1.
In the Beginning was Sound
Why is music so important? Why is music something more than something very
agreeable or exciting to listen to? Something that, through its sheer power, and
eloquence, gives us formidable weapons to forget our existence and the chores of
daily life. My contention is that this is of course possible, and is practised
by millions of people who like to come home after a long day at the office, put
their feet up, if possible have the luxury of somebody giving them a drink while
they do that, and put on the record and forget all the problems of the day. But
my contention is that music has another weapon that it delivers to us, if we
want to take it, and that is one through which we can learn a lot about
ourselves, about our society, about the human being, about politics, about
society, about anything that you choose to do. I can only speak from that point
of view in a very personal way, because I learn more about living from music
than about how to make a living out of music.
And so I propose to you, before we embark on this journey, that we look at the
moment at this physical phenomenon, that is the only way through which music
expresses itself, and that is sound. Now, when people speak about sound, they
speak very often in terms of colours. This is a bright sound, this is a dark
sound. This is very subjective - what is dark for one is light for the other and
vice versa. But there are some elements of sound which are not subjective, and I
think that if you allow me to I would like to spend a few minutes on that.
If sound is a physical phenomenon, which it obviously is, then one should be
able to observe it as such in a very discerning and in a very rational way. The
first thing we notice about sound of course is that it doesn't live in this
world. Whatever concert took place in this hall earlier today or yesterday, the
sounds have evaporated, they are ephemeral. So although sound is a very physical
phenomenon, it has some inexplicable metaphysical hidden power. The physical
aspect that we notice first is that sound does not exist by itself, but has a
permanent constant and unavoidable relation with silence. And therefore the
music does not start from the first note and goes onto the second note, etc.,
etc., but the first note already determines the music itself, because it comes
out of the silence that precedes it. ...
If we achieve a total silence, and we start a piece of music that becomes rather
than is there - it's not about being, but about becoming. ...
The next observation about sound is if it has a relation with silence, what kind
of relation is it? Does it dominate silence, and silence stop the sound when it
wants? Can the sound go over the silences? Is that all a realistic possibility?
And I think if we observe that clearly we notice that sound reacts to silence
much like the law of gravity tells us, that if you lift an object from the
ground you have to use a certain amount of energy to keep it at the height to
which you have brought it up to. You have to provide additional energy,
otherwise the object will fall back to the law of gravitation on the ground. But
this is exactly what sound does with silence. ...
The note dies. And this is the beginning of the tragic element in music, for me.
You understand that all of what I'm telling you now is what I have learned to
feel, and hope to have learned through all these years of, of making music. ...
I pondered for a very long time on this subject, and I will not bore you with
all the details, but it is obvious that if a sound has a beginning, we have
already seen it also has a duration, and it has an end, whether it does, or
whether the next note comes. And then you get one more other means of
expression, of content if you want, of music, and that is that the notes in
music cannot be allowed to develop their natural egos, so that they hide the
preceding one, but the expression in music comes from the linkage, what we call
in Italian legato - bound. When we play five notes that are bound, each note
fights against the power of silence that wants to make it die, and is therefore
in relation to the preceding note and to the note that comes after that. So when
you play five notes, if each note had a big ego it would want to be louder than
the note before. And therefore I learned from this very simple fact, that no
matter how great an individual you are, music teaches you that the creativity
only work in groups, and the expression of the group is very often larger than
the sum of the parts. And you can draw whatever conclusions you want from this,
but I think that this is a not unimportant factor.
And maybe in a strange way I've found some answers to all this, not in music but
in philosophy, especially from reading regularly and for many years the ethics
of Spinoza. Spinoza was a religious scholar, a political architect, a
philosopher, who aspired to geometric demonstration of the universe and the
human being in it, and he was a biological thinker who advanced the science of
emotion. And there lies of course one of the great difficulties of making music,
the science of emotion. How do you play with passion and with discipline? Having
realised all of this, I saw that there was a need for knowledge, and these much
abused words 'He is so musical' was absolutely senseless because talent is
certainly not enough. If music is sound with thought, then talent is a very poor
weapon to have at one's disposal.
