Wagner's Music in Israel
Derrick Everett
Jerusalem Post:
"Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel yesterday gave a green light for the
first concert here to feature music by the antisemitic German composer
Richard Wagner. He rejected an appeal by three Holocaust survivors, the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the roof organization of Holocaust survivors'
groups against the performance by the Rishon Lezion Symphony Orchestra.
The concert, which includes Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and Till Eulenspiegel,
and a piece by Richard Strauss, another antisemitic German composer, is
scheduled to take place today in the context of a series called Chamber
Music at Noon.
The appellants protested the presentation of both composers, even though
Strauss has been performed here for the past eight years. It was also the
Rishon Lezion orchestra that first broke the taboo on his works.
"The Rishon Symphony did this just to get publicity, and this is a very
insensitive way to go about it," said Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israeli
branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
"The decision was particularly untimely, because of the recent outbreak of
antisemitic incidents all over the world. This is hardly the time to give
permission for the first concert in Israel of works by Wagner by a publicly
funded orchestra. It is the worst possible message to be sending out at
this time."
Orchestra director Ehud Gross was unable to respond to a request for a
reaction to the court's decision.
In its response to the appeal, however, the orchestra argued that playing
the German composers is a matter of freedom of expression. In April, when
the orchestra first announced its intention to play Wagner, Gross said that
more than 50 years since the end of the Nazi regime which glorified his
antisemitic philosophy and his musical settings for Teutonic myths, "it is
time to introduce this music to the public."
When the opponents learned of the orchestra's plans to present Wagner and
Strauss, they appealed to Tel Aviv District Court, asking for a permanent
order banning the playing of their music. The court rejected the request.
The appellants, represented by attorney Jacob Westschneider, argued that
"playing the works of Wagner and Strauss causes injury to the feelings and
dignity of Jews in general and Holocaust survivors in particular, while
violating the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom. Playing works of the
Nazi Strauss and the antisemite Wagner causes serious injury to the
feelings of the generation of survivors living in our midst. It causes them
great emotional suffering, reminds them of the past, opens old wounds, and
causes them fear and sleepless nights."
Gross noted that the idyll was written by Wagner as a love offering to his
wife Kosima on the occasion of their son Siegfried's birth, and that his
The Ring of the Nibelung, a series of four operas, was banned in the waning
stages of the Nazi regime because of its "anti-tyrannical overtones."
In 1981, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, under Zubin Mehta, attempted to
present a prelude from Wagner's opera, Tristan and Isolde, as an encore.
There were calls of "shame" from the audience, and an usher leapt on the
stage to exhibit his Nazi-inflicted scars.
After their appeal was turned down, the appellants turned to the Supreme
Court and asked for permission to appeal against the lower court decision.
At the same time, they asked the court to issue a temporary injunction
forbidding the Rishon Lezion Symphony Orchestra from playing Strauss and
Wagner until it ruled on their request.
Turkel turned down the request for a temporary injunction and gave the
orchestra 15 days to respond to the appeal request. Theoretically, the
Supreme Court could still overrule the lower court decision and ban
performances of Strauss and Wagner. But even if it does, Wagner will have
already been performed."
--
Derrick Everett (deverett at c2i.net)
Benjamin Rochefort
> Playing works of the
> Nazi Strauss and the antisemite Wagner causes serious injury to the
> feelings of the generation of survivors living in our midst.
Nobody is forcing them to attend the performace...
> It causes them
> great emotional suffering, reminds them of the past, opens old wounds, and
> causes them fear and sleepless nights."
This is so over the top it's ludicrous !
--
Benji di Parigi
Campbell Fulton
expressed pre-holocaust when they were viewed by a large and varied part of
the population. From Shakespear Merchant to Dickens Fagen.
I have always been interested with the way art is used in a politics with
Germany and Russia being the most obvious.
Hitler loved Beethoven's 9th symphony even with it's great message to
humanity.
Wagner was dead before Hitler was born. It was not Wagner who was the
architect of the nazi atrocities.
I'm sure many people in Isreal listen to Wagner in their home. I think it is
now time to let them hear the fullforce of that music in the oncert hall.
I'm sure there will be other views on this matter and look forward to
reading them.
Wagnerbuch
Wagner was vocal as an antisemite (1850-1883 Last significant text written in
1881) - That's thirty years of actively, publically opposing Jews. The modern
antisemitic movement in Germany dates from 1879. When it was taking shape,
Wagner is on record as taking a degree of *responsibility* it. This is not your
average common or garden antisemite. This is someone who liked to think he was,
to some degree, responsible for antisemitism.
To be more specific: The composer invented the term "Jewification" in his
article "Judaism in Music". Other aspects of the article were:
1. Jews are hateful (passim)
2. Judaism is rotten at the core (PW3 p90-1)
3. Jewish composers are comparable to worms feeding on the body of art (PW3
p99)
4. Jews are hostile to European civilisation (PW3 p84-5)
5. The Jew rules the world through money (PW3 p81)
6. The cultured Jew is "the most heartless of all human beings" (PW3 p87) 7.
The Jews should, like Ahasuerus, "go under" (PW3 p100)
Wagner reissued his article in 1869. In 1881, the composer produced another
article: _Know Thyself_ in which he asserted that the Jew was "the plastic
daemon of man's downfall" and looked to a "Great Solution" to the Jewish
Problem as a result of which there to be "no longer - any Jews". Later the same
year Wagner asserted that the (dreadful) state of Society was the result of
blood corruption by Jews (in his article _Heroism and Christendom_).
Amongst other things, therefore, Wagner wanted the Jews to disappear - and said
so publically over a period of 30+ years.
It may be that the majority of people held the same views at the same time in
Germany, but there is no proof. Rather the opposite. Wagner's antisemitic
writing not only *preceded* the modern antisemitic movement in Germany (1879),
but was substantially more vehement than all except its most extreme elements.
Treitschke is a moderate compared to him.
Simon Weil
Check out my Wagner and the Jews book at:
http://members.aol.com/wagnerbuch/intro.htm
Derrick Everett
"The first concert performance in Israel of a work by Richard Wagner, Adolf
Hitler's favorite composer, was about to begin Friday when a man stood up
in the audience, swinging a loud Purim noisemaker in protest.
Others shushed the 80-year-old Polish-born Holocaust survivor, and the
performance of Siegfried Idyll went on, breaking a taboo but showing that
Wagner's music still causes deep rifts in the Jewish state.
Holocaust survivors had tried to stop the performance by the Rishon Lezion
Symphony Orchestra, charging that Wagner and his music were Nazi symbols.
Hitler had adopted Wagner's music, and the composer's antisemitic writings
helped shape the Nazi leader's views. Wagner died a half-century before
Hitler came to power.
Wagner's music had been subject to an informal boycott because of his
antisemitism. But Tuesday a Tel Aviv District Court judge declined to ban
the performance, ruling that freedom of expression requires hearing and
debating a wide variety of views, and that the survivors would not be
harmed directly by the concert. On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the
ruling.
Conductor Mendi Rodan, himself a Holocaust survivor, ignored the noise and
continued conducting, but people sitting around the protester, who gave his
name as Shlomo, told him to stop, and another elderly man scuffled with
him. Finally, an usher snatched the noisemaker and ended the incident.
The protester then left, telling the audience, "You should be ashamed of
yourselves." He said that he was the only one in his family to survive the
Holocaust, because he managed to escape from Poland and fought in the ranks
of the exiled Polish Army. Asked why he'd brought a noisemaker, he said,
"Because I couldn't find a bomb."
Despite the informal ban on Wagner's music since 1948, some has been
broadcast on Israel Radio in recent years.
In 1991 the renowned Israel Philharmonic Orchestra planned a performance of
a Wagner piece, but cancelled after subscribers protested.
At a 1981 encore performance of a passage from Wagner's opera Tristan and
Isolde, a Holocaust survivor jumped on stage, lifting his shirt to show
Nazi-inflicted scars. Conductor Zubin Mehta immediately stopped the
orchestra.
Composer Gil Shohat, who introduced the concert in Rishon Lezion, said that
regardless of Wagner's personal faults, his music is among the most
important of the late 19th century and has inspired nearly every subsequent
composer, including Jewish composers such as Mahler and Schoenberg."
It would appear that the taboo on performances of Wagner's music in Israel
has been broken.
acdouglas
> [snipped - original post is below]
> "Composer Gil Shohat, who introduced the concert in Rishon Lezion, said
that
> regardless of Wagner's personal faults, his music is among the most
> important of the late 19th century and has inspired nearly every subsequent
> composer, including Jewish composers such as Mahler and Schoenberg."
------------------------------------------------------
Can't believe that Shohat (or any intelligent person) actually called Mahler
and Schönberg "Jewish composers" (they were composers who happened to be
Jews). May have been just an innocent slip of the tongue, or just sloppy use
of language, but it really rankles.
