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Probably a lot of you know the story of the two salesmen

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who went down to Africa in the 1900s.

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They were sent down to find if there was any opportunity

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for selling shoes,

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and they wrote telegrams back to Manchester.

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And one of them wrote, "Situation hopeless. Stop.

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They don't wear shoes."

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And the other one wrote, "Glorious opportunity.

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They don't have any shoes yet."

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(Laughter)

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Now, there's a similar situation in the classical music world,

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because there are some people who think

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that classical music is dying.

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And there are some of us who think you ain't seen nothing yet.

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And rather than go into statistics and trends,

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and tell you about all the orchestras that are closing,

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and the record companies that are folding,

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I thought we should do an experiment tonight -- an experiment.

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Actually, it's not really an experiment, because I know the outcome.

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But it's like an experiment. Now, before we --

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(Laughter)

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-- before we start, I need to do two things.

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One is I want to remind you of what a seven-year-old child

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sounds like when he plays the piano.

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Maybe you have this child at home.

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He sounds something like this.

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(Piano)

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I see some of you recognize this child.

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Now, if he practices for a year and takes lessons, he's now eight

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and he sounds like this.

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(Piano)

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Then he practices for another year and takes lessons -- now he's nine.

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(Piano)

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Then he practices for another and takes lessons -- now he's 10.

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(Piano)

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At that point, they usually give up.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Now, if you'd waited, if you'd waited for one more year,

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you would have heard this.

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(Piano)

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Now, what happened was not maybe what you thought,

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which is, he suddenly became passionate, engaged,

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involved, got a new teacher, he hit puberty, or whatever it is.

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What actually happened was the impulses were reduced.

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You see, the first time, he was playing

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with an impulse on every note.

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(Piano)

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And the second, with an impulse every other note.

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(Piano)

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You can see it by looking at my head.

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(Laughter)

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The nine-year-old

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put an impulse on every four notes.

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(Piano)

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And the 10-year-old, on every eight notes.

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(Piano)

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And the 11-year-old, one impulse on the whole phrase.

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(Piano)

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I know -- I don't know how we got into this position.

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(Laughter)

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I didn't say, "I'm going to move my shoulder over, move my body."

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No, the music pushed me over,

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which is why I call it one-buttock playing.

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(Piano)

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It can be the other buttock.

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(Piano)

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You know, a gentleman was once watching a presentation I was doing,

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when I was working with a young pianist.

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He was the president of a corporation in Ohio.

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And I was working with this young pianist

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and I said, "The trouble with you is you're a two-buttock player.

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You should be a one-buttock player."

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And I moved his body like that, while he was playing.

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And suddenly, the music took off. It took flight.

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There was a gasp in the audience when they heard the difference.

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And then I got a letter from this gentleman.

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He said, "I was so moved.

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I went back and I transformed my entire company

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into a one-buttock company."

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(Laughter)

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Now, the other thing I wanted to do is to tell you about you.

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There are 1,600 people, I believe.

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My estimation is that probably 45 of you

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are absolutely passionate about classical music.

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You adore classical music. Your FM is always on that classical dial.

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And you have CDs in your car, and you go to the symphony.

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And your children are playing instruments.

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You can't imagine your life without classical music.

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That's the first group; it's quite a small group.

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Then there's another group, bigger group.

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These are the people who don't mind classical music.

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(Laughter)

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You know, you've come home from a long day,

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and you take a glass of wine, and you put your feet up.

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A little Vivaldi in the background doesn't do any harm.

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(Laughter)

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That's the second group.

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Now comes the third group.

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These are the people who never listen to classical music.

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It's just simply not part of your life.

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You might hear it like second-hand smoke at the airport, but --

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(Laughter)

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-- and maybe a little bit of a march from "Aida"

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when you come into the hall. But otherwise, you never hear it.

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That's probably the largest group of all.

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And then there's a very small group.

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These are the people who think they're tone-deaf.

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Amazing number of people think they're tone-deaf.

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Actually, I hear a lot, "My husband is tone-deaf."

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(Laughter)

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Actually, you cannot be tone-deaf. Nobody is tone-deaf.

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If you were tone-deaf, you couldn't change the gears

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on your car, in a stick shift car.

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You couldn't tell the difference between

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somebody from Texas and somebody from Rome.

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And the telephone. The telephone. If your mother calls

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on the miserable telephone, she calls and says, "Hello,"

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you not only know who it is, you know what mood she's in.

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You have a fantastic ear. Everybody has a fantastic ear.

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So nobody is tone-deaf.

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But I tell you what. It doesn't work for me to go on with this thing,

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with such a wide gulf between those who understand,

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love and [are] passionate about classical music,

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and those who have no relationship to it at all.

