2008 Woodie Awards
Can We Play Nazi Music?
Daniel Barenboim at the First Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia
Menachem Wecker
Issue date: 2/15/05 Section: Editorials/Op-Ed
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Wagner, Israel and Palestine
Lecture by Daniel Barenboim
Monday, January 24, 2005
The Miller Theater at Columbia University
First Edward Said Memorial Lecture
www.millertheater.com
"In one evening with Daniel, I learned more about sound than ever before," Columbia University President Lee Bollinger began, addressing a packed house at the Miller Theater at Columbia. By Daniel, he means Maestro Daniel Barenboim, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For a change, Mr. Bollinger was not under fire for his Middle East department demanding of its Jewish students how many Palestinians they had killed during their army service, or the like. Like several of his peers in Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers and more recently University of Massachusetts President William Bulger, Mr. Bollinger seems to always represent the poor soul in the worst place at the wrong time. This time, he was introducing Mr. Barenboim's lecture, the first of the Edward Said Memorial Lecture series, and the Miller Theater billed it as "Wagner, Israel and Palestine."
I sat in the press box near a Boston Globe reporter, and some AP camera men (who seemed to have previously conspired to block all my photo ops), I heard Miriam Said say "We hope the Said Lecture will continue forever," and hoping that she meant the series and not this particular talk, I sat back with my notebook, my pen in my sweaty little palm and as an open mind as I could muster given the topic of "Music as a Bridge to Peace in the Middle East." I tried to block my memories of the jazz bar in the German Colony in Jerusalem that I used to frequent, where the owner, Arnie thought his music would bring peace to the Middle East. It hasn't yet.
If you are a Yeshiva student, you probably freely associate the late Mr. Edward Said with an anti-Semite-if you recognize the name at all-so a few words of introduction might be in order, for both your sake and his. Mr. Said was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and a very renowned academician. With Maestro Barenboim, Mr. Said founded the West Eastern Divan Workshop, "an orchestra and school that brings together Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians to play music and to help bring understanding and peace in an area of conflict." The Workshop was created two years ago in Weimar, Germany (yes, you heard of it from the Bauhaus movement, which the Nazis shut down, alleging it was Communist-degenerate-Jewish, a string of indictments they rallied interchangeably).
Lecture by Daniel Barenboim
Monday, January 24, 2005
The Miller Theater at Columbia University
First Edward Said Memorial Lecture
www.millertheater.com
"In one evening with Daniel, I learned more about sound than ever before," Columbia University President Lee Bollinger began, addressing a packed house at the Miller Theater at Columbia. By Daniel, he means Maestro Daniel Barenboim, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For a change, Mr. Bollinger was not under fire for his Middle East department demanding of its Jewish students how many Palestinians they had killed during their army service, or the like. Like several of his peers in Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers and more recently University of Massachusetts President William Bulger, Mr. Bollinger seems to always represent the poor soul in the worst place at the wrong time. This time, he was introducing Mr. Barenboim's lecture, the first of the Edward Said Memorial Lecture series, and the Miller Theater billed it as "Wagner, Israel and Palestine."
I sat in the press box near a Boston Globe reporter, and some AP camera men (who seemed to have previously conspired to block all my photo ops), I heard Miriam Said say "We hope the Said Lecture will continue forever," and hoping that she meant the series and not this particular talk, I sat back with my notebook, my pen in my sweaty little palm and as an open mind as I could muster given the topic of "Music as a Bridge to Peace in the Middle East." I tried to block my memories of the jazz bar in the German Colony in Jerusalem that I used to frequent, where the owner, Arnie thought his music would bring peace to the Middle East. It hasn't yet.
If you are a Yeshiva student, you probably freely associate the late Mr. Edward Said with an anti-Semite-if you recognize the name at all-so a few words of introduction might be in order, for both your sake and his. Mr. Said was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and a very renowned academician. With Maestro Barenboim, Mr. Said founded the West Eastern Divan Workshop, "an orchestra and school that brings together Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians to play music and to help bring understanding and peace in an area of conflict." The Workshop was created two years ago in Weimar, Germany (yes, you heard of it from the Bauhaus movement, which the Nazis shut down, alleging it was Communist-degenerate-Jewish, a string of indictments they rallied interchangeably).
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