Hi List!

My quotation of today is one of the most absurd and mean-spirited I
could find. To say what should be perfectly clear: I quote this just to
show how low musicologists can go in their need to serve a dictatorship.

   "Glucks compositions are written originally in Italian or French
   language and he had his greatest triumphs in Paris. Can a man
   who seems to root so little in his own nation be a Germanic, a
   Nordic artist? And isnt this blurring of national limits the
   sign of the bastard?"

     Richard Eichenauer, Music and Race, 1942

In the Third Reich is was forbidden to play Mendelssohns bridal march,
Carl Orff, one of the composers who profited in these times, was eager
to compose a substitute. Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schonberg, Hanns Eisler,
Kurt Weill, Paul Dessau were forced to emigrate, conductors like Busch,
Walter, Klemperer, Schnabel also had to go. Richard Strauss took Bruno
Walters job as president of the Reichsmusikkammer. He and Furtwangler
thought naively they could do some good by staying in Germany but
(volutarily - involuntarily?) served the regime and lied afterwards
about their time under Hitler. Karajan became a party member to make a
tremendous career. This, too, is musical history.

Robert