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The tone-deaf people, they're no longer here.

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But even between those three categories, it's too wide a gulf.

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So I'm not going to go on until every single person in this room,

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downstairs and in Aspen, and everybody else looking,

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will come to love and understand classical music.

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So that's what we're going to do.

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Now, you notice that there is not the slightest doubt in my mind

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that this is going to work if you look at my face, right?

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It's one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt

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for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading

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to realize whatever he's dreaming.

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Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, "I have a dream.

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Of course, I'm not sure they'll be up to it."

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(Laughter)

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All right. So I'm going to take a piece of Chopin.

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This is a beautiful prelude by Chopin. Some of you will know it.

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(Music)

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Do you know what I think probably happened in this room?

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When I started, you thought, "How beautiful that sounds."

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(Music)

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"I don't think we should go to the same place

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for our summer holidays next year."

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(Laughter)

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It's funny, isn't it? It's funny how those thoughts

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kind of waft into your head.

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And of course --

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(Applause)

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-- and of course, if the piece is long and you've had a long day,

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you might actually drift off.

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Then your companion will dig you in the ribs

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and say, "Wake up! It's culture!" And then you feel even worse.

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But has it ever occurred to you that the reason you feel sleepy

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in classical music is not because of you, but because of us?

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Did anybody think while I was playing,

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"Why is he using so many impulses?"

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If I'd done this with my head you certainly would have thought it.

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(Music)

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And for the rest of your life, every time you hear classical music,

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you'll always be able to know if you hear those impulses.

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So let's see what's really going on here.

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We have a B. This is a B. The next note is a C.

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And the job of the C is to make the B sad. And it does, doesn't it?

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(Laughter)

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Composers know that. If they want sad music,

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they just play those two notes.

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(Music)

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But basically, it's just a B, with four sads.

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(Laughter)

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Now, it goes down to A. Now to G. And then to F.

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So we have B, A, G, F. And if we have B, A, G, F,

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what do we expect next? Oh, that might have been a fluke.

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Let's try it again. Ooh, the TED choir.

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(Laughter)

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And you notice nobody is tone-deaf, right? Nobody is.

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You know, every village in Bangladesh

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and every hamlet in China -- everybody knows:

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da, da, da, da -- da. Everybody knows, who's expecting that E.

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Now, Chopin didn't want to reach the E there,

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because what will have happened? It will be over, like Hamlet.

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Do you remember Hamlet? Act one, scene three,

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he finds out that his uncle killed his father.

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You remember, he keeps on going up to his uncle

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and almost killing him. And then he backs away,

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and he goes up to him again and almost kills him.

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And the critics, all of whom are sitting in the back row there,

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they have to have an opinion, so they say, "Hamlet is a procrastinator."

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(Laughter)

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Or they say, "Hamlet has an Oedipus complex."

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No, otherwise the play would be over, stupid.

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That's why Shakespeare puts all that stuff in Hamlet --

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you know, Ophelia going mad and the play within the play,

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and Yorick's skull, and the gravediggers.

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That's in order to delay -- until act five, he can kill him.

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It's the same with the Chopin. He's just about to reach the E,

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and he says, "Oops, better go back up and do it again."

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So he does it again.

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Now, he gets excited. (Piano) That's excitement,

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you don't have to worry about it.

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Now, he gets to F-sharp, and finally he goes down to E,

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but it's the wrong chord -- because the chord he's looking for

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is this one, (Piano) and instead he does ...

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(Piano) Now, we call that a deceptive cadence, because it deceives us.

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I always tell my students, "If you have a deceptive cadence,

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be sure to raise your eyebrows. Then everybody will know."

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Right. So, he gets to E, but it's the wrong chord.

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Now, he tries E again. That chord doesn't work.

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Now, he tries the E again. That chord doesn't work.

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Now, he tries E again, and that doesn't work.

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And then finally ... (Piano)

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There was a gentleman in the front row who went, "Mmm."

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It's the same gesture he makes when he comes home

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after a long day, turns off the key in his car and says,

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"Aah, I'm home." Because we all know where home is.

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So this is a piece which goes from away to home.

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And I'm going to play it all the way through

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and you're going to follow. B, C, B, C, B, C, B --

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down to A, down to G, down to F.

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Almost goes to E, but otherwise the play would be over.

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He goes back up to B. He gets very excited. Goes to F-sharp. Goes to E.

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It's the wrong chord. It's the wrong chord. It's the wrong chord.

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And finally goes to E, and it's home.

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And what you're going to see is one-buttock playing.

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(Laughter)

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Because for me, to join the B to the E,

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I have to stop thinking about every single note along the way,

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and start thinking about the long, long line from B to E.

