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PRESIDENT'S LETTER

At no period of man's existence upon this earth does he appear to have been without MUSIC. The harps that have been brought to light from the royal graves of UR are silent but eloquent witnesses. We have testimony in the mythologies of many peoples, in the East and in the West concerning prehistoric music. Modern anthropology tells us of the far from primitive music of the so-called primitive cultures.

Many scientists and investigators assume that human speech was originally a sort of chant, and it was only in the course of evolution that the two branches separated into the language of words and the language of tones. Hence the world of man has never been a world without tones.

Among the various experiences of our senses, tone is the only one that belongs exclusively to life. Light, color, sound, odor, taste, solidity, fluidity, rough, smooth, hot, cold... all these are found in non living nature, only life can produce tones. In today's search in the planets, a scientist not knowing if he would find organic life there or not, would only need to hear a tone and his question would be answered.

May we not assume that it is the sound in nature - the sound of wind, of water in all its forms, of electric discharges, the rustling of leaves rather than the sight of their growth and fall - which aroused in sensitive minds the idea of a nature alive in all its parts? A completely soundless nature could hardly have been felt as alive. The image of the soundlessly circling constellations is not an image of life to us.

It was not the motion of the spheres, but their harmony, their sounding together, hence man thought of the universe as alive; and it seemed to man that the universal life must reveal itself as something audible rather than visible. Are we carrying the antithesis too far if we ask saying that man attains the inwardness of life by hearing and its outwardness by seeing?

Most of our fundamental ways of thinking about MUSIC and musical creation are derived from the very recent past. Indeed, our whole notion of "ART" and artistic creativity as a unique and separable human activity is a relatively modern idea; and it is now the idea of all Individuals, communities, societies and nations; it is now the idea of universality in human experience, and this universality retains its humanistic goals when all individuals, communities, societies and nations endeavor their particularities and characteristics so as to contribute hand in hand with the universal flow of humanity.

Music as knowledge and industry is and shall always be an eloquent episode of humanity.

The Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music will never fail to grant the knowledge of music for that goal.

Walid Gholmieh
President