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