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In August 2007, we had finished our first record after the end of our deal with EMI. Previously, we would have given it to our record company at least three months up front, and then gone through the protracted round of meetings to decide on videos and singles — experiences we’d had for the previous six records. This time there was no EMI, and no one to decide anything but ourselves. We owned it outright, and could do whatever we wanted with it. This coincided with the growth of the internet as a medium to discover and share music, something we had used to reach fans while we made In Rainbows. This desire to use the technology was driven by distrust and frustration with trying to broadcast our music via traditional media, such as radio and television. Music on television is scarce, and hard to do well. Radio has such regulated playlists that disc jockeys are lucky to have one free play per show. Why go exclusively through such straitened formats when you could broadcast directly to people who are interested in you, in that moment?

The other attraction for us was the conjuring up of an event, a way of marking our releases and performances as special, unique times. The internet makes it easier for everything to be live, and that’s what we do. While we were in our studio, making the last few records, we would schedule last-minute “web casts”, and, at short notice, make small, spontaneous and impromptu programmes where we would play our favourite records, talk to fans, play new and old songs live, and even cover versions of songs from bands that had inspired us. It was stitched together on old Sony cams and video editors from eBay. It did feel like a Ruritanian broadcast, but it was thrilling to be sharing a live moment with our fans that wasn’t mediated by anyone except the internet service provider, and a live show that could be created ten minutes from home. I’d like to think the equivalent of this in broadcasting history would be the mom and pop radio stations that set up in America between the wars, when the excitement of a new medium was explored through the immediate community. In the same way, we saw the internet as a chance to treat the global constituency of Radiohead fans as our community. Also, it helped break up the studio tension, and made us feel less cloistered and isolated while we finished recording.

Against all this positive experience of using net technology, we’d had a bad experience on the previous record, when someone had taken some of the songs from a computer and put them online, well ahead of the official release. Everyone became very careful about carrying songs around, in the car, on CDs, music players and computers. It made you realise how easy it is to store and transmit music once it’s digitised, and that the fundamental thing about music is its destiny to be broadcast or shared. Part of the process of making a record involves listening to new songs or ideas in lots of different places: the car, the kitchen, with friends late at night. Having feelings of mild anxiety about music escaping onto the web wasn’t conducive to that, and there were a few panics. Fortunately, we managed to keep everything unreleased until the online download of In Rainbows.

The success of keeping the music off the net until release proved very powerful. A pre-digital album launch would involve some shows perhaps, record shop queues if you were lucky, and plans by the record company to mark the release as an event. In the digital world, with the ease of music escaping online, that sense of an event is diminished.

With In Rainbows, we were able to be the first people to digitally release our record, directly to people’s personal computers, at 7.30am GMT on 10 October 2007. I was having breakfast, and watched as the file appeared in my email, and the album streamed onto my desktop. I spent the next day and night monitoring people’s reactions online, both to the music and the means of delivery. Journalists in America had stayed up overnight to write the first review as they received the music – again, in the pre-digital age they would have had advance copies up to three weeks before. On the torrent site bulletin boards, people were arguing over whether they should be downloading and paying for the record from our site, rather than the free torrents. Various online pundits and pamphleteers were pronouncing the end of the record business, or of Radiohead, or of both.

For all the giddy prognostications, the most important reason for the success of In Rainbows was the quality of the music. I think this was overlooked, but without the great songs that we were proud of, the online release would have counted for nothing. I am optimistic that if you make good work you can secure the patronage of your fans.

Three years later, we have just finished another group of songs, and have begun to wonder about how to release them in a digital landscape that has changed again. It seems to have become harder to own music in the traditional way, on a physical object like a CD, and instead music appears the poor cousin of software, streamed or locked into a portable device like a phone or iPod. I buy hardly any CDs now and get my music from many different sources: Spotify, iTunes, blog playlists, podcasts, online streaming – reviewing this makes me realise that my appetite for music now is just as strong as when I was 13, and how dependent I am upon digital delivery. At the same time, I find a lot of the technology very frustrating and counter-intuitive. I spend a lot of time using music production software, but iTunes feels clunky. I wish it was as simple and elegant as Apple’s hardware. I understand that we have become our own broadcasters and distributors, but I miss the editorialisation of music, the curatorial influences of people like John Peel or a good record label. I liked being on a record label that had us on it, along with Blur, the Beastie Boys and the Beatles.

I’m unconvinced that the internet has replaced the club or the concert hall as a forum for people to share ideas and passions about music. Social networking models such as Twitter and foursquare are early efforts at this but have some way to go to emulate the ecosystem that labels such as Island drew upon, the interconnected club and studio worlds of managers, musicians, artists and record company mavericks, let alone pay for such a fertile environment. Shoreditch, in east London, has a vibrant scene right now, with independent labels such as Wichita, Bella Union and distribution companies like The Co-op, alongside the busy Strongroom studio. I spoke to a friend, Dan Grech-Marguerat, about the scene. He is a busy mixer and producer, and told me that he could just sit at home and work on the computer but would miss the social buzz and benefits of working at the Strongroom and other studios.

