Since 1999, the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim has animated the Western-Eastern Divan Orchestracomposed of Israeli and Palestinian musicians. In his latest book, he meditates as a humanist on the way in which music makes it possible to educate peoples to each other. The approach is consistent and politically desirable, but does it lead to a true philosophy of music ?
Third work dated from the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, Music awakens time May appear as a synthesis and an extension of his last two books. A life in music (1992) approached autobiography ; Parallels and paradoxeswrote in 2003 with his friend Edward Said, proposed a reflection on the relationships between music and society. This new book, which presents itself as a constant round trip between musical experiences and biographical events, brings them into resonance.
The numerous subjects discussed, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contemporary music, the interpretation, the child’s childhood, to name a few, will be able to confuse the readers accustomed to rigorously constructed tests developing an idea in depth. And, in fact, certain passages on musical time, on the sonata form, or even on the history of Israel come out more of good popularization than from an authentically original reflection. Specialists will probably not find their account. The fact remains that under this apparent abundance appear the fundamental and very personal ideas of Daniel Barenboim on music. Let us remember for example the beautiful parallel drawn between the process of interpretation of the work and this passage of theEthics From Spinoza who defines the three regimes of knowledge – empirical, rational and intuitive -, the third being both a synthesis and an overcoming of the first two. Reason and the senses, opposed for centuries by music theorists feed each other. It emerges from this parallel that the true freedom of the interpreter, and therefore its originality, is only acquired after an in -depth analysis and an internalization of the score to play. The romantic myth of spontaneity is precisely undermined.
Throughout his essay, Daniel Barenboim defends this idea that we cannot say anything about the music itself (which will make certain musicologists scream), but rather on our way of receiving it. Musical activity, both from the point of view of the composer and that of the interpreter, is for the author much more than a metaphor of human and political relationships. If music awakens time, it is because it allows us to understand these relationships and to make them evolve: “ Acceptance of the freedom and individuality of the other is one of the most important lessons in music. The most developed example concerns the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lucid, reflection never falls into the Platonic utopia of music that would control the relationships between men. Once demonstrated the absurdity of a settlement of this drama by arms, once explained the insurmountable difficulties of a dialogue between the authorities almost without effect on the populations, music appears as an example of a third way essential to the pacification of the relationships between the two peoples: awareness of the other of Palestinian and Israeli individuals. Without dialogue between people, the dead end is inexorable. Music will not solve the conflict, but playing together is one of the means that allow it to be overcome. This is all the political and ethical meaning of Western-Eastern Divan Orchestra whose history is the subject of long developments during which the author sometimes lets himself go to the pleasure of the anecdote. Does music change our vision of the world ? To generalize such a proposition can undoubtedly seem abusive, but it is to recognize the coherence of the approach of Daniel Barenboïm and his Israeli-Palestinian orchestra.
This posed, music can also become a real opium of the people ; This is the issue of all the passages concerning the instrumentalization of Wagnerian music by Nazi propaganda. Music can awaken time, but also put people who listen to it by consuming it. Thus described by Daniel Barenboim, this opposition poses a problem in that it tends to disqualify any musical listening that is not intended to be reflexive. Is it not possible to imagine in our turn a third way, less elitist than the first and less stupid than the second, consisting in listening to music simply to have fun, while remaining lucid on the way in which we receive it ? Must must necessarily be listened to as a manifestation of a depth encouraging political, philosophical or ethical reflection on the world ? If Daniel Barenboim disqualified a certain romantic conception of the interpretation of a work, this same romanticism resurfaces in his own ideas on the way in which he would have to be listened to. More than just a musician book, Music awakens time is above all the book of a humanist – an interesting work even in the problems he poses, in that he encourages the reader to re -entertain his own relationship to music.