Conversation between Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim, part 1

you know about the Lamar Vesto Slipher divan workshop there were about 70 or 80 young people from the Middle East from the Arab countries and from Israel and the first time when I walked on and I saw the orchestra as you were in the middle of a rehearsal of the Beethoven seventh the thing that struck me was was how I mean obviously all of them had come from not only different backgrounds but from very complicated circumstances I suppose you know I mean someone middle-class and working-class some are Arabic speaking some are Christians who are Muslim some are obviously from Syria from Jordan and so on but at the moment that they were playing in a strange sort of way their personal identities and histories sort of dropped away they become sort of irrelevant and what's relevant is what they're doing towards you now I don't you know when I give a lecture of course I see people in the same way I just see them as a group and only after time I mean there's a much response in the same way that when you're conducting this you know the immediate response but do you feel the personalities of the people or do you just feel them as the first violins or the second violins or in the beginning and the beginning yeah well of course what I mean I think the situation is different from from a lecture in a sense than the lecture you provide the impetus and they are they absorb or don't agree or disagree they react whereas here they act the music sounds different when the orchestra reacts only to the conductor you know any professional conductor can make a willing professional orchestra play the way he wants this is that music making music and only happened I mean it's after all the orchestra musicians who actually produce the sound and in that respect it is it is different and I don't I don't believe in seeing the orchestra as several groups the first violins the Clarion it's the base etc in the same way that I don't believe in seeing the pianist as having two units two hands it's either one unit which is a combination of the two hands in the orchestra is one unit a combination of the whole Orchestra or a hundred units of individuals you know and I believe very much that every musician in the orchestra conceives the music or should constancy but in a certain certain sense their backgrounds are irrelevant totally irrelevant totally because they're there I think that at the moment that they are playing the unity is they in the muse in the music yeah that's what's so fascinating about music you know I mean as as you and other musicians have described it I mean it is obviously like a language but it's a language without the kinds of concepts that you find in you know spoken or written language when when you talk to a student for example in a class where you're you're teaching let's say a poem or a novel the words mean something quite specific I mean you know you talk about a glass you talk about a lamp you talk a lot of person so there's a denotation there and in that respect the student immediately his or her background becomes absolutely relevant to what they're saying and they say it you know my own experience this is you know this is simply untrue or I can I can identify with this or I hate this character or something like that whereas in the music there's there's I mean there's obviously very personal you know there's very emotional kind of content to it but it's not about the personal in the same way it's about I mean it's as if it was but it isn't really it's kind of a paradox don't you think of course of course but everything about about music is paradoxical but I think the other difference which is at least to be very very interesting it may be not unimportant is that when you talk in language you talk about a table the person you are talking to doesn't only see that table but the association of other table other chaos this is in this is why I don't believe in when when rehearsing with the orchestra to only give images which are very entertaining and attractive to the musicians and it makes it sort of easier to digest what you're trying to say you know it's like a wonderful landscape or it is the running down the hall or the horse falling etcetera I mean every now and then as a example of something entertaining it can be it can be said but I think that the best results in the music are obtained when they are concentrated and this difference being considered and being limited to the music concentrated on the musical language short long soft sustained all these are the elements because the this is really only in the sound everything that one says about music actually reflects on our reaction to it not about music itself music you see the motional essential is rational is mathematical is philosophical that doesn't speak about the music it's all those things and more it speaks about our reaction to it the best proof of that is that if you are in a joyful mood the music sounds joyful and adds to your joyfulness and if you are sad the same piece becomes sad too so therefore I think a piece of music has everything we talk about anymore well that's anyway another kind of magic of music and that that has made a lot of people I won't say uncomfortable but somehow they're thinking about music you know I mean the way Nietzsche thought about music or the way Plato thought about music there's this there's a slightly unsettling quality to it because it can be so many things I mean you can't really tie it down and music is also about movement and it's about stimulation I mean question about that I mean you know I mean Tristan is such obviously the case I mean when you when you get to the end of Tristan at least for the air for the participant I don't know what it's like for a singer to get through but you really as the poet has it you're taken outside of yourself I mean there's a state of almost ecstasy in the literal sense of the word and that can be dangerous you know can make you lose your reason and I think that's one of the reasons for example at Plato at the same time that he recognized as did the Greeks that that music is associated with medicine it has curative powers but it can also have these other disturbing qualities and you know I often wonder what the effect on a musician's let's say he spends a lot of his time or her time working on music that in fact takes you out of