Everything Is Connected: The Power of Music

Dear prospective readers of `Music Quickens Time', You are wandering around the myriad of news broadcast and web outlets, on every quarters of our cyberspace, in a quest of the latest literature release that will make your days for the foreseeable future and enrich your personal way of life. If you ended up here on that corner of the web social space it's because you are a cultivated individual, who loves music and values intelligent discourse about it in order to enrich your experience as a listener and/or a practitioner. Many essays were and are written about Music evidently. Another one? Well rather than music per se, this series of assays will give you the great opportunity to get connected with one of our brightest contemporary musician. As a matter of fact, Daniel Barenboim himself bluntly starts his book by asserting that `it is impossible to speak about music'! Indeed. In addition, is-it not somehow ironic that a musician, who argues that music is a powerful media to express ourselves, needs another mean, i.e. literature, to demonstrate his point? Would performing and composing music not be self-sufficient and should it no fulfill the need of a great performer like Daniel Barenboim? Well apparently not, and that's lucky for us. In this series of assays, Daniel Barenboim is like sitting on a divan so to speak, with the obvious need to disclose what is bothering him in our current world and what keeps him awake at night. We, the reader have the great privilege to be part of this analysis and be exposed to this meta-analysis of music and share his passion about it. This `Music Quicken Times' assay is not a treatise of western music. It is a convincing message that music is incredibly much more than a mere entertainment; this is a permanent teaching of philosophy, history and wisdom to name a few. Daniel Barenboim somehow rejuvenates the concept of `Honnête Homme'. He convincingly conveys the message that being literate in music is much more than being a member of an elite culture: it teaches a universal language that deeply affects all human being. Not only Daniel Barenboim writes about it, he actually successfully implements this concept with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. It is reassuring to witness an intellectual like Daniel Barenboin being engaged, an `intellectuel engagé'. 'Music Quickens Time' is full of fascinating insights about composers and the fabric of music as well as very pertinent statements, e.g. "Individuality and collectivism need not be mutually exclusive; in fact, together they are capable of enhancing human existence". Listing to Bach Well-Tempered Clavier while reading `Music Quickens Time' assay will definitively enhance yours.

I am a lover of classical music and the piano. I am not a musician. Barenboim's explanations applied to specific classical works are interesting, but I don't really understand them. He has excellent chapters giving his insights and opinions on Mozart and Bach. He explains why Mozart is preferable to Brahms and then why such comparisons are not really relevant. More paradox. The book is not as well-written or detailed as I would have preferred, but Mr. Barenboim does a really good job of explaining how music and composers (Mozart) employed paradox is their compositions; e.g., the tragic has touches of comedy and vice versa, heavy and light, etc. If you are a relative novice in music history, this book has appeal. I've listened to Barenboim for years, particularly playing the Mozart piano concertos. It is a nice supplement to listening pleasure.

Daniel Barenboim is one of the world's greatest living conductors. This Argentine-born, Israeli child prodigy began publicly performing the piano at the age of seven before moving to Europe to pursue further studies in music. During his youth, he encountered the legendary German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, whose profound, probing, and philosophical approaches to music have become the paragon after which he patterned himself. Indeed, there is no one today I would rather hear conduct the operas of Wagner and the symphonies of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. As a pianist, only a handful can contest him in the keyboard masterpieces of Bach, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Chopin and many of the aforementioned masters. Barenboim, however, is not merely a musician. He is also an international ambassador of peace who chooses to speak through the universal language of music. In Wagner's Bayreuth Festival, a temple of music tainted with the vestiges of the Nazi regime, Barenboim was the first Jewish conductor to be constantly invited for nearly two decades to direct its prestigious summer festivals. He is also an outspoken critic of Israel and has strongly supported Palestinian rights since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Together with his best friend Edward Said, he formed the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble of Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians who congregate not only for the sake of music, but also to symbolize a utopian state of peace in the war-torn Middle East. The conductor is also a prolific writer, having published multiple articles in prestigious international publications like France's Le Monde and Germany's Der Tagesspiegel. Last year, he released his third book "Music Quickens Time," a collection of thought-provoking essays about the inherent truths in music and the philosophical lessons that revolutionaries like Mozart, Schumann and Bach are able to engender in their unique approaches to the art form. In this slender book, Daniel Barenboim eloquently shows how the fibers of music are intrinsically connected with the threads of life, unlocking a gateway for it to instruct us in exploring how we live, and to illuminate and find a resolution to many current, intractable issues. His prelude begins with the words, "This is not a book for musicians, nor is it one for non-musicians, but rather for the curious mind that wishes to discover the parallels between music and life and the wisdom that becomes audible to the thinking ear." As an ambassador of music, Barenboim manages to effectively communicate certain human fundamentals through examples that expound on music's spatial and temporal relations, its innately pragmatic interconnections, its symbolic philosophies, and its undergirding motif of totality that shed light on a perspective constantly recapitulated in our symphony of life. He urges readers to incorporate a culture of active and intelligent listening, to develop "the educati

