# Some Interesting Music Facts



## R-F

Add your own!


Franz Liszt supposedly stunned Grieg when, upon visiting him and seeing his Piano Concerto, sight-read it from start to finish. 
Hungarian musician Franz Liszt received so many requests for locks of his hair that he bought a dog and snipped off patches of fur to send to admirers.
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), the first documented conductor, was the first musician to use a baton. It was a heavy, six-foot-long staff that he pounded on the ground in time to the music. One day, at a concert to celebrate the king's return to health, he accidently stuck the staff into his foot. He developed gangrene and died
Mendelssohn left the score for his A Midsummer Night's Dream overture in a cab, and was able to rewrite every note from memory. 
The largest musical instrument in the world is the organ in the Municipal Auditorium, in Atlantic City. Designed by U.S. senator Emerson L. Richards and completed in 1930, the organ has 33,112 pipes ranging in length from 6 millimetres to 19.4 metres. 
Tchaikovsky suffered from many mental breakdowns and neuroses. He believed that his head would fall off, so when conducting an orchestra he would hold his chin with his left hand.
After attending the first performance of Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, the Emperor Joseph II's only comment was "Too many notes".
American composer John Cage (1912-1992) composed a work in 1952 entitled 4' 33", which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.
A 1964 piece of music written by avant-garde American composer Lamonte Young is called "The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as They Were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gang, Illustrated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot, and the High-tension Line Stepdown Transformer".
Most toilets flush in E flat.
Warner communications paid $28 million for the legal use of Happy Birthday.
Beethoven's fifth was the first symphony to include trombones.
A grand Piano can be played faster than an upright Piano.
The Piano's sound range covers more than the whole range of the Orchestra.

They are all, alledgedly, true!


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## Yagan Kiely

> American composer John Cage (1912-1992) composed a work in 1952 entitled 4' 33", which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.


Kinda well known...



> The Piano's sound range covers more than the whole range of the Orchestra.


Violin harmonics can get higher and I believe some instruments can get lower.

And:



> The first use of the trombone in a symphony was in 1807 in the Symphony in E♭ by the Swedish composer Joachim Nicolas Eggert 1, although the composer usually credited with its introduction into the symphony orchestra was Ludwig van Beethoven, who used it in the last movement of his Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808). Beethoven also used trombones in his Symphony No. 6 in F major ("Pastoral") and Symphony No. 9 ("Choral").


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## fox_druid

Amazing! So, toilet flush is musical too 

Poor me, i've known only two from all the facts above! I should've learnt more 



> American composer John Cage (1912-1992) composed a work in 1952 entitled 4' 33", which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.





> Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), the first documented conductor, was the first musician to use a baton. It was a heavy, six-foot-long staff that he pounded on the ground in time to the music. One day, at a concert to celebrate the king's return to health, he accidently stuck the staff into his foot. He developed gangrene and died


I love Lully's work! He's so cool! He even died because of his duty as musician.


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## Yagan Kiely

Purcell supposedly died because his wife locked the door after one of his late nights at the pub. Got some sort of disease from the cold and died.


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## opus67

Thanks for those. Some were familiar and others new. I especially like the one by Superstar celeb Liszt and his dog's fur.



R-F said:


> After attending the first performance of Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, the Emperor Joseph II's only comment was "Too many notes".


I read somewhere that it is still not clear what he meant by that, if he had indeed said so.



> American composer John Cage (1912-1992) composed a work in 1952 entitled 4' 33", which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.


It's not quite silence. It's the "music" created by the environment...music-philosophy-*&%[email protected] 



> Most toilets flush in E flat.


I've always considered works in E-flat to be most cheerful and uplifting.


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## confuoco

Maybe one:

Dvorak considered cello to be an inappropriate concerto istrument and refused to compose work for it for long time.


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## Yagan Kiely

He disliked the high (and low?) register of the instrument thus making it limiting.


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## opus67

confuoco said:


> Dvorak considered cello to be an inappropriate concerto istrument and refused to composed work for it for long time.


But I'm thankful that he changed his mind.


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## confuoco

Yagan Kiely said:


> He disliked the high (and low?) register of the instrument thus making it limiting.


Yes, he disliked sound of both high and low register.


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## confuoco

Brahms fell asleep when piano genius Liszt played him one of his works. 

But maybe this is just a tale.


