Toward a Renaissance of Classical Culture

Hundreds of millions of human beings are under dire threat of starvation, disease, and lack of clean water; but meanwhile at church councils, the use of bio-fuels is defended, and the popes of environmentalism get decorated with the Medal of Honor for stopping agricultural production and water management, causing millions of human lives to be lost. For decades, “society” has been tolerating the tearing down of one bastion of civilized behavior after another; and so is it any wonder now, that twelve-year-olds are downloading pornographic videos onto their smart phones and showing them around on the school playground; or that it’s considered almost normal that individuals riding the subway or walking on side-streets are “ripped off,” and have to relinquish all their valuables in order to forestall something far worse? Might we not, then, say that a society in which teenagers are the most menacing social grouping, can be considered a failed society?

This list of social evils could be expanded in many directions. It’s certainly true that the root of many of the problems lies in the false axiomatics of economic, military, and social policy. Yet perhaps the most important area where development has gone completely awry, is the shift in cultural paradigm in the western world over recent decades.

Even if during the decades of Germany’s post-war reconstruction everything wasn’t perfect, nonetheless the vector of development was positive: There was an enormous desire to rebuild, and secondary virtues such as diligence and honesty—virtues later denigrated—fostered the General Welfare and promoted social cohesion. Our schools were still governed by the Humboldt educational ideal, namely that developing beauty of character within each student was at least one aspect of the goals of education. Classical culture in music, poetry, and the fine arts played an important role in all grades, but especially in our Gymnasia.

The fact that this has long not been the case, is due to many factors: the Frankfurt School’s deconstructive role regarding Classical music and poetry, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the advent of “director’s theater,” the Brandt educational reforms, the ’68er movement, the counterculture, and pop culture in general. The end-result of all these influences is a cultural wasteland: shriveled hearts, bereft of all ability to experience profound intellectual emotion; and for many of our fellow men, a loss of the ability to judge, with any sense of justice and injustice supplanted by a striving to conform to popular opinion.

If Schiller, already in his own time—and even more concretely after he witnessed the failure of the French Revolution—had to ask: “How has it come to pass that we are still barbarians?”, then how much more urgently would he be posing that question, horror-filled, today? Unfortunately, yet another facet of our time demonstrates how right he was, that a society that has degenerated from a higher level to a lower one, is more despicable than one that is still striving to free itself from underdevelopment. In his Fifth Aesthetic Letter, Schiller writes:

“Through his actions, Man portrays himself—and what an awful form do we see depicted in our present-day drama! Here brutalization, there decadence: the two extremes of human corruption—and both united in one age of history!

“In the lower and more numerous classes, we see raw, lawless impulses, unleashed after all bands of civil order have been dissolved, rushing with ungovernable impetuosity toward bestial satiation…. Its rudder gone, our society, instead of speeding upwards into organic life, is relapsing back into the inorganic domain.

“On the other side, the civilized classes present us with an even more detestable spectacle of decadence and depravity of character, which disgusts us all the more because it feeds upon the culture itself. I no longer remember which ancient or modern philosopher remarked that the nobler person is all the more abhorrent in his self-destruction; but one will find this true in the moral realm as well. From the savage, run amok, there emerges a madman; from the disciple of art, a worthless nothing.”

The key to overcoming the present existential crisis therefore lies in affording people access to their own creativity, in rekindling within them the divine spark which brings their full human potential to fruition. Our task is thus to strengthen this faculty of the human spirit—a place where scientific discoveries are made, which is the same place where Classical art is born, and where musical and poetical ideas are developed according to the criteria of Classical composition. Whenever man discovers new universal scientific principles, or when the composer or poet harkens to the rules of Classical composition, or lawfully extends them, then the creativity of an inventive mind comes into complete harmony with the creatively self-developing physical universe.

And thus, if we wish to survive the present crisis, a renaissance of Classical culture will be the absolute prerequisite. Therefore the Schiller Institute, along with its cultural journal Ibykus, supports Lynn Yen’s initiative (see right), and calls upon all artists and friends of Classical art to become part of a worldwide movement which will continue to fight for this renaissance until we have banished the current Dark Age—just as the Golden Renaissance of the 15th Century banished the 14th-Century Dark Age, and as German Classicism overcame the destruction wrought by the Thirty Years War.

Open Letter from the Director of the Revival of Classical Culture

This May 13, 2012, at the Stern Auditorium of Carnegie Hall, a concert was performed by master pianist Tian Jiang.  Over 1700 students, parents and teachers from over 80 public schools in the New York City area, most of whom have never been inside of Carnegie Hall, and many who have never heard Classical music, participated in the joy that the mind experiences when the beauty of human emotion and human intellect become one.  In a program of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin, spanning almost two centuries in composition, and almost two and a half hours in performance, there were riveted silence, prolonged applause, and standing ovations from a crowd who the popular opinion of today deems “unable to comprehend or become interested in classical music”.  Even two and three-year -old toddlers in the audience listened quietly in attention throughout the entire performance of Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor, Beethoven’s “Appassionata”, and Brahms “Handel Variations”.

In the aftermath of this concert, we received numerous letters from teachers, parents and students, asking for more of such opportunities for this sustenance for the mind and soul. We therefore considered: why not make true Dr. Martin Luther King’s desire and intent, as expressed in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture is issuing a call to all Classical and Classically trained musicians around the world, to donate time and to participate together with us, in the performance and teaching of great Classical composition in the strictest of Platonic aesthetics, in the best of Schillerian sentiments, to the youth of the world.  Let us, in all major cities of America and beyond, revive the practice of Classical Culture, for the betterment of mankind and for the love we bear our children and all children.

In these dark times of terrorism, war and the dramatic refugee crises, it is essential to recall the superiority of human creativity over the forces of destruction. And what could better demonstrate this unique human capability than the great masterpieces of diverse civilizations? By recognizing the one in the many, and by placing what unites us above what separates us, we will be able to overcome the present profound civilizational crisis. In that spirit, the leitmotif of this concert is the dialogue of cultures.

The performers are members of the Camerata Geminiani, the Russian Children’s Choir of the Shostakovich Music School in Berlin-Lichtenberg, the Chinese Academic Chorus in Berlin, and the International Chorus of the Schiller Institute. The event is organized by the Network for International Cultural Exchange (NICE) and the Schiller Institute.