Barenboim Gets Yearlong Professorship

World-renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim will join Harvard’s faculty next year as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, the University announced last week.

Barenboim, 62, will deliver six lectures in Cambridge beginning next spring and continuing into the fall of 2006 as part of his yearlong professorship.

“I think the whole community is very excited about it,” said Rosen Professor of Music Bernard Rands, who chaired the selection committee. “There are many dimensions to this man’s abilities.”

Barenboim is currently music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Staatskapelle. His musical career includes performances with all of the world’s major orchestras, hundreds of recordings, and dozens of international awards.

“He’s a musician of prodigious capacities,” Rands said.

In addition to his work as a musician, Barenboim, an Israeli Jew, has garnered a reputation as an outspoken advocate for peace in the Middle East.

Along with the late Columbia University professor Edward Said, Barenboim founded the West-Eastern Divan Workshop, an orchestra for music students in Middle Eastern nations aimed-at bringing young people together “to make music on neutral ground,” according to Barenboim’s personal website.

In 2001, Barenboim caused a flurry of controversy when he led a performance of Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde” in Israel. Prior to the performance, the country had maintained an informal ban on the music of Wagner, whose compositions are said to have influenced Adolph Hitler.

Fellow concert pianist and Harvard professor Robert D. Levin ’68 calls Barenboim a “philosopher musician.”

“This is an artist who is not merely an able practitioner at the highest level that one kind can find worldwide, but someone who understands the call…to be a force for the good of the people,” said Levin, the Robinson professor of music.

Barenboim will be performing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in between the six lectures he is slated to give at Harvard, Rands said. While Barenboim will not be teaching any classes, Rands said he hopes Barenboim can find time to share his musical expertise with Harvard students.

“Knowing him over the years, I can reasonably say that it will be of great interest to him,” Rands said. “He likes to share knowledge and experience with young people.”

Students echoed these sentiments and say they look forward to the prospect of studying under Barenboim.

“He’s definitely one of the most talented piano players in history,” said Sabrina E. DeAbreu ’06.

Barenboim was unavailable for comment due to a series of concert engagements over the weekend.

He was born in Argentina and began piano lessons at the age of five with his mother and father. He made his debut in Buenos Aires at the age of seven, gaining international notoriety after a series of concerts in Vienna, Rome, Paris, London, and New York.

Barenboim still makes frequent appearances with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic and has authored a book titled “A Life in Music.” He has received numerous awards, including a Grammy in 2003, and most recently, the Wolf Prize for the Arts for his efforts to unite Palestinians and Israelis.

The Norton professorship, established in 1925, is given in honor of Harvard’s first professor of the History of Art, Charles Eliot Norton, who taught from 1875 to 1898. It honors “poets” in fields including music, literature, humanities, and the fine arts. Past recipients include composers Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copeland, and literary figures T. S. Eliot ’10 and Robert Frost.

—Staff writer Javier C. Hernandez can be reached at jhernand@fas.harvard.edu.