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." 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.  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.  "Springtime for Hitler" so perfectly
caricatured its torches, spotlights and orchestrated crowd movements.  You
see, I am afraid many who would genuinely denounce Nazism are paradoxically
narcotized by such spectacles.  Now, I like big things-bosoms, elephants,
the Grand Tetons, powerful railroad locomotives, even Bruckner, but bigness
that just frightens and overwhelms, that blows its own horn, doesn't do
anything for me; it is neither frightening nor overwhelming nor impressive.
It is just plain uninspired.  One simple Schubert song conquers all of
Wagner.

Wagner was crude.  No, that's not it.  I love earthy crudity.  He
artistically exemplifies the biblical warning to beware, not the flesh
or real sensuality like the peasant-breed Italian opera, but spiritual
wickedness and aridity in high places, in academe in particular.  Wagner
glorifies, every two-bit tyrant, bully, grandiose impresario who ever
strutted across the stage of history.

Now there's something worth feeling at least a little irritated by.

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.

I saw a bumper sticker today which read "We are what we hate." We are also
what we love.  Yes.  of course, and what we eat.  If Beethoven had spent
as much time hating as Wagner, his music would have shown it.  Now, please,
there is a great difference between being irascible and hating.  Beethoven
was isolated from the society he so desperately wanted to love that he
sometimes became irritable.  It was his weakness.  My God, by the time
of the last quartets and late sonatas that's what he's trying to tell us.
"Muss is sein.  Es muss sein." Hatred, Wagner thought, was his strength.
So he wrote it into his music.

Andrew Carlan
Still Standing Up for Nielsen