Barenboim, Said and the West-Eastern Divan: listening without erasing differences

The conversations between Palestinian scholar Edward Said and Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim moved between music, culture and political life.¹ In 1999, they created a workshop in Weimar for young Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians. That meeting became the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.² Its name came from Goethe’s collection of poems, itself an encounter with another cultural world. The point was not to ask participants to exchange their histories for a common identity.³

For Barenboim, ensemble playing requires two simultaneous acts: expressing one’s own part and attending closely to others. The shared musical task gave dialogue a practical discipline.³ The project gained an Andalusian base through its first workshop there in 2002; the Spanish foundation was established in 2004.⁴ Said died in 2003. Mariam Said continued the work with Barenboim, making its continuity more than the story of two celebrated founders.⁵

In Ramallah, 80 musicians under Barenboim played Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Beethoven’s Fifth. Spanish diplomatic passports facilitated their journey.⁶ Arrangements for crossing barriers, alongside musical preparation, made the encounter possible.⁶

In March 2010, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, PACBI, criticized the Divan as normalization. It argued that a shared cultural platform could obscure the unequal relationship between occupation and the people living under it.⁷

The related Barenboim-Said Akademie began teaching in Berlin in autumn 2016, extending the educational work beyond the orchestra’s workshops.⁸ In October 2025, the orchestra published principles explicitly linking peace to justice, equality, Israeli and Palestinian self-determination, an end to occupation, and safety and freedom for both peoples. It described these principles as an ethical compass, not a solution.⁹ Listening here is not the erasure of politics. It is a practice that must remain answerable to rights and to the realities outside the concert hall.