There are signs that the net is moving out of its adolescence, and preparing to leave its bedroom. I have noticed on the fan message sites that a lot of the content and conversations have grown up, moved away from staccato chat and trolling, to discussions about artists, taste and trends, closer to writing found in music magazines.

There is less interest in the technological side of the net, and more focus on what services the web can deliver, like any other media. People are using touch and gesture-controlled devices such as the iPad to see through those objects to get to the content they want. This transparency and immediacy is exciting for us as artists, because it brings us closer to our audience.

We have yet to decide how to release our next record, but I hope these partial impressions will help give some idea of the conversations we’ve been having. Traditional marketplaces and media are feeling stale – supermarkets account for around 70 per cent of CDs sold in the UK, the charts are dominated by TV talent-show acts – and we are trying to find ways to put out our music that feel as good as the music itself. The ability to have a say in its release, through the new technologies, is the most empowering thing of all.

Colin Greenwood is Radiohead’s bassist

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In recent years, Barenboim has become increasingly vocal on non-musical issues, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. He holds Israeli citizenship. In 1999, together with his close friend, the late Palestinian academic Edward Said, Barenboim founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble of more than 120 young musicians who hail from the Middle East — Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan — and other Muslim countries including Egypt, Iran and Turkey. Each summer, the orchestra comes together in Seville, where its members are issued with Spanish diplomatic passports allowing them freedom of movement, before launching an international tour. The orchestra is not able to perform in most of the countries represented by its members, but has enjoyed phenomenal critical acclaim elsewhere in the world. Barenboim was born in Argentina in 1942 to Russian-Jewish parents. He gave his first piano recital in Buenos Aires aged just seven, moved with his family to Israel aged ten, and was being described by conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler as a “phenomenon” by the time he was 11. The former music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Barenboim was named Conductor for Life at the Berlin Staatsoper in 2000 and Maestro Scaligero at La Scala, Milan, in 2006.

The recipient of numerous awards for his conducting, piano recordings and human rights work, he is also the author of three books: A Life In Music, Parallels and Paradoxes (with Edward W Said), and Everything Is Connected, in which he outlines his belief that music offers us a unique model for understanding human relations and the world. Clemency Burton-Hill, the granddaughter of a Jew from Belarus, is a British writer, broadcaster and violinist who has been involved with music projects in the West Bank and occupied Palestinian territories since 2004, including the al Kamandjati refugee camp music schools in Ramallah and Jenin. In January 2009, she was invited by Daniel Barenboim to join the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra as an honorary violinist on their tenth anniversary tour. She has also interviewed Barenboim on a number of occasions in print and on television, including the Proms, the BBC’s Culture Show, and the Berlin Philharmonic’s 2010 Europa Konzert, which will be broadcast on BBC4 later this year.

Clemency Burton-Hill: One of my strongest memories of rehearsing with you and the West-Eastern Divan is a moment when you reminded the members of the orchestra that every single one of their governments would stop them from being there if they could, and that what they were doing was therefore very brave. For all the adulation and acclaim that the Divan garners around the world, it strikes me that it is, essentially, a censored orchestra.

Daniel Barenboim: Yes, you’re probably right. The Divan is not acceptable to any of the countries represented by its members. We can’t play in any Arab countries except the Emirates, nor in Israel. The Israelis don’t understand why it is even necessary to make the gesture. And the Arab world mostly sees the Divan as a way of normalisation, in the sense of accepting Israel, and all the problems that involves.

Clemency Burton-Hill: So the fact that those kids come together to make music with each other every year, in the face of governments who would silence them and despite recriminations from their friends and family at home, feels like something of a defiant act.

Daniel Barenboim: It is. And you know, I believe more and more that it is up to individuals — or minorities — to express things which are not acceptable to the majority. Because there is always a special angle that an individual or a minority can have. And maybe the majority will eventually follow, but you cannot start a new idea that is going to change things with the blessing of the majority.

Clemency Burton-Hill: How important is it that the orchestra be allowed to make music freely in the Middle East?

Daniel Barenboim: I think the full dimensions of the Divan will only be achieved when we are able to play in Tel Aviv, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, because that is really what it is all about. On the other hand, if the conflict was resolved there would hardly be a need for the Divan. And so it is a bit of a contradiction in terms. The Divan came into existence and continues to develop because of the conflict, and it has not yet been fully able to push through its idea of accepting the narrative of the other, the point of view of the other. For that you need a yearning voice for justice and for compassion, from both sides. And the Israelis as a majority I don’t think have a compassion for the rights of the Palestinians, otherwise they wouldn’t be occupying the territories for so many years and they wouldn’t blockade Gaza.