All this has brought me to the conclusion that I am very unhappy, and for a long
time, about the place of music in society. This is the part that I will try to
explore further in the next lectures. Music can and from my individual point of
view should become something that is used not only to escape from the world but
rather to understand it.
From discussions with the audience
You know I am playing tomorrow the second book of The Well Tempered Klavier in
London. Let me tell you something, I have played it yesterday evening in Paris,
and I had the feeling when I finished it that all music that was written since
then is actually unnecessary. ...
When you play music, you get this peaceful quality I believe also because you
are in control of something, or at least you are attempting to control something
that you cannot do in the real world. You can control life and death of the
sound, and if you imbue every note with a human quality, when that note dies it
is exactly that, it is a feeling of death. And therefore through that experience
you transcend any emotions that you can have in their life, and in a way you
control time. I mean, we all know that when we are born, two minutes seem like
two hours. And when we're interested, two hours are two seconds. But when you do
that - and I'm especially conscious of that now because I'm been playing the,
both books of The Well Tempered Klavier on several occasions in the last er few
weeks, er in Europe - you have a feeling of a, of a journey through, through
history. In other words a journey that is much longer than the life of a human
being. When I finish playing one of the books of 'The Well Tempered Klavier' I
have a feeling that this is actually much longer than my real life. ...
I believe that things, creations, objects, are neither moral nor immoral. It's
when the human being makes use of it that he, this is the free will, he decides
whether it is moral or whether it is immoral. What is a knife? Is that an
instrument with which you can murder someone, therefore an instrument of
violence, or is it something with which you cut the bread and feed your
neighbour? The knife in itself is perfectly innocent. The music is innocent - it
is what the human being makes of it. Only the human being is not courageous by
nature, and the human being always likes to blame something else - somebody else
or something else - and therefore it says classical music is elitist, classical
music is transcendent. I'm sorry, classical is none of that, classical music is
nothing until it comes into contact with a human being. I can plead exactly the
opposite of that. I can tell you that making music and playing it in an
orchestra is the best way to understand democracy. Elitist? What do you mean,
elitist? The oboe plays the most wonderful tune in a slow movement of a Brahms
symphony, and the whole orchestra, all ninety or ninety-five of them, and the
conductor with the big ego, is following him.
(LAUGHTER)
Everybody's following him, everybody supporting him, adjusting everything for
him to be able to express this thing. He's the king of the world - and that
lasts for eight bars!
(LAUGHTER & APPLAUSE)
I'll just finish that, I'll just finish that. And then, on the ninth bar, he
hold… goes back in the society, in the collective, and he has to do what
ninety-five people have been doing for him for eighty-five bars, he has to do
maybe for the double basses or for the clarinet or whatever the case may be. I'm
sorry, music is not democratic, music is not elitist, music is not
transcendental, it is what the human being does with it that it becomes moral,
immoral, amoral, transcendental, or sheer nonsense.
(APPLAUSE) ...
SUE LAWLEY:
What would you play if you had one minute left to live and would you play it for
us now?
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
You only want me to have one minute left?
SUE LAWLEY:
One minute.
(LAUGHTER)
SUE LAWLEY:
I have to tell you before we began that Daniel Barenboim that someone would ask
him to play, so…
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
This is why I refuse to sit at the piano to answer the questions. No I don't
really feel ... But I nev ... I don't know, you know I don't, I never think in
those er terms. The most wonderful thing, the most wonderful thing about playing
music - two most wonderful things about playing music - is that no matter how
much you learn, and how much you open your brain and get addit… additional
knowledge, with understanding, since you deal with sound, the next morning you
start from scratch. And you get a wonderful combination of more knowledge and
nothing materially there to show for it. Only the ability to find the courage in
itself to start again from scratch with more knowledge than the day before. I
think this is a very positive thing in that people play music, that's why I, one
of the reasons why I think people would be happier playing music. And I don't
want to think about the last er minute of my life to play, because I am rather
happy, I would say almost proud of the fact that I attempt - I don't achieve -
attempt to play every concert as if it was both the first and the last.
SUE LAWLEY:
That's it.
(APPLAUSE & CHEERS)
On the Nature and Power of
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