# How can a composer be a creep and still write beautiful music?



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Prokofiev is my favorite composer. I find his music quirky, soulful, beautiful, energetic, etc., etc. but the more I learn about him, the more I find that he really wasn't a great person. He turned his back on his wife when the soviet government bore down on her (she was a westerner - from Spain), resulting in her being sent off to Siberia to work as prisoner/slave. He also showed tremendous personal selfishness, was highly critical of other composers, etc, etc. In most accounts, he was basically an a$%h0le.

So how can a person like that create music that is so wonderful?

I'm sure there are many examples of artists and composers who created something that didn't quite coincide with their character?

How do we reconcile this?


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

What about Wagner? He was a bigot, racist and other things and yet his compositions were terrific!


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

I always found Prokofiev's music to be somewhat detached from Prokofiev the man. Perhaps it's because he wrote music usually on commission. That's my take anyway.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

You don't have to marry him, just listen to his music. I remember Carl Jung saying that the fullfillment of one's soul or self, is many times dependent upon doing things that are considered "wrong" to normal family-oriented standards. Of course, Jung accepted the dark side of human nature, instead of trying to moralistically sweep it aside and "demonize" it like Christians and most other religions do. It seems, then, that the moral dilemma you have presented is completely within the realm of your own subjective standards; presented as if it were a "given" that people are "not a**holes," when of course, they are, and that is a value judgement anyway, which holds no objective truth.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

So, in restating your entry millionrainbows, Prokofiev's _creepiness_ is my own subjective interpretation.

I can respect that idea. Geniuses and highly creatives are certainly less likely to conform to "accepted or usual" standards of behavior. We love them for their creations, but maybe having a cup of coffee with them wouldn't be so great....


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

20centrfuge said:


> Prokofiev is my favorite composer. I find his music quirky, soulful, beautiful, energetic, etc., etc. but the more I learn about him, the more I find that he really wasn't a great person. He turned his back on his wife when the soviet government bore down on her (she was a westerner - from Spain), resulting in her being sent off to Siberia to work as prisoner/slave. He also showed tremendous personal selfishness, was highly critical of other composers, etc, etc. In most accounts, he was basically an a$%h0le.
> 
> So how can a person like that create music that is so wonderful?
> 
> ...


One thing has nothing to do with the other.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Lovely quote about John Bull - who fled to Amsterdam to evade a charge of adultery - the Archbishop of Canterbury said: _the man hath more music than honesty and is as famous for marring of virginity as he is for fingering of organs and virginals._

Gesualdo had a bit of a bad reputation but wrote brilliant music. Lully had a vile reputation but his music is sublime.

Caravaggio was an excellent painter but .... Christopher Marlowe a good playwright with many flaws in his personal life

Why should one expect a brilliant artist to be a "good person"? Often the drive to greatness results in a feeling that the normal rules are not for them.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Bruckner is on the other side of the spectrum. Super nice guy with no ego at all, creating music you wouldn't expect. But he's a little creepy in his own way though. He insisted on marrying a virgin. Incidentally he never did marry...


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Proks music sounds a bit HARSH...


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Bulldog said:


> One thing has nothing to do with the other.


I would find it hard to listen to Prokofiev's music if, say, it emerged that he had been a serial murderer of children.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It's wrong to presume that a specific behavior or belief or attitude that's offensive or unpleasant defines a person's inmost nature. We like to simplify people and judge them accordingly. People are complex, inconsistent, and finally mysterious, and "good" people are often not objectively superior in their basic motivations and dispositions to those who may simply be less constrained by social expectations from expressing their various sides. They may also be more interesting, so I wouldn't be so sure about who I'd rather have that cup of coffee with. 

I attended a Christian college where I was surrounded by "good people" who were always smiling at me as if to remind me that happiness was obligatory and if I wasn't happy I obviously hadn't been saved (from what, I was ornery enough to ask). It was surreal. My best times during those years were had with heathens, reprobates, and the closeted gay organists from the music department (we actually had four of them). I don't know whether those folks were all "good" or not, but the music we made together sure was. (I'm referring to actual music there, in case you were wondering.)


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Much as I probably shouldn't say it (again!), here goes. Many of the values that prevail now are specific to one time and place. What we consider unacceptable attitudes, beliefs, and opinions might be quite acceptable or even worthy of praise in another place or in another time, both past and future.

But of course we're always right about this stuff because...well...we're _us_!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Years ago I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on this very topic - but based on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the disconnect between his work and his self-confessed poor character. Can't remember a word of it...

There are quite a few composers with unpleasant character traits. Malcolm Arnold was supposedly a nasty character, but I like his music. Perhaps because I heard it before I knew anything about him. I won't pretend that I am not subject to common human reactions. Often when we despise the character or behaviour of an artist we refuse to acknowledge their works as a sort of snub; even when it means we might miss out.

How solid is this "I am not swayed by subjective value-judgements" approach? If Pol Pot had written a symphony would you listen to it in a value-free way? Perhaps, if you didn't know the composer. Then after learning the identity of the composer still no reaction? I doubt it. The pseudo-zen claim to be value-free in all human dealings is false posturing.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

20centrfuge said:


> He turned his back on his wife when the soviet government bore down on her (she was a westerner - from Spain), resulting in her being sent off to Siberia to work as prisoner/slave.


she was accused of being a spy, what could he do for her? can you help those accused of harassment these days? what can you do for them now?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

it is also that within Russian traditions you don't conceal your true self, as opposed to the West where you have to hide your feelings. Prokofiev was merely honest in his life, like many others with same background.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Judith said:


> What about Wagner? He was a bigot, racist and other things and yet his compositions were terrific!


Yes, Wagner and Delius were vile creatures, but their music was great. Gesualdo had a dark past, but he was very repentant getting people to whip him voluntarily for his sins. His late music was sublime, some say he poured a lot of his fervour and guilt into his music since the murder.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> it is also that within Russian traditions you don't conceal your true self, as opposed to the West where you have to hide your feelings. Prokofiev was merely honest in his life, like many others with same background.


There's something to this. It can, however, be important to distinguish between not concealing one's self and not behaving oneself.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Phil loves classical said:


> Yes, Wagner and Delius were vile creatures, but their music was great. Gesualdo had a dark past, but he was very repentant getting people to whip him voluntarily for his sins. His late music was sublime, some say he poured a lot of his fervour and guilt into his music since the murder.


What was more abnormal: murdering someone, or asking to be whipped?

Wagner, at least, preferred silk underwear to S&M.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Personally I separate the man from the music and concentrate solely on the music otherwise it gets too complicated.


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## st Omer (Sep 23, 2015)

Judith said:


> What about Wagner? He was a bigot, racist and other things and yet his compositions were terrific!


That is all true and those were some of his better qualities. He was also a serial adulterer who stole other men's wives. I don't think about any of that when I listen to the great orchestral excerpts from his operas. He was an absolute master in orchestration.

After 16 hours of The Ring and seeing what a jerk Wotan was it is obvious that Wagner was writing an autobiographical music drama. Perhaps his greatest quality was being an egomaniac and revealing his true self in his greatest artistic creation. Bits and pieces of it were entertaining but on the whole I would rather listen to Wagner without words and not have to think about some naive punk who falls for his aunt.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

The beauty of the music has nothing to do with with the beauty, if any, of the composer.

Neither the composer, the performer, nor the subject of the music need have any real beauty.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

st Omer said:


> That is all true and those were some of his better qualities. He was also a serial adulterer who stole other men's wives. I don't think about any of that when I listen to the great orchestral excerpts from his operas. He was an absolute master in orchestration.
> 
> After 16 hours of The Ring and seeing what a jerk Wotan was it is obvious that Wagner was writing an autobiographical music drama. Perhaps his greatest quality was being an egomaniac and revealing his true self in his greatest artistic creation. Bits and pieces of it were entertaining but on the whole I would rather listen to Wagner without words and not have to think about some naive punk who falls for his aunt.


It's easy and popular to take shots at Wagner. Actually I doubt that many of us have any idea of his better qualities. But you cite his operas as "autobiographical," and if you're thorough you'll find a full range of human faults and virtues depicted there. As I remarked in my post above, we like to simplify people so as to stand in facile judgment of them. But few people can have been as complex as Wagner, and he inspired both great devotion and great hostility in his lifetime. The extremes may be well expressed in his relationship with Hermann Levi, the Jewish conductor of the premiere of _Parsifal._ Wagner half-teased Levi by suggesting that the conductor of his "Christian" opera might want to be baptized first, and Levi's rabbi father told Hermann that although he was proud that his son was a participant in such a great event, he "wished he could like Wagner," a known anti-semite. It should tell us something that Levi responded in a letter:

_You certainly could and you should like Wagner. He is the best and noblest of men. Of course our contemporaries misunderstand and slander him. It is the duty of the world to darken those who shine. Goethe did not fare any better. That he bears no petty antisemitism like a country squire or a protestant bigot is seen by the way he treats me, Rubinstein, the late Tausig whom he loved dearly…Even his fight against what he calls „Jewishness" in music and modern literature springs from the noblest of motives. I am convinced that posterity will learn what we who are close to him know already: that in him we had just as great a man as a musician. I consider myself very lucky to be working with such a man and I thank God for it every day._

Alas, posterity has lost the whole man Wagner was. Men's flaws are so much easier to see, and so much more appealing to our baser instincts, than their virtues. I myself doubt that the creator of Wagner's dramatic works, which are at bottom chronicles of a quest for spiritual realities and are fundamentally noble, are the work of a monster.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Wagner had his faults but we need to have perspective:

We view anti-semitism through the lense of the modern day after witnessing the atrocious affects of Naziism, and after evolving in our consciousness as a society to shun racism.

It was a different set of values back in Wagner’s day.

A hundred years from now, I’m sure people will talk about how individuals from our time were wrong.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

This also helps me to know (in thinking about Prokofiev), that he was a complex person and that I certainly don’t know the full picture of his life and times. I’ll give him the benefit of my ignorance.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

JeffD said:


> The beauty of the music has nothing to do with with the beauty, if any, of the composer.
> 
> Neither the composer, the performer, nor the subject of the music need have any real beauty.


I see your point, but I also think of the parable - can a bad tree bring forth good fruit? Can a corrupt vessel issue a pure product?

For me, understanding the person can relate to understanding the music and vice-versa.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

I've read somewhere that Chopin was anti-semitic. It's completely regrettable, but that didn't stop pianist like Rubinstein and Horowitz from playing his music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

arnerich said:


> I've read somewhere that Chopin was anti-semitic. It's completely regrettable, but that didn't stop pianist like Rubinstein and Horowitz from playing his music.


Negative views of Jews were common currency in 19th century Europe. There were various perspectives on the subject. We'd best just see it as a historical phenomenon in its context. The idea of avoiding the music of people who had such sentiments is absurd. Some of the greatest admirers and exponents of the music of antisemitic composers have been Jews. If they can handle it, so can we.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

It's interesting that we like to think of Wagner as hiding a Nazi uniform under his bed, while in fact he never advocated any action against the Jews (that I know of). Contrast Martin Luther, in this passage from Wiki:
-----------------
Luther advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their homes, so that these "envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time".


