Eric Kisch wrote:

>Perhaps far afield - but imagine yourself having a passionate, intense
>love affair with a beautiful, intelligent, sensitive woman (ladies make the
>appropriate gender switch), in which you (seem to) share your innermost
>feelings and secrets -- only to discover later that this person was a
>concentration camp guard or worse.  What does this do for your sense of
>judgement of other people? For your feelings about yourself for having
>given so much to a person who was not worthy of that giving?

Perhaps your example is too far afield.  Discovering that a person whom
you loved or lusted for has an evil past is different from discovering
that a person whose work or creations gave you enjoyment has had an evil
past.

But that doesn't resolve the issue and I doubt that the issue will be
resikved in these posts.  FWIW, my own view, which I've had occasion to
express in similar threads in the past is that the extent to which an
artist's personality may become relevant in judging his or her work has
no single simple answer.

If Wagner, or for that matter, Bach or Beethoven (or pick your favorite
composer) had been a concentration camp guard, had herded innocent captives
into the gas chambers, had performed medical experiments upon live victims,
had crushed victims' skulls w/ rifle butts, or had ordered or condoned
these or similar atrocities, I do not know how I would be able to enjoy
their music.  Fortunately, it hasn't been necessary for me to make that
judgment.

Wagner's big crime was to have been transformed into an icon by the Nazis,
whom he predeceased by decades.  Other than that, his was the sin of saying
hateful things in writings and conversations about Jews at a time and
place when and where, like it or not, a certain measure of anti-Semitism
was socially acceptable (as it was in the USA, during the time of
restricted neighborhoods, resorts, and clubs, and admission quotas to
prestige colleges, medical schools, and places of employment).  This, as
has often been pointed out, did not prevent him from selecting Hermann
Levi to conduct the premiere at Bayreuth of his most Christian opera,
*Parsifal*, something that would have been unthinkable in the Third Reich.

Wagner's selection of Levi, and his possible earlier associations w/ other
Jews on a non hostile basis, do not, in my view, absolve him.  But they
are matters to be kept in mind when we say that, much as we might despise
the man, we (at least some of us) admire his music.

>But to get back to Wagner - I think that tension will always remain
>with those of us who seek some consonance in the world and in our music.
>In a keynote address before the start of the 1998 Proms, the noted critic
>George Steiner spoke on "Politics and Music" which is as fascinating and
>tightly reasoned as it is disturbing.  In one part, IIRC, he cites the
>critic/philosopher Adorno as saying that an artist (composer?) is
>responsible for the uses to which his art/music is put, even after his
>death.

Which leaves me incredulous.  Is Adorno, or any other responsible person
saying that Wagner was responsible for the uses to which his *music*, as
opposed to his writings and sayings, were put after his death?

>By that criterion, Wagner would certainly be guilty of irresponsibility.

By that criterion, yes.  If Adorno said so, however, that doesn't make it
so.

Walter Meyer