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Einstein's Violin
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an interview with Eger
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Joseph Eger’s life is a testimony to the power of music. Among the most widely traveled and venerated classical conductors of his generation, Eger has discovered within music a universal language that not only unites people across cultures but also suggests something about the physical rules of life itself.
In Einstein’s Violin: A Conductor’s Notes on Music, Physics, and Social Change
(Tarcher/Penguin hardcover), the internationally renowned conductor looks back on
more than half a century of music making and what it has taught him about individuals, the world, and the very nature of reality.
“For me,” writes Eger, “music, physics, and social concerns are intertwined tightly together like a Navajo rug. This book is woven from these three threads into patterns illuminating the effects of each on the other.” Eger shares the lessons learned from his
70-year-long romance with music:
• The symphony orchestra as a model both for society and for the entire universe.
• Music as a force for change across enemy lines in the Middle East.
• Classical music as a bridge between peoples through fusion concerts with musicians
such as Keith Emerson (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) and John Lennon, and through
performances at venues such as Harlem’s Apollo Theatre.
• The sources of music, the unifying language of the universe, found in the ancient
music of the Hebrews, Egyptians, ancient Chinese, and the schools of Pythagoras.
• Music’s uncanny similarity in design to “string theory” so popular in today’s
theoretical physics. Instead of just using music as a means of illustrating the concepts
of string theory, perhaps the universe itself is music, as it expands and contracts like
the waves emanating from a plucked guitar string.
• As well as Eger’s intimate portraits of such celebrated figures as Leonard Bernstein,
David Bohm, Albert Einstein, Queen Noor al Hussein, and, above all, Beethoven.
Einstein’s Violin is an astounding survey of music’s tremendous power—from cultures using it to improve harvests, cure the outbursts of the mentally ill, and worship God;
to Eger’s personal experiences of bridging nations; to its far-reaching implications for twenty-first century physicists.
"Einstein's
Violin is an extraordinary -- and richly entertaining -- look at how music
reveals the inner workings of our world. Maestro Joseph Eger, one of the
pioneering classical conductors of the twentieth century, shows how music,
science, and social
issues are intimately connected -- and how the
structure of music unites each. Whether you are interested in classical or
other forms of music, leading-edge quantum physics,
or the social issues
facing our warring planet, Einstein's Violin will teach you to look
at each in a different way -- indeed because it is the same."
MARVIN HAMLISH
AN EXCERPT FROM EINSTEIN’S VIOLIN
Music Opens the Door
Here I must give some background. Shortly after a series of my articles on Middle East peace appeared across the country, the Arab American Cultural Foundation, realizing that I was not an inveterate Arab hater, asked me to visit Lebanon to meet with the most popular
music star in the Arab worlds and, if I found her worthy, bring her to the U.S. for a tour. Even the Israelis enjoyed her music. The foundation sent me to Beirut, Lebanon, where I met the famous singer Fayrouz.
After hearing her music, I invited her to the States. She readily agreed, and I subsequently became her music director for sold-out concerts at Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and in the United Nations. At the UN, her troupe of seventy dancers and singers joined my Symphony for United Nations orchestra in musical exchanges and performances. For that performance, I arranged, with difficulty (the Arabic musical scale is different from ours), the works in which our two groups collaborated. The international audience of diplomats, UN personnel, and invited VIPs applauded enthusiastically, for was not that what the UN was about? The Arab delegates beamed with pride.
Now let us fast-forward to the Jordanian military hut.
Seeing that we were acquainted with Fayrouz’s music, the soldier dropped his gun to the table, perked up, and in halting English, “You…like…Fayrouz?”
We nodded our heads, yes.
The soldier had no idea I actually knew Fayrouz and had been her music director. It was enough that we liked her music. His face became wreathed in smiles. To put it in American vernacular, we immediately became soul brothers.
When the commander returned to the hut, the soldier spoke to him in Arabic, and now his formerly sour face was also transformed. He became friendly and cooperative.
The moral of the story is clear; music had come to the rescue with its powers to cross the artificial barriers that keep peoples apart.
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