When I was a child the highlight of our annual family holiday in Scotland was always a visit to the Edinburgh Festival where I was carried away by the stirring martial music of the Military Tattoo with its precision marching and the poignant appearance of a lone piper on the battlements.
I must confess to having failed then ever to make any connection between that event and the ugly rusting warships I so hated to see despoiling the beauties of the West Highland waters – ships that would later give way to UK’s fleet of nuclear submarines bearing names like ‘HMS Revenge’ and later, ‘Vengeance’.
I was reminded of this during a recent enjoyable recital given in London by pianist John Flinders and the principal clarinettist of the English National Opera, Tony Lamb, who is current Chairperson of MANA (Musicians Against Nuclear Arms). The evening’s entertainment incorporated an interval talk by Jeremy Corbyn MP. A direct forerunner of MANA was ‘The Musicians’ Organisation for Peace’, whose President , the conductor Adrian Boult, wrote in 1958 that musicians have ‘special opportunities through practice of an Art that knows no language, religion, or national barriers, to foster international understanding and make common cause with their colleagues throughout the world. This is an opportunity and obligation to humanity that we wish all British musicians to recognise and carry out.’ As it happens, this summer London has hosted several important concerts, each with the ideal of peaceful co-existence between people of differing cultures and religious beliefs at the heart of the way the music is presented. On September 18th at LSO St Lukes in the City, an audience of Jews, Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians along with people of many other nationalities, sat together to hear music from across the cultural divide.
Songs were sung in Arabic, Hebrew, English and Yiddish at the fund-raising concert organised on behalf of the ‘Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families For Peace’. A central theme was ‘the need to find a way to understand each other and to humanise each other.’ The concert ended with artists and audience joining to sing together words from Isaiah: ‘They Shall Study War No More.’ in Hebrew:
Lo yisa goy el goy herev Velo yilmedu od milhamah in Arabic:
La yushheru elnasu alhuruba didha baadehem baadah Wala yataalamu alhuruba baada alyon in English:
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation They shall study war no more.
Televised highlights of this year’s Prom season at the Albert Hall, were the concerts given by two orchestras, each founded with the specific intention of finding a way to disperse racial and religious antagonisms through musical harmony. The late George Solti’s ‘World Orchestra For Peace’ is made up of more than 200 players from 40 nations, all top-class musicians, who make time in their tight schedules to play together, unpaid, for the simple yet profoundly complicated cause of world peace. Solti’s widow Valerie Solti is optimistic: ‘The orchestra is living evidence of how music can bridge the divide. The more you have dialogue, co-operation and understanding, the more there’s hope.’ Perhaps the highest profile musical initiative of this kind in recent times is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded by Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian-born writer, the late Edward Said. The two men had long agreed that there can be no military solution to the Middle East conflict because, however powerful the military strength of Israel, ‘it cannot win a war against a people fighting for its own identity.’ For:
Music is about listening to each other, about communication. War is about not listening, about depersonalising the enemy.
When you play together that is no longer possible.
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is made up of young Jordanians, Israelis, Lebanese and Egyptian players and as Barenboim has said, ‘it is little more than a miracle.’ Few people listening to the players in the Albert Hall that night or watching the televised concert could have doubted music’s ability to unite a group of dedicated young people; nor was it possible to separate the identity of a Jew or an Arab musician as the players collaborated in their art with such fervour and dedication, communicating to their listeners the healing power of music.
The title of this review is taken from the words of Edward Said who said that ‘counterpoint is a way to unity.’ Parallels and Paradoxes – Explorations in Music and Society : Dialogues between Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim (Pantheon Books, 2002).
Cicely Herbert listens to some recent initiatives for peace by musicians in London. The editor would like to thank Tony Rudolf for checking the Hebrew transcription; the Arabic transcription has been checked by a native speaker.