But more to the point of the event, looks like Wagner will now have a new
audience now that the zealots have been dealt with by the Israeli S.C.
--
ACD
http://www.monmouth.com/~acdouglas
v---------------------- [original post] ----------------------v
"Derrick Everett" <mimir...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:39FBFC19...@hotmail.com...
mpresley
> The following news item appeared in Friday's online edition of the
> Jerusalem Post:
>
> "The Rishon Symphony did this just to get publicity, and this is a very
> insensitive way to go about it," said Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israeli
> branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
>
> "The decision was particularly untimely, because of the recent outbreak of
> antisemitic incidents all over the world. This is hardly the time to give
> permission for the first concert in Israel of works by Wagner by a
publicly
> funded orchestra. It is the worst possible message to be sending out at
> this time."
And at what time will the message be appropriate? If anyone interested
waits until anti-Jewish feelings ameliorate "around the world" then sadly,
given the history of the Jews, it will never be performed. Perhaps the
message is (or could be), instead, that in spite of one man's irrational
prejudice we can recognize that artistic genious transcends the merely
human. If it is to be the case that the works of anti-semetic persons
(something completely different than anti-semitic art) cannot be legally
exhibited in Israel then much of what we take as Western art must be
excluded.
michael
Campbell Fulton
"
Report in Todays Sunday Telegraph refers to Barenboim being referred to the
Jew Conductor in Berlin. I understand that this was to set him above his
competitor.
He is also a great conductor of Wagner and appears at the Home of Wagner.
One wonders whatb his views of the dispute would be. Is there any thing on
record to that?
acdouglas
> [snipped - original post is below]
------------------------------------------------------
You saw that report in *today's* Sunday Telegraph(!)? That remark made
against Barenboim (the politician who spoke it says it was for, not against)
is old news. Happened a while ago (week or more).
I've no idea what B's thoughts may be on the Israeli-Wagner thing. But I can
sure make an educated guess. <g>
--
ACD
http://www.monmouth.com/~acdouglas
v---------------------- [original post] ----------------------v
"Campbell Fulton" <cd.f...@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:5L%K5.27580$h%4.18...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
"
Report in Todays Sunday Telegraph refers to Barenboim being referred to the
Jew Conductor in Berlin. I understand that this was to set him above his
competitor.
He is also a great conductor of Wagner and appears at the Home of Wagner.
One wonders whatb his views of the dispute would be. Is there any thing on
record to that?
>
> Can't believe that Shohat (or any intelligent person) actually called
Mahler
> and Schönberg "Jewish composers" (they were composers who happened to be
> Jews). May have been just an innocent slip of the tongue, or just sloppy
use
> of language, but it really rankles.
>
> But more to the point of the event, looks like Wagner will now have a new
> audience now that the zealots have been dealt with by the Israeli S.C.
>
> --
> ACD
> http://www.monmouth.com/~acdouglas
>
> [snipped]
Mike Scott Rohan
from wagne...@aol.com (Wagnerbuch) contains these words:
{snip}
> It may be that the majority of people held the same views at the same time in
> Germany, but there is no proof. Rather the opposite.
Come now, Simon. Anti-semitic feeling was widespread and
institutionalized, not least in the Catholic states. Jews complained
of it all the time, and I find no reason to disbelieve them; one
example that comes to mind is Hermann Levi, in the same letter in
which he defends Wagner. Cosima's beliefs -- far more set and
conventional than Wagner's, and which may well have coloured what we
see of them -- were entirely typical of her class, and indeed of her
society. There are also some interesting comments in a review of
Bryan Magee's new book, which I'll try to post here for you,
regarding the effect of the quest for nationhood upon German concepts
of identity and racial exclusivity. I'd add the intellectual
influence of Darwin on the educated classes, as well, particularly in
notoriously anti-semitic Prussia.
Just the other day I found an interesting example of extreme
anti-semitic behaviour among the musicians of the Cinncinnati
Symphony Orchestra -- mostly German immigrants, at least the ones
involved -- in 1911. They were not members of any movement, it was
simply that their upbringing was squarely anti-semitic, as an
accepted thing; and they had to be fairly forcibly shocked out of it.
You can find the incident in biographies of Stokowski, who was
conductor at the time (and repressed it, hard, to his credit).
Cheers,
Mike
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
From Little, Brown, out now -- The Singer & The Sea
Visit my site at www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mike.scott.rohan
Derrick Everett
>
> The message <20001028151437...@ng-fy1.aol.com>
> from wagne...@aol.com (Wagnerbuch) contains these words:
>
> {snip}
>
> > It may be that the majority of people held the same views at the same time in
> > Germany, but there is no proof. Rather the opposite.
>
> Come now, Simon. Anti-semitic feeling was widespread and
> institutionalized, not least in the Catholic states. Jews complained
> of it all the time, and I find no reason to disbelieve them; one
> example that comes to mind is Hermann Levi, in the same letter in
> which he defends Wagner. Cosima's beliefs -- far more set and
> conventional than Wagner's, and which may well have coloured what we
> see of them -- were entirely typical of her class, and indeed of her
> society.
Cosima's attitudes would have been formed in France, rather than Germany.
It might also be the case that some of Richard's anti-Semitic notions were
acquired in France, where anti-Semitism was at least as widespread as it
was in Germany.
richard loeb
book is one of the shortest and paradoxically most enlightening in the
large Wagner library. What the name of the new book?
"Mike Scott Rohan" <mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:200010292...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk...
Roger Lustig
acdouglas wrote:
>
> "Derrick Everett" <mimir...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [snipped - original post is below]
>
> > "Composer Gil Shohat, who introduced the concert in Rishon Lezion, said
> that
> > regardless of Wagner's personal faults, his music is among the most
> > important of the late 19th century and has inspired nearly every subsequent
> > composer, including Jewish composers such as Mahler and Schoenberg."
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Can't believe that Shohat (or any intelligent person) actually called Mahler
> and Schönberg "Jewish composers" (they were composers who happened to be
> Jews).
Right. The composer of _Moses und Aron_, _Kol Nidre_, _Israel Exists
Again_,
_Dreimal tausend Jahre_, _A Survivor from Warsaw_, etc. just *happened*
to be
Jewish.
> May have been just an innocent slip of the tongue, or just sloppy use
> of language, but it really rankles.
Could you point out the sloppy part?
> But more to the point of the event, looks like Wagner will now have a new
> audience now that the zealots have been dealt with by the Israeli S.C.
You would seem to know even less about Israel than about Schoenberg.
The
zealots won't go away for a long, long time.
Roger Lustig
acdouglas
> [snipped - original post is below]
------------------------------------------------------
Still trolling, are you Roger?
Say goodnight, Gracie.
Bloody simpleton.
--
ACD
http://www.monmouth.com/~acdouglas
v---------------------- [original post] ----------------------v
"Roger Lustig" <juli...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:39FCE2B5...@ix.netcom.com...
Kevin D. Thomas
> I've no idea what B's thoughts may be on the Israeli-Wagner thing. But I
can
> sure make an educated guess. <g>
I remember news stories about him campaigning for the playing of Wagner in
Israel some time ago, but have no way to document it.....you will just have
to trust me! lol
Kevin
Wagnerbuch
>> It may be that the majority of people held the same views at the same time
>in
>> Germany, but there is no proof. Rather the opposite.
>
>Come now, Simon. Anti-semitic feeling was widespread and
>institutionalized, not least in the Catholic states. Jews complained
>of it all the time, and I find no reason to disbelieve them;
You disappear the specifics of Wagner's antisemitism. There is no proof that
the majority of people wanted the Jews to disappear. He did. he said so
specifically over a period of 30 years.
If a majority of people had thought like that, it would have been unbearable
for Jews.
Derrick Everett
>
> Does Bryan McGee have a new book? Thats great. I think his Aspects of Wagner
> book is one of the shortest and paradoxically most enlightening in the
> large Wagner library. What the name of the new book?
%T Wagner and Philosophy
%A Bryan Magee
%D 2000
%C Oxford
%I Oxford University Press, ISBN 0 7139 9480 0
From the "Wagner Books FAQ".
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Campbell Fulton" <cd.f...@virgin.net> contains these words:
> "
> Report in Todays Sunday Telegraph refers to Barenboim being referred to the
> Jew Conductor in Berlin. I understand that this was to set him above his
> competitor.
> He is also a great conductor of Wagner and appears at the Home of Wagner.
> One wonders whatb his views of the dispute would be. Is there any thing on
> record to that?
Didn't he himself set out to break the ban by introducing the Tristan
prelude to an Israel Phil. concert some twenty years ago?
William Satterthwaite
Derrick Everett <mimir...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>richard loeb wrote:
>>
>> Does Bryan McGee have a new book? Thats great. I think his Aspects of Wagner
>> book is one of the shortest and paradoxically most enlightening in the
>> large Wagner library. What the name of the new book?
