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Criticism, Culture, and Performance An Interview with EdwardSaid The publication ofEdwardSaid's Orientalism,followed by the more recent The World, the Text and the Critic, influenced an entire generation of scholarsand students in literary and culture studies. A Palestinian,born inJerusalem,he has been an active spokesmanfor the Palestinians, writing and lecturingfrequently on the Mid-East and internationalpolitics.A professor of English and ComparativeLiteratureat Columbia University, Said also writes music criticismforThe Nation. Hiswritings on music will appear in the forthcoming Musical Elaborations, coinciding with his new political study Culture and Imperialism. In March, 1989, Bonnie Marranca,Marc Robinson, and Una Chaudhurimet with Edward Saidfor a conversation. I BONNIE MARRANCA: Since you write on music performance, tell us how you feel about this activity in your life, and how it is perceived by others in the literary world. EDWARD SAID: I think the isolation of musical culture from what is called literary culture is almost total. What used to be assumed to be a kind of passing knowledge or literacy on the part of literary people with regard to music is now non-existent. I think there are a few desultory efforts to be interested in the rock culture and pop music, that whole mass culture phenomenon, on the part of literary intellectuals. But the world that I'm interested in, the music of classical performance and opera and the socalled high-culture dramas that have persisted largely from the nineteenth century, is almost totally mysterious to literary people. I think they regard what I do as a kind of lark. I've demonstrated my seriousness by giving a series of lectures last spring, the Wellek Lectures at the University of California at Irvine, which are normally very heavy-duty literary theory lectures. 21 I gave them on what I call musical elaborations, of which the first lecture of three was on performance. It was called "Performance as an extreme occasion." I was interested in the role of music in the creation of social space. In the third lecture I talked about music and solitude and melody, which are subjects that interest me a great deal. But I don't think one can really worry about music seriously without some active participation in musical life. My own background is that of a pianist. I studied piano quite seriously when I was an undergraduate at Princeton and with teachers at Julliard. So I think what interests me in the whole phenomenon is not so much the reviewing aspect. I prefer trying to deal with the problem of the composer and the problem of performance as separate but interrelated issues. MARRANCA: Your music criticism seems to be different from your literary criticism. Not only is the subject matter different, but it doesn't seem to be as-let me see if I can choose the right word, because I don't want to mean it in any kind of pejorative sense-it's lighter, it's not as dense and politically engaged. Of course, it doesn't always lend itself to that, depending on the subject matter. On the other hand, the piece that you did on Verdi's Aida is a model for a new kind of theatre history. But it seems to me that there is something you allow yourself to do in music criticism that is not there in your literary criticism. SAID: What I'm moved by in music criticism are things that I'm interested in and like. I am really first motivated by pleasure. And it has to be sustained over a long period of time. I don't write reviews; I think that's a debased form, to write a kind of scorecard, morning-after kind of thing about performance . So what I like to do is to go to many more performances than I would ever write about and then over a period of time, certain things crystallize out of my mind as I reflect on them and think about them, and the music I'll play over. In the end, what I really find abides are the things that I care about. I don't know what those are until after a period of...

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