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## Andrei (Sep 11, 2013)

How can a composer be a creep and still write beautiful music?
Because we all have many sides to us. Everyone has done bad things. If they give something in return - in the present case, music - then that is some atonement.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

There is zero correlation bwteen being a Great Artist (of any sort) and being a Good Person. They are separate qualities.


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

If Prokofiev had a personality of Lavrentiy Beria, then it would 'have been really irreconcilable. Subjectively at least. All information (music is also information) makes a whole and this makes an impact it's unavoidable. I wouldn't listen to his music then. Looking at this objectively there's nothing to reconcile, like many posters already said a good artist doesn't equal a good person. So I'll just explain how I deal with it from subjective perspective. 

In general most people's behaviour have a varying degree of decency and wrongdoing. The question is where you draw a line. I usualy ask myself if I think them evil, and their behaviour monstrous beyond redemption. I don't think Prokofiev was evil or inhuman. His behaviour and personality could've used a few improvements but that's what the life is for. Like everyone composers aren't excempted from that rule. 
Although I prefer to listen to music without knowing about composers personalities, I also noticed that after the first unpleasant shock the information gets internalized and after awhile I can listen to their music without thinking about whatever they did or did not do.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

st Omer said:


> That is all true and those were some of his better qualities. He was also a serial adulterer who stole other men's wives.


No-one ever steals a man's wife; she always goes voluntarily.


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## st Omer (Sep 23, 2015)

Wagner was just unfortunate that Hitler liked his music. I don't think of Wagner hiding in a Nazi uniform. When I think of Wagner I think of a great genius who was an egomaniac and stole other men's wives.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> How solid is this "I am not swayed by subjective value-judgements" approach? If Pol Pot had written a symphony would you listen to it in a value-free way? Perhaps, if you didn't know the composer. Then after learning the identity of the composer still no reaction? I doubt it. The pseudo-zen claim to be value-free in all human dealings is false posturing.


Yes, many values change over time, but at the extreme they are surely quite consistent; your Pol Pot symphony being an example. I tend to know little or nothing about composer's lives but there would be a line that if crossed I could not wish to listen to or enjoy their music (even if that might be considered "my loss"). No doubt where this line is will vary from person to person.

As a real example (from the non-classical world) I used to have records by Gary Glitter and saw him twice at Christmas shows. Then the truth came out. The music hadn't changed but I threw the records away immediately. Listening to them would have felt like an affront to those he abused.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

On the flip side: I'm a lovely person yet I write terrible music.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Could be worse, you could be a terrible person writing terrible music. Didn't the recently deceased Charles Manson write some music? I suppose he could fall into that category although I haven't heard it myself.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

dogen said:


> On the flip side: I'm a lovely person yet I write terrible music.


I, too, am a lovely person but I like terrible music!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Go through the lives of the great (and not so great) composers and you will find many unsavoury things about their character. The romantic view of the artist was that somehow made him a great person. Most of them were extremely flawed people who wrote great music.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Probably if you have a great gift, you are aware of it. You are also aware that in that respect, you are superior to other people. Then other people praise you and flatter you - plus, you have the stress of having to live up to your own gift, over and over again. 

No wonder that flawed human beings in such circumstances may start to develop 'antinomian tendencies' (I've always thought that would be a great title for a novel). 

I can't approve of Lully's ego and attitude to others - but I still adore his music.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Better to have a long deceased composer be a creep than your next door neighbour.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

I dislike for Wagner for purely musical reasons, let alone his abhorrent character and beliefs. 

I do like act II of die Meistersinger though.


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## metro845 (Nov 12, 2016)

There was a deep difference between Wagner's anti-semitism and the typical anti-semitism typical of many German and other European composer of his time. Given Wagner's deep influence on German culture and the centrality of anti-semitism in his worldview, Wagner became an architect of the modern anti-semitism which was a foundation stone of the Holocaust. As a Jew who can "handle it", and handles it because of the importance of Wagner's music for the evolution of classical composition, I must underline that this is no easy task. 
Personally I subscribe to the title of one of Father Owen Lee's books: Wagner, The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Kivimees said:


> Better to have a long deceased composer be a creep than your next door neighbour.


Yes, the smell would be unbearable.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Great men, like small men and women, have flaws - they are human beings, not gods


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

manyene said:


> Great men, have flaws - they are human beings, not gods


Oh I don't know when people meet me for the first time they always comment "Good God"


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

metro845 said:


> There was a deep difference between Wagner's anti-semitism and the typical anti-semitism typical of many German and other European composer of his time. Given Wagner's deep influence on German culture and the centrality of anti-semitism in his worldview, Wagner became an architect of the modern anti-semitism which was a foundation stone of the Holocaust. As a Jew who can "handle it", and handles it because of the importance of Wagner's music for the evolution of classical composition, I must underline that this is no easy task.
> Personally I subscribe to the title of one of Father Owen Lee's books: Wagner, The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art.


Having investigated this subject, I'm interested in the views you state here. How do you conceive of typical anti-semitism in 19th-century Europe, and how would you say Wagner's was different? How central was anti-semitism in his worldview, what part do you think it played in his work, and how was it a significant element in his cultural influence? "Architect of modern anti-semitism" and "foundation stone of the Holocaust" are very strong phrases. Do they really fit Wagner?

I wonder if there's as much to "handle" as you think.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Pinpointing Wagner as the 'architect' is too convenient. What happens here is people have the telescope the wrong way around: the thing to understand is how and why Wagner meant something to the Nazis, not how Wagner was a sort of foundation for the Nazis.
Wagner had two 'social' dimensions most convenient to Nazism: his 'revolutionary socialist', views which were genuine, and his self-expressed concern with the 'Jewish Question'. The former was useful because revolutionary "socialism" (at least their disfigured version of it) is one of the political currents that was widely circulating through the '20 and '30s. Politically the '20s and '30s were another sustained period (much like the period Wagner experienced) concerned with sweeping away ancient political and economic privilege. Nazism is socialism in pretty much the same way The Westboro Baptist Church are 'Christians'.

The popular anti-semitism of the 19th century is a peculiar phenomenon linking both the Herbert Spencer filtered version of Darwinian ideas and the common 19th century preoccupation with decline, to the older, base ideas of anti-semitism. Personally I find Wagner's views on these matters far less sophisticated than those of e.g. Karl Marx in his essay on Bruno Bauer's _On the Jewish Question_. Wagner rather lets himself down by clinging to meaningless ideas like Jews converting to Christianity to ensure their break from what is degenerate...and silly claims about Jews (Mendolssohn particularly) being behind meaningless and trivial art, even though he could have easily pointed out enough 'proper German' examples doing exactly the same thing...la-di-da. 
Even if Wagner had never existed there were quite enough prominent people grinding out this drivel to have supplied the Nazis with their role models. Wagner was just a great convenience.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Having investigated this subject, I'm interested in the views you state here. How do you conceive of typical anti-semitism in 19th-century Europe, and how would you say Wagner's was different?


The man cared enough to write and publish (and years later republish) an essay on the topic.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Chronochromie said:


> The man cared enough to write and publish (and years later republish) an essay on the topic.


Very nice that the man cared! :lol:

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/wagner-on-judaism-in-music


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

Indeed, "bad" people can write good music. I don't know enough about Prokofiev's personal life, but I know I like his music.

In my opinion, art should be valued on its own merits, and you can judge the artist's personal life separately. For example, the reason I don't like Wagner's music is not because of his supposed anti-Semitism, but rather because 1) I don't like opera, and 2) most of the music I know of his is overdramatic. On the other hand, despite absolutely despising Hitler and all that he has done, his art actually seems quite decent to me (and I wish he had been accepted to the academy, maybe it would have changed everything). It's pretty nice and peaceful, but I'm no expert in art.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> Pinpointing Wagner as the 'architect' is too convenient. What happens here is people have the telescope the wrong way around: the thing to understand is how and why Wagner meant something to the Nazis, not how Wagner was a sort of foundation for the Nazis.
> Wagner had two 'social' dimensions most convenient to Nazism: his 'revolutionary socialist', views which were genuine, and his self-expressed concern with the 'Jewish Question'. The former was useful because revolutionary "socialism" (at least their disfigured version of it) is one of the political currents that was widely circulating through the '20 and '30s. Politically the '20s and '30s were another sustained period (much like the period Wagner experienced) concerned with sweeping away ancient political and economic privilege. Nazism is socialism in pretty much the same way The Westboro Baptist Church are 'Christians'.
> 
> The popular anti-semitism of the 19th century is a peculiar phenomenon linking both the Herbert Spencer filtered version of Darwinian ideas and the common 19th century preoccupation with decline, to the older, base ideas of anti-semitism. Personally I find Wagner's views on these matters far less sophisticated than those of e.g. Karl Marx in his essay on Bruno Bauer's _On the Jewish Question_. Wagner rather lets himself down by clinging to meaningless ideas like Jews converting to Christianity to ensure their break from what is degenerate...and silly claims about Jews (Mendolssohn particularly) being behind meaningless and trivial art, even though he could have easily pointed out enough 'proper German' examples doing exactly the same thing...la-di-da.
> Even if Wagner had never existed there were quite enough prominent people grinding out this drivel to have supplied the Nazis with their role models. Wagner was just a great convenience.


Your analysis is consistent with my understanding. I would only add that Wagner was not at all important to "the Nazis," but rather to Hitler, whose infatuation with him was basically artistic and pseudo-religious, not philosophical. There is no recorded evidence that Wagner's infamous essay was ever read by Hitler or influenced him in any way, and there is actually evidence _against_ the notion that Wagner's personal ideas on "the Jewish problem" played any significant role in the formation of Nazi ideology.

The essential Nazi conception of race, racial inequality, and the superiority of Aryan peoples, was not a basis for Wagner's thinking about the Jews, who were for him a cultural problem; he viewed them as an alien people whose values and customs were inimical to those of European culture, and he fastened on the religion of Judaism (with its belief in a cruel warrior deity) as particularly despicable. We have no record of him encountering modern, pseudo-scientific racial ideology until his introduction to Count Arthur de Gobineau, author of "On the Inequality of Races," the seminal book on the subject (which was actually adopted by racial theorists in America to justify slavery). Wagner met Gobineau in 1876, and was fascinated by his ideas on race, incorporating some of them into his last essays dealing with the then popular notion of degeneration, but, according to Cosima, forcefully rejecting the idea of a dominating master race when Gobineau proposed it as a "solution" to the Jewish problem.

These were Wagner's last years, the _Ring_ was finished and performed, and his final opera was fully conceived and in the process of musical composition (a fact that undermines the misconception, advanced by Gabriel Adorno, Robert Gutman and others since, that racial theory is somehow expressed in _Parsifal_). Wagner died in 1882, by which time his thinking about the fate of the Jews had become a rather ethereal fantasy of regeneration and assimilation through a mystical, pacifist Christianity. That such a conception would have no appeal for Nazism is pretty obvious, and is nicely symbolized by the fact that from 1939 to 1945, _Parsifal_, Wagner's final artistic testament which synthesizes Christianity and Buddhism and tells a tale of "enlightenment through compassion," was not performed at Bayreuth, apparently having been pronounced "ideologically unacceptable."

