What is a musician’s response to the condition of the world? Do musicians have an obligation and an opportunity to serve the needs of the world with their musicianship? At a time of crisis for the classical music profession, with a changing commercial landscape, a shrinking audience base, and a contraction in the number of professional orchestras, how does a young musician construct a career today? Are we looking at a dying art form or a moment of reinvigoration? In this course we will develop a response to these questions, and we will explore the notion that the classical musician, the artist, is an important public figure with a critical role to play in society. The course will include inquiry into a set of ideas in philosophy of aesthetics; a discussion about freedom, civil society, and ways that art can play a role in readying people for democracy; discussion on philosophy of education as it relates to the question of positive social change; and an exploration of musical and artistic initiatives that have been particularly focused on a positive social impact. Guiding questions for this course inquiry will include: - How can classical music effect social change? - How has music made positive change in communities around the globe? - What can the field of classical music learn from other movements for social change? - How have educators and philosophers thought about the arts and their connection to daily contemporary life? Each class will explore one critical question through lectures, discussions, interviews, or documentaries.
7.3 - Barenboim and the West Eastern Divan Orchestra
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Do curso por Yale University
Music and Social Action
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21st Century Artists and Social Commitment
This class will involve a discussion with performing musicians and a look at examples of artists and musicians from the past hundred years who have been committed to making positive contributions to political or social issues of their time.
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Sebastian RuthVisiting Lecturer in Community Engagement
Yale School of Music
We'll start with a discussion of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
The project lead by the internationally renowned pianist, conductor,
and teacher Daniel Barenboim, and
which was founded by Barenboim and the scholar and cultural critic Edward Said.
Barenboim and Said initiated the project out of a friendship that began in music,
and that included many years of honest dialogue and
probing into the meaning of cultural identity, particularly in the Middle East.
Said was Palestinian, Barenboim originally Israeli.
And the project involves bringing together young Israeli, Palestinian,
and Arab musicians to form an orchestra that rehearses,
engages in discussions, and performs together every summer.
As they explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the intractable political and
geographic and identity issues that have kept the Middle East in a state of
conflict, Barenboim and Said felt that the contribution that they could
make would be to find ways through music of bringing young people from many sides
of this conflict together to form a better understanding of one another as people.
With Barenboim as the conductor and teacher of the combined orchestra
the common experience was that of learning and performing with a master musician.
The reason I include this project in the course is that there's a commitment and
a theory inherent in the founding of the project that in an ongoing way
acknowledges the musical experiences can be profound in it of themselves.
And that the orchestra as a community becomes a vehicle to build understanding
between groups, especially groups enmeshed in conflict.
As we think about the relationship between arts and civil society,
between arts and individual freedoms, this project as a social action
stands as an important example and raises many important questions.
Let's first turn to the founders of this orchestra, talking about their ambitions.
Daniel Barenboim describes the orchestra in ambitious and yet realistic terms.
In his essay about the orchestra in his book, Music Quickens Time, he
talks about how culture provides important opportunities in oppressed societies.
He says, often, in societies suffering from political oppression, or
from a vacuum in leadership, culture takes a dynamic lead, changing
external realities by influencing the collective consciousness of the people.
He's clear that the orchestra cannot bring about peace.
However, he emphasizes the opportunity for
people to develop mutual understanding in the community of an orchestra.
He goes on and says, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is,
of course, unable to bring about peace.
It can, however, create the conditions for
understanding without which it's impossible even to speak of peace.
It has the potential to awaken the curiosity of each individual
to listen to the narrative of the other and
to inspire the courage necessary to hear what one would prefer to block out.
When Barenboim says that he aims to create the conditions for
understanding through the orchestra, he's making a seemingly simple statement
about the relationship of music to social change.
Rather than referring to music that is overtly political, he's suggesting
that music creates a unique setting in which dialogue can become possible.
In creating that setting, he thinks that space opens for
people to engage directly with the issues.
Edward Said talked about music being a vehicle for people to come together and
understand one another apart from their conflicting identities, but more for
their common humanity.
In a speech accepting an award for this project Said says,
strange though it may seem, it is culture generally, and
music in particular that provide an alternative model to identify conflict.
My friend Daniel Barenboim and I have chosen this course for
humanistic rather than political reasons,
on the assumption that ignorance is not a strategy for a sustainable survival.
