Andy Carlan:

>I cannot believe intelligent people can be suckered into Wagner's music,
>except as I gladly acknowledge in the momentary parting of the heavy clouds
>that is "Die Meistersinger."

Just call me "sucker" (but you don't have to believe I'm intelligent).

>I guess what offends me is that I have to bear the weight as part of
>my culture a man who had no more discernment or naturalness of feeling
>than Walt Disney or Mussolini, which stretches a long way.  Wagner's art
>is the musical counterpart of Hitler's and Mussolini's and (yes) the WPA
>megalomaniac architecture that weighs the human spirit down.  It has no
>lightness, no air.

It has very little, to be sure.  I agree it's a limitation.  He seemed
incapable of writing something light and fast.  In fact, the only thing I
can think of is the Prelude to Act III (?) of Lohengrin.  Fast, but not
particularly light.

>The organized noise on Wagner's stage and the gussied up Neanderthal
>myths which pass for its libretti were borrowed lock, stock and barrel
>by Leni Reifenstahl (sp?) in planning out the Nuremberg rallies.

And used for, I contend, different purposes.  Wagner, I repeat, is not
about glorifying power, but showing the limits even of gods.  That's why
he wrote tragedies.  That's what makes what he wrote tragedies.  I really
do think it's time to look at what Wagner actually wrote, rather than what
we all know he wrote.

>Ah!  but Beethoven or Bach couldn't have contradicted their own natures
>by being concentration camp guards.  During the whole clamor here over
>whether Beethoven was anti-Semitic, I knew it had to turn out to be untrue
>if Beethoven would be Beethoven.  Wagner could rise no higher than himself
>or Beethoven fall no lower, no matter how hard they tried.  Perhaps art and
>biography are not mirror images, but they cannot be contradictions of each
>other either.

There's a very interesting poem by Paul Celan called "Black Milk." It talks
about a concentration-camp commandant listening to, if I remember right, a
song by Schubert and feeling spiritually ennobled by it.  He never sees the
contradiction between that and his job.  I think many of us - me included
- have done shameful things which go against our ideals.  Why not artists?
What makes them exempt?

I don't know whether Beethoven was anti-Semitic.  I don't care.  I don't
hear anti-Semitism in his music.  I also don't hear it in Wagner's music.
Do I think that Hitler got some of his anti-Semitism from Wagner? Sure,
in so far as Wagner contributed to making anti-Semitism acceptable in the
culture, even by acquiescence.  But this is a feature of Wagner the man,
not Wagner the composer.  The Nazis both misread and perverted Wagner's
dramas, as they perverted just about all of German culture, including
Beethoven and Bach.

>I saw a bumper sticker today which read "We are what we hate." We are also
>what we love.

Haven't you ever heard the phrase "opposites attract?"

Steve Schwartz, who also likes Nielsen