>
>%T Wagner and Philosophy
>%A Bryan Magee
>%D 2000
>%C Oxford
>%I Oxford University Press, ISBN 0 7139 9480 0
>
>From the "Wagner Books FAQ".
>
There's also a recent article "Wagner and Politics" by Bernard
Williams in the Nov. 2 2000 New York Review Of Books.
An interesting discussion of these issues. Has anyone else
read it? Comments?
Bill
Roger Lustig
acdouglas wrote:
>
> "Roger Lustig" <juli...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > [snipped - original post is below]
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Still trolling, are you Roger?
What do you mean? Do you consider Schoenberg to have been
a "composer who happpened to be a Jew"?
> Say goodnight, Gracie.
>
> Bloody simpleton.
An odd .sig if I ever saw one.
Roger Lustig
Wagnerbuch
>> Still trolling, are you Roger?
>
>What do you mean? Do you consider Schoenberg to have been
>a "composer who happpened to be a Jew"?
>
>> Say goodnight, Gracie.
>>
>> Bloody simpleton.
>
>An odd .sig if I ever saw one.
A sig. you never see:
"Fair? Fair has nothing to do with it." From _ Unforgiven_
Trish Benedict
> If a majority of people had thought like that, it would have been unbearable
> for Jews.
Isn't that why Mahler left the Wiener Staatsoper? My recollection was that
it was pretty unbearable.
Trish Benedict
> 3. Jewish composers are comparable to worms feeding on the body of art
> Amongst other things, therefore, Wagner wanted the Jews to disappear
Ah, well, that's pretty much the way I feel about Republicans but it doesn't
mean I'd advocate their wholesale slaughter. I'd just like to reform them.
Wagner wanted to convert Jews as much as anything, IMHO.
Tr
Roger Lustig
Trish Benedict wrote:
>
> Simon says:
>
> > 3. Jewish composers are comparable to worms feeding on the body of art
> > 4. Jews are hostile to European civilisation
> > 5. The Jew rules the world through money
> >...etc...
> > Amongst other things, therefore, Wagner wanted the Jews to disappear
>
> Ah, well, that's pretty much the way I feel about Republicans but it doesn't
> mean I'd advocate their wholesale slaughter. I'd just like to reform them.
> Wagner wanted to convert Jews as much as anything, IMHO.
No, quite the opposite. He was of the opinion that conversion did
nothing
to mitigate that evil Jewishness. Check out _Know thyself_, one of his
last
writings.
His ideal solution would seem to have been mass suicide.
Roger Lustig
Wagnerbuch
Wagnerbuch
>> Amongst other things, therefore, Wagner wanted the Jews to disappear
>
>
>Ah, well, that's pretty much the way I feel about Republicans but it doesn't
>mean I'd advocate their wholesale slaughter. I'd just like to reform them.
>Wagner wanted to convert Jews as much as anything, IMHO.
Did that include hanging Rothschilds?
Trish Benedict
>
> Did that include hanging Rothschilds?
Well, they make some pretty good wines, but Reagan, the Bushes, Ken Starr -
that ilk - for crimes against humanity? Hmmm....
But seriously, while I may fantacize on it, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't
be outraged and rail against it if such a thing actually were to come to
pass. We simply don't know how Wagner would have reacted to the Nazis. We
can imagine, we can postulate, we know how other artists of the time did,
but we'll never know how Wagner would have. (Haven't we beaten this poor
dead horse enough?)
Trish
Disclaimer: I am not an advocate of capital punishment
Oper...@webtv.net
Since Israel has many citizens who lost loved ones to Nazi terror,
Wagner's association with Hitler and the Nazis is especially painful.
It is impossible for those of us, who did not lose family and friends
during that era, to judge people's strong feelings against an Israeli
orchestra's playing Wagner's music.
Perhaps Wagner was one of the most virulent anti-Semites, but if we
excluded the music of all anti-Semitic composers, we'd have a rather
"music-silent" world. Chopin and Brahms were proven anti-Semites, but
we have no trouble listening to their music.
Michael
[snip]
> Chopin and Brahms were proven anti-Semites, but
>we have no trouble listening to their music.
I don't think Chopin could have been a _virulent_ antisemite, at any
rate, as Alkan, a non-assimilationist Jew as I understand, was a close
friend of his IIRC. As for Brahms, I'm sorry to hear that he was an
antisemite. We know that his friend Schumann was not. What did Brahms'
antisemitism consist of? Was it similar to Beethoven's remarks about a
"Jewish trick" in his letters?
Michael
To reply by email, please eliminate "NOSPAM" from my address. Personal messages only!
Derrick Everett
>On Thu, 9 Nov 2000 20:53:27 -0500 (EST), Oper...@webtv.net wrote:
>
>[snip]
>> Chopin and Brahms were proven anti-Semites, but
>> we have no trouble listening to their music.
>
> I don't think Chopin could have been a _virulent_ antisemite, at any
> rate, as Alkan, a non-assimilationist Jew as I understand, was a close
> friend of his IIRC.
By the same argument, Wagner could not have been a virulent antisemite, since
several individuals of Jewish race were among his close friends and trusted
associates. In particular I am thinking of Tausig, Rubinstein, Porges and
Neumann, but there are at least a dozen others beyond that inner circle.
> As for Brahms, I'm sorry to hear that he was an antisemite.
More so than the average for Vienna in those days?
Michael
Everett) wrote:
>panN...@musician.org (Michael) wrote in <3a36f161...@news.rcn.com>:
>
>>On Thu, 9 Nov 2000 20:53:27 -0500 (EST), Oper...@webtv.net wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>> Chopin and Brahms were proven anti-Semites, but
>>> we have no trouble listening to their music.
>>
>> I don't think Chopin could have been a _virulent_ antisemite, at any
>> rate, as Alkan, a non-assimilationist Jew as I understand, was a close
>> friend of his IIRC.
>
>By the same argument, Wagner could not have been a virulent antisemite, since
>several individuals of Jewish race were among his close friends and trusted
>associates. In particular I am thinking of Tausig, Rubinstein, Porges and
>Neumann, but there are at least a dozen others beyond that inner circle.
First of all, might there not be a difference between using people and
having a genuine friend? (It's my impression that Wagner, who it often
seems to me seldom left good deeds unpunished, may have been
sociopathic and incapable of genuine feelings of friendship, though I
guess he refrained from doing harm to Liszt and Berlioz, who did him a
lot of good.) Also, were any of the Jews you mention
non-assimilationists like Alkan, who I seem to remember studied the
Talmud? But the other major difference is that, while Chopin may have
expressed the type of antisemitic feelings that were and remain all
too common in Paris, he did not publish virulent antisemitic
pamphlets. Ultimately, that is the big difference between Wagner and
every other composer who was personally an antisemite, of which there
have been many.
>> As for Brahms, I'm sorry to hear that he was an antisemite.
>
>More so than the average for Vienna in those days?
I wouldn't know. I didn't know that he had anti-Jewish attitudes.
First I've heard of it.
Mike Scott Rohan
from panN...@musician.org (Michael) contains these words:
{snip}
> First of all, might there not be a difference between using people and
> having a genuine friend? (It's my impression that Wagner, who it often
> seems to me seldom left good deeds unpunished, may have been
> sociopathic and incapable of genuine feelings of friendship,
This is very much a "received" view, particularly from early
biographers who were already inclined to take a high moral stance,
especially over his relations with women, and who were also rather
casual in their definition of friendship. Wagner had a immense range
of acquaintances and benefactors, some of whom he certainly treated
badly; but they were usually not close friends in the intimate sense.
Otto Wesendonck, for example, was no more than an acquaintance in the
modern sense; von Bulow more professional than intimate. Wagner did
have a number of definite personal friends to whom he never seems to
have been anything but friendly in the normal sense, but because with
the exception of Liszt they were rarely high-profile figures we are
less aware of them. Certainly they remained devoted to him, and they
can't all have been masochists; Peter Cornelius found Wagner
suffocating, was glad to break away from him, and satirized him in
Der Barbier von Bagdad, nonetheless remained personally very fond of
him. We have records of his extravagant generosity and high spirits
in friendly circles. It may be that Wagner was most at ease with
those who represented no challenge to him, and was ready to exploit
those he considered could look after themselves. But don't be too
ready to accept the sociopathic monster some biographers portray. It
makes eyecatching reading, and it bolsters those who wish to depict
his art as inherently tainted, but it does not fit the facts, which
reveal Wagner as a flawed but comprehensible human being.
though I
> guess he refrained from doing harm to Liszt and Berlioz, who did him a
> lot of good.)
