Edward Said - Music

Music

Besides having been an accomplished public intellectual, the Renaissance Man Edward Saïd was an accomplished pianist who also worked as the music critic for The Nation magazine; as such, he wrote three books about music: Musical Elaborations (1991); Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), co-authored with Daniel Barenboim; and On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (2006). In Music at the Limits (2007), Saïd said that he found reflections of his ideas about literature and history in music, especially in bold compositions and strong performances. The composer Mohammed Fairouz said that he has been deeply influenced by the writings of Edward Saïd; compositionally, he produced the First Symphony, which alludes to the essay “Homage to a Belly-Dancer'”, about Tahia Carioca; and a piano sonata titled Reflections on Exile, which refers to the eponymous collection of essays.

In 1999, Saïd and Daniel Barenboim co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which is composed of young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians. They also established The Barenboim–Said Foundation in Seville, for which a government-funded foundation was constituted, in 2004, to develop education-through-music projects. Besides managing the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Barenboim–Said Foundation assists with the administration of the Academy of Orchestral Studies, the Musical Education in Palestine project, and the Early Childhood Musical Education Project, in Seville.