Clemency Burton-Hill: You have said that “Our challenge in the 21st century is to use music not only as an escape from life — in the sense that you come home fed up, put on music, and forget your troubles — but also as a way of making sense of the world. Music is not an alternative to living; it’s a model for living.” So when music is censored, or silenced, is there much more at stake than merely entertainment and pleasure?

Daniel Barenboim: Yes, of course. I think history has shown us that many people are afraid of the effect of music. It can be very exalting, it brings people to expressions of solidarity and of enthusiasm – which is not always the case with the government. That is why music was used and manipulated so unashamedly by dictatorships. By the Nazis, by the Soviets …

Clemency Burton-Hill: And, ironically, those governments that manipulate music for their own purposes are often the states that censor it most cynically.

Daniel Barenboim: Because music is very powerful. It is very difficult to remain unmoved by music, I think probably for the simple fact that it has a physical penetration through the ear, which is much stronger than through the eye. If I don’t like what I am seeing, I can close my eyes. But if I don’t like what I am hearing, I cannot close my ears; I mean, I can, artificially, I can put my fingers in my ears, but basically there is a penetration, a physical penetration, which makes it very powerful indeed.

Clemency Burton-Hill: I have heard you say there is something “subversive” about music.

Daniel Barenboim: Edward Said always used to say that music is subversive. When you have a beautiful melody played by a woodwind instrument, veryoften the accompaniment, say, in the strings, will subvert that. Yet at the same time, the full expression of the line will be totally dependent on it too. There are many, many lessons to be learned from that.

Clemency Burton-Hill: Is it possible to describe why music is so powerful, why it acts on us the way it does?

Daniel Barenboim: Well, I think music is so powerful because it is, first of all, a physical thing, a physical expression of the human soul; something that is not only in the thought. And it attacks, I would say, all the functions of the human being. It attacks the brain, and it attacks the heart, and it attacks the stomach, you know, the temperament. Each one of us reacts perhaps with one more than any other of those three elements, but all three are constantly in action, and that’s what makes it so dangerous. Music is much more powerful than words.

Clemency Burton-Hill: Which is why censorship of music has always existed, and still exists?

Daniel Barenboim: Yes. By the way, there is a wonderful book called Beethoven in German Politics [by David B. Dennis]. It documents how Bismarck, Hitler, and then in the East German Republic, how Beethoven was used for their purposes, and how Hitler managed to convince the world that Beethoven’s Ninth was the perfect example of German spirituality with a text that says ‘all men are brothers – except a few’, namely the Jews.

Clemency Burton-Hill: That brings us to an important point about the de facto censorship of Wagner in Israel. You have always been adamant that Wagner was originally banned after Kristallnacht in 1938 not because of his own anti-Semitism — which had been well known since the 19th century — but because of the anti-Semitism of the Nazi party, i.e. the monstrous and appalling uses to which Hitler put the music. That distinction seems still not to be being made in Israel today, where the ban is very much still in place.

Daniel Barenboim: I’m afraid Israeli public opinion has manipulated all that. I’m sure there are many people in Israel who “don’t want to hear Wagner” who think that Wagner was around in 1940 — that Wagner was a Nazi. But you know, none other than [Arturo] Toscanini — who besides being a great musician was a great fighter for liberty — in 1936, when he was conducting the opening concerts for the new symphony orchestra in Tel Aviv, ironically then called the Palestine Philharmonic, played Wagner and there was no problem. The decision to stop playing Wagner was taken by members of the orchestra after Kristallnacht and that was perfectly understandable and just, from my point of view, in 1938. But to continue with that now is arguably as bad as it would have been to continue to play Wagner from that day.

Clemency Burton-Hill: It seems ironic that you were accused of being a fascist for playing Wagner’s music, when it could be argued that censorship of any music in a democratic country is verging on the fascist.

Daniel Barenboim: As I have said before, the idea this was a scandal was started the following day by people with a political agenda, not those in the concert hall, which greatly saddened me. I have always said that I respect anybody’s right not to listen to Wagner and that is why his work should be offered to a non-subscription audience. Israel is a democratic society, there should be no place for such taboos.

Clemency Burton-Hill: Have you ever had any problems from members of the West-Eastern Divan who perhaps did not want to play Wagner?

Daniel Barenboim: No, in fact it was the Israeli members who asked me to play Wagner in the first place, in 2004 or 2005. It was the brass players, who came and asked me to programme some Wagner because they couldn’t play it in Israel, they could not hear it in Israel, but they felt that musically it was very important to them, and they had no problem with it.

Clemency Burton-Hill: How depressing is it, to you, that it is now almost a decade since you played that Wagner encore in Jerusalem, and yet the debate about whether his music should still be banned from live performance seems not to have moved forward at all — rather backwards?