The association of Wagner's descendents with Hitler, who more or less made Bayreuth his headquarters as well as his artistic mecca, is well-documented, and by that time the ideology of Aryan supremacy and master-race domination had become the common currency in their circle. It's hard to imagine that, based on his own Romantic free-spiritedness and loathing of militaries, war, and violence, Wagner would not have been appalled to see the most radical ideas of Gobineau attain such horrific fulfillment in his own shrine to "holy German art."

We have to see Wagner as a peculiar, personal manifestation of 19th-century European antisemitism, made more notorious than his own ideas warrant by his adoption by a deluded 20th-century dictator, of whom it is simply impossible to imagine him approving. He was very far from being an architect of the Third Reich or a "foundation stone of the Holocaust," and I hope it isn't presumptuous to say that people who've been put off of Wagner's music because of that association might do well to try to see the man in terms of his own life and times, and to examine his works without ideological spectacles. If they can do that, they will find that such ideology as the music dramas contain does not point toward racial supremacy or the violent domination and destruction of man by man. Indeed, if Hitler had not been so caught up in fantasies of his own heroic Germanness and so intoxicated by the sensuous mysticism of Wagner's music, he might have been chagrined to see in Wotan's _Gotterdammerung_ an eerie prediction of his own.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

“The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life or of the work.” —W.B. Yeats


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Indeed, if Hitler had not been so caught up in fantasies of his own heroic Germanness and so intoxicated by the sensuous mysticism of Wagner's music, he might have been chagrined to see in Wotan's _Gotterdammerung_ an eerie prediction of his own.


however, there must be more to Der Ring than merely that. Wagner tells us what happens to the world if the original Ruling Elites are faced with the risk of losing power; they would then drag the entire world to hell along with themselves. Der Ring should be considered as a message to humanity, a warning: there would be no survivors in this war.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Your analysis is consistent with my understanding. I would only add that Wagner was not at all important to "the Nazis," but rather to Hitler, whose infatuation with him was basically artistic and pseudo-religious, not philosophical. There is no recorded evidence that Wagner's infamous essay was ever read by Hitler or influenced him in any way, and there is actually evidence _against_ the notion that Wagner's personal ideas on "the Jewish problem" played any significant role in the formation of Nazi ideology.


Quite so, I should have specified Hitler rather than the entire 'Nazis'. If I were to boil it down to a simple formula it's something like: Hitler likes Wagner's music, he also discovers Wagner was vocal about the Jews in Europe and concerned to rebirth German culture. So all the pieces are in place to graft this onto Hitler's 20th century concerns with post Great War Germany.
There is no record of Hitler having read Wagner's essay(s), but I imagine it would have been a simple matter for him to seek it out as one of the cheap pamphlets he consumed in his early miserable years.



Woodduck said:


> We have to see Wagner as a peculiar, personal manifestation of 19th-century European antisemitism, made more notorious than his own ideas warrant by his adoption by a deluded 20th-century dictator, of whom it is simply impossible to imagine him approving. He was very far from being an architect of the Third Reich or a "foundation stone of the Holocaust," and *I hope it isn't presumptuous to say that people who've been put off of Wagner's music because of that association might do well to try to see the man in terms of his own life and times, and to examine his works without ideological spectacles.* If they can do that, they will find that such ideology as the music dramas contain does not point toward racial supremacy or the violent domination and destruction of man by man. Indeed, if Hitler had not been so caught up in fantasies of his own heroic Germanness and so intoxicated by the sensuous mysticism of Wagner's music, he might have been chagrined to see in Wotan's _Gotterdammerung_ an eerie prediction of his own.


I have to confess to having done this very early on and my own intellectual laziness was to blame. However I had the good fortune to run into Bryan Magee's book on Wagner and learned some facts. I still don't entirely agree with Magee's view because his own view is somewhat coloured by his enormous admiration for music and the man and a deep desire to right the wrongs done to Wagner's reputation. On the whole though he is right; the idea of a Wagner-Hitler continuum ought to be severed in people's minds because it is a falsehood.

However there is more than this; discussions of Wagner all over the internet - including 'scholarly articles' are singularly obsessed with this 'problem'. A problem created after the man had already died!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> however, there must be more to Der Ring than merely that. Wagner tells us what happens to the world if the original Ruling Elites are faced with the risk of losing power; they would then drag the entire world to hell along with themselves. Der Ring should be considered as a message to humanity, a warning: there would be no survivors in this war.


I agree that the _Ring_ is a warning, but there is no war, and the _Gotterdammerung_ is not the cosmic holocaust some see in it. In the last scene, the people survive to watch Valhalla burn. Humanity inherits the world, the greed-tainted Rhinegold is reclaimed and purified by the primal waters, and a melody of hope for redemption sounds as the curtain falls. The _Ring_ ends with a question mark - and _Parsifal,_ re-enacting the death of the gods and bringing back the innocent boy from the forest to try again and this time reach maturity, is Wagner's answer to the question.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> I agree that the _Ring_ is a warning, but there is no war, and the _Gotterdammerung_ is not the cosmic holocaust some see in it. In the last scene, the people survive to watch Valhalla burn. Humanity inherits the world, the greed-tainted Rhinegold is reclaimed and purified by the primal waters, and a melody of hope for redemption sounds as the curtain falls.


that is true, Wagner attempts to be optimistic, but the truth is Humanity can't do without a Elite to rule them... meanwhile there's no Hero or God left (besides not many people would survive Valhalla downfall) so *there's going to be a war* until the new Elite is established, which in itself is a gruesome process.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

When it comes to Wagner I dislike the man, his philosophy and his music. Never was genius more misguided imo.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Star said:


> Never was genius more misguided imo.


misguided? Wagner in his _Der Ring_ was spot on as to the events of 20th century.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Zhdanov said:


> misguided? Wagner in his _Der Ring_ was spot on as to the events of 20th century.


Yes it certainly mirrors some of the philosophers of the 20th century I despise most. But don't go into that. I don't doubt his genius but I hate what it produced.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Star said:


> I don't doubt his genius but I hate what it produced.


and what it has produced? Wagner has so far remained a prophet they have interpreted in many ways but never the right one.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> When it comes to Wagner I dislike the man, his philosophy and his music. Never was genius more misguided imo.


Well, at the very least, unmitigated loathing is a time saver.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Star said:


> *Yes it certainly mirrors some of the philosophers of the 20th century I despise most*. But don't go into that. I don't doubt his genius but I hate what it produced.


Which ones?___________


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> that is true, Wagner attempts to be optimistic, but the truth is Humanity can't do without a Elite to rule them... meanwhile there's no Hero or God left (besides not many people would survive Valhalla downfall) so *there's going to be a war* until the new Elite is established, which in itself is a gruesome process.


The funnest (may I use that as a word?) thing about Wagner is that you can approach him through different fields of inquiry, and different temperaments will gravitate toward different perspectives - and they may all be right.

Who knows what will happen after the gods are gone? From a sociological perspective, your prediction of war is no doubt accurate, since man inevitably wages war. Any hoped for "redemption" is unpredictable for society. But from a philosophical, specifically an ethical, perspective, the death of the gods symbolizes a shift from an absolutist, theocratic, rule-bound concept of morality (Wotan) to one rooted in personal insight, empathy and self-giving (Brunnhilde). That's why the tender, ecstatic "redemption" motif is not an empty gesture toward a "happy ending," but simultaneously celebrates Brunnhilde's loving sacrifices (in which she defies Wotan's edicts and finally brings him down) and points ahead to the possibility of a Parsifal (who, enlightened by empathy with human suffering, is able to return to society and right its self-inflicted wrongs). Wagner's plots do show humanity's struggles in and against society, but they are most impressively inner quests and moral fables - which, of course, have implications for society which the _Ring_ leaves an open question.

Talk about the meaning of the operas may seem off-topic, but if people reading it become aware that ideas like this are essential to Wagner's work, they may be a little less severe in judging him a "creep." Some on this forum have scorned me as biased in Wagner's favor, but I believe an informed attempt to find the virtues that actually existed in the man and his work is something we owe him, a necessary antidote to the glib, gleeful, often justified but as often mistaken bashing to which the cliches of history and popular culture have subjected him. It just won't do to regard Hermann Levi's words of profound respect for Wagner, written to his rabbi father, as what some have tried to call them, the rationalizations of a self-loathing middle-class German Jew. I'm moved by them to regret that I never met the creator of the works which have given me so much to think about and so much joy, and I repeat them here:

_You certainly could and you should like Wagner. He is the best and noblest of men. Of course our contemporaries misunderstand and slander him. It is the duty of the world to darken those who shine. Goethe did not fare any better. That he bears no petty antisemitism like a country squire or a protestant bigot is seen by the way he treats me, Rubinstein, the late Tausig whom he loved dearly…Even his fight against what he calls „Jewishness" in music and modern literature springs from the noblest of motives. I am convinced that posterity will learn what we who are close to him know already: that in him we had just as great a man as a musician. I consider myself very lucky to be working with such a man and I thank God for it every day._


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

It can be dangerous to judge someone else's behavior separate from one's own. Even the life of a Hitler can be instructive if only to illustrate the power of self-destructive egoism, hatred and revenge toward others... As conveniently condemned as Wagner has been for some of his behavior and writings, he was not without his thoughts on the necessity of redemption that surely included himself, in that he had not lived a blameless life without faults -- or I doubt if he would have written _Parsifal_. The thing about anyone being labeled as a "creep" in the arts and one stopping there, is that when someone like Wagner was actually creating--spending hours, days, years in dedication--he was not engaging in a destructive pursuit during those moments but rather a constructive one. Something higher and transcendent was flowing into his life that was bigger than the arrogance or distortions of his own ego. His music so often floats on an unbridled torrent of energy that seems to be controlling him rather than the other way around, such as in Act 1 of _Tristan Und Isolde._ It miraculously flows on and on and on, and the limitations of his ego was evidently out of the way to allow for that to happen.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Now I come to think of it, what actually is a 'creep' as used in the title of this thread? 

We use the world in England, but more often for people who are trying to curry favour with someone by being rather obsequious.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

eugeneonagain said:


> Now I come to think of it, what actually is a 'creep' as used in the title of this thread?
> 
> We use the world in England, but more often for people who are trying to curry favour with someone by being rather obsequious.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Your analysis is consistent with my understanding. I would only add that Wagner was not at all important to "the Nazis," but rather to Hitler, whose infatuation with him was basically artistic and pseudo-religious, not philosophical. There is no recorded evidence that Wagner's infamous essay was ever read by Hitler or influenced him in any way, and there is actually evidence _against_ the notion that Wagner's personal ideas on "the Jewish problem" played any significant role in the formation of Nazi ideology.
> 
> The essential Nazi conception of race, racial inequality, and the superiority of Aryan peoples, was not a basis for Wagner's thinking about the Jews, who were for him a cultural problem; he viewed them as an alien people whose values and customs were inimical to those of European culture, and he fastened on the religion of Judaism (with its belief in a cruel warrior deity) as particularly despicable. We have no record of him encountering modern, pseudo-scientific racial ideology until his introduction to Count Arthur de Gobineau, author of "On the Inequality of Races," the seminal book on the subject (which was actually adopted by racial theorists in America to justify slavery). Wagner met Gobineau in 1876, and was fascinated by his ideas on race, incorporating some of them into his last essays dealing with the then popular notion of degeneration, but, according to Cosima, forcefully rejecting the idea of a dominating master race when Gobineau proposed it as a "solution" to the Jewish problem.
> 
> ...