Barenboim extends this thinking, and talks about the art of playing music.
The art of playing music is the art of simultaneously playing and
listening, one enhancing the other.
This dialogical quality inherent in music was our main reason for
founding the orchestra.
Edward Said made it clear in his discussions with the young musicians
that separation between people is not a solution for any of the problems that
divide us and ignorance of the other certainly provides no help whatsoever.
Thinking back to Maxine Greene's definition of civil society, and
citizens in general, she advocated for
the notion of regard as the defining critical component.
Can people truly see the other?
Become visible to one another, see integrity of others, and not simply stayed
tied to the stereotype of the assumption they may have started with.
As Green says, out of that regard comes a kinship, and
a community or a civil society may begin to take shape.
In the Divan example to what extent do the orchestra members,
through music, begin to find that kind of kinship?
To what extent are Barenboim and Said's ambitions realized in the project
that young people from two sides of the conflict can begin
to grow in understanding of the other and of otherness?
Elena Cheah's book, An Orchestra Beyond Borders,
reveals portraits from the orchestra members and their experience.
Here are a few of these.
This is from Israeli musician, Daniel Cohen,
speaking about the opportunity to form friendships with musicians
with whom he otherwise would be unable to assemble with.
Being in a room, he says, with three Syrians, two Lebanese people, and
a Palestinian was nothing major.
It was just normal.
It was just being in a room with my friends.
But this is so far from reality.
Nasib al Amadea, the Lebanese cellist, speaks to the question of what
impact the Divan orchestra can have on the political situation in the Middle East.
He says all we Divaners can do is present an example in our own countries.
Maybe I can soften the fear and
hate, maybe I can help to put these emotions in a rational perspective.
What is definite is that we can present an example of how we have developed
in these particular ways after having had contact with each other all these years.
Hareem, from Jordan, spoke about the phenomena of humanizing the other,
coming into contact and to collaboration with the other.
[MUSIC]
>> I was the youngest in 99.
And still as a 10 year old, I was pretty naive.
Israelis to me, were something that's not human even.
This is how I perceived it as a young boy.
And it's something that isn't to be dealt with, something that should be isolated.
Because the only side we saw and in Jordan is that of killing,
of massacring, even of extreme brutality.
That's the only thing I saw of Israelis.
And for me to actually meet people that have the same interests as me and
lead relatively similar lives, it changes my
[MUSIC]
My view of what a human being is almost.
[MUSIC]
>> I think it's important to question whether the significance of the project is
that it's music, or whether the opportunity could come from another
activity that also brings young together and to community and dialogue.
Barenboim speaks of this special skill developed in music, to simultaneously play
and listen, as a skill that can transfer to pur relating to other people.
Said indicates that the collective learning, the focus on a special project
of beauty and discipline, itself is the unique opportunity.
>> But their lives are changed, there's no question about it.
That whatever happened, they will not think the same way,
neither about music or about anything else, in my opinion.
So, in that sense, music is a bit subversive.
>> Yes, of course it is.
>> At the same time that it seems harmless.
>> The question comes up of what change may come from this project.
Does the orchestra work as a symbol to people beyond the musicians themselves,
to the audiences for instance,
that dialogue is possible between people form different sides of this conflict?
What strikes me from seeing the orchestra rehearse and perform, and
I would recommend seeking out their concerts and videos of this group, for
sure, is the level of musicianship that's developed, and
the integrity of Barenboim's musical leadership.
From his high expectations, he seems to make possible a world class level of
music making from this diverse group of musicians
coming from different backgrounds and different levels of training.
And the musicians seemed to be brought together in part by his demanding
standards, and therefore making the impact of the project not only what happens
with this opportunity for dialogue, but indeed from the musical experience itself.
The project when viewed just from the perspective of Barenboim's musical career,
seems no less important than his work conducting the great
professional orchestras and opera companies of the world.
It's precisely his commitment to this project as an ongoing and
central part of his musical career, that I find to be a model and a fascination.
In this, there's a merging of musicianship and social practice,
where they seem to each carry equal weight.
[MUSIC]
It's useful to ask whether this project and
its potential to change the perceptions of the musician members can
serve as the model beyond in the Middle East.
Certainly many corners of the globe could benefit from opportunities to bring
citizens into dialogue and find mutual understanding.
Move on to another example, we'll consider how an artist works as an activist for
individual rights within his own country.
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