It would be pushing it to say that Wagner ever really did any harm to
anyone. He exploited people financially, certainly; but never those
who could not afford it, and were not well aware of what they were
giving and to whom. In his arrogance he considered it society's duty
to support his genius, and that is why he didn't die in poverty with
his works barely completed or performed, like so many other
composers; he was no worse in this than that conniving miser and
double-dealer Beethoven. Beethoven was also a violent bully, beating
up defenceless servants; he threw a heavy chair at one young woman,
injuring her. Wagner is not on record as using violence on anyone. In
the matter of women he certainly left a trail of cuckolds, but in the
days before divorce was accessible or respectable this was, given
human nature, almost inevitable. There is a strong implication that
the Wesendonck and Gautier marriages had cooled completely, and
Cosima's to von Bulow was definitely one of convenience from the
start; considered awkward and unattractive by her parents, she had
been married off at an early age without much say in the matter, to a
handy pupil of Liszt's who was also no catch, but socially ok and
eager to please his master. Interestingly, I am not sure that von
Bulow ever remarried; can anyone confirm this?
He was, however, more than a bit scornful about Berlioz. Which was
unkind, but harmful as such, and not uncommon; even today a French
critic calls B. "England's greatest composer".... Nor did Berlioz do
him that much good; in fact in later life, as he grew more
embittered, he turned heavily against Wagner.
Also, were any of the Jews you mention
> non-assimilationists like Alkan, who I seem to remember studied the
> Talmud? But the other major difference is that, while Chopin may have
> expressed the type of antisemitic feelings that were and remain all
> too common in Paris, he did not publish virulent antisemitic
> pamphlets. Ultimately, that is the big difference between Wagner and
> every other composer who was personally an antisemite, of which there
> have been many.
Very true. And it's interesting that Levi, who was certainly in a
position to know, distinguished Wagner's anti-semitism from common
prejudice; he considered it something different and nobler in
purpose. Which sounds a bit remarkable, but which probably meant that
it was addressed at what Wagner saw as Jewish cultural dominance, the
current popular preference for the shallow and ephemeral -- Offenbach
and Meyerbeer -- over the profundities of Beethoven (or himself!),
rather than at the Jews as people.
Which is, though Levi probably didn't see it, a rationalization of
the old prejudice, rather than a departure from it, and still pretty
nasty; but ultimately less vicious.
Michael
<mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>Very true. And it's interesting that Levi, who was certainly in a
>position to know, distinguished Wagner's anti-semitism from common
>prejudice; he considered it something different and nobler in
>purpose. Which sounds a bit remarkable, but which probably meant that
>it was addressed at what Wagner saw as Jewish cultural dominance, the
>current popular preference for the shallow and ephemeral -- Offenbach
>and Meyerbeer -- over the profundities of Beethoven (or himself!),
>rather than at the Jews as people.
>Which is, though Levi probably didn't see it, a rationalization of
>the old prejudice, rather than a departure from it, and still pretty
>nasty; but ultimately less vicious.
I can't agree with you or, I suppose, Levi on this conclusion, but
thanks for all the information in your post. It was interesting and
taught me something.
Mike Scott Rohan
from panN...@musician.org (Michael) contains these words:
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 16:03:18 GMT, Mike Scott Rohan
> <mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> [snip]
> >Very true. And it's interesting that Levi, who was certainly in a
> >position to know, distinguished Wagner's anti-semitism from common
> >prejudice; he considered it something different and nobler in
> >purpose. Which sounds a bit remarkable, but which probably meant that
> >it was addressed at what Wagner saw as Jewish cultural dominance, the
> >current popular preference for the shallow and ephemeral -- Offenbach
> >and Meyerbeer -- over the profundities of Beethoven (or himself!),
> >rather than at the Jews as people.
> >Which is, though Levi probably didn't see it, a rationalization of
> >the old prejudice, rather than a departure from it, and still pretty
> >nasty; but ultimately less vicious.
> I can't agree with you or, I suppose, Levi on this conclusion,
Your privilege; and I don't think anybody can be blamed for feeling
deeply offended by Wagner's views -- especially anybody who happens
to be Jewish! But do look into the whole matter of his anti-semitic
beliefs further, and not only in extreme sources like Rose or Gutman.
Like its subject, it's full of complexities. For example, Wagner
chose a surprising number of Jewish associates and assistants. This
is often explained as "using them", but he was under no obligation
whatsoever to "use" Jews at all. There were plenty of equally well
qualified Gentiles who would have jumped at the chance. The fact
seems to be that Wagner was actually somewhat drawn to Jews as individuals.
That is by no means incompatible with prejudice. When I first came to
the USA about twenty-five years ago I often used to encounter
educated southerners who went on quite freely about race -- not
violent, but patronizing as hell -- and yet had black colleagues and
even friends with whom they seemed to have no problem at all. The
blacks were surprisingly relaxed about it, too; one said something to
the effect that it was a time of transition, that the prejudice was
the past talking, and that he could live with it because he knew
these people, whatever they said, were decent towards individuals.
Maybe that's how Levi and the others felt about Wagner. Certainly
there are accounts of Wagner and even Cosima trying, evidently rather
painfully, to say nicer things about Jews (what they thought were
nicer, anyhow!) -- and that really does remind me of those crackers.
I have no wish to defend their prejudices or Wagner's, but I do feel
that in both cases a much more acceptable and comprehensible human
being lurked behind them, and that their behaviour was much more
creditable than their words.
>but
> thanks for all the information in your post. It was interesting and
> taught me something.
Well, it's all "IMHO"; there are other points of view, and a lot more
information than would fit in any post. The important thing is to get
as much as possible, and make up one's own mind. Among good starting
points are Rudolf Sabor's The Real Wagner and the documentary life of
Wagner published by Thames & Hudson in the UK. My own viewpoint is
that I don't believe the comic-book sociopath that extremists depict
could exist, let alone create such humane works; and I question their
reasons for trying to create him, especially with highly selective
analyses and dubious or simply unfair scholarship. Most of all one
must never see Wagner through Nazi eyes, or by that much the Nazis
still triumph.
Roger Lustig
Well, to *some* Jews. Levi, the inevitable starting point for any such
discussion, is a very difficult case.
Not only the authors you disagree with, but many others have noted
Levi's *own* tortured relationship to Judaism. Do you suppose for
a moment that *Wagner* didn't notice it? Levi was, alas, as close
to a Jewish antisemite as one could imagine. More than once he
complained about excessive "Jewish influence" in cultural life.
> That is by no means incompatible with prejudice. When I first came to
> the USA about twenty-five years ago I often used to encounter
> educated southerners who went on quite freely about race -- not
> violent, but patronizing as hell -- and yet had black colleagues and
> even friends with whom they seemed to have no problem at all. The
> blacks were surprisingly relaxed about it, too; one said something to
> the effect that it was a time of transition, that the prejudice was
> the past talking, and that he could live with it because he knew
> these people, whatever they said, were decent towards individuals.
> Maybe that's how Levi and the others felt about Wagner.
Get real, Mike. Levi said plenty, and precious little of it was
addressed toward equal acceptance of Jews as Jews.
I'll go along with quite a few hypotheses, but not one like this,
that's so completely contradicted by the man's own writings and
the memoirs of so many others. Check out Peter Gay's chapter on
Levi in _Freud, Jews, and Other Germans_.
> Certainly
> there are accounts of Wagner and even Cosima trying, evidently rather
> painfully, to say nicer things about Jews (what they thought were
> nicer, anyhow!) -- and that really does remind me of those crackers.
I suppose we're lucky not to have those crackers' diaries. But then,
in most cases we don't have their pamphlets either.
> I have no wish to defend their prejudices or Wagner's, but I do feel
> that in both cases a much more acceptable and comprehensible human
> being lurked behind them, and that their behaviour was much more
> creditable than their words.
Some of us consider publication (and republication) to be behavior,
or, in more traditional parlance, deed as well as word. And there's
still the matter of Wagner's attempt to get rid of Levi as conductor
of Parsifal--and the avowed reason.
> >but
> > thanks for all the information in your post. It was interesting and
> > taught me something.
>
> Well, it's all "IMHO"; there are other points of view, and a lot more
> information than would fit in any post. The important thing is to get
> as much as possible, and make up one's own mind. Among good starting
> points are Rudolf Sabor's The Real Wagner and the documentary life of
> Wagner published by Thames & Hudson in the UK. My own viewpoint is
> that I don't believe the comic-book sociopath that extremists depict
> could exist, let alone create such humane works; and I question their
> reasons for trying to create him, especially with highly selective
> analyses and dubious or simply unfair scholarship. Most of all one
> must never see Wagner through Nazi eyes, or by that much the Nazis
> still triumph.
Alas, Wagner has suffered from unfair, biased, even one-sided
biographers
and critics for a century and a half, beginning with himself. By now,
it's a life's work simply to fight one's way through Foerster,
Chamberlain,
Glasenapp, Kapp (speaking of deeds!!!) and all the rest. One should not
be too hard even on the extremists of today, given that extremism and
Wagnerism have always gone together.
Wohl ihm, dass er Ekel ist!
Roger
Mike Scott Rohan
from Roger Lustig <juli...@ix.netcom.com> contains these words:
{snip}
> Well, to *some* Jews. Levi, the inevitable starting point for any such
> discussion, is a very difficult case.