Your last paragraph indicates to me that your understanding of Nazism is incomplete. Hitler wasn't chagrined thathis own demise was similar to Twilight of the Gods. He intentionally planned that it be so. He wanted a Gotterdamerung exit. Historians have long pondered why the Nazis fought to the bitter, suicidal end when it was apparent as early as 1943 that they were going to lose the war. Hitler was so informed by the Wagnerian ethos as expressed in Gotterdamerung that once he realized the War was lost, this was the only acceptable outcome . I refer you most specifically to the works of Ian Keyshaw and David Evans on this topic


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## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

Not everyone is worthy of his/her gift. 

One can be a 'winner' in the genetic/Cosmic talent lottery without it being correlated to their character. 

In an ideal world, a person with a great talent would strive to live up to it, in gratitude for it.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Triplets said:


> Your last paragraph indicates to me that your understanding of Nazism is incomplete. Hitler wasn't chagrined thathis own demise was similar to Twilight of the Gods. He intentionally planned that it be so. He wanted a Gotterdamerung exit. Historians have long pondered why the Nazis fought to the bitter, suicidal end when it was apparent as early as 1943 that they were going to lose the war. Hitler was so informed by the Wagnerian ethos as expressed in Gotterdamerung that once he realized the War was lost, this was the only acceptable outcome . I refer you most specifically to the works of Ian Keyshaw and David Evans on this topic


Not quite. This policy of fighting to the point of destruction was one made when the tide of the war turned irrevocably; and it was easy to just tie it in to the early squawkings of 'glory-or death' made in the early years when the not-so-1000-year-reich was riding high. In the first chapter of Hitler's unpublished (at the time) sequel to Mein Kampf he writes:



> Policies must fight for the life of the people, and to do so they must always choose their weapons in such a way as to serve this life in the highest sense. Because one does not make policies in order to be able to die; rather one may only sometimes allow men to die in order that the people can live. The goal is the preservation of life and not heroic death....
> 
> _Chapter one - War and peace in the struggle for survival_


Rather different than the collapse into a 'blaze of glory' (or rather reckless ignomy) when the chips were down, isn't it?


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Well, at the very least, unmitigated loathing is a time saver.


Especially to those things which I consider a waste of time!


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

CypressWillow said:


> Not everyone is worthy of his/her gift.
> 
> One can be a 'winner' in the genetic/Cosmic talent lottery without it being correlated to their character.
> 
> In an ideal world, a person with a great talent would strive to live up to it, in gratitude for it.


I think you see it in every realm of life - people whose character does not match their considerable talent. Why should it be any different to music? Let's face it that for all his high ideals Beethoven was a pretty difficult person on a personal level. I doubt whether he was very likeable even though people were very loyal to him because of his genius. Just read an honest biography of the man. Thankfully I don't have to put up with Beethoven the man when I hear that wondrous music. Nor do I have to wrestle my conscience because of some bent philosophy he possessed.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Star said:


> Especially to those things which I consider a waste of time!


I'm not quite certain what you are saying. You say Wagner was a genius, but that he produced nothing worthy of this genius (based upon the fact you dislike it), which makes me wonder how you, or anyone at all, could know about this genius if there is nothing to show for it? I thought the way we acknowledged anyone's genius was by remarking on what it produced.

I've never come across a novelist of genius who wrote bad novels, or no novels.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Triplets said:


> Your last paragraph indicates to me that your understanding of Nazism is incomplete. Hitler wasn't chagrined thathis own demise was similar to Twilight of the Gods. He intentionally planned that it be so. He wanted a Gotterdamerung exit. Historians have long pondered why the Nazis fought to the bitter, suicidal end when it was apparent as early as 1943 that they were going to lose the war. Hitler was so informed by the Wagnerian ethos as expressed in Gotterdamerung that once he realized the War was lost, this was the only acceptable outcome . I refer you most specifically to the works of Ian Keyshaw and David Evans on this topic


What I meant by "he might have been chagrined to see in Wotan's Gotterdammerung an eerie prediction of his own" is that the _Ring_ is about, among other things, the consequences of desiring and wielding power. Wotan in the end understands what those consequences must be for him and his domain, and resigns himself to his fate. If Hitler desired a fiery death, it certainly wasn't because he understood Wagner's message, which was not an affirmation but a condemnation of his whole project.

I'm aware of the grandiosity that would have made Hitler prefer to go out with a bang rather than a whimper, but that couldn't have been the goal that inspired him and kept him going. There's an element of self-destructiveness in a mentality that could so blithely destroy others - profoundly frustrated and angry people sometimes just want to blow things up, even themselves - and watching the end of the gods in the opera house may have given him an apocalyptic thrill, but I wouldn't identify that sort of psychology with any "Wagnerian ethos."

Despite his youthful socialist-anarchist revolutionary phase, Wagner's temperament hardly inclined him toward aggression and violence; his pacifism, antivivisectionism and (attempted) vegetarianism actually appear in his last opera, where the juvenile hero's shooting of a swan occasions a stern and poignant lecture by a wise elder. But the "Wagnerian ethos" is sort of like Biblical morality: it can be what you want it to be, depending on which passages you read and which you ignore. Hitler seems to have had no trouble ignoring what didn't support his megalomaniacal fantasy of himself.

It's also worth remembering that the vast _Ring_ cycle, filled with gods and heroes, is far from the whole of Wagner, though I'm certain it's always the work that comes to mind in this context. It's quite a challenge to find "Nazi" heroics - young blond supermen and such - in the other operas, although it was apparently _Rienzi_ that got Hitler thinking about a political career.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> I'm not quite certain what you are saying. You say Wagner was a genius, but that he produced nothing worthy of this genius (based upon the fact you dislike it), which makes me wonder how you, or anyone at all, could know about this genius if there is nothing to show for it? I thought the way we acknowledged anyone's genius was by remarking on what it produced.
> 
> I've never come across a novelist of genius who wrote bad novels, or no novels.


I think they are saying Wagner produced great works but they do not care for it for themselves.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> Now I come to think of it, what actually is a 'creep' as used in the title of this thread?
> 
> We use the world in England, but more often for people who are trying to curry favour with someone by being rather obsequious.


Over here it just means someone you find repugnant or disgusting and want to avoid.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> I'm not quite certain what you are saying. You say Wagner was a genius, but that he produced nothing worthy of this genius (based upon the fact you dislike it), which makes me wonder how you, or anyone at all, could know about this genius if there is nothing to show for it? I thought the way we acknowledged anyone's genius was by remarking on what it produced.
> 
> I've never come across a novelist of genius who wrote bad novels, or no novels.


You can say the guys who produced the atomic bomb were scientific geniuses but you don't have to like what they produced. I have certainly seen articles about 'Wagner's dangerous genius'


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> I have certainly seen articles about 'Wagner's dangerous genius'


An interesting concept. I wonder why the writers of those articles felt unsafe?


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> I think they are saying Wagner produced great works but they do not care for it for themselves.


and how can one not care for something and call it great at the same time?

Ulysees is a great novel but I dont care for it - quite an illogical statement.

Maybe - Ulysees is considered to be a great novel but I dont care for it - makes more sense.


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## Guest (Dec 16, 2017)

stomanek said:


> and how can one not care for something and call it great at the same time?
> 
> Ulysees is a great novel but I dont care for it - quite an illogical statement.
> 
> Maybe - Ulysees is considered to be a great novel but I dont care for it - makes more sense.


Round here, the obligation to make, or at least agree with such "illogical" statements seems at times a requirement of membership!


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Star said:


> You can say the guys who produced the atomic bomb were scientific geniuses but you don't have to like what they produced. I have certainly seen articles about 'Wagner's dangerous genius'


post deleted. Wrong place


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

stomanek said:


> and how can one not care for something and call it great at the same time?
> 
> Ulysees is a great novel but I dont care for it - quite an illogical statement.
> 
> Maybe - Ulysees is considered to be a great novel but I dont care for it - makes more sense.


Hitler was a great orator but I don't care at all for what he said. 
Alexander was a great military leader but I don't have to like what he did with his genius. 
The fact is that genius can be used for good or ill


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Star said:


> Hitler was a great orator but I don't care at all for what he said.
> Alexander was a great military leader but I don't have to like what he did with his genius.
> The fact is that genius can be used for good or ill


What you are actually doing is saying that other people have declared someone's genius, but if you don't think much of something or someone you're not likely to think there's any genius involved.

In the case of the atomic bomb it was very bad for Japan, but considered good and a moral act (!) for the U.S. So what was genius used for?

House of cards.


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## Guest (Dec 16, 2017)

stomanek said:


> and how can one not care for something and call it great at the same time?
> 
> Ulysees is a great novel but I dont care for it - quite an illogical statement.
> 
> Maybe - Ulysees is considered to be a great novel but I dont care for it - makes more sense.


I would suspect the latter expression is what is meant. I'm sure we can all come up with works/artists/people generally considered "great" but not appreciated by oneself. I won't cite any personal examples for fear of creating another rabbit hole!


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> What you are actually doing is saying that other people have declared someone's genius, but if you don't think much of something or someone you're not likely to think there's any genius involved.
> 
> In the case of the atomic bomb it was very bad for Japan, but considered good and a moral act (!) for the U.S. So what was genius used for?
> 
> House of cards.


I cannot understand what you are driving at. I am merely makng the point that genius can be used for good or ill, which I thought was obvious.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

<<I cannot understand what you are driving at. I am merely makng the point that genius can be used for good or ill, which I thought was obvious. >>

That's the summary, of course. I'll never forget watching "The Mechanic" with Charles Bronson as a hit man who listened to Beethoven's string quartets while planning his next murder. The cases of composers with bad ideas in their heads transcends to practitioners of music also. I know several Jewish people that will never listen to nor purchase any recordings by Karl Bohm, Herbert von Karajan and others conductors who were linked to the Nazis. The Nazis thought Beethoven's 9th symphony spoke for their goals in the world.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

George Bernard Shaw said something that suggested that Haydn was the only legendary composer who wasn't lacking in virtue. I forget where it was, but yeah.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

I look at it philosophically. My interest in classical music is based upon the idea that as cruel as this world may seem, there is always some beauty in it. The evidence indicates that several of our favorite composers, conductors and musicians were allegedly (or not so allegedly) involved in behavior that ranges from unsavory to depraved. Some were nasty to their wives and children, others were swindlers, womanizers, racists, bigots and others seem to have had been involved in inappropriate relationships with underage youths. There's no need to elaborate or name names as we all know who the suspects are. It's the music, though, that rises above this fallen world. It's all part of the human condition that even a scoundrel may provide a weary world with some measure of comfort. Why throw the good part away along with the bad, especially when the bad is so very, very bad?


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Part of me thinks part of the problem is that these composers are more evolved and have little patience with the average.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Part of me thinks part of the problem is that these composers are more evolved and have little patience with the average.