yourself what does it mean to come back I mean you know is it you come back to the real world and that back and forth must be also very unsettling don't you think I mean I listen now I feel it yes I think so and I think this also explains why there are musicians that are musically intelligent and are not particularly intelligent human beings you know are generous in their expressions and amusing and not it is it can be separate so I don't think it has to be I don't think it has to be but it can it can be separate and there is of course something which to me at least it gives it an additional dimension to the music making which I maybe that speaks of the poorness of my spirit order or the poorness of my ability to come to terms with it which I don't feel in in everyday life what you call real life and that is the feeling that you are hanging even though you are producing the sound you hang yourself to the first sound when you play a piece of music and and you are as it were you are at the same time producing it and yet and still you're hang on to it and it carries you through a certain amount of time and then it died line and this feeling of death of many deaths which obviously you can't experience as a human being I mean you know you experience it as silence basically used ss-sorry ears so far as music is good music but this I think this is in the end when I think what is the dimension about music that is the most obvious over or above or other than real life it is that this feeling of having you have a feeling of I have the feeling of having lived through so it's alive and it doesn't depend on the on the length or the scope of the piece it is as true of Tristan as it is true of a work of Pierre Boulez as it is true of a shop our worlds the fact that it starts out of nothing out of the silence and ends and nothing gives it for me this this dimension and therefore there isn't a constant intensity that one leaf lives through in the music that is not possible to live in daily life and I think this is the most difficult don't you think it could be described as the other aspect of music which is I think equally I don't know whether the word that the right word is tragic but I mean the the tension in it one is silence versus sound you know I mean the the way the sound takes you away from the silence but then you know the silence is going to be returned so it's like a suspension with a lot of intensity but the other I think and that's one of the things that chairs say with poetry but not with painting is that what is that it happens and only happens once that is to say the time is in only one direction and in a certain sense of course you can in a rehearsal but the actual performance of a piece of music and the flow of music there's there's also something so inevitable about it right at the same time that it's not recoverable because once you've played it it's gone you cap and all the attempts I mean I think for me at any rate all the attempts you know that you've been involved with this more than anyone I mean all the attempts to record music to try to preserve a moment in a certain sense something always gets left out isn't it I mean and and I think I experienced it as a loss you know you have the experience where they're playing or listening very intense as you said but then at the end it's over and you can't get back you know it's like the concert that you did with with these young musicians you know you worked on it for two weeks the concert happens and it's over oh yeah don't you do you feel that sense of sort of lassitude and loss or perhaps you do it off and you don't feel it that way because you know there's another one well yes and I find the the although it it takes I think it takes courage and it takes a lot of strength to really put bygones and bygones and really start everything from scratch that is the most wonderful thing about otherwise it would be intolerable to play the same pieces again again but I don't feel that previously we played the better at 70s to the evening with this all this wonderful young people from the Middle East and even if I don't have to go to another Orchestra if I were to play the same Beethoven set with them today or tomorrow it would be different I don't I don't feel that that that we play the same the same piece you know well and I think that I think the one thing I want to still to say is that I mean I'm a certified I'm a great believer in paradoxes I think that the everything of course has its opposite and it's always through the opposite that you understand the thing itself whether it is in the musical structure and in the Sonata form the one let's say masculine element and they feminine element and not only they complement each other but one as it were realizes itself through the contact with with the other I think this is very true and I think that in a way as a performing musician there is for me and it is no better way than to forget myself and to forget the world and to forget everything than to play music and yet paradoxically at the same time never do I find that I understand myself and the world better than to the music and I think that one must one should not be afraid of these paradoxes but you know for some of the people in the orchestra I was very aware of it amongst obviously the Arab musicians who come from a culture where Western music I mean precisely the music I don't know about the Israelis it's I assume for them worse in music is their music but I know for the average musicians you know they come most of them are trained really as Western musician as an old not an alternative but a different form than the one they grew up with as for me I mean the first things I heard we're obviously that would you know the song song consumed which I loved as it turns out but that's neither gonna there it was familiar to me and one of the things that I was very interested in in this in this workshop was the extent to which they they didn't forget that they come from another culture I mean they focused with great discipline on Beethoven and Mozart and so on but at the same time around them is their own music you know which they I think that's also a kind of a paradox or at least it's a it's a let's say it's a tension yeah unresolved tension yes there's no attempt to really to exclude huh do you like him to exclude no no no attempt to exclude but in fact when they're doing one or the other they're not doing both they have to do one or the other and I you know I wondered it because I don't know enough about this generation you know where they come from in Syria and so on to what extent it represents a diminishment of their identity too playing a music that's different from this you know is it simply professional or I don't know I mean you've seen them around the world I don't know no but I mean this is of course my first contact with a large group of Arab musicians I have occasionally in my travels met the odd musician but nothing to speak of but very often during the time of the workshop I took time to observe you know how they were reacting obviously if you mean during during the rehearsals during the rehearsal on this and I don't think that there was one profile that can be tagged on to all of them or the Arabs I think there was some where it was obvious that they were doing it with great passion and with great dedication but you felt like people who speak a second language and there were others a translation from foreign translation comes from an original and there were others that you felt it was the mother tongue the others were I felt they really mmm they think you know like I'm sure you are asked the same question you speak so many language what language do you think in my you're gonna want you speak either when you're speaking and there were some musicians who you've I felt were thinking in western music they were thinking in Beethoven and there were others who were translating from other backgrounds maybe subconsciously most probably of course most probably subconsciously but such is the the power of music sound first end of music later that it can totally get hold of them and you felt that they did from absolute India at the end absolutely absolutely and I was very impressed with the individual standards of the people you know I think it is a it is one of the best-kept secrets you know that there are so many talented arab musicians it is one of the best case we are going catastrophes of the I'm sorry to say they are of governments that they don't they don't try to do more with these young people because it's really you know this said there's lots of talent I have a feeling by the way I don't know but I have a feeling that with the group we had here we were scratching the surface I mean there must be my feeling I am sure I am sure that there are in in Cairo and in Damascus there must be many more musicians who either didn't dare because they they were at the beginning of course they were a little bit cautious why they didn't dare to send a tape or they maybe it was too complicated and didn't have a machine to send a tape for the audition and if I ever do this again I'm going to make sure that somebody sort of experts in the recession of a musician goes to those places and listens to them like but the number of Jewish musicians performing musicians in the 20th century speaks for itself how many they are in how many good ones there for it was natural in a way to expect that we would have this wonderful Israeli musicians and the Arabs who would sort of tag along and you know there will be a few remember we talked about there was nothing was that there were some very good Israelis and there were some less good is really and there were some very good Arabs and there were some least good Arabs there were there was in other words there was a difference in the individual standards obviously but there wasn't the difference was not a national or a group yeah right but again to get back to the description of the car I'm not sure about the situation in Israel whether now for example young musicians when you were growing up I mean I don't know what young musicians did did they all plan to leave or they look forward to careers there but these Carib kids bye-bye by contrast music in our societies associated either with you know the folk tradition or the truth I mean there is a long complicated history of Arabic music and theory and so on and so forth but music is what people play and sing and it's you know fantastically popular through records and TV internet so forth when it comes to Western music that's considered a luxury that's considered you know it's not something so much it's not something to invest in so a lot of these kids are talking to them you know Egypt is different because they have an opera house and have a symphony I mean Egypt is the largest Arab country so a lot of them have positions that they can look forward to perhaps staying in for a while but the others in the smaller countries and probably Syria too you know which is a major country have no future there isn't there isn't a sustaining institution and society to care for them and that that I think is a is a tragedy for us but you know there is one thing one other thing that they have in common all the good musicians that were in this workshop whether they were from Egypt whether they were from Israel or whatever from Syria they basically or want to leave the Middle East you think they want to go to America or other want to go to Europe and the trees did you get the impression is that to leave or to leave for good for good for good because I don't think that they feel that they will that they have today the standards that they can look forward to in Europe or in the United States know that they could really do something in order to achieve that and probably this is the most important as far as music is concerned if there is any kind of coexistence real coexistence in the Middle East I think this is a very strong common denominator that a situation has to be created where the standards of orchestra playing are so high and the people are there the people are there I am performance performance and one must assume audiences to an audience is to so that they don't feel that they have to go to Chicago or that they have to go to buried or even to London you know I mean if you talk about Chicago Symphony or you talk about the Vienna Philharmonic I understand this is the pinnacle and it doesn't matter what part of the world you are yes this is something that you can and should aspire to but I mean you know they would go also to less important American or German orchestras I think to go and there's no reason for this and maybe this is something that we are obviously speaking ahead of the times but if there is a real coexistence and not just a piece of paper not a piece of paper that brings some kind of of cold peace you know like there is really bit in Israel in Egypt now but it is real coexistence this is the as far as music is concerned a very strong common denominator I mean I'm convinced after this experience yes I'm convinced that you could really make an absolutely first-class Middle Eastern Orchestra mmm convinced yeah you see the advantage of it and I think that's part of the spirit of what occurred here thinking back over it you know all a long period of going to visit the various countries and and and the difficulties with the bureaucracies and the individuals and so and so forth but in the end I think what made it possible for Syrians and Egyptians and Palestinians and Jordanians and so on and so forth I think we're two things number one I think a lot of them slip through the cracks in other words they in the end they were not stopped by but I know this happened in Egypt for example there was some thing there about you know you have to do this in the Minister of Culture and that was a dead end but the moment you started speaking to slightly lower officials they understood this was a golden opportunity you know to work you know people like you and your monitor so that's number one and number two I think probably even more important than that is given the political climate and there is now in the Arab world anyone with you know this but in the Arab world is a tremendous debate certainly is going on in Lebanon it's certainly going on in Jordan but nowhere more volubly than in Egypt about what is called normalization which is normal relations with Israel which has only do with a peace process or even a peace agreement as Egypt has and Jordan has on a popular level it's just there's nothing there a because these are pieces papers written negotiated between basically dictators on the one on the Arab side right I mean who did King Hussein talk to his advisers and the Israelis and the Americans but it wasn't given a popular but basically there was no referendum in fact I just wrote an article while I was here saying you know I mean the disgrace of it now that they're pressing forward with this final status thing on in the Palestinians and out of fact hasn't once said what the Israelis say about the Golan Heights that they're we going to have a referendum why don't we do the same thing but anyway that's another subject but about the music I think one of the reasons that then the end they accepted this was the fact that music isn't really political it's not about normalization in other words you're not going to come out with a declaration of I'm are right I mean all it that is produced in the end is in effect a recital or go or an orchestral concert and in that sense it was you know considered not normalization but he knows something else Israeli the word Israeli is not necessarily only for a Syrian somebody who is responsible for sending missiles over Damascus one right and said fit for the israeli-syrian is not some kind of animal that is geographically very close but actually worlds apart worlds apart and they say the same kind of thing and I think that in if this is so then the the Arab politicians are in for a bit of a surprise of course do you know them but they are very they were very verbal and very very clear about this absolu been changed I have no doubt of it I don't take anybody who took part in this on any level whether as you know a conductor who didn't conduct among the students I mean or a pianist who just played by himself or occasionally had a masterclass with you but and certainly all the orchestra musicians were playing together a lot of the time but their lives are change there's no question about it that whatever happened they will not think the same way whether neither about music nor about anything else in my opinion so in that sense music is a bit subversive you know of course at the same time that it seems harmless you know what what have we got to lose after all there's no political content to this thing so let's send them I mean in the end and the Syrian government not only sent them but paid for them you know so there was the some there was some very important dynamic there but I think a lot of it was based on the idea that this is really not something that will have any much any great effect I think it will have a great effect because they will go back and these are after all privileged in many ways privileged young people is from the Arab world and they're mostly of well-to-do families I don't know well to do with chuckling middle class I mean they're not work I don't think that any of them were really working class because you don't get to the violin or the flute or the oboe from from a look from a working-class family you see I mean there's a certain level but I certainly don't think any of them that I could tell at least from Egypt that come from wealthy families these are hardworking kids who've had to earn their way and their families have sacrificed for them that's certainly true among the Palestinian kids all of them it's it's partly true amongst the Jordanians I mean I don't quite know the setup in Jordan Lister this new Academy they have there but in any case I I think that they will never think the same way about other people and certainly not about Israelis and apart other Arabs don't forget that there isn't when you talk about coexistence I hope you're not only thinking about Arabs and Israel of course because because you know there isn't much going on between Egyptians and Syrians in you know and Kyle you know in cultural terms you know they everybody is cut off in his or her country and I think this is an experience that certainly stirs things up you know and I think something like it in my opinion should continue determinately non-political but subversive in the ways we've been discussing they say but what of course but for me was also very interesting I mean it was to be expected that the Syrians and the Israelis would be two different groups two different insight around each other two different societies to you know but what was very in the end actually amusing although it is not in a music subject was to see the relations between the different Palestinians Israeli Palestinians and I don't know but the Jordanian Jordanian Palestine kids were there there was something I was like no no no of course Oh only by the way all the Jordanians have to first in our