who went down to Africa in the 1900s.

They were sent down to find if there was any opportunity

for selling shoes,

and they wrote telegrams back to Manchester.

And one of them wrote,

"Situation hopeless. Stop. They don't wear shoes."

And the other one wrote,

"Glorious opportunity. They don't have any shoes yet."

(Laughter)

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

because there are some people who think that classical music is dying.

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

And rather than go into statistics and trends,

and tell you about all the orchestras that are closing,

and the record companies that are folding,

I thought we should do an experiment tonight.

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

(Laughter)

But it's like an experiment.

Now, before we start --

(Laughter)

Before we start, I need to do two things.

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

sounds like when he plays the piano.

Maybe you have this child at home.

He sounds something like this.

(Music)

(Music ends)

I see some of you recognize this child.

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

and he sounds like this.

(Music)

(Music ends)

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

(Music)

(Music ends)

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

(Music)

(Music ends)

At that point, they usually give up.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Now, if you'd waited for one more year, you would have heard this.

(Music)

(Music ends)

Now, what happened was not maybe what you thought,

which is, he suddenly became passionate, engaged,

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

What actually happened was the impulses were reduced.

You see, the first time, he was playing with an impulse on every note.

(Music)

And the second, with an impulse every other note.

(Music)

You can see it by looking at my head.

(Laughter)

The nine-year-old put an impulse on every four notes.

(Music)

The 10-year-old, on every eight notes.

(Music)

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

(Music)

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

(Laughter)

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

No, the music pushed me over,

which is why I call it one-buttock playing.

(Music)

It can be the other buttock.

(Music)

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

when I was working with a young pianist.

He was the president of a corporation in Ohio.

I was working with this young pianist, and said,

"The trouble with you is you're a two-buttock player.

You should be a one-buttock player."

I moved his body while he was playing.

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

The audience gasped when they heard the difference.

Then I got a letter from this gentleman.

He said, "I was so moved.

I went back and I transformed my entire company

into a one-buttock company."

(Laughter)

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

There are 1,600 people, I believe.

My estimation is that probably 45 of you

are absolutely passionate about classical music.

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

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

your children are playing instruments.

You can't imagine your life without classical music.

That's the first group, quite small.

Then there's another bigger group.

The people who don't mind classical music.

(Laughter)

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

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

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

That's the second group.

Now comes the third group:

people who never listen to classical music.

It's just simply not part of your life.

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

(Laughter)

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

when you come into the hall.

But otherwise, you never hear it.

That's probably the largest group.

And then there's a very small group.

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

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

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

(Laughter)

Actually, you cannot be tone-deaf.

Nobody is tone-deaf.

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

on your car, in a stick shift car.

You couldn't tell the difference between

somebody from Texas and somebody from Rome.

And the telephone. The telephone.

If your mother calls

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

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

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

So nobody is tone-deaf.

But I tell you what.

It doesn't work for me to go on with this thing,

with such a wide gulf between those who understand,

love and are passionate about classical music,

and those who have no relationship to it at all.

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

But even between those three categories,

it's too wide a gulf.

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

downstairs and in Aspen, and everybody else looking,

will come to love and understand classical music.

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

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

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

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

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

to realize whatever he's dreaming.

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

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

(Laughter)

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

This is a beautiful prelude by Chopin.

Some of you will know it.

(Music)

Do you know what I think probably happened here?

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

(Music)

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

for our summer holidays next year."

(Laughter)

It's funny, isn't it?

It's funny how those thoughts kind of waft into your head.

And of course --

(Applause)

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

you might actually drift off.

Then your companion will dig you in the ribs

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

(Laughter)

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

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

Did anybody think while I was playing,

"Why is he using so many impulses?"

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

(Music)

(Music ends)

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

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

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

We have a B. This is a B.

The next note is a C.

And the job of the C is to make the B sad.

And it does, doesn't it?

(Laughter)

Composers know that.

If they want sad music, they just play those two notes.

(Music)

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

(Laughter)

Now, it goes down to A.

Now to G.

And then to F.

So we have B, A, G, F.

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

what do we expect next?

(Music)

That might have been a fluke.

Let's try it again.

(Music)

Oh, the TED choir.

(Laughter)

And you notice nobody is tone-deaf, right?

Nobody is.

You know, every village in Bangladesh

and every hamlet in China -- everybody knows:

da, da, da, da -- da.

Everybody knows, who's expecting that E.

Chopin didn't want to reach the E there,

because what will have happened?

It will be over, like Hamlet. Do you remember?

Act One, scene three,

he finds out his uncle killed his father.

He keeps on going up to his uncle and almost killing him.

And then he backs away, he goes up to him again, almost kills him.

The critics sitting in the back row there,

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

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

No, otherwise the play would be over, stupid.

(Laughter)

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

Ophelia going mad, the play within the play,

and Yorick's skull, and the gravediggers.

That's in order to delay --

until Act Five, he can kill him.

It's the same with the Chopin.

He's just about to reach the E,

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

So he does it again.

Now, he gets excited.

(Music)

That's excitement, don't worry about it.

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

but it's the wrong chord --

because the chord he's looking for is this one,

and instead he does ...

Now, we call that a deceptive cadence,

because it deceives us.

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

raise your eyebrows, and everybody will know."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Right.

He gets to E, but it's the wrong chord.

Now, he tries E again.

That chord doesn't work.

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

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

And then finally ...

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

(Laughter)

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

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

"Aah, I'm home."

Because we all know where home is.

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

I'm going to play it all the way through and you're going to follow.

B, C, B, C, B, C, B --

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

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

He goes back up to B, he gets very excited.