation) Death is the cool night. Life is the sultry day. It now grows dark; I'm drowsy, The day has wearied me. Above my bed rises a tree, Therein sings the young nightingale; She sings of naught but love - I hear it even in my dreams. (verse translation) O Death, that is the cooling night, And Life, that is the sultry day. It's darkening, I'm sleepy, The day, it has made me tired. Over my bed arises a tree, Where sings the youthful nightingale; She sings of love so boldly, I dream, yet it reaches me.

The overarching paradox of this poem is the paradox that has fueled many great works of art, including Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and many of Shakespeare's sonnets²: the Paradox of Mortality, that man is mortal, and yet, man is immortal -- there is a quality in a human being, that can transcend mortality, and this quality is the real subject matter of all Classical art.       In contrast to Shelley and Shakespeare, who are propelled to summits of eloquence by the profundity of this theme, Heine seems to deliberately adopt a tone which is terse, almost matter-of-fact. In doing so, he achieves something that perhaps only Heine could, which is that the paradox is the more compelling for his unusual treatment.      Heinrich Heine was a master of irony; in the first stanza, the poet seems to assert that he is tired of life, and looks forward to the release of death. This creates a naive expectation, which is shattered by the second stanza, and superseded by a powerful ambiguity. Thus, there is an internal paradox to the poem, where an initial hypothesis is overthrown, forcing the mind to rise to the vantage point of an higher hypothesis, one commensurate with the Paradox of Mortality. All this in eight short lines!       Both Goethe's poem, and Heine's, present a similar ironic juxtaposition of death and beauty. But, Goethe is satisfied with a certain formal elegance, which permits the reader a degree of emotional distance; anyone can imagine himself as the sailor in the poem, but it does not demand from the reader an intensely personal identification with the tableau Goethe presents. Heine's poem, in contrast, is more provocative, more subjective, by being more ambiguous; the enervating effects of a hot day, with the implied experience of life as a tiring struggle, create an association which is universal, as is the redeeming joy of love. And, the redeeming joy of love adds a moral dimension to the paradox, which is absent from Goethe's treatment.