# The tainted legacy "What if" thread



## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

It's a slow Thursday here in the Salt Mines, and I have been catching up with some of the older threads.

I saw (and participated in) a thread about Nazism and whether/not artists and composers that were somehow associated with it had seen their legacy tainted.

And it got me thinking about something.

What if we found out that *Vivaldi "liked little girls"*? He was, after all, a priest working in a girls only orphanage... I'm not suggesting that he was, but what if we had uncovered accounts or evidence that Vivaldi was a pedophile. Would that taint his legacy (think of *Michael Jackson*, for instance)?

What if we found out *Liszt was a serial rapist*? Or that *Robert Schumann beat his wife*?

I guess where I'm going with this is: *are there things that an artist could do in his or her life that could taint his or her legacy?* If you found out that *Dinu Lipati *was a real-life _Hannibal Lector_? Would you find the closest dumpster and chuck all his vinyl recordings? Or would you listen to his Chopin preludes enjoting liver and fava beans?

Let's see what TC'ers think...


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

There's that line, "the only difference between tragedy and humour is time", and I think this falls into that group. It doesn't matter what a person does, let them sink a little into history and no one will care. After all, we've already got murderers and racists who people listen to without caring. If a composer did that _today_, there'd be a boycott that lasted for a few decades, maybe a century, but sooner or later it all just becomes part of the fun of looking back at history.

"LOL, he killed someone!"


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

Interesting...

Come to think of it, one'man's tainted legacy is another man's notoriety. Maybe, some of these artists' works could (in a sinistre twist) _gain _in notoriety _because _of their bad behaviour (think of *gangster rappers*...)


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Polednice said:


> If a composer did that _today_, there'd be a boycott that lasted for a few decades, maybe a century, but sooner or later it all just becomes part of the fun of looking back at history.
> 
> "LOL, he killed someone!"


It worked for Gesualdo.


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

Manxfeeder said:


> It worked for Gesualdo.


You learn something new every day...


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## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

Manxfeeder said:


> It worked for Gesualdo.


I can't listen to Gesualdo, because I get so spooked knowing it is music by a killer. 

So if one of my favorite composers has done something bad, I don't wanna know.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

For me, a really compelling work of literature, nonfiction or music is a window into another person's mind. (You can say "soul" if you'd like that romanticism.)

I can never really get that part of it out of my head. It's never "just music" or "just poetry" or whatever - it's someone's music, someone's poetry, someone's novel, someone's essay. 

And that person (or people), being human like me, show me what I am or could be. I am not all that different from a murderer, a racist, a rapist, a pedophile, or for that matter, a saint, or whatever. The anger or fear or greed is there; the desire is there; the moral longing is there. Change this or that detail of my life, and I'm serving life.... And we're the same! 

This division of the world into something like "normal people" and "monsters" does not make sense to me. We like those Silence of the Lambs type movies because we know we can identify with the villain all too easily, we want to live a bit of that fantasy for a moment, and then we want the assurance that the villain within us and in the story has been conquered, and we can return to our proletariat/bourgeois lives with the moral assurance that we are actually fairly good people. 

Thing we don't want to admit is, in real life the "monsters" feel the same way. And sometimes they make beautiful music, write great literature.


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

the composers that were most expressive were the ones who accepted their dark passenger.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

science said:


> We like those Silence of the Lambs type movies because we know we can identify with the villain all too easily, we want to live a bit of that fantasy for a moment, and then we want the assurance that the villain within us and in the story has been conquered, and we can return to our proletariat/bourgeois lives with the moral assurance that we are actually fairly good people.


"We" as in "some of us" or "many of us" or "most of us", right?

Seems like ethics and aesthetics are one and the same, indeed.


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## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

It wouldn't effect my enjoyment of the composer's music but I think it would be remembered in the back of my mind. When someone does something wrong it is usually not forgotten. Time weakens the effect of the wrongdoing but I don't believe it erases it from people's minds.


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

everytime I listen to "tristis est anima mea", i completely forget that the man killed anyone.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Dodecaplex said:


> "We" as in "some of us" or "many of us" or "most of us", right?


I don't know, there might be exceptions, but I usually don't trust people who think they're ethically exceptional, and don't like people who think they're aesthetically exceptional (either in taste or what they offer to the world's enjoyment).


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Polednice said:


> There's that line, "the only difference between tragedy and humour is time", and I think this falls into that group. It doesn't matter what a person does, let them sink a little into history and no one will care. After all, we've already got murderers and racists who people listen to without caring. If a composer did that _today_, there'd be a boycott that lasted for a few decades, maybe a century, but sooner or later it all just becomes part of the fun of looking back at history.
> 
> "LOL, he killed someone!"


True in most cases, unless you happen to be John Wilkes Booth! People forget that he was a celebrity. A renowned actor in his day.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Gesualdo live in the 1500's. It was the 1500's. **** happened.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Igneous01 said:


> the composers that were most expressive were the ones who accepted their dark passenger.


hmm... watching Dexter much?


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

TresPicos said:


> I can't listen to Gesualdo, because I get so spooked knowing it is music by a killer.


The thing about Gesualdo is that it was perfectly within his right in the culture/society he lived in to do what he did. He killed his wife and her lover, you could legally do that in Italy in the 1500s. The only problem is that the family of the wife would be after you and of course your own guilt, of which he was reputed to have had. People could take more of the law into their own hands, so I've been led to believe.

So think of it like this: if a composer had been in a war and killed in battle, would you be spooked at the thought of listening to a murderer's music? This is only a small degree closer to murder than killing in battle, but still isn't quite the same. Gesualdo was not a murderer, he killed because that was the custom of the time. Also he was probably pissed if not just duty bound. Hot blooded, not cold blooded.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

When I was a little kid, and I loved basketball, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, I was deeply saddened to hear about Dennis Rodman's drug use and having been to prison. I didn't enjoy watching him play basketball after having learned this. These days, such things don't bug me nearly as much as they used to.


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