Palestine but they call including Kerry I mean he I said to a blind son I said why you always identified as a Jordanian pianist he said what I have a have a Jordanian passport I said okay in that case oh it's not a problem but it's sort of interesting but they are now there were some people from the West Bank but the two main groups are the ones who are really the most cut off from each other the Palestinians from Jordan and the Palestinians for misery from Israel and the way because you couldn't you can really see and at the beginning there was a little bit of they were tentative I noticed for instance some of the Israeli Palestinians would speak to me when they were alone with me in Hebrew because they speak Hebrew perfectly but in the groups they would speak English although everybody spoke and as the days went along they had no difficulty just speaking Hebrew because Hebrew for them is easier than English and they had absolutely there in some cases even easier than Arabic can you clip because ease it out yeah cuz they get more they get more Hebrew training than they do our God I never said when I was there this year in Nazareth there was a great concern among I spoke to me a very large meeting of Israeli Palestinians young people or post graduates who feel you know the absence in their education of something that connects them to the Arab world I mean they're very connected to Israel they're very combative and they and of course they speak Hebrew and they've gone to Hebrew universe all University graduates but the one thing they don't have is a kind of lingua franca were there were there people outside ler yeah it's quite extraordinary and and one of the young Palestinians from Israel told me that for him the opportunity wasn't only what he'd met Israelis before and he said in Israeli University but for him the great opportunity was to meet sir of course I'm Jordanian no sir it's a particular and Egyptians come they never see and I think the a very important point is that for everyone when you say that you don't think that any of them will think the same thing way about anything about themselves or about the others or about the music obviously I think that the important thing is that it in one stroke did a way for these people with the empty cliches that run around on both sides on the Arab side about that's why me what runs around I physically sheraton both sides you know i from the Israeli side I don't feel qualified to speak about the Arab side I've never actually been to a country much to my regret well I would like well fix it I would love to make I would love to do that you know I would love to do that she this might not be a bad vehicle for it to tell you the honest truth vesica leave an orchestra you know to create a plane company I mean as a kind of jerk well I mean it is a German building you know but you know this is the cliches in Israel of the Arabs not even on the politically not about how they feel about Israel or how they feel about the Jews but of being uneducated rather stupid people you know in the same way the jokes are made in France about the Belgians or in America but the poles all the things that are now politically incorrect all this is gone yeah I mean you know when they heard Muhammad the first oboe play the Beethoven seventh you know all the Israelis you know I could see that you know not only was it humanly touching to see that they obviously wanted him to play well because he was part of the same group that they were playing it but they were full of admiration that boy from Egypt nobody is in his right mind in Israel would associate Egyptian people with over players playing the seventh Beethoven it's you know it it's pretty surreal istic histories and and you could see that and this is very important I'll tell you I'll tell you what to two episodes one with an Egyptian musician I think he's a violinist now here I know he's a violinist and the other one is was an Israeli composer two separate conversations so I said to in talking with Egyptian I'm just asking how are things going in the middle of the workshop and he said you know it's really quite something you know here's barren boy you know who's like a world-famous conductor and musician and so on and he's absolutely no I mean it's no problem for us to talk to him and he never throws his weight around and never says you know you have to do this because I'm the boss or any of that so he says in our society you know a third-rate conductor or a fifth-rate professor just because of the position and the title feels that it's his right to be sort of to be a bully and to dominate of it so I think that was a very important lesson that you can be great at what you do and that you have a certain kind of musical I mean you have a cut a certain kind of human humility or at least you're a normal person so that was one I thought that was very interesting because I know how hierarchical societies are as you know to the other thing which amused me also is the Israeli composer who told me I said how has it been for you and so he's a conductor also and some of the other musicians from Israel here he said well it's a shock I said why he said leave aside the question of the other Arabs for which we had no real preparation that they could play and so on and so forth what you said about the oboist the other thing he said it was a shock for a barren boy I said why he said two reasons one because he knows the score so well we didn't expect you know all the conductor's we worked with you know always looking at pages and he never had a score in front of him and that was a shock you know as to how he could do it so easily and the second thing is that no none of us here is going to be like him so in a way because I thought it was quite it was quite quite sweet you know that that it was you know this kind of disorientation admiration disorientation and yet you know what a what a lucky person I am to have this experience it says you must have felt it well after all they all come from the Orient therefore it was my duty to dis Orient you

Channel: EuroArtsChannel

Views: 36,908

Rating: 4.9004149 out of 5

Keywords: Daniel Barenboim (Musical Artist), Edward Said (Author), Ramallah, Bernd Hellthaler, EuroArts Music, Weimar, Goethe, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Id: HWQCy6_TU3A

Length: 35min 43sec (2143 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2015