James Zehm wrote:

>No, there are no anti-semitism, but well racism; remember Siegmund and
>Sieglinde, what means; "We Germans shall not mix our blood with other
>races"!

How do you get that interpretation of this relationship? It seems rather
arbitrary.  I don't see anything about Germans and non-Germans here.
(Unlike the end of Meistersinger, which is really somewhat problematic.)

Obviously, the fact that the couple are brother and sister has some sort of
symbolic meaning, but as in all works of art it is not easy to pin it down
to a single significance.  Perhaps the illicitness of their union (despite
the fact that the miseries of both their lives end in an almost explosive
outbreak of joy when they meet) and its short duration are related to the
fact that they represent the failure of Wotan's attempts to consciously
design a solution to his problems, while at the same time they literally
give birth to the hero who will resolve the whole drama on a level which
leaves Wotan's and the Gibichung's schemes behind.

>But *I* wonder; how can one hear that? Is the nazism to be heard in a
>certain accord, a certain melody, or a certain combiantion of notes? I
>think it is nonsence claiming that nazism can be heard in someones music...

I agree (unless of course we are talking about something like the
Horst-Wessel-Lied).  This is related to my position in another perennial
controversy:  "music as a language." Since music is not a language, it
can't "say" anything, and in particular music *in itself* can't advocate
any particular political or social view.

What causes confusion is that, in many cases, we are so used to associating
a piece of music with a political context that it can be psychologically
very difficult to separate them.  To some people, the "Internationale" may
be an inspiring hymn to the spirit of resistance to oppression, while to
someone who suffered at the hands of a Stalinist-style government it would
have completely different associations.  But it itself it is only a series
of notes and rests on a page.  When I hear the French national anthem (as
in the 1812 Overture recently discussed here), it doesn't move me in the
slightest to want to go out to find an aristocrat to guillotine, and this
is not only due to the fact that there don't happen to be many aristocrats
(or guillotines) within handy reach of where I am.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]