Daniel Barenboim

The question from the audience was fairly innocuous. Daniel Barenboim’s answer was anything but.

A woman had asked about the problems facing musical education in America. Barenboim, who is currently serving as the Charles Eliot Norton professor of poetry, gave a bewildering answer that lasted for five minutes, indicted all of American society, and concluded with an outburst about vegetables.

“You have artificial vegetables! And food!” Barenboim called out. “And so the problem of musical education is very small.”

In a way, the exclamation was oddly emblematic of Barenboim’s visit. Though there were moments of profound musical insight, Barenboim’s time at Harvard was not the overwhelming success some hoped.

Barenboim—one of the world’s most eminent and prolific conductors and pianists—spent the last two weeks at Harvard lecturing, conversing with students, performing, and teaching. But most Harvard students wouldn’t be able to tell you that.

Though Barenboim, spoke out in favor of a broad, humanistic approach to both music and education, a small, very specific audience attended his lectures at Sanders Theatre: mainly music students, Harvard faculty, and elderly residents of Cambridge and Boston.

At the beginning of Barenboim’s residency, Knafel Professor of Music Thomas F. Kelly predicted in a statement that Barenboim would “remind Harvard that we are the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”

It’s unclear, however, whether the people who needed to be reminded even bothered to show up

Though Barenboim spoke out in favor of a broad, humanistic approach to both music and education, a small, very specific audience attended his lectures at Sanders Theatre: mainly music students, Harvard faculty, and elderly residents of Cambridge and Boston.

Though Barenboim spoke out in favor of a broad, humanistic approach to both music and education, a small, very specific audience attended his lectures at Sanders Theatre: mainly music students, Harvard faculty, and elderly residents of Cambridge and Boston.

At the beginning of Barenboim’s residency, Knafel Professor of Music Thomas F. Kelly predicted in a statement that Barenboim would "remind Harvard that we are the Faculty of Arts and Sciences."

It’s unclear, however, whether the people who needed to be reminded even bothered to show up.

INSISTING ON OBJECTIVITY

Barenboim’s lecture series at Harvard was entitled "Sound and Thought." Expanding on (and sometimes repeating) his autobiography, "My Life in Music," and a series of lectures he delivered for the BBC this spring, Barenboim’s concerns ran from how to break the silence at the beginning of a symphony to what it means to be human.

"The main purpose of these lectures is to show that music is not divorced from the rest of the world," Barenboim says in a later interview with The Crimson.

Barenboim also says that he had hoped to deliver lectures that were objective. "I have really tried to measure every syllable, and to shy away from any subjective comment on music," he says.

His insistence on objectivity in his lectures sometimes limited him to observations that bordered on vagueness or obviousness. Statements like "the first thing to notice about sound is that it disappears as it stops" popped up throughout the lectures.

However, in the question and answer sessions that followed each lecture, Barenboim enthusiastically defended a very non-objective set of opinions.

Responding to a questioner who observed that young musicians today are more technically proficient than their counterparts fifty years ago, Barenboim argued that technique often comes at the cost of other valuable skills.

He consistently rebuffed questioners who complained about the current state of classical composition as a whole. "There is a lot of wonderful contemporary music, and the element of individual taste…is just as important in the 20th century as it has been in the 18th and 19th centuries," he said. But, true to form, Barenboim didn’t confine himself to discussion of music. Criticizing American cultural exceptionalism, he jokingly made a formal appeal "for the name of this country to be changed to what it really is: The United States of Central North America."

CONDUCTING CONTROVERSY

Such rhetoric is nothing new for Barenboim. His talents have been ushering him onto both musical and political stages for decades.

Born in Argentina to Russian Jews, Barenboim grew up in both Argentina and Israel. He was a child prodigy who began his performing career at the age of eight.

Over the course of a long career, Barenboim has both played with and conducted the world’s premier orchestras, most recently the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which he left last July after a 15-year tenure.

According to Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of Music Robert D. Levin ’68, who sat on the 5-person committee that invited Barenboim to Harvard, Barenboim was a natural choice for the Norton Lectures.

"To call him a conductor is not to do him justice," Levin says. "He is an intellectual powerhouse."

Each summer, he invites young musicians from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, and Israel to play in his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

"His perspective is unusually interlaced with the larger issues of society and tolerance," says Levin, in reference to Barenboim’s activism for dialogue between Israel and the rest of the Middle East.