> Not only the authors you disagree with, but many others have noted
> Levi's *own* tortured relationship to Judaism. Do you suppose for
> a moment that *Wagner* didn't notice it? Levi was, alas, as close
> to a Jewish antisemite as one could imagine.
Hardly. There were many others, not least in the shadow of Nazism.
One writer whom Hitler was rather keen on, surprise surprise, took
matters to their logical conclusion, as he apparently saw it, by
killing himself. Levi's self-doubt was mild by comparison; and he had
no time at all for traditional anti-semitism.
If he'd been the only one, nonetheless, your point might hold water;
but there were plenty of others. Wagner was drawn to intelligence,
musicality and, naturally enough, admiration, and he found all of
these in Jews, some of the most cultivated and unconventional people
in Germany at the time. Many of them, understandably, were ready to
champion Wagner against the same fashionable tastes in music he
attacked -- and perhaps even agree with them on the taste of their
fellow Jews. There was and is, after all, no obligation on members of
any race or culture to think the same way. Many US blacks reject
steretypical "black" culture as beneath them, and complain of its
perpetuation by the media. That doesn't make them pathological specimens.
> I suppose we're lucky not to have those crackers' diaries. But then,
> in most cases we don't have their pamphlets either.
Don't we just! I suspect you weren't in the Deep South in the early
1970s. Like being on another planet -- Klan "literature" everywhere.
> > I have no wish to defend their prejudices or Wagner's, but I do feel
> > that in both cases a much more acceptable and comprehensible human
> > being lurked behind them, and that their behaviour was much more
> > creditable than their words.
> Some of us consider publication (and republication) to be behavior,
> or, in more traditional parlance, deed as well as word.
Certainly. And there are degrees of behaviour. My point, as you must
know, is not that Wagner was not an anti-Semite, or that he didn't
say and do unpleasant things in the name of his beliefs. It's simply
that his bark was worse than his bite -- and in fact he had very
little bite at all.
And there's
> still the matter of Wagner's attempt to get rid of Levi as conductor
> of Parsifal--and the avowed reason.
No doubt as bad a thing as he ever did, in some respects. I suspect
he was aware of the inconsistency between his beliefs and his practice.
But that's how bad, exactly? This is an excellent point at which to
put Wagner in perspective. If all the Nazis and other German
anti-semites -- and will somebody please coin a better word? -- if
all the German Jew-haters had done something similar and nothing
worse, the world would be a vastly better place and Belsen and Dachau
just names on a map. Better if they didn't do anything at all, of
course; but I think most people, given the alternative, would have
settled for the Wagner level of nastiness, as near harmless as one
can get -- especially as, given his inconsistent character, there was
other behaviour to mitigate it.
{snip}
> Alas, Wagner has suffered from unfair, biased, even one-sided
> biographers
> and critics for a century and a half, beginning with himself. By now,
> it's a life's work simply to fight one's way through Foerster,
> Chamberlain,
> Glasenapp, Kapp (speaking of deeds!!!) and all the rest. One should not
> be too hard even on the extremists of today, given that extremism and
> Wagnerism have always gone together.
Very involuted sarcasm -- try taking a line from "Don't let's be
beastly to the Germans!"
Of course it's not a matter of being hard or easy on extremists. It's
the sensible and indeed very vital practice of not over-emphasising
one aspect of a creator's character to the exclusion of all others,
or of shouldering him with the very real guilt of a nation sixty
years after his death. We seem able to treat the virulent
anti-semitism of many other major artistic figures -- Yeats and
T.S.Eliot, for example -- in proportion to their characters, and not
build them into inhuman monsters. To do that to Wagner or any of them
is not only unnecessary and misleading; it is bigotry in itself, and
opens the door to many things -- suppression, for example. Which is
what some people -- not, I trust you -- ultimately want. They're extremists.
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
icono...@home.com
<<We seem able to treat the virulent
anti-semitism of many other major artistic figures --
Yeats and
T.S.Eliot, for example -- in proportion to their characters,
and not
build them into inhuman monsters. To do that to Wagner
or any of them
is not only unnecessary and misleading; it is bigotry
in itself, and
opens the door to many things -- suppression, for example.
Which is
what some people -- not, I trust you -- ultimately want.
They're extremists.>>
It is obviously true that Wagner's taint of antisemitism has been more severe, more prominent, more controversial than Eliot's or Yeats' -- more than any other artist in history. But that didn't happen by itself, without any reason. Neither Yeats nor Eliot nor Henry Ford nor Chopin were handpicked by Adolph Hitler to be the poster child for the Third Reich. It doesn't matter if Hitler's favorite composer was bruckner or if he banned Parsifal during the war years. The simple fact is that Hitler casued Wagner's name to be inextricably linked with Nazism. It's irrelevant if this was fair or not, it is simply history. One of the most interesting factoids I uncovered while researching Wagner on the Internet was the fact that Wagner's music was unofficially banned in Israel in 1938, before World War II began and long before the Final Solution was implemented. This is significant. It is easy to blame the current blackening of Wagner's name on "extremists," and on Millington, Rose, Gutman et. al. But Wagner's name was already backened before the war even began because Hitler made Wagner a symbol for Nazism and all it stood for, and he made Bayreuth his haven. Why didn't it happen to Bruckner? I think it's simple: Though Hitler may have loved Bruckner's music as much as or even more than he loved Wagner's, he did NOT lift Bruckner onto a pedastal, constantly citing his name and associating his music with his evil cause. Nearly everyone who dealt with Hitler who wrote about him has commented on his Wagner obsession, and virtually every biographer I've read -- Kershaw, Schirer, Trevor-Roper, Toland, etc. -- cites this obsession as something that permeated Hitler's life, his conversation, and it was no secret. So to the many poor defenseless Jews undergoing the brutality of the Reich, and to the Jews abroad, Wagner WAS Nazism. Again, perhaps not fair, but at least it is comprehensible, and it helps put into perspective why Wagner has been singled out for the dubious honor of being "Hitler's Composer." I remember many years ago my parents had a friend who survived the holocaust, and when I was discovering Wagner in my teen years he told my parents he prohibited Wagner's from being played in his house. I found it ridiculous at the time. But my readings have helped me realize that, warranted or not, Wagner was symbolic of Hitler and all his evil, and for many people to tolerate Wagner would be to tolerate Hitler himself. I have always felt the Israeli ban to be absurd, but now I at least understand it, and when defenders cry out that if they banned Wagner they should have banned Strauss and Orff as well, I realize that they aren't seeing the whole picture. It wasn't Wagner's antisemitism per se, but, again, his unique deification by Hitler and therefore his inseparable association with the Third Reich. Life is unfair. But I think there are answers to this anomaly. Thanks.
Richard Burger
Sisigtender
Mike Scott Rohan mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk contains these words:
Snip:
>Wagner chose a surprising number of Jewish associates and assistants. This
>is often explained as "using them", but he was under no obligation
>whatsoever to "use" Jews at all. There were plenty of equally well.
Where in the world would he get qualified non-Jews such as emotionally unstable
Joseph Rubinstein, who Wagner called his court pianist. He was on call 24 hours
a day, working without pay, to entertain the Wagners and their guests, as well
as to do the piano reduction of his operas –-while being subject to continual
denigration.
Levi? The King, who Wagner bullied for the 19 years of their relationship, made
it clear that he wasn't buying into Wagner's attack on the Jews. No Levi, no
orchestra, no Parsifal.
And is there anyone who could have pulled Wagner out of the financial and
emotional doldrums other than Neuman? Wagner certainly didn't think so and told
him that over and over again?
>When I first came to the USA about twenty-five years ago I often used to
>encounter educated southerners who went on quite freely about race -- not
>violent, but patronizing as hell -- and yet had black colleagues and even
>friends with whom they seemed to have no problem at all. The blacks were
>surprisingly relaxed about it, too; one said something to the effect that it
>was a time of transition, that the prejudice was the past talking, and that
>he could live with it because he knew these people, whatever they said, >were
decent towards individuals.
>Maybe that's how Levi and the others felt about Wagner. Certainly
>there are accounts of Wagner and even Cosima trying, evidently rather
>painfully, to say nicer things about Jews (what they thought were
>nicer, anyhow!) -- and that really does remind me of those crackers.
Who that you met in the South wrote diatribes against the Blacks the equivalent
to Jewry in Music, the Bayreuther Blätter and Know thyself? By calling the
Southerners you met "crackers," jokingly or not, you're insulting not only
them, but most of the South. I doubt that any in this newsgroup would disagree.
>My own viewpoint is that I don't believe the comic-book sociopath that
>extremists depict could exist, let alone create such humane works; and I
>question their reasons for trying to create him, especially with highly
>selective analyses and dubious or simply unfair scholarship. Most of all
>one must never see Wagner through Nazi eye
Someone should have told that to Hitler.
