"It's a dark time,"
Jews and Palestinians say, and withdraw from each other -- withhold their
presence, intelligence, energy, creativity.
Lost are opportunities to show the other their high
sides, cast light onto stereotypes, transform fear into love.
"When there's darkness, light a candle,"
courageous Rabbi Arik Ascherman repeatedly told Palestinians and Jews last
night in San Francisco at Temple Emanu-El.
"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars,"
reflected Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"Listen to the music of the night,"
we're instructed by Andrew Lloyd Webber in "Phantom of the Opera."
"Night time sharpens,
heightens each sensation. Darkness wakes and stirs imagination.
Silently the senses abandon their defenses, helpless to resist the notes I
write. For I compose the music of the night."
Below are notes about music helping
Arabs and Jews transcend together -- even in dark times -- stepping across
borders and "out of the box" toward one another.
Every
summer the "Playing for Peace" experience -- http://applehill.org/p4p/
-- brings Israelis, Arabs, and others together in New Hampshire at the Apple
Hill Center for Chamber Music.
Their selection process includes taking their own
exquisite music to Israel and Palestine -- building relationships along the
way. Photos are at:
Their inspirational, affordable one-hour video
is "Playing for Peace," documenting with beauty and depth how music
helps Israelis and Arabs -- anyone, universally -- transcend and unite.
Order "Playing for Peace" for $20 at http://applehill.org/store/product_info.php?products_id=50 .
World-famous Israeli musician, Daniel Barenboim, has appeared on most of the
world's great concert stages.
In 1967, at age 24, after the Six-Day War, he made a
concert tour to support the Israeli war effort.
In 1999, in an act of "piano diplomacy" at
Birzeit University, he performed in conecert with Palestinians, believing
""No tanks, no missiles, no intelligence services will give you
security. The only security for Israel that is of any long-term value is
acceptance by its neighbors. It is in that spirit that I come to play on
the West Bank."
Last week in 2004 at the Friends' School, Barenboim
again appeared in Ramallah to raise his baton to conduct the premiere
performance of the Palestine Youth Orchestra, the first of its kind in
Palestinian history -- a true musical, cultural, and relationship-building
"movement."
Read the article below -- a bit long, but so
full of meaning, humanity, and vision.
"The Music of the Night" concludes: "Let your darker side give
in to the power of the music that I write, the power of the music of the
night."
Then the very last words: "You
alone can make my song take flight. Help me make the music of the
night."
Published in Ha'aretz -- Israel -- Monday, May 10, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/425470.html
A maestro who fights against loud noise -
and silence
By Noam Ben Ze'ev
World renowned conductor Daniel Barenboim gave the audience in Ramallah
something to cheer about at last week's premiere concert of the Palestinian
Youth Orchestra.
RAMALLAH - "I know that it is hard for you to
believe your eyes, but what you see before you here, on the stage - is
reality," said Daniel Barenboim, and in the tense silence that prevailed
in the small, crowded concert hall in Ramallah on Friday, his emotional remarks
sounded like a prophecy that was being fulfilled. On the stage, with
glistening eyes, sat the performers of the Palestine Youth Orchestra, the first
of its sort in Palestinian history. And when Barenboim, the greatest conductor
of his generation, waved his hand, they raised their instruments, ready to
produce the first symphonic chord in their homeland, and the audience held its
breath.
And in that frozen moment, an identical situation
was recollected: In that same part of the world, 70 years ago, the greatest
conductor of his day - Arturo Toscanini - stood in a small, crowded hall in Tel
Aviv, facing an orchestra that had just been founded: The Land of Israel
orchestra, which was known in English as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. He
raised his hand, and a small, isolated audience hungry for culture, glued to radio
sets, also held its breath. International recognition was what it desired more
than anything, in 1936, and the orchestra under Toscanini's baton, which
eventually became the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, symbolized the beginning
of its independence. Barenboim, for whom the Israel Philharmonic served as his
musical home since childhood, sharply lowered his hands, and the opening notes
of Bizet's "Carmen" sounded in the space.
They live here too
"A person who is determined to do
something constructive with his life needs to come to terms with the fact that
not everyone is going to love him," said Barenboim in a series of
conversations, press conferences and interviews he held in Israel and in the
Palestinian Authority during the past week, after arriving here for several
concerts and the Wolf Prize ceremony at the Knesset, which was held yesterday.
"In Israel, there are a lot of people who are very grateful for my
activities, but apparently there are also a lot of people who are hostile toward
me because of this; and I have no problem with that."
During his current visit, the negative feelings have
grown. The anger over Barenboim's musical activity among the Palestinians has
mingled with the insult at his having darted to play a work by Richard Wagner
in Israel in 2002, and Knesset members have used violent expressions in
describing him. "I'm not bringing the scandal," he says.
"They're making it here. I'm coming to perform and to advance musical
education - yes, in the PA as well. Are people so shortsighted that they can't
see the importance of the connection with our neighbors and the obligation that
we have toward them?
"There's one piece of land here, call it what you
will - the land of Israel or Palestine, and until 1948, everyone who lived here
was a Palestinian, but since then, we Jews have had a new destiny. We won
independence, and some of the responsibility for finding a solution lies on our
shoulders." When asked to explain why so many people disagree with this
opinion, he replies: "We haven't managed to digest this sharp transition,
from a majority that was ruled over for 2,000 years to a majority that is
ruling over another people - and this within only 19 years. We haven't
developed the ability to grasp that there are people who have a historical
story that is different from ours. People who also live here and do not
understand what the justification is for a state exclusively for Jews. I'm
arguing that the time has come - but this time in reverse: In the past we said
that `the time has come' to stand on our own two feet and achieve our
independence. Now `the time has come' here too: to recognize our neighbors
as equals and to end the conflict with them, in the realization that there is
no military way of doing this."
