Daniel Barenboim’s Proms Speech
Daniel Barenboim made this wonderful speech at the BBC Proms at the weekend. It seems to have annoyed some people who get annoyed when someone expresses something that doesn’t fit in their own narrow minds, and does it with grace, eloquence and great dignity. I’m posting it here to annoy such people still further. It’s no more than they deserve.
And here is the encore that followed the speech – Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 – in full. It’s a piece I usually hate. This was the first time in my whole life that I’ve actually enjoyed it.
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This entry was posted on July 19, 2017 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Music, Politics with tags BBC Proms, Daniel Barenboim, Edward Elgar, Pomp and Circumstance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
In the Dark 
July 19, 2017 at 12:19 pm
Here is his speech in full. No idea why a screen capture made it on the net. 😦 https://youtu.be/0oNWpKBP6bU
July 19, 2017 at 12:26 pm
My fault! I added the wrong link. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ve added the right one.
July 19, 2017 at 4:13 pm
Reblogged this on Spocki's World and commented:
This post originally appeared on the In The Dark blog. I agree wholeheartedly with both the telescoper and Barenboim.
July 19, 2017 at 7:28 pm
Education… if only it were so simple! Yet Europe, the continent whose culture I love so much, and also Russia, instituted mass education systems in the 20th century for the first time in human history – yet it proved to be a century of blood. The problem is in the human heart, not the head.
That much, at least, can be deduced from empirical observation even before any discussion about what might be done about it.
July 20, 2017 at 12:01 am
The relevant empirical observation being the absence of violent conflict in Western Europe for 80 years – the longest period since Romantic times.
July 20, 2017 at 10:39 am
Barenboim spoke of Europe, European culture, and education. So if his words are the subject at issue then it is appropriate to sample the situation across the whole of Europe – from Portugal to the Urals. When this is done, doesn’t my comment remain accurate? He wasn’t talking exclusively about Western Europe. Had he done so, I would have made a different reply.
July 20, 2017 at 10:57 am
Reviewed here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-declining
July 20, 2017 at 3:08 pm
Mass education is a good thing because it unleashes the creativity of many more people in furtherance of the common good. But isn’t it obvious that education is about the head and that evil (such as war) is to do with the heart?
I’d add to that interesting review – and I too affirm that people should read both sides in depth – that most mediaeval wars were not like WW1 & WW2, which were total wars that mobilised every citizen to the war effort. Centuries before, your country could be at war with its neighbour and unless you were in the border province where the fighting took place your life would be largely unaffected. Counting wars can be misleading. And in determining the stats, not only an average over space should be taken (which is my point in a comment higher above), but over time – and WW1 and WW2 remain huge events in the era of mass education, while the peace in the western half of Europe was long kept only by the faustian bargain of nuclear deterrence. Add a mediaeval-style war to the stats and they don’t change much, but add a nuclear war and Pinker’s case dissolves overnight.
July 20, 2017 at 4:28 pm
Preserve us from education about the heart! That is social engineering and is a hallmark of totalitarianism whether of the Left or the Right.
I fear that you have dismissed that review without genuinely engaging with it – or the comments by Gray and myself about nuclear war.
July 20, 2017 at 10:07 pm
“Preserve us from education about the heart!”
What have you got against the teaching of cardiology?
July 21, 2017 at 12:36 am
Just that I’d rather not know the effect of my fried breakfast.
Anyway, I’ve made 60, and my father made 80 having smoked at least a packet a day since he was 20…
July 20, 2017 at 12:01 pm
I’d like to remind potential commenters of my comments policy, published on the front page of this blog, part of which reads:
July 21, 2017 at 9:31 pm
Some people are not receptive/susceptible to “education”. No amount of external pressure could change them.
However, most people are not hostile to other EU citizens, who more or less have the same cultural values. It is the mass immigration from Middle East and Africa that worries people.
July 25, 2017 at 6:35 pm
“”Note that mass immigration from Middle East and Africa has nothing to do with the EU, so Brexit as a reaction to that is rather bizarre.””
It has everything to do with EU AND British Marxists /Globalists /Multiculturalists. EU ‘s open-border mass immigration policies enable these primitive third-worlders to settle in the UK.
The future of the West is at stake. Unfortunately, most Europeans turn a blind eye to the the terrifying dysgenic evolution happening in their countries.
Only working class people are hostile to Polish immigrants ( both groups are competing for the same jobs).
July 25, 2017 at 6:53 pm
Wow. Pure racism. Kindly find somewhere else to post your disgusting rants.
July 26, 2017 at 4:04 pm
I’m afraid facts like are more than that primitive commenter can cope with.