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.
Read more about this topic: Edward Said
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,—the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Good-by, my book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees will rise—but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow’s morning haze—nor does this terminate the phrase.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)