Walter Meyer wrote:

>If I don't want to hear Wagner's music, I should not be forced to do so.

Nobody forced you.  When Barenboim before the concert gave the chance to
leave the concert hall, why didn't you walk out if you didn't want to hear
Wagner?

>If I do not wish to subscribe to a concert performing Wagner's music, I
>should not be forced to do so.  This is so whether my wishes are related to
>my opinion of Wagner's music or of Wagner's personality or of what Wagner
>has been perceived to represent.

It is just that you try to make the issue to something else than it is
about.  Nobody was forced to subscribe to a concert with Wagner's music
when they did not.  The problem - which you try to ignore (by intent it
seems) - was that Wagner has been banned from being performed in Israel
since 1949.  And I can promise you that those who didn't want to hear
Wagner certainly wasn't forced to hear him.  On the other hand there might
be a number of musiclover's who were prevented from hearing him.  In this
aspect of banning what authority dislikes; the policy is the same as the
nazis ban on "entartete" composers.

>If scheduling Wagner's music in Israel results in such declines in
>subscriptions and attendance at concerts as to force the cancellations of
>concerts or concert series (which, incidentally, I'm not sure is the case),
>than his music, IMO, should not be scheduled.

If nobody comes to the concerts with Wagner, he will not be played as
all rational concert arrangers will realize they will loose money on the
affair.  However I am sure the case is that most of the people chose not to
leave the concert hall at Barenboim's concert, and if they will do in the
future (what I do not think will be the case) it will be interesting to see
if the musiclover's who fight for Wagner will give up at that point.

I can understand that people who are the concertgoer's - people who I
suppose at least to a certain degree (more or less) has informed themselves
about the circumstances, or at least shown an active interest and sought
truth - know what the thing is about.  What I wonder is how people who
never go to concerts and never read a Wagner biography in lack of interest
for the specific case, thinks and "votes" when they hear that an
antisemitic composer shamefully has been forced upon poor concertgoers and
that the conductor refuses to beg apologization from a comitee of selected
holocaust survivors.  "Ach, hvad haver Fanden ikke at bestille?" as Ludwig
Holberg would have put it.  *grins*

>Nevertheless, the decision of whether or not to perform Wagner's music,
>even the wrong decision, can simply not be compared to the Nazi's "final
>solution".

*Ahem* I said that authorities bans on what it considers to be evil are the
same manner,

Didrik Schiele [[log in to unmask]]