Roger Lustig
Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
> The message <3A3AF3BE...@ix.netcom.com>
> from Roger Lustig <juli...@ix.netcom.com> contains these words:
>
> {snip}
>
> > Well, to *some* Jews. Levi, the inevitable starting point for any such
> > discussion, is a very difficult case.
>
> > Not only the authors you disagree with, but many others have noted
> > Levi's *own* tortured relationship to Judaism. Do you suppose for
> > a moment that *Wagner* didn't notice it? Levi was, alas, as close
> > to a Jewish antisemite as one could imagine.
>
> Hardly. There were many others, not least in the shadow of Nazism.
> One writer whom Hitler was rather keen on, surprise surprise, took
> matters to their logical conclusion, as he apparently saw it, by
> killing himself.
Are you referring to Otto Weininger? Now, *there* is a can of worms.
> Levi's self-doubt was mild by comparison; and he had
> no time at all for traditional anti-semitism.
"Traditional anti-semitism" isn't the issue here, and never has been.
It's the *non*-traditional kind that Wagner espoused.
> If he'd been the only one, nonetheless, your point might hold water;
> but there were plenty of others. Wagner was drawn to intelligence,
> musicality and, naturally enough, admiration, and he found all of
> these in Jews, some of the most cultivated and unconventional people
> in Germany at the time. Many of them, understandably, were ready to
> champion Wagner against the same fashionable tastes in music he
> attacked -- and perhaps even agree with them on the taste of their
> fellow Jews. There was and is, after all, no obligation on members of
> any race or culture to think the same way. Many US blacks reject
> steretypical "black" culture as beneath them, and complain of its
> perpetuation by the media. That doesn't make them pathological specimens.
But claiming that they're that way because they're black--that would
border on pathology.
> > I suppose we're lucky not to have those crackers' diaries. But then,
> > in most cases we don't have their pamphlets either.
> Don't we just! I suspect you weren't in the Deep South in the early
> 1970s. Like being on another planet -- Klan "literature" everywhere.
The Deep South--no, not generally. But I grew up south of the Mason-
Dixon Line, and encountered plenty of racism. I think you missed the
context of what you were responding to.
> > > I have no wish to defend their prejudices or Wagner's, but I do feel
> > > that in both cases a much more acceptable and comprehensible human
> > > being lurked behind them, and that their behaviour was much more
> > > creditable than their words.
> > Some of us consider publication (and republication) to be behavior,
> > or, in more traditional parlance, deed as well as word.
> Certainly. And there are degrees of behaviour. My point, as you must
> know, is not that Wagner was not an anti-Semite, or that he didn't
> say and do unpleasant things in the name of his beliefs. It's simply
> that his bark was worse than his bite -- and in fact he had very
> little bite at all.
And my point was that his bark *was* his bite, because he gave
scurrilous
ideas legitimacy and made it easier for others to proceed.
> > And there's
> > still the matter of Wagner's attempt to get rid of Levi as conductor
> > of Parsifal--and the avowed reason.
> No doubt as bad a thing as he ever did, in some respects. I suspect
> he was aware of the inconsistency between his beliefs and his practice.
> But that's how bad, exactly? This is an excellent point at which to
> put Wagner in perspective. If all the Nazis and other German
> anti-semites -- and will somebody please coin a better word? -- if
> all the German Jew-haters had done something similar and nothing
> worse, the world would be a vastly better place and Belsen and Dachau
> just names on a map. Better if they didn't do anything at all, of
> course; but I think most people, given the alternative, would have
> settled for the Wagner level of nastiness, as near harmless as one
> can get -- especially as, given his inconsistent character, there was
> other behaviour to mitigate it.
No, the worst things he ever did were his publications, and they *did*
have an effect, one he sought.
> {snip}
> > Alas, Wagner has suffered from unfair, biased, even one-sided
> > biographers
> > and critics for a century and a half, beginning with himself. By now,
> > it's a life's work simply to fight one's way through Foerster,
> > Chamberlain,
> > Glasenapp, Kapp (speaking of deeds!!!) and all the rest. One should not
> > be too hard even on the extremists of today, given that extremism and
> > Wagnerism have always gone together.
> Very involuted sarcasm -- try taking a line from "Don't let's be
> beastly to the Germans!"
I've always tried to do that--or am I missing some involuted sarcasm of
yours?
> Of course it's not a matter of being hard or easy on extremists. It's
> the sensible and indeed very vital practice of not over-emphasising
> one aspect of a creator's character to the exclusion of all others,
> or of shouldering him with the very real guilt of a nation sixty
> years after his death. We seem able to treat the virulent
> anti-semitism of many other major artistic figures -- Yeats and
> T.S.Eliot, for example -- in proportion to their characters, and not
> build them into inhuman monsters. To do that to Wagner or any of them
> is not only unnecessary and misleading; it is bigotry in itself, and
> opens the door to many things -- suppression, for example. Which is
> what some people -- not, I trust you -- ultimately want. They're extremists.
Well, no. The case of Eliot (a friend of my grandfather's, speaking
of Some Of My Best Friends Are) is not so clear; quite a few writers
since the 50's have come down hard indeed on the man's bizarre political
and "religious" views. (The bit about his nostalgia for French fascists
even *after* the war is really hard to digest even now.) Pound is
another
one who's still debated.
Trouble is, none of these figures was in the vanguard of national/racial
ideas the way Wagner was. To some extent they were even able to say
what they did because Wagner and his successors had made that sort of
thing
"salonfaehig."
Roger
TAK 8
Of My Best Friends Are) is not so clear; quite a few writers since the 50's
have come down hard indeed on the man's bizarre political and "religious"
views. (The bit about his nostalgia for French fascists even *after* the war
is really hard to digest even now.) Pound is another
>one who's still debated.
There's quite a few folks at the TS Eliot list (t...@lists.missouri.edu) --
where TSE's antisemitism (vel non) is a very frequent subject of debate --
who'd be delighted to have you drop in with any ancecotes (or opinions) you may
have about the man. While the views are diverse, most if not all there would
agree -- as I believe the evidence compels -- that Eliot's attitude toward Jews
is not in the same ballpark as Wagner's.
Pound, by contrast, seems to me to leave little to debate. If anything, his
pronouncements on Jews are more scurrilous than Wagner's, and their timing far
more damning.
Mike Scott Rohan
from sisig...@aol.com (Sisigtender) contains these words:
> Subject:Subject: Re: Wagner's Music in Israel
> Mike Scott Rohan mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk contains these words:
> Snip:
> >Wagner chose a surprising number of Jewish associates and assistants. This
> >is often explained as "using them", but he was under no obligation
> >whatsoever to "use" Jews at all. There were plenty of equally well.
> Where in the world would he get qualified non-Jews such as emotionally unstable
> Joseph Rubinstein, who Wagner called his court pianist. He was on call 24 hours
> a day, working without pay, to entertain the Wagners and their guests, as well
> as to do the piano reduction of his operas –-while being subject to continual
> denigration.
Wagner had plenty of non-Jewish associates as well, and he could have
had his pick of others. The Dachau-commandant style picture you
paint, all too reminiscent of the concentration-camp orchestras, is
suitably emotive, but as with much of this it is sadly not
reconcilable with the facts on record. Levi specifically says how
fond Wagner was of Rubinstein. Oh, you were going to claim Levi was
unstable too? Handy, all these neurotic Jewish masochists around,
ready to undergo what no normal human being would stand for a moment.
This is the standard dismissal for any Jewish witness who in any way
favours Wagner -- but it is actually a very nasty piece of
anti-semitic stereotyping in itself.
> Who that you met in the South wrote diatribes against the Blacks the equivalent
> to Jewry in Music, the Bayreuther Blätter and Know thyself? By calling the
> Southerners you met "crackers," jokingly or not, you're insulting not only
> them, but most of the South. I doubt that any in this newsgroup would disagree.
Who wrote diatribes? You evidently know nothing of this subject
either, or you would not need to ask! The Klan, for a pretty good
start. But a huge chunk of the rest of the South, too. There were
books, pamphlets, even sermons preached against racial integration
and civil rights from otherwise respectable pulpits, all in
repellently racist terms. And while you again show your ignorance by
assuming "crackers" is necessarily an insulting term, I would not
hesitate to insult the South of those days in any terms I can. Anyone
who disagrees can consider himself included.
Most of all
> >one must never see Wagner through Nazi eye
> Someone should have told that to Hitler.
You conveniently leave off the other half of my comment, because you
yourself don't want to do otherwise. But yes, someone should. If
Hitler had really understood and believed in the humanitarian content
of Wagner's operas, it would have overridden the much less
significant strain of anti-semitism in his written work. Or, if he
had only decided to imitate Wagner's behaviour exactly, he would
never have harmed a single Jew physically, nor advocated any such
harm. Your unwillingness to recognise difference and degree, as any
just law would, completely devalues your views.
