Rick’s
Place
Notes, Thoughts, and
Random Musings on the Online Experience
by Rick Hein, AMIS web master
This is why music in the end is so powerful, because it speaks to all parts of the human being, all sides - the animal, the emotional, the intellectual, and the spiritual. How often in life we think that personal, social and political issues are independent, without influencing each other. From music we see that this cannot occur, it is an objective impossibility, because in music there are no independent elements. Logical thought and intuitive emotions are permanently united. Music teaches us that everything is connected.
Daniel Barenboim
Reith Lectures, 2006
He has been everything from child prodigy through orchestral conductor. Milestones in his life include his marriage to Jacqueline du Pré and his controversial programming of the music of Richard Wagner in Israel. He champions modern music, classical music , solo works for piano, chamber ensemble, and symphony orchestra. His work uniting Palestinian and Israeli musicians in the East West Divan Orchestra, he contends, is non-political.
In order to speak to more people in the United Kingdom and the world the BBC have broadcast these lectures as well as made them available on the Internet as streaming media, podcasts and transcriptions. This has ben a part of their experiment in changing the way they broadcast. As Elizabeth Kuehn pointed out in the last newsletter, many archives of their programs are available online so it is possible to listen to them anywhere there is a network connection. As maestro Barenboim suggests the connection of everything, the BBC is struggling to connect all the pieces of their broadcasting system.
This year in your ensembles and classes, you have lead your students to believe that the experience of making music and listening to music is a central expression of their life. You may have grown to appreciate that understanding music is a wider and richer curricular vein than you previously thought. In our festivals we have united students of many nationalities and creeds under the banner “Music is everyone’s language”.
For your summer reading and re-creation, I encourage you all to visit the BBC web site and download the transcript of this year’s Reith Lectures. Daniel Barenboim spoke from London, Chicago, Berlin and Jerusalem under the title In the beginning was sound. A great musician speaks on the role of music in the life of the world and in the lives of the worlds citizens. As we segue in to summer, I leave you with the closing words of the fifth and final lecture.
Throughout these lectures I have been attempting to draw parallels between the inexpressible content of music and the inexpressible content of life. We have talked about the phenomenon of sound, about the distinction between hearing and listening, about the need for having a point of view, both in music and in life, and we have spoken about how music can bring people together, how music itself can be a great connector. As I conclude these lectures here in Jerusalem today, we have come full circle. This too, ladies and gentlemen, I learned from music, because when you perform a piece of music you have to be able to hear the last note before you play the first. Thank you very much.
Have a great summer and return to your school or arrive at your new school ready to make music and connect the lives of your students.
The Reith Lectures are on
the BBC web site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2006/