James Zehm:

>I just wanted to add that if we should not be allowed to listen to Wagners
>music just that he was an antisemit, we shouldn't neither ba allowed to
>listen to Beethoven, Tjajkovskij, Balakirev or Grainger, because they were
>all as good antisemits - if not worse - than Wagner.

I didn't know about Beethoven, although I would like to know the source.
You can also add Chopin and Brahms, among many, many others to the list.
Some of them even had Jewish friends.  Grainger was nuts on the subject of
race and it came out in nutty ways, most of them not particularly vicious.
He saw himself as a "Nordic" artist.  He theorized that all the great
composers had blue eyes, although Bach was a favorite.  On the one hand,
he promoted the music of Gershwin.  On the other hand, he transferred his
cancer operation from the Mayo Clinic to Denmark, because he "had a horror
of discovering a Jewish doctor working over me." Anti-Semitism wasn't a
motivating force in his life, as it certainly was with Wagner.  I suppose
it comes down to the simple fact that Wagner was a son of a bitch and
Grainger wasn't.

I should add that I don't particularly care about the lives of any of these
folks to the extent that it influences my listening habits.

Steve Schwartz