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