As an artist and musician who has lived most of his life from childhood on more or less consumed by artistic values, goals, pursuits and visions, I can attest to the impossibility of finding much of what passes for "normal" life interesting, and many of society's commonest values - marriage, children, money, routine employment, politics, business, church, social groups and functions, holidays, etc. - have always been at best peripheral and at worst downright annoying to me. I don't know that it's always a question of being evolved; in some cases it may simply be a matter of being, and feeling, different and alien, which leads many artists to conclude early on that there's no point in trying to conform to the world around them, and leads some to outright rebellion against the values of the common herd. These people will be widely misunderstood and judged, and this will only confirm them in their feeling that their own ways are necessary to them. There can be a kind of integrity in being "bad."


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## Guest (Dec 17, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> As an artist and musician who has lived most of his life from childhood on more or less consumed by artistic values, goals, pursuits and visions, I can attest to the impossibility of finding much of what passes for "normal" life interesting, and many of society's commonest values - marriage, children, money, routine employment, politics, business, church, social groups and functions, holidays, etc. - have always been at best peripheral and at worst downright annoying to me. I don't know that it's always a question of being evolved; in some cases it may simply be a matter of being, and feeling, different and alien, which leads many artists to conclude early on that there's no point in trying to conform to the world around them, and leads some to outright rebellion against the values of the common herd. These people will be widely misunderstood and judged, and this will only confirm them in their feeling that their own ways are necessary to them. There can be a kind of integrity in being "bad."


I think the feeling of being an outsider, and finding some aspects of common-or-garden daily life somewhat 'alien' is rather more common than artists think. I'm no artist, but regularly feel that I'm an observer of someone else's life and, as I get older, rather wishing that I was reviewing a dress-rehearsal so I could get things right next time.

I'm married and have children, and have had a...what shall I say...a stable career in education. "Nice" home, family-friendly neighbourhood, quiz-league member...All this!

And yet, the nagging simultaneous suspicions that there must be _something _more and _nothing _more.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> I think the feeling of being an outsider, and finding some aspects of common-or-garden daily life somewhat 'alien' is rather more common than artists think. I'm no artist, but regularly feel that I'm an observer of someone else's life and, as I get older, rather wishing that I was reviewing a dress-rehearsal so I could get things right next time.
> 
> I'm married and have children, and have had a...what shall I say...a stable career in education. "Nice" home, family-friendly neighbourhood, quiz-league member...All this!
> 
> And yet, the nagging simultaneous suspicions that there must be _something _more and _nothing _more.


I do believe you. Artist's aren't the only aliens. I think it's part of being human, and artists only experience it more consistently because it fills their heads constantly as well as their hearts. They're in the business of creating alternate realities, and that can really screw you up for life in the "real" world.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Part of me thinks part of the problem is that *these composers are more evolved a*nd have little patience with the average.


In that case we should have more great composers as more should have 'evolved'?


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> As an artist and musician who has lived most of his life from childhood on more or less consumed by artistic values, goals, pursuits and visions, I can attest to the impossibility of finding much of what passes for "normal" life interesting, and many of society's commonest values - marriage, children, money, routine employment, politics, business, church, social groups and functions, holidays, etc. - have always been at best peripheral and at worst downright annoying to me. I don't know that it's always a question of being evolved; in some cases it may simply be a matter of being, and feeling, different and alien, which leads many artists to conclude early on that there's no point in trying to conform to the world around them, and leads some to outright rebellion against the values of the common herd. These people will be widely misunderstood and judged, and this will only confirm them in their feeling that their own ways are necessary to them. There can be a kind of integrity in being "bad."


I don't think it's a case of being widely misunderstood and judged. It's more a case that some of these people feel that their genius excuses any sort of behaviour towards their fellow man. It's called selfishness. I mean, just because the guy is really good at writing music or has a good pair of tonsils or (note a recent case) is good at producing a sound from an orchestra - why should I excuse his poor behaviour any more than the guy who serves me in the local store? But you are advocating some form of elite, because somebody is an artist they can be excused? Sorry I don't buy it. Just say these were guys who were pretty awful at living but great at writing music. Don't buy into the the 'mystique' of the artist. Else we get all people are equal but some are more equal than others


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I think that artists come in a whole spectrum of attitudes and behaviors, and also in all degrees of self-awareness and self-acceptance, ranging from the humility of Bruckner through the seeming pedestrianism of Strauss, the egomania of Prokofiev to the strange terminal lunacies of Wolf and perhaps Scriabin. We focus on artists and magnify their traits because they are become famous and the objects of certainly more scrutiny than we deploy on those around us (excluding ourselves). When one reads about The Great Whatevers, of any occupation, one is reading the fruit of a long and intense gaze at a small, select group of people. What would be the result of an equally penetrating gaze at the members of a random population? Quite a number of us might be found to feel like strangers in a strange land.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

I'd imagine that in order to become a world-renowned musician, one would need not only highly creative mind, but also intelligence and a strong work ethic. I don't see where a correlation can be made between those characteristics and unethical behavior or, sociopath or narcissistic behavior. Along this line, there's nothing scientific that supports the old saying that "There is a fine line between genius and insanity". If I'm not mistaken, I'd guess that the feelings of alienation and unhappiness (which may underline bad behavior) are more common in those who are less intelligent, less creative, less focused and less able to make their dreams become reality. How many guys serving time in jail have college educations, masters degrees or doctorates?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> I don't think it's a case of being widely misunderstood and judged. It's more a case that some of these people feel that their genius excuses any sort of behaviour towards their fellow man. It's called selfishness. I mean, just because the guy is really good at writing music or has a good pair of tonsils or (note a recent case) is good at producing a sound from an orchestra - why should I excuse his poor behaviour any more than the guy who serves me in the local store? But you are advocating some form of elite, because somebody is an artist they can be excused? Sorry I don't buy it. Just say these were guys who were pretty awful at living but great at writing music. Don't buy into the the 'mystique' of the artist. Else we get all people are equal but some are more equal than others


Interesting that you make no distinction between understanding people's unconventional behavior - behavior which may or may not be badly motivated or truly reprehensible - and "excusing" evil. That's an awful lot of conflation, and exceedingly moralistic and judgmental. Where I speak of differences and suggest ways in which those differences might be understood, you read me as advocating "elites" and "selfishness."

I don't think that being and feeling unusual, being preoccupied with things (art, science, philosophy, whatever) that a majority have little clue about, and having independently evolved values in some respects opposed to, or at least indifferent to, the expectations of society, necessarily makes one "selfish" or "elite." People have always been ravenously eager to brand as immoral actions that upset the conventional order. But moral inquisitors are themselves elites in their own minds, and of the most dismal sort. God save us from them.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Interesting that you make no distinction between understanding people's unconventional behavior - behavior which may or may not be badly motivated or truly reprehensible - and "excusing" evil. That's an awful lot of conflation, and exceedingly moralistic and judgmental. Where I speak of differences and suggest ways in which those differences might be understood, you read me as advocating "elites" and "selfishness."
> 
> I don't think that being and feeling unusual, being preoccupied with things (art, science, philosophy, whatever) that a majority have little clue about, and having independently evolved values in some respects opposed to, or at least indifferent to, the expectations of society, necessarily makes one "selfish" or "elite." People have always been ravenously eager to brand as immoral actions that upset the conventional order. But moral inquisitors are themselves elites in their own minds, and of the most dismal sort. God save us from them.


I'm not talking about unconventional behaviour. I'm talking about behaviour which shows monstrous egoism and ingratitude, total disregard for the feeling of fellow man - and all covered up with the excuse, 'he's an artist', or 'it's his genius'. Now you might think that artists are a certain elite and should be excused but I don't anymore than the guy who serves me in Tesco. To brand people who object to these actions as 'moral inquisitors' is just a get-out and a conscience salver. You can argue black is white but if everyone else lives according to what society considers morally acceptable, then why not those who deem themselves 'artists'? What if it's you their unreasonable behaviour affects? Do you then excuse them on account of them being an 'artist' and brand everyone else 'moral inquisitors'? I know it's cool to suppose a moral relativism these days but I do think consideration to your fellow man is a virtue.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> I'm not talking about unconventional behaviour. I'm talking about behaviour which shows monstrous egoism and ingratitude, total disregard for the feeling of fellow man - and all covered up with the excuse, 'he's an artist', or 'it's his genius'. Now you might think that artists are a certain elite and should be excused but I don't anymore than the guy who serves me in Tesco. To brand people who object to these actions as 'moral inquisitors' is just a get-out and a conscience salver. You can argue black is white but if everyone else lives according to what society considers morally acceptable, then why not those who deem themselves 'artists'? What if it's you their unreasonable behaviour affects? Do you then excuse them on account of them being an 'artist' and brand everyone else 'moral inquisitors'? I know it's cool to suppose a moral relativism these days but I do think consideration to your fellow man is a virtue.


If you're talking about monstrous evil, then why did you respond to my post, since, I think it should be clear, I wasn't talking about it? Even after I explained that to you, I see that you are still accusing me of "excusing" the worst in human behavior. If you aren't engaged in an inquisition of some sort, then what _are_ you doing? And why do you presume to call me a "moral relativist" (without defining that term) and implying that I'm advocating inconsiderateness - which, in any case, isn't quite the same as "monstrous egotism and ingratitude," is it? I'll wager that inconsiderateness is something we've all been guilty of - and hope that others can understand and forgive.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> If you're talking about monstrous evil, then why did you respond to my post, since, I think it should be clear, I wasn't talking about it? Even after I explained that to you, I see that you are still accusing me of "excusing" the worst in human behavior. If you aren't engaged in an inquisition of some sort, then what _are_ you doing? And why do you presume to call me a "moral relativist" (without defining that term) and implying that I'm advocating inconsiderateness - which, in any case, isn't quite the same as "monstrous egotism and ingratitude," is it? I'll wager that inconsiderateness is something we've all been guilty of - and hope that others can understand and forgive.


You are now shifting the goalposts of the argument. Let me ask you - if someone ran off with your partner would you excuse his 'unconventional' behaviour because he was an artist? I'm afraid in my own role as 'moral inquisitor' I taught my kids that faithfulness was a virtue.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> You are now shifting the goalposts of the argument. Let me ask you - if someone ran off with your partner would you excuse his 'unconventional' behaviour because he was an artist? I'm afraid in my own role as 'moral inquisitor' I taught my kids that faithfulness was a virtue.


You only think I'm shifting the goalposts because you mistook the meaning of my original post. I am now objecting to your calling me a "moral relativist" and accusing me of excusing evil. If you will reread post #89, you may realize that neither of these things is implied by it. I was merely musing on why unusual people may have somewhat unconventional ideas about acceptable behavior (as indeed "ordinary" people may).

As to your example, yes, faithfulness is a virtue, but a relationship is not a prison sentence. No one could "run off" with my partner unless my partner was unhappy with me and went voluntarily, and should that happen unexpectedly my first recourse would not be moral denunciation but inquiry into what was wrong with my relationship. It might just be that I had failed my partner in ways that I wasn't aware of - or chose to ignore, assuming that my partner was somehow "mine" no matter how I behaved. Or it might be that the relationship was never very good and that the change was for the best. There are many possibilities, and acknowledging that is not "moral relativism."