Daniel Barenboim: Yes, but the whole of Israeli society, from my point of view, has humanly moved backwards over those ten years.

Clemency Burton-Hill: You have made an explicit connection between this issue and Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians and the conflict today, suggesting that the Wagner ban means Israelis have not yet made the transition into being Israeli Jews and are still identifying themselves with the Judaism of the 30s and 40s. You have said: “Until we are able to do that, we will not be able to establish a fruitful dialogue with non-Jews”, and pointed out that while a sense of history is imperative, Israel must also look forward.

Daniel Barenboim: Yes, well, it is the same instinct that would allow so many Israelis to deny the Palestinians who live in Israel, the so-called Israeli Arabs, their human rights; to not allow civil marriages; the same instinct that means there is no separation of the synagogue and government, which is something that is accepted in most of the world. The other place where it is not accepted is Iran!

Clemency Burton-Hill: Talking about Iran, the authorities there have banned all teaching of all musical instruments in all schools because “the use of musical instruments is against the principles of our value system”, according to Education Minister Ali Bagherzadeh. Any school in Iran that teaches music may now be permanently closed and its director barred. What do you think of that?

Daniel Barenboim: Well, one has to say that music has not played the role in the Muslim world that it has played in Europe for centuries, so in a way they are sadly more ignorant about the nature of what music is. For them, music is something to celebrate with at weddings and mourn with at funerals, but they don’t view it as an expression of the human quality of life. They don’t understand that when you play a piece of music, whether it is a Chopin Nocturne or a huge Bruckner Symphony, that this is the story of human life, it tells us something of the quality of humanity. This is what makes us moved when we listen to music.

Clemency Burton-Hill: The West-Eastern Divan contains some young Iranian musicians within its ranks. How do you find their attitudes?

Daniel Barenboim: Those youngsters obviously do not share the opinions of their government about the nature of music. As you know, they are wonderful musicians, they have a huge capacity of giving, of generosity.

Clemency Burton-Hill: And I don’t think it’s too idealistic to suggest that their experiences making music, especially in the West-Eastern Divan, have probably nourished and developed that capacity. The orchestra is what brings them together with Israelis and Arabs, but music leads these youngsters to all sorts of other connections — they talk about politics, football, pop music, films; they fall in and out of love with each other; they begin to understand and accept the narrative of the other and take what they have learned back home. Isn’t it a tragedy that young Iranians will henceforth be denied the right to even learn a musical instrument? To my mind that’s a particularly pernicious form of music censorship; silencing it before it even exists!

Daniel Barenboim: In the end, though, when people forbid things, it is because they are afraid of them. It is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness.

Clemency Burton-Hill: Yes — I have been struck by that often, travelling through the occupied territories with musicians. I have watched Israeli soldiers turn away young Palestinian musicians and singers at checkpoints as if somehow playing Bach or singing Puccini were a genuine threat to the state of Israel. And it always smacks of such monumental cowardice, even if the soldier is wielding a gun. Especially when the soldier is wielding a gun.

Daniel Barenboim: Exactly.

Clemency Burton-Hill: And whoever it was who burned down the al Kamandjati music centre in Jenin, or destroyed the Gaza music school; such acts feel like a despicable yet rather pathetic attempt to silence the Palestinian’s fledgling right to express themselves, through music, as a people. As Ramzi Aburedwan [founder of the al Kamandjati music school and viola player in the West-Eastern Divan] always says: “Bring music, and you bring life.”

Daniel Barenboim: Of course. You know, earlier this year, in May, I had organised an orchestra only of European musicians — no Israelis, no Arabs — to play a concert in Gaza. Simply to give people a little bit of relief from the harshness of their lives. And in the end the Israeli government did not allow it to happen, because they would have had to open the border to me and 35 musicians, once in the morning to let us in, once in the afternoon to let us out. We would have been there simply to make music; there was no question of anything else. But they forbade it. I found it absolutely devastating, I have to say.

Clemency Burton-Hill: What would you have played?

Daniel Barenboim: We would have played Mozart.

Clemency Burton-Hill: And if an Israeli politician had the vision to think about this differently, to say: we are a democracy, we support human rights, the inalienable human right to self-expression, we must let international musicians come here and make music freely …

Daniel Barenboim: A politician like that would not be elected in Israel.

Clemency Burton-Hill: But these are the moments, as you say, when Israel can define itself as a democracy. How can it get away with silencing something as innocuous and humane as a simple concert of Mozart in Gaza?

Daniel Barenboim: I have no idea. I have no idea. It defies every logic. Every logic. From our Jewish history we should be the first ones to know the importance of compassion and not to do unto others what was done unto us for so many centuries.

Clemency Burton-Hill: Where does it all end?

Daniel Barenboim: I don’t know. I don’t know. I really cannot answer that.

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