The Chicago Symphony and Daniel Barenboim

How is the West-Eastern Divan connected with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO)? Literary criticism of Goethe has this answer: “Never again, before nor after, has the Islamic World been comprehended and represented as comprehensively as here.” (Carl Hohoff, Goethe. Dichtung und Leben, München 1989, S. 483). And it is Daniel Barenboim, CSO director and chief conductor, who - in his West-Eastern Divan workshops - brings together young musicians from Palestine and Israel. This has already earned him several European awards, the most recent being the prestigious Protestant Academy Award of Tutzingen - the “Prize for Tolerance”. You don't have to study the CSO programs to see their close connection with the musical culture of Germany. When the orchestra was founded in 1890, Theodore Thomas was its first conductor, a German immigrant who had come to New York with his family in 1845. In the meantime he had become the most popular conductor in the United States and was given the baton for the CSO, using a method he had learned from his father to teach others to appreciate classical music: “When you play Yankee Doodle, you can keep the doors open… When you play Handel's Te Deum, they must be shut.” (Donald Miller, City of the Century, New York 1996, p. 409) In this way he very successfully influenced the musical taste of his day. He played popular music at the beginning of a concert, polkas, waltzes, in other words the lollipops, which were followed by Mozart, Bach, Händel, and Beethoven. Today's program has no polkas and waltzes, but the European classics are as much present as the avantgarde, as in 2003 at the world premiere of "Rewakening” when the composer Elliott Carter received a standing ovation. Divan is a Persian word and means assembly. “The contradictory variety of life is seen as a unity: faith and skeptical thinking, everyday life and festivities, passionate lyrics and sober prose. Goethe composed his divan as a piece of music with returning motifs” (Gesammelte Werke, 9, p. 527) Daniel Barenboim has rejuvenated the West-Eastern Divan, which at a time of global confrontations is no mean achievement.


		The Chicago Symphony and Daniel Barenboim

	God has made the Orient! God has made the Occident! North and South his hands are holding, All the lands in peace enfolding. (J.W. von Goethe, West-Eastern Divan, Oswald Wolff Publishers, London 1974, p. 7)
How is the West-Eastern Divan connected with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO)? Literary criticism of Goethe has this answer: “Never again, before nor after, has the Islamic World been comprehended and represented as comprehensively as here.” (Carl Hohoff, Goethe. Dichtung und Leben, München 1989, S. 483). And it is Daniel Barenboim, CSO director and chief conductor, who - in his West-Eastern Divan workshops - brings together young musicians from Palestine and Israel. This has already earned him several European awards, the most recent being the prestigious Protestant Academy Award of Tutzingen - the “Prize for Tolerance”. You don't have to study the CSO programs to see their close connection with the musical culture of Germany. When the orchestra was founded in 1890, Theodore Thomas was its first conductor, a German immigrant who had come to New York with his family in 1845. In the meantime he had become the most popular conductor in the United States and was given the baton for the CSO, using a method he had learned from his father to teach others to appreciate classical music: “When you play Yankee Doodle, you can keep the doors open… When you play Handel's Te Deum, they must be shut.” (Donald Miller, City of the Century, New York 1996, p. 409) In this way he very successfully influenced the musical taste of his day. He played popular music at the beginning of a concert, polkas, waltzes, in other words the lollipops, which were followed by Mozart, Bach, Händel, and Beethoven. Today's program has no polkas and waltzes, but the European classics are as much present as the avantgarde, as in 2003 at the world premiere of "Rewakening” when the composer Elliott Carter received a standing ovation. Divan is a Persian word and means assembly. “The contradictory variety of life is seen as a unity: faith and skeptical thinking, everyday life and festivities, passionate lyrics and sober prose. Goethe composed his divan as a piece of music with returning motifs” (Gesammelte Werke, 9, p. 527) Daniel Barenboim has rejuvenated the West-Eastern Divan, which at a time of global confrontations is no mean achievement.