To apply this to a familiar case: Wagner is often said to have "stolen" Cosima from Hans von Bulow. Ignored is the simple fact that nobody outside a Viking raid gets "stolen," and that she was quite capable of deciding for herself who she wanted to be with and left von Bulow voluntarily. In fact, she fell in love with Wagner and tried to snare him long before he reciprocated her interest. Moreover, although von Bulow was naturally wounded and angry when he discovered their affair, he came to admit that her nature was such that he could never have satisfied her as Wagner could, and he gave their marriage his blessing. We can say that Wagner and Cosima acted badly toward von Bulow, but we're also left with the fact that Cosima ended up with the right husband, and that it would have been foolish and cruel for von Bulow to have tried to hold her back.

Life is complicated, human needs are complicated, and simple moral judgments don't always do justice to reality.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> You only think I'm shifting the goalposts because you mistook the meaning of my original post. I am now objecting to your calling me a "moral relativist" and accusing me of excusing evil. If you will reread post #89, you may realize that neither of these things is implied by it. I was merely musing on why unusual people may have somewhat unconventional ideas about acceptable behavior (as indeed "ordinary" people may).
> 
> As to your example, yes, faithfulness is a virtue, but a relationship is not a prison sentence. No one could "run off" with my partner unless my partner was unhappy with me and went voluntarily, and should that happen unexpectedly my first recourse would not be moral denunciation but inquiry into what was wrong with my relationship. It might just be that I had failed my partner in ways that I wasn't aware of - or chose to ignore, assuming that my partner was somehow "mine" no matter how I behaved. Or it might be that the relationship was never very good and that the change was for the best. There are many possibilities, and acknowledging that is not "moral relativism."
> 
> ...


If you look at your post you will see it can certainly be interpreted as moral relativism, whether you meant it or not. Of course costing that was not Wagner's only dalliance. There were probably many more, but then he wasn't alone among musicians for his unwillingness to be faithful. 
Putting the ball on the other foot, would you then say it was OK for Onassis to dump Callas in favour of Jackie Kennedy?


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## Guest (Dec 18, 2017)

Star said:


> I taught my kids that faithfulness was a virtue.


An interesting idea this, defining virtues and, therefore, our expectations of people's behaviour. Even those who profess to follow the explicit moral codes of their religion have trouble keeping on the straight and narrow, never mind those of us who don't. I wonder why?

I don't think I've 'taught' my kids anything about faithfulness, but they might have learned what benefit there has been in my staying married for 33 years. In fact, I don't think I've attempted to teach them anything explicitly since I objected to their swearing and excess drinking - but that had no impact, so I doubt I'll get anywhere with a lecture on fidelity, a much more complicated subject.

There seems to me to be more than enough anecdotal evidence that people will behave as it suits them to behave, and not as their elders and betters would prefer (or teach). I see no reason why composers would be any different. 'Geniuses' they may be, but that's only with tadpoles on telegraph wires, not human behaviour.



Star said:


> If you look at your post you will see it can certainly be interpreted as moral relativism,


I did look at his post. I didn't see any mention of morals at all.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> An interesting idea this, defining virtues and, therefore, our expectations of people's behaviour. Even those who profess to follow the explicit moral codes of their religion have trouble keeping on the straight and narrow, never mind those of us who don't. I wonder why?
> 
> I don't think I've 'taught' my kids anything about faithfulness, but they might have learned what benefit there has been in my staying married for 33 years. In fact, I don't think I've attempted to teach them anything explicitly since I objected to their swearing and excess drinking - but that had no impact, so I doubt I'll get anywhere with a lecture on fidelity, a much more complicated subject.
> 
> ...


Always makes me smile post like this that when you talk about teaching you think of it in terms of giving moralistic lectures. Where as we all know that example is far better than any amount of lectures. You are quite right - you kids the way you live your life and hopefully they see the virtue of it. Any talk comes with chatting in with them about it.

Another thing that makes me smile is that you always brand religious people as those who have difficulty keeping to the straight and narrow as if a few high profile cases of those who don't prove the rule for everyone. I never find such judgmentalism helpful.

As to moral relativism, look again!

As to geniuses why shouldn't they follow the same rules of decency that everyone else is expected to? That's all I'm asking. Why should they be made an exception?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

DeepR said:


> Could be worse, you could be a terrible person writing terrible music. Didn't the recently deceased Charles Manson write some music? I suppose he could fall into that category although I haven't heard it myself.


Have you ever heard the Beach Boys' "Never Learn Not to Love?" Manson wrote that.

I don't see any reason why writing beautiful music should be correlated with personal moral qualities good or bad. More interesting to me is why the question sounds plausible to so many in the first place. I suspect it has to do with the assumption that the expressive qualities of musical works are reflections of a composer's internal life, as in old saws like: "How could Mozart have written such sunny music when he was … (sick, in debt, whatever)" - the assumption that musical works are emotional autobiography. To the extent music simulates human-like personae by embodying sequences of expressive states, I believe these personae are fictional, not autobiographical. Like novelists, composers can create noble and beautiful personae because that is a basic skill the art of a certain era requires. Even evil writers and composers can learn to do this.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Manson has couple of good songs...My fav is ''Ego is TOO MUCH a thing''...This topic broke my Geekometer up till now and it goes even further!!!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> If you look at your post you will see it can certainly be interpreted as moral relativism, whether you meant it or not. Of course costing that was not Wagner's only dalliance. There were probably many more, but then he wasn't alone among musicians for his unwillingness to be faithful.
> Putting the ball on the other foot, would you then say it was OK for Onassis to dump Callas in favour of Jackie Kennedy?


It seems that you misunderstand moral relativism. "Moral relativism" is a philosophical position which denies that there are any universally valid moral principles. I do not hold that position. But I do hold that if a principle is to have universal validity, it has to be broad enough to allow for and accommodate the full range of possible applications.

A moral principle may be absolute, but its application may vary according to circumstances. A legitimate moral principle must be sufficiently encompassing of the variability of human needs to accommodate varying circumstances. A moral position which requires or disallows particular actions regardless of circumstances is going to wreak havoc on human life and is obviously untenable as a general principle, and any so-called morality that fails to take legitimate conflicts of interest into consideration fails the entire purpose of morality, which is to serve human life.

Legitimate conflicts of interest, between people and within an individual, are a normal part of the fabric of life. "What should I do" is a question which frequently doesn't have a simple or obvious answer, and choosing the best option can be a difficult and even agonizing process. Traditional moralities, simple-minded prescriptive codes like the Ten Commandments, state some obvious general guidelines for behavior, but offer little or no guidance in the complex conduct of everyday human relationships, where there is often right on all sides and a compromise, which may be both helpful and hurtful to all concerned, must be reached.

It isn't hard to find examples of legitimate conflicts of interest, and the necessity of balancing one good against another. You may consider it immoral to steal, but also wrong to neglect your health and well-being, or the health and well-being of your family which depends on your own. If you find that you must steal to eat or to feed your children you must weigh one moral value against another. Killing is likewise deemed immoral, but if you see someone being attacked you will make a choice as to who should live, and your morality may either forbid you to kill or you may shoot the attacker. On a more mundane level, you and another person may both want a certain job, and you may know that the other person's financial needs are far greater than yours. Will you take the job, or will you charitably recommend him for it? What if you feel you should choose the second option, and then learn that he's a convicted felon or a sexual predator?

Examples of conflicting values, in which there is no single morally correct choice, can be multiplied indefinitely. Acknowledging the need to balance legitimate interests in such cases is not "moral relativism." A moral principle that isn't large enough to allow for legitimate personal choice is not large enough for life.

(Quibbling over individual cases such as the sad Onassis-Callas-Jackie affair won't prove anything. I suspect you have your own "non-relative" opinion and are sticking with it.)


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

With the regard to the topic and its relevance to Wagner's behaviour, I don't think there's anything of relevance in his sexual and romantic exploits - love and lust has always been a complicated business. There is elsewhere though, like his false accusation that Mendelssohn had destroyed the score of his (Wagner's) youthful Symphony in C on the grounds that it contained some germ of genius that Mendelssohn wanted to suppress. His general attacks upin Mendelssohn (largely after his death) were pretty shoddy in my opinion.

Still, as the thread title indicates, he wrote great music. So I guess the production of great music is not really dependent on either good or bad behaviour.


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## Guest (Dec 18, 2017)

Star said:


> *Always makes me smile *post like this that when you talk about teaching you think of it in terms of giving moralistic lectures. Where as we all know that example is far better than any amount of lectures. You are quite right - you kids the way you live your life and hopefully they see the virtue of it. Any talk comes with chatting in with them about it.
> 
> *Another thing that makes me smile* is that you always brand religious people as those who have difficulty keeping to the straight and narrow as if a few high profile cases of those who don't prove the rule for everyone. I never find such judgmentalism helpful.
> 
> ...


I'm pleased that my posts make you smile!



> you always brand religious people as those who have difficulty keeping to the straight and narrow as if a few high profile cases of those who don't prove the rule for everyone. I never find such judgmentalism helpful.


I'm not sure who the "you" is that you refer to. It can't be me, as I don't think I have any track record on which you can judge what I "always do" regarding this issue. All I was doing was pointing out the obvious - that _all _of us are fallible, vulnerable to committing acts that most of us would regard as generally undesirable (such as lying) even if we don't characterise them as immoral or 'good/bad' - even those who do their best to act within an explicit moral code as part of their religious beliefs (nothing to do with 'high profile cases' - not sure what you had in mind there.)

I don't think _anyone _was arguing that geniuses should be forgiven their failings.

Oh, and you can keep exhorting us to 'read the post', but it would be more helpful if you explained your interpretation that leads you to charge Woodduck with moral relativism.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> With the regard to the topic and its relevance to Wagner's behaviour, I don't think there's anything of relevance in his sexual and romantic exploits - love and lust has always been a complicated business. There is elsewhere though, like his false accusation that Mendelssohn had destroyed the score of his (Wagner's) youthful Symphony in C on the grounds that it contained some germ of genius that Mendelssohn wanted to suppress. His general attacks upin Mendelssohn (largely after his death) were pretty shoddy in my opinion.
> 
> Still, as the thread title indicates, he wrote great music. So I guess the production of great music is not really dependent on either good or bad behaviour.


I've never encountered that story about Mendelssohn supposedly destroying Wagner's symphony. The symphony still exists, though. Did Wagner think it was lost forever?


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I've never encountered that story about Mendelssohn supposedly destroying Wagner's symphony. The symphony still exists, though. Did Wagner think it was lost forever?


It seems it was re-discovered in the 1880s among papers he'd left behind when fleeing from Prague or Dresden or somewhere. On IMSLP the score is referred to as the 'revised' version, so I assume he must have corrected it himself. I have to say though, I have no solid evidence for this.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

I like the idea that humans are complex. 

As something of a Bible scholar, I'd say that the Bible best exemplifies this point. From Genesis (which reads like a soap opera, of dysfunctional families, squabbling sibling rivalries and all forms of violence, greed and lust) through to the Gospels (which portrays the disciples as quite flawed and ordinary men); one finds that between the stained-glassed platitudes, the Bible is not a book of plastered saints, but of very human characters. In this regard, it is no wonder that Paul says to the Romans that "We all fall short."

My point here is that even in ancient times the authors of the Bible realized the full depths of the human condition long before Freud, Jung, Adler, Skinner, Rogers and the other luminaries of psychological thought attempted to make a scientific study of the nature of human thought and behavior. 

