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Reith Lectures, Daniel Barenboim

Thought for the Day, Radio 4, 4 April 2006 Chief Rabbi
Dr Jonathan Sacks

This week the 2006 Reith Lectures begin on radio 4
(and Radio 3), and they're a wonderful institution.
....

And what an intriguing choice of lecturer and subject
this year: one of the great pianists and conductors of
our time, Daniel Barenboim, talking about music and
how it's fundamental to our humanity.

It always feels odd talking about music instead of
listening to it: a bit like explaining the point of a
joke. But there is something spiritual about music,
about our ability to rise beyond the sheer pressures
of survival and create beauty out of something as
insubstantial as mere sound. The poet Rainer Maria
Rilke captured that mystical dimension when he said:
"Words still go softly out towards the unsayable / and
music, always new, from palpitating stones / builds in
useless space its godly home." .

There's a marvellous moment in the film The Shawshank
Redemption when the wrongly imprisoned central
character Andy Dufresne commandeers the prison's
loudspeaker system and plays a duet from The Marriage
of Figaro. And as its notes ring out across the prison
yard everyone stops, and in that place of confinement
they inhale some blessed breaths of freedom. .

Which is why the great religions have always cherished
music and made it part of worship, because as the
spirit strives to break out beyond the gravitational
pull of our daily concerns, words naturally modulate
into song and take wing, lifting us with them. .

And that really is universal, which is why music, one
of the great expressions of our shared humanity, can
sometimes cross the otherwise impassable abyss that so
often divides one faith or culture from another.
That's what Daniel Barenboim has tried to do in his
own life, using music to rebuild the shattered
relationship between Jews and Germans after the
Holocaust, and more recently as a bridge on which
young Israeli and Palestinian musicians can meet.
Where words divide, music unites, creating moments of
harmony and hope. Because we are all voices in God's
choir. And if we can sing together, perhaps we can
learn to live together, lifted by a beauty that
transcends us all. ##


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