03 February 2006
Daniel Barenboim, pianist, conductor and peacemaker, gave the first in his series of Reith lectures last week, in front of a packed and distinguished house in central London. His theme, unsurprisingly, was music. It was not an easy presentation to summarise, full of philosophical and abstract considerations. And he said little about the project for which he is these days best known, his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a collaboration between young Israeli and Palestinian musicians that has become a rare case of confluence in a region more familiar with chaos.
Perhaps that discussion will come in later lectures, to be delivered in the coming weeks in Chicago, Berlin, Jerusalem and Ramallah. This is a globalised Reith series, with each venue trumping its predecessor for political sensitivity. It is hard to believe that the last lecture, in particular, will lack geo-political bite.
But London had to make do with some typically intelligent, yet disparate, observations, delivered in a casual, charismatic style by an undeniably important cultural figure. I feel I wasn't the only one who was urging him to sit at the Steinway behind him, and illustrate more of his points with his exquisite playing; yet he only did this to serious effect once, and it was the highlight of the evening.
It came when Barenboim was discussing, in a question and answer session after the lecture, the row he had had with his good friend Edward Said over the Oslo Accord of the early 1990s. Said, he remarked, was pessimistic on the likelihood of its success right from the start, believing it to be a sell-out of the Palestinian people. Barenboim was more hopeful; and the two men disagreed long and hard, yet always in a civilised fashion.
After a while, however, Barenboim also joined those who could not see a satisfactory conclusion to the Oslo talks. And it was music, he said, that convinced him; or, to be more precise, a musical metaphor. Barenboim sensed that the rhythm of the discussions between the Israeli and Palestinian sides was all wrong. The prelude, he said, was way too fast. And then, once the talks commenced, they took too long. It was all out of kilter. It did not feel right.
He demonstrated the point at the piano. It was like playing Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata: instead of sounding like this (he gently rippled into the leisurely First Movement), and then this (the sparkling allegro that follows), it actually sounded like this: and he reversed the tempi, to cacophonous and humorous effect. By thinking of the entire process in musical terms, Barenboim had abandoned his earlier optimism and correctly foresaw the cul-de-sac that Oslo was to become.
This anecdote, amusingly recounted, speaks very highly of the power of music. Not only does it have the ability to touch us, and make us feel extraordinary things; it also evidently has a kind of metaphorical existence by which all external events can be measured and judged. We surely know what Barenboim means: think of any relationship whose tempo feels awkward ("he is pressing me too hard"; "she needs some time out to get her head straight"). Or indeed the pace of our working lives, which occasionally outstrips our ability to stay healthy and on top of things. It is difficult, sometimes, to put these rhythmic disjunctions into words. Can music help?
That would presuppose that those masters of music quoted by Barenboim have been able to produce pieces of work that are so perfectly proportioned, that we are able to use them as some kind of template by which to assess the quality of our daily lives. That is a commonly held view. Many theorists associate some of the greatest musical works with the Golden Mean or Section, the mathematical value that is used in architecture to construct works of perfect harmony (most famously, the rectangular form of the Parthenon, but also, apparently, that of credit cards and Kit Kat bars).
The famous opening "motto" of Beethoven's Fifth, for example, reappears at the Golden Mean point, 0.618 of the way through the symphony. An article in American Scientist in 1996 analysed that many of Mozart's sonatas divided into two parts at the Golden Mean point. Design or intuition? Does it even matter? (There is much more of this, incidentally; type 0.618 into your search engine, and your way of looking at the world will change, in rather a spooky way.)
This is why music of this calibre is so often pronounced divine. It is the understandable confusion between mathematical neatness and theistic intent. But, to return to the subject of Barenboim's epiphany, politics is a far, far messier business than all those millimetrically precise geometric forms. Said admitted as much himself, when he described how depressed the "sameness" of political and intellectual debate made him feel, and how he turned to music and poetry as a refuge. Once there, he still felt pain he had perfect pitch, and recalled crying as a two year old when his cousin played a wrong note on his mouth organ but it was a different kind of pain, much more palatable, than that felt daily on the streets of Ramallah and its environs.
Barenboim too understands the difference between these two places, the concert hall and the street. He is scrupulous in describing the West-Eastern Divan project, not as a peace initiative, but as an attempt to get people to play together: in harmony, and with discipline, consideration for others and furious concentration. These, as much as flutes and violins, are the tools for making great music. It is by searching deep inside and bringing out the best in ourselves that we find the key to getting on with others. The road to peace can be wilfully opaque; but beauty can play its part at least in encouraging our first, faltering steps.
The Reith lectures will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from April 6 to May 4.
peter.aspden@ft.com
By Peter Aspden
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