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You know, we were just in South Africa, and you can't go to South Africa

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without thinking of Mandela in jail for 27 years.

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What was he thinking about? Lunch?

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No, he was thinking about the vision for South Africa

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and for human beings. That's what kept --

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this is about vision. This is about the long line.

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Like the bird who flies over the field

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and doesn't care about the fences underneath, all right?

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So now, you're going to follow the line all the way from B to E.

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And I've one last request before I play this piece all the way through.

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Would you think of somebody who you adore, who's no longer there?

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A beloved grandmother, a lover --

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somebody in your life who you love with all your heart,

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but that person is no longer with you.

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Bring that person into your mind, and at the same time

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follow the line all the way from B to E,

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and you'll hear everything that Chopin had to say.

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(Music)

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(Applause)

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Now, you may be wondering,

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you may be wondering why I'm clapping.

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Well, I did this at a school in Boston

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with about 70 seventh graders, 12-year-olds.

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And I did exactly what I did with you, and I told them

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and explained them and the whole thing.

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And at the end, they went crazy, clapping. They were clapping.

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I was clapping. They were clapping.

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Finally, I said, "Why am I clapping?"

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And one of the little kids said, "Because we were listening."

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(Laughter)

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Think of it. 1,600 people, busy people,

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involved in all sorts of different things,

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listening, understanding and being moved by a piece by Chopin.

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Now that is something.

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Now, am I sure that every single person followed that,

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understood it, was moved by it? Of course, I can't be sure.

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But I tell you what happened to me.

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I was in Ireland during the Troubles, 10 years ago,

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and I was working with some Catholic and Protestant kids

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on conflict resolution. And I did this with them --

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a risky thing to do, because they were street kids.

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And one of them came to me the next morning and he said,

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"You know, I've never listened to classical music in my life,

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but when you played that shopping piece ... "

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(Laughter)

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He said, "My brother was shot last year and I didn't cry for him.

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But last night, when you played that piece,

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he was the one I was thinking about.

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And I felt the tears streaming down my face.

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And you know, it felt really good to cry for my brother."

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So I made up my mind at that moment

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that classical music is for everybody. Everybody.

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Now, how would you walk -- because you know,

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my profession, the music profession doesn't see it that way.

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They say three percent of the population likes classical music.

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If only we could move it to four percent, our problems would be over.

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I say, "How would you walk? How would you talk? How would you be?

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If you thought, three percent of the population likes classical music,

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if only we could move it to four percent. How would you walk?

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How would you talk? How would you be?

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If you thought, everybody loves classical music --

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they just haven't found out about it yet."

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(Laughter)

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See, these are totally different worlds.

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Now, I had an amazing experience. I was 45 years old,

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I'd been conducting for 20 years, and I suddenly had a realization.

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The conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound.

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My picture appears on the front of the CD --

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(Laughter)

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-- but the conductor doesn't make a sound.

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He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.

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And that changed everything for me. It was totally life changing.

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People in my orchestra came up to me and said,

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"Ben, what happened?" That's what happened.

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I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people.

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And of course, I wanted to know whether I was doing that.

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And you know how you find out? You look at their eyes.

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If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it.

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You could light up a village with this guy's eyes.

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(Laughter)

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Right. So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it.

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If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question.

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And this is the question:

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who am I being, that my players' eyes are not shining?

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We can do that with our children, too.

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Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining?

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That's a totally different world.

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Now, we're all about to end this magical, on-the-mountain week,

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and we're going back into the world.

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And I say, it's appropriate for us to ask the question,

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who are we being as we go back out into the world?

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And you know, I have a definition of success.

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For me, it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power.

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It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.

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So now, I have one last thought, which is

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that it really makes a difference what we say --

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the words that come out of our mouth.

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I learned this from a woman who survived Auschwitz,

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one of the rare survivors.

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She went to Auschwitz when she was 15 years old,

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and her brother was eight, and the parents were lost.

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And she told me this, she said,

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"We were in the train going to Auschwitz, and I looked down

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and saw my brother's shoes were missing.

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And I said, 'Why are you so stupid, can't you keep your things together

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for goodness' sake?' " The way an elder sister

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might speak to a younger brother.

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Unfortunately, it was the last thing she ever said to him,

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because she never saw him again. He did not survive.

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And so when she came out of Auschwitz, she made a vow.

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She told me this. She said, "I walked out of Auschwitz into life

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and I made a vow. And the vow was, I will never say anything

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that couldn't stand as the last thing I ever say."

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Now, can we do that? No. And we'll make ourselves wrong

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and others wrong. But it is a possibility to live into. Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Shining eyes, shining eyes.

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Thank you, thank you.

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(Music)