The Divan Orchestra has been a locus of controversy in the Middle East. "There were many people in Palestine who didn’t want to see the orchestra playing in Palestine because they said it reeked of normalization," Barenboim says. "I took the orchestra to Ramallah as an act of defiance."

In addition, Barenboim drew fire from Jewish organizations for his friendship with the late Palestinian activist and writer, Edward Said, and for conducting music by 19th-century composer and anti-Semitic pamphleteer Richard Wagner in Israel in 2001.

However, Jewish groups on campus didn’t raise a stir about Barenboim’s visit.

Seth R. Flaxman ’08, the Education Chair of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, agrees with Levin. "He’s an example and a model for political engagement for anyone who’s not a politician, and especially for artists," he says.

Barenboim’s defiance of convention has its limitations, however. Flaxman points out that the East-Western Divan has not yet managed to play in Barenboim’s childhood home. "It’s sad to remember that they’ve only played to Arab audiences twice, and they’ve never played in Israel," he says.

But Barenboim seems to show that he’s more concerned with change on a person-to-person level rather than sweeping societal change, when it comes to his work.

He recalled an instance in which one Israeli and one Palestinian warily shared a music stand in the violin section. "Once the young musicians agreed on how to play one note together, they were not able to look at each other the same way again."

TAKING ATTENDANCE

But bringing Harvard students together in one amphitheater proved to be a problem all its own. Barenboim’s lines about American exceptionalism drew loud laughter from a crowd that, at each lecture, left Sanders Theatre conspicuously unfilled.

"It’s a shame, isn’t it?" Professor John T. Hamilton, one of the members of the Norton committee, said of the turnout. "I anticipated it to be much more of an event."

Reverend Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Minister in Memorial Church, finds the low attendance particularly disappointing in light of the broad intellectual aspirations inherent in the stature of the Norton Lectures. "This was supposed to be the great flagship of the humanities," he says.

Gomes thinks the turnout may have something to do with the Music Department’s inward focus on its own field of study.

"Remember," Gomes says in discussing the department, "Music is to be seen and not heard."

On Monday, an e-mail was sent out to music concentrators announcing a discussion with Barenboim to be held at the Harvard Hillel this afternoon. The email said that music faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate concentrators were invited.

"We can’t make this event open to the greater Harvard community, but if there is someone in particular you are dying to invite please let me know," the email said.

But the low attendance wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the Music Department, says Lesley Bannatyne, the department’s Communications Coordinator.

She says that posters were put up around campus and press releases were sent to "major papers," as well as various e-mail lists.

Hamilton also suggested that the time of the year may have hampered turnout. "I think the fact that it was so early in the term accounts for the somewhat disappointing attendance," he says.

TEACHING AND TALKING

Despite these disappointments, Barenboim’s visit was anything but a failure for many Harvard students, especially members of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO).

In addition to teaching a master class, Barenboim had lunch with students, and gave an open rehearsal with the HRO. He conducted Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony.

"Talking to a lot of the orchestra members afterwards, the consensus was that it’s the best the orchestra has ever sounded," said Davone J. Tines ’09, a violinist in the HRO.

Rather than cue the orchestra as conductors normally do by calling out a measure number, Barenboim would whistle the important melodic phrase. "It’s just a more intuitive way of going into the music," Tines said.

He suggested that Barenboim’s brilliance as a conductor lies in the attention he gives to the score and to the musicians he is leading.

"It’s not any secret or magic trick," Tines said. "But it’s just his presence. It’s like ‘all right guys, you know what you’re supposed to do. Just do it.’"

"Conducting is not meant to be a full-time profession," Barenboim lamented during a question and answer session. "Composers—Wagner, Brahms, all of them—played the piano and conducted."

Though it may seem ironic that Barenboim would speak out against musical specialization to such a specialized audience, the sentiment fits with the spirit of the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry, which awards "prominent figures in poetry in the broadest sense."

During a question and answer session, Barenboim expressed a similar, gentle humility about the post of Norton professor of poetry.

One audience member asked Barenboim if he could tell a story about something funny that had happened during his career. He said, "Once, I was invited to give the Norton Lectures at Harvard."

—Staff writer Richard S. Beck can be reached at rbeck@fas.harvard.edu.