Alma Deutscher’s Plea for Harmony Strikes a Universal Chord

As we move out of an extremely discordant 2021 into a new year defined by both incredible danger and incredible potential for beauty, I think it is fitting to revisit a recent speech delivered by 14 year old composer Alma Deutscher upon receiving the European Culture Prize at the Vienna State Opera.

At this prestigious ceremony, the young musician, whose works have sent shock waves through the musical world since she began composing at young age of 6 made an impassioned defense of harmony.

For years, Alma had been pressured by the musical elite of Europe to adopt the modernist ideological view that art must reflect the ugliness of the age which the artist is born into. For years, this young protege has not only fought against this pressure, but has continued to produce incredibly advanced classical works expressing the highest principles of composition including two operas, multiple concertos, sonatas, and orchestral works gaining the admiration of the world’s greatest musicians and conductors.

At the October 20 event Alma said:

“until now, I have always composed melodies and harmonies just as they pour out from my heart. But I have often been told: “as a modern composer, you’ll soon have to forget your melodies, and concentrate on dissonance, as befits our modern age.” But maybe this award today means that a more tolerant age is dawning, when melody and beauty will once again be permitted. Perhaps this is a message that there is more to European Culture than just dissonance. Perhaps there is also a place in European Culture for harmony. And how beautiful it would be if this message could go out into the world from Vienna, from the city of music.”

Featured below are Alma’s beautiful remarks:

Alma’s very existence has demonstrated the universality of classical beauty which mo academics have asserted are outdated and naive as they express a focus on harmony and beauty unbecoming of the ugliness which our modern world has discovered to be humanity’s true nature.

A 2017 documentary called “Finding Cinderella” documented the upbringing, and classical humanist education which enriched young Alma’s genius and which stands as an invaluable pedagogical tool for educators and parents today.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas (which you can purchase by clicking those links). In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation .