Jon Johanning writes:

>What is it about Wagner (his music, that is--we all admit that he was not
>a very nice person) that gets under people's skins so much?

In a nutshell, here at least is my rub:  how can I reconcile myself
to loving this powerful, emotionally gripping, incredibly imaginative
series of musical dramas when their creator was such a total shit as a
person? It's one thing to admire the work of a painter or writer who was
a deplorable human being.  But somehow (to me, at any rate) it's different
with music - we are too wrapped up in it emotionally, too desirous of
wanting to be taken into "eine bess're Welt" that the personality of the
creator and also recreator has to matter, too.  I think it is our intense
emotional investment in the music that cries out for some consonance with
the creator of it.

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?

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.  By that criterion, Wagner would certainly be guilty of
irresponsibility.  In fact, only Mozart seems to have been spared
appropriation by some political faction or other.  Does anyone know whether
Steiner's talk has been published? It would be a powerful catalyst to this
debate, which in many guises has exercised list members since I joined
several years ago.

Eric Kisch