Just as John Gardiner implied that the miracle of Bach is that his music at once touches upon the spiritual, as well as, the human side of life; so it is with life itself. I reiterate that even in a very cruel world where human beings can seem to be no better (or even worse) than animals, that classical music is the best evidence that beauty exists within the human soul. 

The peccadilloes, dalliances, prejudices, and other immoral deeds of the great composers (long dead and "de-composing" in the graves) is now for God to judge and their wonderful music remains for us to enjoy.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Boston Charlie said:


> The peccadilloes, dalliances, prejudices, and other immoral deeds of the great composers (long dead and "de-composing" in the graves) *is now for God to judge and their wonderful music remains* for us to enjoy.


Perhaps in some other thread more generous of spirit than this one. Here ya' names yer creep and ya' judges hard! It's right there in the title.


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

st Omer said:


> He was also a serial adulterer who stole other men's wives.


From where? A store?

Those women made their choices.



20centrfuge said:


> A hundred years from now, I'm sure people will talk about how individuals from our time were wrong.


Many of us do now. I can make a good enough list of ridiculous aspects of humanity, in the present and recent past. Making that list doesn't cause them to vanish or be transformed into rationality.

I've joked that the biggest threat AI poses is that it might force us to live with under a rational government. We have long chosen comfortable layers of lies over uncomfortable facets of truth.

Many of those lies are so blithely promulgated and consumed that it defies credulity - like the way "communists" were legally persecuted in the USA, despite the fact that doing so was obviously unconstitutional. As George Carlin pointed out, rights are basically a fiction, something that can be seen in how those rights just disappear when they're needed the most by a group of people. All of the layers of lies and pretension are gauze that cover the throbbing raw hunger of resource competition.


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

Boston Charlie said:


> the Bible is not a book of plastered saints, but of very human characters.


It has its share of supernatural demigod behaviors, though - like an old man who is stone drunk and yet manages to get it up twice in order to impregnate both of his daughters, shortly after his wife's murder, no less.

I wouldn't call that achievement ordinary or particularly human.


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

Star said:


> Beethoven was a pretty difficult person on a personal level. I doubt whether he was very likeable even though people were very loyal to him because of his genius.


Lead poisoning will do that.

Similarly, Cezanne was said to be irritable and irascible. Arsenic will do that (along with his diabetes). (His favorite paint pigment was Paris Green, also known as sewer rat poison.)

One thing that is commonly missed in these "artistic temperament" discussions is the issue of heavy metal/metalloid poisoning. Pollution from technological development was a very serious problem, even in ancient Rome (with their lead pipes, lead-lined baths, and lead-sweetened wine). Hatters weren't the only ones going mad from mercury.

Some think Van Gogh may have gotten syphilis from his prostitute girlfriend but he also most likely had a severe case of metal/metalloid poisoning even before he ate his paints in a suicide attempt. Paris Green is so unstable that it degrades constantly into arsine gas. And that's just one of the highly-toxic pigments used by artists in those days.

People are trained to think mad behavior or bad behavior is purely due to individual character, ignoring the environmental factors. In Sociology it is called attribution error or bias. This type of thinking is predominant today, where inner-city kids' violence and poor learning is blamed on teacher and parent quality - instead of poisoning from lead dust stemming mainly from building demolition.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> It seems that you misunderstand moral relativism. "Moral relativism" is a philosophical position which denies that there are any universally valid moral principles.


To me, "moral relativism" simply means that those who disagree with my values are relatively wrong. If they persist in such unreasonable positions, then they are absolutely wrong. This is not very complicated.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

spectral said:


> It has its share of supernatural demigod behaviors, though - like an old man who is stone drunk and yet manages to get it up twice in order to impregnate both of his daughters, shortly after his wife's murder, no less.
> 
> I wouldn't call that achievement ordinary or particularly human.


I don't think that therein anything demigod about that story! In any case the man wasn't that old. :lol:


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

DavidA said:


> I don't think that therein anything demigod about that story! In any case the man wasn't that old. :lol:


Let's see...

1) Superior to all of the people around him? Check.

2) So superior that all of the people in one or more large populated areas could be wiped out but he should survive? Check.

3) So superior that he doesn't need a wife? Check.

4) So superior that he can impregnate his daughters and still be a model citizen? Check.

5) Manages to impregnate both on the first attempt, despite there not being 48 hours or more to recharge the testes? Check.

6) Manages to do so while stone drunk? Check.

7) Manages to do so while (so terribly upset because) his wife was just murdered (by his big pal in the sky)? Check.

8) Isn't smitten for amorality by the big guy in the sky for having intercourse with his daughters, the same dude who just killed one of the chosen family for looking around at the scenery (in a clear ripping off of Orpheus and Euridice)? Check.

9) Was able to offer his daughters to a mob comprised of "all the people of the city" to be (well, you fill in the blanks) and still be holier-than-thou? Check.

10) So superior that the God(s) sent messengers to save him? Check.

11) So mystical that he was able to overcome the extremely bad genetics problem of parent/child reproduction, not once but twice (and both on the first attempts)! Check. (In reality, the chances of healthy offspring are very remote, even with dozens of tries, due to the recessive gene problem caused by such a close genetic pairing. The closest person to come to this in fairly recent history was the last Habsburg, Charles II, who was sterile, impotent, mentally deficient, and had various other physical deformities.)

Of course it's demigod stuff. He was already mystically superior to everyone else there, before he engaged in the "feats of strength" with his kids. I suppose the one thing that makes him not so demigod is that he didn't have an identified fatal flaw. I suppose his wife being easily bumped off for being imperfect enough to dare to look at destruction is the closest one gets to that.


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

KenOC said:


> To me, "moral relativism" simply means that those who disagree with my values are relatively wrong. If they persist in such unreasonable positions, then they are absolutely wrong. This is not very complicated.


That's not what it means to the vast majority of people. It means what Woodduck said.

Moral relativism is easily seen in the Star Trek Enterprise episode "Cogenitor" where the captain condemns his first officer for treating an alien baby machine like she is a person. It's crude even by pop culture standards but it's a good illustration of how bad moral relativism can be.

(Of course she is a person but the captain is so happy joyriding with his man crush and lusting over their superior technology that he's fine with them having slaves.)


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2017)

spectral said:


> Let's see...[etc]


Er...I'm lost. Which composer are we talking about now?


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> It seems that you misunderstand moral relativism. "Moral relativism" is a philosophical position which denies that there are any universally valid moral principles. I do not hold that position. But I do hold that if a principle is to have universal validity, it has to be broad enough to allow for and accommodate the full range of possible applications.
> 
> A *moral principle may be absolute, but its application may vary according to circumstances.* A legitimate moral principle must be sufficiently encompassing of the variability of human needs to accommodate varying circumstances. A moral position which requires or disallows particular actions regardless of circumstances is going to wreak havoc on human life and is obviously untenable as a general principle, and any so-called morality that fails to take legitimate conflicts of interest into consideration fails the entire purpose of morality, which is to serve human life.
> 
> ...


Oh constant but it may vary? Quite a contradiction?

Just to point out (btw) that by moral relativism I meant applying a different set of moral values to different people. In this case making allowances bf or there behaviour because they are 'artistic'. Something you appear to be doing.

actually, rather giving long and complicated answers like this, I'd much prefer you to just answer the question about the Callas / Onassis / Jackie I gave you instead of brushing it under the carpet. I find concrete examples so much more helpful that philosophical chat.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

spectral said:


> That's not what it means to the vast majority of people.


The "vast majority" of people? How many is that? I am forced to quote Lord Kelvin: "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind."


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> Er...I'm lost. Which composer are we talking about now?


Most likely any of them who were influenced by the "Holy Bible" and any of us who are evaluating their creepiness based on its precepts of morality.

A better question is probably "Which composers and posters have no significant relationship to Biblical concepts of morality?" You'll find a much shorter list there.


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

KenOC said:


> The "vast majority" of people? How many is that? I am forced to quote Lord Kelvin: "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind."


I suppose you've not encountered dictionaries and their definitions. Those are a good example of definitions agreed upon by the vast majority of people.

The initial basic definition Woodduck gave you for moral relativism is the "dictionary" definition. Your personal definition may be quite useful to you but it's not the one the vast majority of people will refer to. Similarly, having a private definition for the melting point of gold can lead to confusion when dealing with most scientists.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

spectral said:


> I suppose you've not encountered dictionaries and their definitions. Those are a good example of definitions agreed upon by the vast majority of people.
> 
> The initial basic definition Woodduck gave you for moral relativism is the "dictionary" definition. Your personal definition may be quite useful to you but it's not the one the vast majority of people will refer to. Similarly, having a private definition for the melting point of gold can lead to confusion when dealing with most scientists.


No no you're squirming here! Using "vast majority" yet again. And referring to the melting point of gold, which can (indeed) be expressed plainly in numbers! We expect better than that.


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2017)

Star said:


> I find concrete examples so much more helpful that philosophical chat.


I await with interest your response to my earlier request for specifics .



spectral said:


> I suppose you've not encountered dictionaries and their definitions. Those are a good example of definitions agreed upon by the vast majority of people.


I don't think they are. Dictionaries list words that have acquired 'settled' uses - but not necessarily by a vast majority of people. I think a relatively small minority of people agreed what "quantum mechanics" means.



spectral said:


> A better question is probably "Which composers and posters have no significant relationship to Biblical concepts of morality?" You'll find a much shorter list there.


A better question? I don't understand it!

I was drawing attention to the fact that the thread risks wandering freely away from the OP unless it keeps in touch with the part that involves composers.


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

KenOC said:


> No no you're squirming here! Using "vast majority" yet again. And referring to the melting point of gold, which can (indeed) be expressed plainly in numbers! We expect better than that.


Dictionary definitions being subject to consensus is a fact that has nothing to do with squirming.

Not everything is as simple as the melting point of gold. However, I used that humorous example because I once had a debate with a drunken idiot who refused to acknowledge the Chemistry book's definition I showed him. He was utterly convinced that gold would melt in a person's mouth if it's thin enough - because he didn't understand that gold leaf that's used for cakes and such is gold dust suspended in sugar.


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## spectral (Dec 19, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> I don't think they are. Dictionaries list words that have acquired 'settled' uses - but not necessarily by a vast majority of people. I think a relatively small minority of people agreed what "quantum mechanics" means.


You're picking nits. The big picture point is that dictionary definitions are malleable and forged by consensus. Even scientific laws are subject to change. However, despite the creeping arbitrariness inherent in even agreed-upon definitions - they are still what the vast majority of people consider factual, unlike individuals' random personalized definitions.


MacLeod said:


> A better question? I don't understand it!


I explained it clearly enough.


MacLeod said:


> I was drawing attention to the fact that the thread risks wandering freely away from the OP unless it keeps in touch with the part that involves composers.


I explained that my post is quite relevant.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

spectral said:


> Let's see...
> 
> 1) Superior to all of the people around him? Check.
> 
> ...


Whatever, I can't see why on earth you've brought this into this discussion on composers and their morality as none of them lived in Sodom.

What has all this stuff in genetics got to do with the OP's question?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

spectral said:


> ...they are still what the vast majority of people consider factual, unlike individuals' random personalized definitions.


