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A Schiller Birthday Celebration

An Afternoon of Music, Drama & Poetry

Friedrich Schiller
1759-1805

Saturday, November 11th, 2017, 1:30 PM


Great is he, who overcomes the terrifying;
Man is greater than his fate


L’Alliance Francaise, 427 Lovett Blvd., Houston 77006

RSVP : schillerinstitutetx@gmail.com

Dear Friend, 

We invite you with friends and family to attend as our guests our upcoming Schiller Institute cultural event in Houston, on Saturday, November 11th.  This afternoon event will be held from 1:30 to 5:30 PM.     

Our communities have been through a lot. Our nation is reeling with a great deal of suffering and loss. The task of rebuilding is enormous, and will require that we think about the future in a fresh way.

Our Houston November 11th event is an informal afternoon of music, poetry, and selected scenes from Schiller's plays.  We will together explore Schiller’s concept of the sublime. The Houston Schiller Institute Community Chorus will also perform Haydn’s Missa Brevis, and selections of J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and the great African-American spirituals.  There will be musical contributions for other countries’ classical cultures. Light refreshments will be served. Dress is casual or business casual.  It is meant to be a very enjoyable, beautiful and thoughtful afternoon.

Our event is being held in celebration of the birthday of Friedrich Schiller, the beloved German poet, playwright, historian and philosopher (1759-1805).  The composer Giuseppe Verdi set a number of Friedrich Schiller's plays as operas, including Don Carlo.  Composer Ludwig van Beethoven set Schiller's poem, Ode To Joy, as the Choral movement of his 9th Symphony. 

In his prologue to his play, The Bride of Messina (1803), Schiller remarks that,

True art . . . is not intended as a mere passing fancy; its earnest endeavor is not to transport man into a mere momentary dream of freedom, but rather to make him actually free, and to do so by awakening, exercising and developing within him his power to achieve an objective distance from the sensible world, which otherwise weighs down upon us like a dead object, pressing us like a blind force. This distance gives us the power to transform the material world into the free work of our own intellect, and to exert dominion over it through ideas.

Such true freedom is certainly required by us today! Please join us at our Schiller birthday event, held at the L'Alliance Francaise, the French language and culture school, located in the Montrose area of Houston. We have reserved their beautiful meeting space for our event. The L'Alliance Francaise is located at  427 Lovett Boulevard, Houston 77006

Please RSVP: schillerinstitutetx@gmail.com.

Space is limited. Questions?  Call us at 713-830-9049.

 

The dignity of man is in your hands. Its keeper be!
It sinks with you! With you, it will ascend!”

From The Artists, by Friedrich Schiller