The Prince of Asturias Foundation
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said have established a close working relationship that has inspired them to seek alternative paths towards peace, coexistence and mutual understanding through the medium of culture. Amongst the projects that Barenboim and Said have launched together, the West-Eastern Divan, a workshop for budding musicians from the Middle East, stands out for its importance and social impact. The project aims to unite young people through music, setting up orchestras in which Palestinian, Israeli, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian and other musicians all perform together, regardless of their origin. Since its creation in 1999, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has performed in several European countries (Spain, Germany, the UK, France, Switzerland, Belgium and Italy) and in America (the USA, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil). In 2003, the orchestra played for the first time in an Arab country, giving a concert in Rabat. It took a major step forward in 2005 when it gave its first concert in Ramallah (Palestine), which was broadcast live by the TV channel ARTE. The project is currently led by Daniel Barenboim and Mariam Said, widow of Edward Said.
Daniel Barenboim is one of the most highly regarded musicians of our time. Born in Buenos Aires in 1942 the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Barenboim has had a spectacular musical career as an orchestra conductor and concert pianist. He has been music director of the Orchestre de Paris and has worked with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, among others. He is currently music director of Berlin’s Staatsoper and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his activities as a pianist and conductor, Barenboim has composed several tangos. Among many other distinctions, he has received the Tolerance Award from the Evangelical Academy of Tutzing (2002) for his efforts to unite Palestinians and Israelis, the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal, the Wolf Prize for the Arts of Jerusalem and the French National Order of the Legion of Honour. On the 12th January, 2008, after a concert in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, being the first citizen in the world with both Israeli and Palestinian citizenship.
Edward Said
Edward Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935 in the heart of a Christian Arab family. Said was one of the clearest exponents of Palestinian culture. This Palestinian intellectual, writer and essayist lived in New York, where he lectured in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His body of work embraces vast areas of knowledge, including disciplines such as political analysis, literary criticism and musicology. He also subjected East-West relations –in all their social, cultural, religious and artistic forms– to exhaustive examination. Like other exiles throughout the course of history, Said managed to draw strength from own misfortunes and those of his people and succeeded in fulfilling a challenge, in the words of Juan Goytisolo, that of “transforming destiny into conscience”, thereby “creating works that are above and beyond the chance circumstance of any given political stance because of the heart-felt pleas and selfless inspiration within them”.
In 1992, Said was appointed member of the Forum of Elders of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a group charged with identifying and defining the vital issues for the organization’s current and future work.
In 1999, together with his friend Daniel Barenboim, he founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an initiative that each summer brings together a group of budding talents from Israel and the Arab countries.
Edward Said died in New York on 25th September, 2003, at the age of 67.
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