"Vast majority" yet again? Please stop that. You're making me itch.


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2017)

spectral said:


> I explained it clearly enough.


You didn't explain it at all, you just asked it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> Oh constant but it may vary? Quite a contradiction?
> 
> Just to point out (btw) that by moral relativism I meant applying a different set of moral values to different people. In this case making allowances bf or there behaviour because they are 'artistic'. Something you appear to be doing.
> 
> actually, rather giving long and complicated answers like this, I'd much prefer you to just answer the question about the Callas / Onassis / Jackie I gave you instead of brushing it under the carpet. I find concrete examples so much more helpful that philosophical chat.


There is no contradiction inherent in the statement that absolute moral principles may be applied differently in different circumstances.

As for the Callas affair, I'm not arrogant and presumptuous enough to pronounce judgment on the romantic affairs of deceased individuals I never knew. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and respond with compassion, which I consider the more moral option. And as for your lack of interest in moral philosophy, if you can't see that specific examples can't be addressed without taking a philosophical position, there's nothing more I can do for you.

I've done enough work here, I gladly leave you to your judgments, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop criticizing mine.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> I'm pleased that my posts make you smile!
> 
> *I'm not sure who the "you" is that you refer to. It can't be me, as I don't think I have any track record on which you can judge what I "always do" regarding this issue*. All I was doing was pointing out the obvious - that _all _of us are fallible, vulnerable to committing acts that most of us would regard as generally undesirable (such as lying) even if we don't characterise them as immoral or 'good/bad' - even those who do their best to act within an explicit moral code as part of their religious beliefs (nothing to do with 'high profile cases' - not sure what you had in mind there.)
> 
> ...


Sorry I worded it badly as written . It should have read 'when people brand religious people......' It just seems a commn trait. I realise that was the only instance you had appeared to do the said.

I have already explained a out moral relativism and what I mean by it.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> There is no contradiction inherent in the statement that absolute moral principles may be applied differently in different circumstances.
> 
> As for the Callas affair and your lack of interest in moral philosophy, if you can't see that specific examples can't be addressed without taking a philosophical position, there's nothing more I can do for you.
> 
> I've done enough work here, I gladly leave you to your judgments, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop criticizing mine.


I just wanted to find out your philosophical position on the Callas affair but if you'd sooner not go into it that is fine! please note of course that the feeling of being criticised works both ways.


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2017)

Star said:


> Sorry


Apology accepted. Thanks.


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

DeepR said:


> Could be worse, you could be a terrible person writing terrible music. Didn't the recently deceased Charles Manson write some music? I suppose he could fall into that category although I haven't heard it myself.


As far as rock goes he was actually quite talented. The music is good.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

People who achieve greatness are not usually well-balanced individuals, that's why they are able to achieve greatness. 

You have to first and foremost be a workaholic, it's your neglected family and friends that pays the price.

You have to have a single-minded focus on your area of expertise, which means other skills, especially social skills, are typically underdeveloped. 

You have to be highly ambitious, which is typically motivated by less favorable traits such egomania or lack of self-esteem. 

Typically you must be highly introverted, and find other people and day-to-day living an annoying distraction from the ideas floating around in your head; this comes across as being an *** to others.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Couchie said:


> People who achieve greatness are not usually well-balanced individuals, that's why they are able to achieve greatness.
> 
> You have to first and foremost be a workaholic, it's your neglected family and friends that pays the price.
> 
> ...


Excellent post!


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Couchie said:


> People who achieve greatness are not usually well-balanced individuals, that's why they are able to achieve greatness.
> 
> You have to first and foremost be a workaholic, it's your neglected family and friends that pays the price.
> 
> ...


Superb. Sometimes the artist has the choice of perfecting his work or his life. He cannot do both and cannot help but sacrifice certain relationships on behalf of his art. Wagner, Debussy, and Prokofiev are three vivid examples.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Couchie said:


> People who achieve greatness are not usually well-balanced individuals, that's why they are able to achieve greatness.
> 
> You have to first and foremost be a workaholic, it's your neglected family and friends that pays the price.
> 
> ...


Superb. Sometimes the artist has the choice of perfecting his work or his life. He cannot do both and will sometimes sacrifice others cruelly on behalf of his art. Debussy had a very cavalier attitude towards relationships and one of the women in his life shot herself in the chest because of great emotional turmoil with him. But of course, everyone can get even with Debussy by condemning him 100 years after the fact and by not listening to his music, right?

It's not just the behavior of the composer too; it's that others may still choose to be associated with someone like this regardless of the toll on their own life. They want to be around greatness, no matter how turbulent the artist may be. Even when one reads about Stravinsky, it seems like it was all about him-that he was another narcissist who rarely had anything good or positive to say about others as composers. He also cheated on his wife and had an affair with Coco Chanel.

Wagner of course is so well-known. I believe he was so driven that he would've stolen the pennies off his dead mother's eyes in order to succeed and manifest the greatness of the vision he carried. That's why he tried to destroy the reputations of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer in order to create greater opportunities for himself to be heard. Some of what these composers are trying to do is so momentous that they feel they cannot waste a moment of time to make it a reality. But we're all a complex and unfathomable mixture even if we don't have their genius.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> Superb. Sometimes the artist has the choice of perfecting his work or his life. He cannot do both and will sometimes sacrifice others cruelly on behalf of his art. Debussy had a very cavalier attitude towards relationships and one of the women in his life shot herself in the chest because of great emotional turmoil with him. But of course, everyone can get even with Debussy by condemning him 100 years after the fact and by not listening to his music, right?
> 
> It's not just the behavior of the composer too; it's that others may still choose to be associated with someone like this regardless of the toll on their own life. They want to be around greatness, no matter how turbulent the artist may be. Even when one reads about Stravinsky, it seems like it was all about him-that he was another narcissist who rarely had anything good or positive to say about others as composers. He also cheated on his wife and had an affair with Coco Chanel.
> 
> Wagner of course is so well-known. I believe he was so driven that he would've stolen the pennies off his dead mother's eyes in order to succeed and manifest the greatness of the vision he carried. That's why he tried to destroy the reputations of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer in order to create greater opportunities for himself to be heard. Some of what these composers are trying to do is so momentous that they feel they cannot waste a moment of time to make it a reality. But we're all a complex and unfathomable mixture even if we don't have their genius.


There is a person's gift - in this case musical creation. THen of course it's how they use it. Of course how they use it cannot always be separated from the person they are.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

20centrfuge said:


> He also showed tremendous personal selfishness, was highly critical of other composers, etc, etc. In most accounts, he was basically an a$%h0le.
> 
> So how can a person like that create music that is so wonderful?


Haven't you heard the phrase 'trust the art ... not the artist'?

Furthermore, I don't associate the word 'creep' with traits such as being critical of others or being selfish.

I myself can be quite selfish and rather critical, and I don't categorize myself as a creep or an a$$hole.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Prodromides said:


> Haven't you heard the phrase 'trust the art ... not the artist'?
> 
> Furthermore, I don't associate the word 'creep' with traits such as being critical of others or being selfish.
> 
> *I myself can be quite selfish and rather critical, and I don't categorize myself as a creep or an a$$hole.*


Does anyone with those traits? That's what other people are for! 

Seriously though, I agree. The word creep tends to be reserved for … well, for creepy, pervy stuff.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

20centrfuge said:


> Prokofiev is my favorite composer. I find his music quirky, soulful, beautiful, energetic, etc., etc. but the more I learn about him, the more I find that he really wasn't a great person. He turned his back on his wife when the soviet government bore down on her (she was a westerner - from Spain), resulting in her being sent off to Siberia to work as prisoner/slave. He also showed tremendous personal selfishness, was highly critical of other composers, etc, etc. In most accounts, he was basically an a$%h0le.
> 
> So how can a person like that create music that is so wonderful?
> 
> ...


Who hasn't been an *** hole from time to time? That's life.


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## fuse (Feb 8, 2018)

Georg Tinter inspired us teenage orchestral hacks with stories of Bruckner being a chronic masturbator.


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## Michael Diemer (Nov 12, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> Superb.
> 
> Debussy had a very cavalier attitude towards relationships and one of the women in his life shot herself in the chest because of great emotional turmoil with him. But of course, everyone can get even with Debussy by condemning him 100 years after the fact and by not listening to his music, right?
> 
> One again, let us be mindful of what we read about people who lived decades or hundreds of years ago. I do it myself, repeating all those undoubtedly exaggerated stories of Mozart's astounding feats. The truth is, we just don't know. There certainly must be some truth to them, but we will never really know the true situation. With Debussy, I feel I must once again rise to his defense. Just because a woman he left shot herself, does not mean he was a louse. She may have been mentally unstable. I would even wager that geniuses are drawn to unstable people, as normal people are boring to them. Artists have long been known to run in the seamier parts of town, and hang out with questionable characters. Bohemians, after all, right? I think Debussy was an extreme introvert, and also a very unhappy man, who said he would have committed suicide had it not been for his daughter, Chou Chou. I tend to put credence in this particular story. I'm only going on intuition, but intuition informed by having worked as a mental health professional. If he left one or two women for another (which is hardly in itself uncommon or "bad" behavior), it was probably because he needed to do that to survive, whether literally or artistically. And I have never heard he was antisemitic, cruel to animals, sexually perverted, etc. He was a tortured individual, who only lived to give birth to the beauty he carried within him. And he changed the course of musical history by doing so.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

fuse said:


> Georg Tinter inspired us teenage orchestral hacks with stories of Bruckner being a chronic masturbator.


 Master debater was the term you should have paid more attention.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

fuse said:


> Georg Tinter inspired us teenage orchestral hacks with stories of Bruckner being a chronic masturbator.


Well, you really had to hand it to him...


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Does anyone with those traits? That's what other people are for!
> 
> Seriously though, I agree. The word creep tends to be reserved for … well, for creepy, pervy stuff.


Some people sing about being a creep.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I think the question is whether someone would be willing to be pulled out of a burning car even if by a creep. [Raises hand!] Such considerations can be a leveler in an imperfect world.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

If I were trapped in a burning car and suspected the person rescuing me of being a creep, I would most certainly demand to see his or her CNC (Certificate of Non Creepitude).


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> I think the question is whether someone would be willing to be pulled out of a burning car even if by a creep. [Raises hand!] Such considerations can be a leveler in an imperfect world.


Of course there is somewhat a difference between trapped in a burning car and sitting down to listen to music. Mnd you if the music is Stockhausen then one might make comparisons and wish for a rescuer!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Conversely, would seeing a known creep in a burning car deform your moral values enough to not want to rescue them?


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Conversely, how can a composer be beautiful and still write creepy music?


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

DeepR said:


> Conversely, how can a composer be beautiful and still write creepy music?


Easy. Think of Liszt's Mephisto Waltz


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> Conversely, would seeing a known creep in a burning car deform your moral values enough to not want to rescue them?


I'd say there's probably a bit of creep in all of us.


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## Chromatose (Jan 18, 2016)

I know others have beat me to this point but it's because we're all immensely flawed individuals and even the greatest or most talented of our representatives have shortcomings and do awful things. As for Prokofiev, I'm glad he left us a wealth of transcendent music even if he did make Shostakovich cry (just another of the horrible things he did).


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