Just as I finished reading this book of essays by Daniel Barenboim, newspaper headlines exploded with word of renewed and terrible conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That news made a sobering counterpoint to Barenboim's plea for mutual concessions, understanding and good will between the two parties. What can a musician, even a world-famous one like Barenboim, contribute to the debate on this frightening problem? First of all, Barenboim has done something concrete about it by helping to organize an orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan, in which young players from both sides meet, rehearse, work together and --- perhaps --- begin to understand one another's points of view. Secondly, he has made an example of himself by accepting Palestinian citizenship in addition to his own Jewish heritage. Third, he has spoken out publicly for dialogue and mutual respect in a situation to which he insists there is no military solution. He insists, in that regard, that the Palestinians have a right to an independent state of their own Daniel Barenboim, known worldwide as a pianist and conductor, is no dreamy-eyed do-gooder. He knows the depth of hatred that this issue has generated. His book does not weave unrealistic fantasies of optimism about a quick solution. He simply says --- over and over --- that there has to be "give" on both sides, there has to be understanding and accommodation, there somehow has to be a beginning of trust, there has to be willingness to consider the other side's point of view. And he thinks music can help. This unconventional idea will probably amuse readers who fail to see the connection. Such people will write Barenboim off as a man carried away by his love for the music that defines his own life. For instance, he compares the two opposing political positions to two subjects in a complex fugue. Neither is independent of the other. Neither is more important than the other. Yet they coexist in perfect synergy. Mastery of this idea could help produce, he says, people "more apt to listen to and understand several points of view at once." Music, he argues, might teach us all "the importance of the interconnection between transparency, power and force." In music, as in life, he says, nothing is totally independent. Everything is connected. It is at least a novel way of looking at the problem. But this book is not just a political tract with musical trimmings. There is a lot of thoughtful discussion of music and musicians as well, though in those, his language can become opaque and cliché-prone. There are discussions of Schumann and Mozart. There are tributes to Pierre Boulez, Wilhelm Furtwangler, and especially to the late writer, teacher and political activist Edward Said, who was his partner in creating the West-Eastern Divan project. About half of the book is made up of previously published pieces culled from various sources. Some of these can stand on their own literary feet apart from their sources, and

As in: The NEW YORK TIMES, dated November 24, 2008 offered an overview of a new book entitled "Music Quickens Time" Verso Books) by Daniel Barenboim. I recently read a book by Daniel Barenboim entitled "Everything is Connected: The Power of Music" (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson-London). ATTENTION TO SHOPPERS.....these two books are exactly the same book. Don't purchase them twice!!! Although Mr. Barenboim is worth reading twIce, even many times, be cautioned that there is a confusion in the purchasing approaches to this item. There is no musician more impassioned with the gift of music to the world than Daniel Barenboim, and no more committed to peace that music is capable of bringing to all nations and the world. Such maxims as: "when you teach, you learn and when you give, you receive" are entwined in the process, the actions and life of this great individual and superb musician.