Foundation

FOUNDATION

The idea of the Barenboim-Said Foundation came to life in August 2003, during the fifth edition
of the West-Eastern Divan Workshop. After two years of work in Andalusia, Daniel Barenboim
and Edward Said accepted the proposal of the President of the Junta de Andalucía
(Autonomous Regional Government of Andalusia), Manuel Chaves, to launch a broad-reaching
project that would be financed by the Junta de Andalucía and would serve as a reference for
intercultural conciliation.

One of the principles inspiring the new Foundation is that music cannot be isolated from
society. Based on this premise, the main objective of the Barenboim-Said Foundation is to
integrate music into the fabric of society, from which it distanced itself throughout the course of
the 20th Century as a result of a general trend of specialisation.

“We must”, stated Daniel Barenboim, “make people aware of the need for music education as
an organic element of culture. Even when there is music education, it is carried out in a very
specialized way.  In the best of cases, young people are offered the opportunity to practice an
instrument, to acquire inevitably necessary knowledge of theory, of musicology, and of
everything that a musician needs professionally. But, at the same time, there exists a
widespread and growing incomprehension of a simultaneously simple and complex problem:
that is, the impossibility of articulating with words the content of a musical work.  After all, if it
were possible to express in words the content of one of Beethoven’s symphonies, we would no
longer have a need for that symphony.  But the fact that it is impossible to put into words the
content of music does not mean that there is no content.” For Edward Said, “what we are
talking about is a process in which the audience, the public, can absorb something that is fairly
complex, whether it is referred to as music, literature or history”.

The Barenboim-Said Foundation was officially constituted by the Consejería de Cultura
[Regional Ministry of Culture of the Autonomous Regional Government of Andalusia] on July
27th, 2004 in Pilas, Seville.