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
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