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Wagnerbuch
> Handy, all these neurotic Jewish masochists around,
>ready to undergo what no normal human being would stand for a moment.
>This is the standard dismissal for any Jewish witness who in any way
>favours Wagner -- but it is actually a very nasty piece of
>anti-semitic stereotyping in itself.
Here's a post of mine from a year ago:
Begin repost:
<<>> Wagner had no Jewish friends
>
> [MSR replies] Yes, we've heard this one before. They considered themselves
friends
>and were treated as such, in the same way as all his assistants --
>with an almost embarrassing generosity which more than one has
>recorded. Peter Cornelius actually lists the flood of expensive
>presents he received, for example, as all the others did. Your
>analysis of their relationship to the Wagners is entirely one of
>interpretation, not fact -- and it requires that all of them should
>be neurotic imbeciles, which they were not.
>
>
To repeat. Here's Wagner's view of "his" Jews:
" I simply cannot get rid of them...I simply have to put up with the most
energetic Jewish patronage, however curious I feel in doing so..."
Something of a related position occurs in:
"When we are talking about the attachment of certain Jews to R.[Wagner], he
says, "Yes they are like flies - the more one drives them away, the more they
come."
CWDII 12/9/1880
Whatever his house Jews may have thought - Wagner saw them as people he was
trying to get rid of. He said it twice. And on one occasion, he asserts that
the more he drives them off, the more they come. Masochists.
God, I'm bored with this.
Simon Weil>>
End repost. I'm still bored with this.
acdouglas
> [snipped - original post is below]
> God, I'm bored with this.
------------------------------------------------------
Hear!, Hear! I'll second that.
--
ACD
http://www.monmouth.com/~acdouglas
v---------------------- [original post] ----------------------v
"Wagnerbuch" <wagne...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010102134746...@ng-fm1.aol.com...
Mike Scott Rohan
from wagne...@aol.com (Wagnerbuch) contains these words:
{snip}
I don't understand what your repost was supposed to demonstrate,
Simon -- except that repeated assertions must be given the same answers.
>
> Whatever his house Jews may have thought - Wagner saw them as people he was
> trying to get rid of. He said it twice. And on one occasion, he asserts that
> the more he drives them off, the more they come. Masochists.
Do these comments -- Wagner's typically tasteless jokes --
specifically refer to his assistants, or simply his fans? The latter,
surely; it is too general to apply to his assistants. Then as now,
many Jews, being among the most cultured and least hidebound people
in German society, naturally found themselves attracted to his music,
and no doubt the paradox struck him as both funny and embarrassing.
Even that may not have been as nasty as it sounds, to him at least.
He was given to making fun of his own image in other contexts -- for
example, coming out of a performance of Il Barbiere, and saying
something to the effect of "Rossini, how I love him -- but don't tell
my fans!". His reaction to his Jewish fans can be read in the same way.
As regards his assistants he had plenty of young devotees who were
non-Jewish, and who would have made him equally good assistants. Did
he enjoy employing Jews as slaves, as you imply? Then surely he would
have employed only Jews, or at least treated them differently. But he
employed both Jews and non-Jews, and by their own accounts treated
them all much the same, and earned their affection -- even that of
the clear-sighted and by no means star-struck Peter Cornelius. He
openly says he found Wagner's presence and personality overwhelming
and overbearing, but he records no incidence of unkindness to Jews or
anyone else, and much of the opposite.
I do not care to write people of talent and intelligence off as
"house Jews" or "masochists" -- and I would be accused of
anti-semitism if I did! People are more complicated than that.
Personally I'd rather follow the practice of all reputable
historians, and give most weight to living accounts such as those of
Wagner's assistants, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, rather than the
deductions and suppositions of others who know neither the person nor
his society, and often have severely biased axes to grind.
> God, I'm bored with this.
>
> Simon Weil>>
> End repost. I'm still bored with this.
You could not be more bitterly bored than I am, with the continual
reappearance of the same tendentious and poorly supported attacks, in
a newsgroup where their sole purpose is to be disruptive. They spring
not from a love of or an interest in the subject, but a desire to
insult and belittle those who do have such an interest. I don't
include you among this barrage of mediocrity; I cannot accept your
position, I don't think the rightness or wrongness of our respective
views can ever be fairly established, but I happily concede that you
make a very strong case.
I often wonder whether it would be better not to reply. A year or two
ago, though, I and others did grow bored and gave up replying (not by
agreement, just coincidence). Within a day or so the group was
largely monopolized by the anti-Wagner brigade. For a day or two
there was some vigorous posting, for a few more some desultory
pretence at discussion, but it rapidly declined and lapsed. They had
nothing left to say, or to contribute to the group; their sole point
and presence here was negative and destructive. That is rarely a
virtue, anywhere, and still less evidence of real and unbiased
thought. I wondered if having their say without contradiction might
content them; but no, back came the cranks as the group revived,
peddling the same lines even more obdurately than before. Leaving
them alone had simply encouraged them. So I feel obliged to answer,
even though it forces me into positions I don't much enjoy; I'm not
naturally inclined to defend Wagner. But the crude
Wagner-as-comicbook-Nazi image reflects on those who enjoy his music,
and should not be allowed to propagate unchallenged, any more than
any other idiocy. That's why defence attorneys are essential in just
trials. If it bores you or anyone else, I am sorry, but I don't apologise.
And forgive me if I'm wrong, but haven't you yourself said that
you're not interested in Wagner's music, or any other aspect of him,
except as it relates to his anti-semitism? I would not object to your
contributions here, even if I felt I had any right to; but don't you
think that that narrow viewpoint might contribute to your boredom, in
a newsgroup whose intention is much wider and more positive? I myself
come here for the more interesting material, and join in the dismal
anti-semitism debate only very reluctantly. If it stopped dead,
exhausted, nobody would be happier. But it will not stop, because it
is fuelled by those whose intention is not genuine discussion, but
simply attack. If you encourage the negative and repetitive, you
can't complain too hard about the tedium it creates.
Cheers,
Mike
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Sisigtender
Message-id: <3A465D0C...@home.com> wrote
Mike, you bring up a point that truly fascinates me, and while I hate to beat
this very dead horse again, I feel I must comment:
<<We seem able to treat the virulent anti-semitism of many other major artistic
figures -- Yeats and T.S.Eliot, for example -- in proportion to their
characters, and not build them into inhuman monsters. To do that to Wagner or
any of them is not only unnecessary and misleading; it is bigotry in itself,
and opens the door to many things -- suppression, for example. Which is what
some people -- not, I trust you -- ultimately want. They're extremists.>>
<It is obviously true that Wagner's taint of antisemitism has been more
severe, more prominent, more controversial than Eliot's or Yeats' -- more than
any other artist in history. But that didn't happen by itself, without any
reason. Neither Yeats nor Eliot nor Henry Ford nor Chopin were handpicked by
Adolph Hitler to be the poster child for the Third Reich. It doesn't matter if
Hitler's favorite composer was Bruckner or if he banned Parsifal during the war
years. The simple fact is that Hitler caused Wagner's name to be inextricably
linked with Nazism. It's irrelevant if this was fair or not, it is simply
history. One of the most interesting factoids I uncovered while researching
Wagner on the Internet was the fact that Wagner's music was unofficially banned
in Israel in 1938, before World War II began and long before the Final Solution
was implemented. This is significant. It is easy to blame the current
blackening of Wagner's name on "extremists," and on Millington, Rose, Gutman
et. al. But Wagner's name was already blackened before the war even began
because Hitler made Wagner a symbol for Nazism and all it stood for, and he
made Bayreuth his haven. Why didn't it happen to Bruckner?>
<I think it's simple: Though Hitler may have loved Bruckner's music as much as
or even more than he loved Wagner's, he did NOT lift Bruckner onto a pedastal,
constantly citing his name and associating his music with his evil cause.
Nearly everyone who dealt with Hitler who wrote about him has commented on his
Wagner obsession, and virtually every biographer I've read -- Kershaw, Schirer,
Trevor-Roper, Toland, etc. -- cites this obsession as something that permeated
Hitler's life, his conversation, and it was no secret. So to the many poor
defenseless Jews undergoing the brutality of the Reich, and to the Jews abroad,
Wagner WAS Nazism. Again, perhaps not fair, but at least it is comprehensible,
and it helps put into perspective why Wagner has been singled out for the
dubious honor of being "Hitler's Composer.">
<I remember many years ago my parents had a friend who survived the Holocaust,
and when I was discovering Wagner in my teen years he told my parents he
prohibited Wagner's from being played in his house. I found it ridiculous at
the time. But my readings have helped me realize that, warranted or not, Wagner
was symbolic of Hitler and all his evil, and for many people to tolerate Wagner
would be to tolerate Hitler himself. I have always felt the Israeli ban to be
absurd, but now I at least understand it, and when defenders cry out that if
they banned Wagner they should have banned Strauss and Orff as well, I realize
that they aren't seeing the whole picture. It wasn't Wagner's antisemitism per
se, but, again, his unique deification by Hitler and therefore his inseparable
association with the Third Reich. Life is unfair. But I think there are answers
to this anomaly. Thanks.>
<Richard Burger>
It was as much the lasting influence of Wagner as the execution of the ideas by
Hitler that brought about the unofficial ban on Wagner's music by the then
Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra during the British Mandate.
