Robert Peters wrote:

>Why is it that great artist are so often pretty small people?

I would ask, 'why would we expect artists to be larger than life, better
than we are, more brave, more wise?'.  Musicians are often very ordinary
people who may have several extraordinary talents and the ability to
move us or make us feel certain feelings we would not ordinarily experience,
but that does not make them especially humane beings.  If we are fortunate
to find a great musician who is ALSO a fine human being, that's a bonus,
not part of the compositional equipment handed out at birth.

This is one of the main reasons why I do not like to learn more about
the private lives of my favorite composers.  I like to have a pure
experience with the music, and not bother about political adjendas or
sentiments.

This is why I can enjoy Strauss, Wagner, and other controversial composers
for their music alone.

I have loved the music from Rosenkavalier, Death and Transfiguration and
Hero's Life since I was old enough to carry a tune. Those works thrilled
me then and still thrill me.  Learning later about Strauss and the Nazis
has nothing at all to do with my earlier assessment of Strauss's music.
To me, it is great and powerful music which I feel deeply.  Should I
reject great music because a half century ago Strauss may or may not
have acted a certain way? If that were the case, I'd have to reject
many more composers than Strauss!

Wagner also wrote great and powerful music.  And his political writings
were trash.  I"m sorry I ever learned about what he wrote.  It's the
raving of a twisted mind, but a mind that could also produce sublime
music.  I'm entitled to take what I want from his musical output and
throw away what I detest. I don't want to know more about his personal
life.  It doesn't help me to know his music more.  Only listening to his
music helps me to know it.

If I rejected unheard every composer who hated Jews, or had a political
thought that did not mesh with my own present ones, I'd have to live
surrounded by a wall of silence.

This reminds me of revisionists of recent memory who want to read sexual
politics into music.  All I can say is 'Humbug.' Listen to the music.
Enjoy it if you want, reject it if you want, but why drag politics into
it?  The world is messed up enough as it is.

Depriving myself of musical compositions or looking at them with a
jaundiced view after the fact is not for me.  And in looking too closely
at the personal lives of human beings one discovers that yes, they are
human!  That they could be ordinary mortals and yet compose divine music
should be enough to please the most critical of us.

Mimi Ezust