Barenboim does not believe that his opinions are
based on the fact that he lives far from the region.
"You don't need to travel far in order to oppose
the occupation and the control over another people," he says. "There
are a lot of people who are living here in Israel who see this no less than I
do. Israel was not intended to be a colonialist nation, and the Jewish
settlements in the territories are like a cancer in the body of the process.
And acts like the separation wall testify to a profound lack of understanding
of the essence of the conflict. We already have one Wailing Wall here, and
now a double wailing wall is being created, over which they will weep on both
sides. I can't make this wall tumble down, even if I were to enlist 300
musicians, but I shall do everything I can so that culture and music seep
through every crack in it."
Therefore, music is a practical political step, he
says. "Everyone has to act in his own field according to his ability,
and in my field I can do projects in music and music education. My way is
music, and as a musician, I fight against two things; against loud noise, but
also against silence."
Only a first exposure
Last August, during his fifth visit to
Ramallah, Barenboim announced a bold plan: the founding of an infrastructure
for musical and multi-disciplinary education in all the Palestinian Authority
territories and the founding of a youth orchestra within five years. His
partners in this plan are the Palestinian National Conservatory, which opened
in 1993, the long-established Friends' School, branches of which were opened in
Ramallah and other Palestinian cities in the 19th century by the Quaker
movement, and the Barenboim-Said Cultural Foundation, which was established
last year in Andalusia by Barenboim and his friend, Palestinian intellectual
Edward Said, who passed away a month later. The plan's annual budget is 100,000
euro, all of it funded by the foundation.
The pace that Barenboim set for fulfilling the plan
looks rather ambitious, but "we're ahead of the timetable," he says.
"Five teachers have already come from Berlin to live in Ramallah and are
teaching string instruments and wind instruments - also in the schools in the
refugee camps like al Amari. The children's thirst is tremendous, and it is amazing
how quickly the interest is growing among them and how much talent there is
there. At the concert, you will be able to hear something of this progress, but
this isn't going to be an official inauguration of the orchestra, just an
initial exposure of its nucleus."
In the hall's corridor, after Thursday's first
rehearsal, the cautious tone already had vanished: "Did you hear that
sound?" Barenboim asks enthusiastically. "Had I known that it was
possible really to play a concert, I would have set more rehearsals. It's
amazing! Why, there are children here who barely know how to tune an
instrument." And the children played, indeed, like little angels: Under
the baton of the musical director of the Chicago Orchestra and the Staatsoper
Opera House in Berlin, someone who has conducted everything during the past
half century, they produced moving sounds in the small pieces that they played.
The piano and muezzin mingled
On Friday afternoon, the busy streets
around the Friends' School in Ramallah, where the concert was held, went
silent. Nearby Manara Square and the surrounding busy neighborhoods were taking
their Sabbath rest, and unusual figures appeared in the area: Teenagers dressed
in black and white clothes, carrying in their hands and on their backs musical
instruments in their cases - violins, a cello, a trumpet, woodwind instruments.
They gathered in the school's circular courtyard for a final rehearsal. An hour
later, the courtyard filled with an excited audience of young people and adults,
musicians and well-known figures from the Ramallah social and political scene -
and a mass of reporters and cameramen, nearly all of them foreign.
Barenboim opened with a recital of two Beethoven
sonatas: the first, the early Opus 10, Number 3 in D major, including the slow,
tragic movement largo e mesto, the sounds of which mingled with the sounds of
the muezzin's call that came in from outside. For the second work, Barenboim
chose a late sonata, Opus 109, and even the limited piano bowed to his wonderful
virtuosity and his uncompromising expressiveness. The audience was delirious,
while the children of the orchestra sat within reach of him on the stage,
listening intently. After an intermission and a brief spell of organization
they got ready for their premiere performance.
In a short speech, Barenboim dedicated the concert to
the memory of Said, and voiced their joint philosophy: "music allows
the individual to reflect his innermost being outward, and thus to influence
others," he told the audience. "With music, a person cannot
shut himself in - not inside himself and not inside his country." Subsequently
he added: "I am not prepared to express criticism of the Israeli
government here," as a buzz passed through the audience, "even though
I certainly could have won applause if I were to do this. No, here I want to
express my commitment to social justice, to the war on ignorance and to the
aspiration to recognize the existence of the other."
Barenboim thanked the teachers and young
musicians, and after he conducted adaptations of the overture to
"Carmen" and Dvorak's "Slavonic Dances," the hall
overflowed with calls and whistles, and eyes glistened with tears. A sense
of historical occasion hovered over the hall, and only with difficulty did Barenboim,
himself emotional, hush the emotive audience: "I must tell you how much
this occasion reminds me of the first time I performed on stage. I was a boy of
7, and after I completed the program, the audience applauded again and again,
like here. I played an encore - you know, baksheesh - but the applause didn't
stop, and I played more and more baksheeshes, altogether, seven. And in the
end, I addressed the audience and I said, apologetically: `I'm sorry, but I've
played everything that I know!' And now I find myself again, for the second
time in my life, in the same situation. Since that's the case, we'll play you
one baksheesh, "Carmen," again, so you won't be
disappointed."