Parallels and Paradoxes
Edward Said & Daniel Barenboim
Why I Recommend This
A Palestinian literary critic and an Israeli conductor meet in a London hotel lobby. What could've been one awkward conversation became a decade-long friendship. They founded an orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians. They argued about music, performance, Wagner's anti-Semitism, what art can do that politics can't.
This book is transcripts of those conversations. What stayed with me: their insistence that understanding does not require agreement. You can hold your position while genuinely engaging with someone who opposes it. Barenboim says the orchestra is against ignorance specifically, which sets a different bar than "for peace." The distinction matters.
The Book
Emerged from public conversations at Carnegie Hall and private dialogues over a decade. Said (the author of Orientalism) and Barenboim (conductor, pianist, citizen of Argentina, Israel, and Spain, with honorary Palestinian citizenship) talk about music, performance, Wagner's anti-Semitism, and what art can do that politics cannot.
The core thesis: music creates understanding across seemingly impossible divides—not by erasing difference, but by making shared practice possible. In 1999, they founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, bringing together young Israeli and Arab musicians. The orchestra still performs.
Passages That Stayed With Me
"You have to find a way to put the extremes together, not necessarily by diminishing the extremity of each one, but to form the art of transition."
Barenboim on music. Applies everywhere.
"The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance... to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it."
The target is ignorance, specifically.
"No one can exactly interpret a composer's score because the spirit is not on the page but in the making."
The notation is not the music.
"Music can be the best school for life, and at the same time the most effective way to escape from it."
Engagement and transcendence, held together.
Read This If...
- • You are interested in how shared practice can create bonds that debate never will
- • You want a model for maintaining your own position while genuinely engaging with people who oppose it
- • You suspect that art offers something politics cannot, but haven't quite figured out what
Skip This If...
- • You want a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—this offers relationship, not policy
- • You have no interest in classical music or find discussions of Wagner and Beethoven tedious