Theodorakis: Evil vs. Creative Harmony

In an interview in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) yesterday, Greek resistance veteran and composer Mikis Theodorakis spoke of the Evil of Chaos and the Creativity of Harmony. The interview comes at a time when he will soon be celebrating his 90th birthday. He is a very ill man, whose injuries from torture at the hands of various tyrants who occupied Greece have seriously affected his health.

Theodorakis’s remarks on music, Lyndon LaRouche commented yesterday, display a truthful insight into the matter, but are a somewhat romantic expression of what is actually a scientific issue. He is echoing an actual principal, but a discussion of the principal itself is best found in Megan Beets’s recent treatment of the matter on LaRouchePAC’s New Paradigm for Mankind show.

FAZ asked Theodorakis to comment on Thomas Mann’s statement in 1947 about the “demonic potential” of sound, to which he responded:

“The ancient Greeks believed that the quintessence of all knowledge lies in recognizing those contradictions from which the cosmos emerged. Chaos and harmony, life and death, the void and the eternal—always two sides of the same coin. The material of music is sound. But as much as music certainly consists of sound, as little sound is music however. Sound is only a part of something which only becomes music when creativity is added. The composer creates life, that is harmony. And not chaos, this would be death. This contrast is personified by the harmony of Beethoven and the chaos of Hitler—just to give an example from the country of Thomas Mann.”

The interviewer also asked if music can “harmonize human and even political relations.” Theodorakis responded that

“Music is a bridge. It voices the desire of man for society. Humans live in totally different, often far-away regions, countries, continents. The overwhelming majority of them will never become acquainted with each other, never talk with each other, know little about the other. But exactly these humans can all listen to the same music and love it. We have thousands of such bridges, music is only one of them. Unfortunately, there are also bridges that are not crossed. But through the times, a few outstanding personalities — philosophers, musicians, painters, writers — have always been kind of the universal currency of human culture and communication, with their voices…

“I am surrounded every day by the chaos. And yet … suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I think of a melody. This is a miracle. Everyone has harmony in himself, he wants it, and he needs it. We could establish a harmonious world, we just have to want to. I am not speaking of political manifestos, but of what is feasible, what may be reality. We simply must not allow Chaos to infiltrate us.”

Theodorakis: Evil vs. Creative Harmony

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