After Mats Norrman's (I think rather unpleasant) attack on Don Satz's Wagner views in the "Atonal Music"-thread I think it is time to think about the reasons for the subjective and controversial reactions pro and contra Wagner. Why is it that Wagner gets more hysterically attacked and adored than almost any other composer? I'd like to present my thoughts on the subject. (I myself like some of Wagner's music, some of it bores me and I have read some biographies on the man that made me not especially looking forward to meet him in eternity.) I think almost everyone would agree that the next two sentences are correct: 1) Wagner is one of the most gifted composers in the history of music. 2) Wagner was a man of a dubious (some would say lousy) character. First his works. Wagner's music is music of genius. But at the same time the music is pure Romanticism, pure GERMAN Romanticism. Haydn and Mozart, the two most classical of all classical composers, always knew, like their great contemporary Goethe, that the world of art is not more important than the real world. No dreams of the absolute. Goethe said: If you want to reach eternity, you have to eternally care for the real world. Goethe's Faust wants to become like God but he has to see that man is bound to the real world. Of course no Romanticist would have subscribed to this. Locked in a world where they could not act politically, they dreamed the absolute dream: absolute religion, absolute love, absolute art. A simple marriage with honest Erik is not enough for Wagner's Senta, it must be the absolute love to the Hollaender. And a simple opera house was not enough for Wagner, he had to have a temple: Bayreuth. Art as religion, that is Romanticism, that is Bayreuth. It is in my opinion Wagner's Romanticism, his exagerrated belief in his own importance (the artist as seer, prophet, priest, pope), his lack of irony regarding his own role, the ridiculously stiff routine of the Bayreuther Festspiele that adds to the dislike of him. At least it provokes irony and parody and comic relief. If you've ever listened to the whole Ring (and I did and I consider it great music though I do not buy the whole thing and the whole idea) you really hunger for some humour (I mean real humour, not sarcasm, irony or cynicism - humour is a sign of accepting the real world, sarcasm shows belief in one's own superiority over others). And then there is Wagner's personality. And, of course, his antisemitism. Wagner surely was not the only composer with a lousy character and surely not the only rascist or antisemite among them. But there is not one composer with followers who tend so much to idolize their favourite musician. Why is that so? I think this idolization is an echo of Wagner's self-idolization. There is the Bayreuth temple, there is his prophetic and humour-proof belief in his own concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, there is his belief in the value of his own verse (and, as a native German and a lover and teacher of German poetry, I can tell you: Wagner's poetry is very poor and often pathetic (all the ridiculous Stabreime) compared with even some of the lesser German poets of his time), there is his artistic arrogance, there is his fierce belief that he was right to fight artistic "enemies" any way he chose (one way was the disgusting "Das Judentum in der Musik"). Yes, maybe there is the rub: the Wagnerites are very fast to believe that all people who try to see Wagner "only" as a good and gifted composer and not as a genius and demigod with great and important messages (I for one do not like most of Wagner's messages) are their enemies. I like Goethe a lot but know that Goethe was a very dubious character and wrote a lot of good stuff and a lot of nonsense. Why not say that Wagner was a very dubious character who wrote a lot of good music and a lot of nonsense? It sure is right and does not make this composer of genius man one inch smaller. The problem is that the Wagner cult (especially of Bayreuth) is dangeroulsy near to a religion and this is a concept I (and many others) dislike a lot. I am a German and I know from my countries past that no man (and no woman) deserves god-like worshipping. If you want to do Wagner right, give him respect and critical consideration, not adoration. And the Wagnerites could begin to stand (and do!) some joking on Richard's costs: it would be a sign of inner independence. (One of Germanys best humourists and cartoonists, Loriot, a great admirer of Wagner's works (he did a fantastic and funny Guide to the Ring with the Berliner Philharmoniker, drew a portrait of Wagner, entitled "A Great German": it shows Wagner, looking very very serious and important, with a clown's nose. Now that is a Wagnerite!) Robert Peters [log in to unmask]