Richard Stock, in his Richard Wagner und die Stadt der Meistersinger, wrote
that Wagner, in a letter to Bülow on February 20, 1866, wanted Meistersinger
produced "in the city it celebrated because he saw this ancient seat of German
tradition as a bulwark against Jewish influences." He was enraged also by the
erection in Nuremberg, opposite the monument to Hans Sachs, of "an imposing
synagogue in purest Oriental style."
Decades later, the Nazis demolished the structure stone by stone and the city
became the birthplace of the infamous Nuremberg race laws, as well as the
ideal host of their party conventions. It also became the city of choice for
Kristallnacht, which led to the cancellation of the scheduled performance of
Wagner's Meistersingers of Nuremberg, followed closely by the and unofficial
ban on Wagner's music by the predecessor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Hitler's artistic taste, according to Brigitte Hamann's Hitler's Vienna, was
neither Wagner nor Bruckner in Berlin, but Franz Lehar, Der Fuehrer preferring
and continuing to listen to his Merry Widow throughout World War II.
Author William L. Shirer wrote of Hitler's "love for American films," many of
which were never publicly exhibited and were shown to him privately. He wrote
that Hitler insisted on having It Happened One Night shown several times
Though Hitler was proposed to have a passion for serious endeavors such as
Wagnerian opera, Shirer wrote that he almost never attended the opera in
Berlin. Instead, he liked the Metropol, which staged comedies, with an emphasis
on "pretty dancing girls."
So much for his passion for Wagner's music.
Neil Wolstenholme
as unfair and have as little basis in fact as the terrible anti-semitic
sentiments he himself committed to print. It should be possible to analyse
and condemn the worst elements of Wagner's personality and work, without
having to turn an essentially rather fragile personality always in need of
reassurance and an "enemy" to vanquish, into-some kind of mythical demonic
figure more gawdy and less "human" than any character he ever drew on from
myth and brought to life in his operas.
It is almost as if the messianic elements of Wagner's personality "infect"
his critics (using some of the language of degeneration that Wagner and
others used when discussing Jewishness), and they become so lost in their
need to punish and discredit such an enduringly influential figure that
normally acceptable limits of scholarly research are breached in favour of
supposition, generalisation and transferred guilt by association. This kind
of mix is seen very clearly in the works of Professor Rose, where sound
scholarship competes for space with polemic and proselytising thereby in
some ways risking turning Wagner into a persecuted martyr. Most people who
love Wagner accept his failings and find some elements of his character and
personality repugnant but are also able to see the beauty and creativity
that co-existed. In fairness to people like Professor Rose some of Wagner's
supporters do tend to try and ignore or even dismiss the anti-semitism,
doing the composer no favours, as this just tends to see an escalation of
extremism as views become ever more entrenched. Truth is always the first
victim of dogma.
Wagner was a complex and in some ways unpleasant man who, like so many of
us, was a mass of contradictions on the personal and professional level but
he is no more the prophet of nazism than many other writers who were his
contemporaries but who, due to their inferior talent or the whims of
fashion, have been blessed with a gift it seems Wagner will never receive -
to be forgotten is the next best thing to being forgiven.
Neil Wolstenholme
Camar...@webtv.net
die Nazis sie so nützlich und ihren Zwecken besonders dienlich fanden,
sondern vor allem weil er selber so ein giftiger, gehässiger Antisemit
war, der jedes Hindernis in seinem persönlichen oder künstlerischen
Leben den Juden in die Schuhe schob. Dazu schrieb er die
niederträchtige, blödsinnige Schmähschrift "Das Judentum in der
Musik" und gab sich noch die Mühe eine zweite annotierte mit
erklärender Einleitung versehene Ausgabe herauszugeben. Wagner und
seine Nachfolger und Anhänger haben ihr allermöglichstes getan das
Gift des Antisemitismus zu verbreiten und zu befördern. Wagners
Bayreuth wurde die Hochburg des Rassenhasses. In der Beziehung hat
Cosima den Wagner sogar "überwagnert" und andere wie Houston Stuart
Chamberlain haben sich verdienstlich dazugesellt. Hitler ist bei Wagner
in die Schule gegangen. Wagner und sein Bayreuth dienten ihm zum
Vorbild. Hier war alles schön ausgelegt. Das Blöd-ironische an der
ganzen Geschichte ist die Tatsache, daß die hervorragendsten
Interpreten wagnerscher Musik zum großen Teil Juden gewesen sind! Es
hilft herzlich wenig aus kalt akademischer Entfernung diesen
verderblichen Einfluß Wagners zu betrachten. Das könnte man genau so
gut mit Himmler, Eichmann oder Heydrich tun. Es hat alles seine Folgen.
Auf dem Gebiet der Kunst, wo so viele Unschuldige beeinflußt werden
können, ist es besonders gefährlich. Søren.
Roger Lustig
Camar...@webtv.net wrote:
>
> Die Musik Wagners wird in Israël mit Recht verbannt nicht nur weil
> die Nazis sie so nützlich und ihren Zwecken besonders dienlich fanden,
> sondern vor allem weil er selber so ein giftiger, gehässiger Antisemit
> war, der jedes Hindernis in seinem persönlichen oder künstlerischen
> Leben den Juden in die Schuhe schob.
Und wie folgt das eine aus dem anderen?
Erstens--Tatsachen, bitte. Wagners Musik wird in Israel *nicht*
verbannt. Manche Orchester spielen seine Werke nicht.
Zweitens--wie kommt man von der Tatsache, dass Wagner Antisemit war,
zum Schluss, dass man seine Musik verbannen soll?
> Dazu schrieb er die
> niederträchtige, blödsinnige Schmähschrift "Das Judentum in der
> Musik" und gab sich noch die Mühe eine zweite annotierte mit
> erklärender Einleitung versehene Ausgabe herauszugeben.
Und auch noch schlimmeres--"Erkenne dich selbst", zum Beispiel.
> Wagner und
> seine Nachfolger und Anhänger haben ihr allermöglichstes getan das
> Gift des Antisemitismus zu verbreiten und zu befördern.
Nein. *Manche* seiner Anhaenger haben das getan. Andere nicht.
> Wagners Bayreuth wurde die Hochburg des Rassenhasses.
Von solchen Hochburgen gab es viele.
> In der Beziehung hat
> Cosima den Wagner sogar "überwagnert" und andere wie Houston Stuart
> Chamberlain haben sich verdienstlich dazugesellt.
Was hat das mit Israel zu tun?
> Hitler ist bei Wagner
> in die Schule gegangen. Wagner und sein Bayreuth dienten ihm zum
> Vorbild.
Vorbild? In welchem Sinne?
> Hier war alles schön ausgelegt.
Alles? Wohl nicht. Vieles schon. Hitler war aber nicht
nur ein Abschreiber Wagners.
> Das Blöd-ironische an der
> ganzen Geschichte ist die Tatsache, daß die hervorragendsten
> Interpreten wagnerscher Musik zum großen Teil Juden gewesen sind!
Weder bloed noch ironisch. (Auch nicht ganz tatsaechlich. Juedische
Wagnerianer gab es--und gibt es; aber was bedeutet eigentlich "zum
grossen Teil"? 5%? 10%? 20%? Bei welchem Pegel schaltet die
Ironie ein?)
> Es hilft herzlich wenig aus kalt akademischer Entfernung diesen
> verderblichen Einfluß Wagners zu betrachten.
Stimmt. Solange man nicht auch den Einfluss Wagners auf Mahler
und Schoenberg (und viele andere Kuenstler) betrachtet, ist man
zu weit von der Sache entfernt.
> Das könnte man genau so gut mit Himmler, Eichmann oder Heydrich tun.
Ironisch? Nein. Bloed? Schon eher. Die Kriegsverbrecherischen
Nazis waren nicht Musiker. Haben nicht die moderne Musik gefoerdert.
> Es hat alles seine Folgen.
Stimmt wieder mal. Gedankenlosigkeit, zum Beispiel, hat als Folge
oft das undiskriminierte um-sich-her-Schreiben. "Es hat alles seine
Folgen" ist Banalitaet ersten Grades.
> Auf dem Gebiet der Kunst, wo so viele Unschuldige beeinflußt werden
> können, ist es besonders gefährlich. Søren.
Ist *was* besonders gefaehrlich? "Alles"? Banal ist noch annehmbar.
Voellig sinnlose Aussagen vielleicht nicht mehr.
Roger Lustig