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## fox_druid

I hope these will also be interesting ones 

- Bach once had to spend a month in jail because he tried to quit his job composing and playing for a duke. During that month in jail, he wrote forty-six pieces of music, many of which are still performed today.

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's sister, Maria Anna Mozart, was also accomplished musician of her time. She was excellent harpsichord player, though because of her being a woman at that time, stopped her career any further. After her husband died, she lived with her step-children and earn their living by teaching music.

- Some of Bach's cantatas are not his. In fact, some which previously was attributed to him, was written by other composer. Those cantatas become less popular after the invention.

- Marie Antoinette, queen of France and Navare, was an excellent harpist. She is said to have popularized playing the harp as female's activity.

- The organ is one of the oldest instruments still used in European classical music. Organ has existed since the third century BC, with the hydraulic system, thus making it the most complicated human technology till the 13th century AD.


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## Rachovsky

Some of these are well-known, others are not:

1. Schubert destroyed his fingers using a device supposed to stretch them, married his teacher's daughter only 14 short years after they first became engaged, tried to kill himself by jumping into the Rhine, and believed towards the end of his life that he spoke to the ghosts of Schubert and Mendelssohn and that he was being followed around by tigers and hyenas.

2. Wagner never knew for sure who his father was, wrote a 22-hour long opera, wrote a play in which 42 characters die, owned (during his life) two poodles named Speck and Dreck and two spaniels named Peps and Fips, married Franz Lizst's daughter just before their third child was born, and believed Canada to be inhabited by 'scores of vegetarian panthers and tigers'.

3. Satie wrote such pieces as 'Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear', 'Genuine Flabby Preludes for a Dog' and 'Dessicated Embryos', spent 8 days in jail for publicly calling a critic a foul name, and once made a movie of a camel pulling a hearse around a mini Eiffel Tower.

4. Mozart was originally named Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, at the age of 7 proposed to Marie Antoinette, probably had Tourette's syndrome, once signed a letter to his father 'Addio, booby looby', and wrote a song called 'Lick my ****'.

5. Mussorgsky had a passion for vodka, wrote a piece for a dog and a canary, is best known for a set of pieces about paintings, worked as a soldier and bureaucrat, and was abandoned by his fiancee when she learned that he had a 'congenital malformation of the sexual organs'.

Beethoven said of Handel: "He is the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel at his tomb."

Robert Alkan was supposedly reaching for a copy of the Talmud, when the bookcase toppled on him and killed him.



That's all I can think of for now.


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## opus67

Rachovsky said:


> Some of these are well-known, others are not:
> 
> 1. Schubert destroyed his fingers using a device supposed to stretch them, married his teacher's daughter only 14 short years after they first became engaged, tried to kill himself by jumping into the Rhine, and believed towards the end of his life that he spoke to the ghosts of Schubert and Mendelssohn and that he was being followed around by tigers and hyenas.


Did you mean Schumann?



> [Mozart] once signed a letter to his father 'Addio, booby looby', and wrote a song called 'Lick my ****'.


I read in a biography of his that reference to bodily functions and such lavatorial language was quite common in the Mozart household. They used to sign off letters with such phrases! Wife and husband, son and mother, just about everybody in the family!


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## ChamberNut

French romantic composer, Ernest Chausson, died of a bicycle accident at age 44. Apparently crashed into the brick wall of his own estate, lost control going downhill. Died instantly.


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## Rachovsky

Sorry, meant Schumann. I get those two mixed up as it is.


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## R-F

-Jean Sibelius once consoled a young musician after a poorly-received concert. "Remember, son," he said, patting the lad on the shoulder, "there is no city in the world where they have a statue to a critic."

-One night after a rehearsal with the London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn retired to the Westbury Hotel bar for a drink with the soloist. 
Seeing a young American composer whose work he admired, Previn beckoned him over and ordered him a drink. "I heard your orchestra a few nights ago," the young man remarked. "It sounded absolutely marvelous. It was the night Beethoven's Sixth was played in the first half." 

"Oh, God," Previn replied, "that was the night Pollini was supposed to play the Fourth Piano Concerto in the second half, and he cancelled, and we were stuck with one of those last-minute substitutions, that really appalling third-rate lady pianist. I'm really sorry you had to suffer through that." 

"That's all right - I didn't mind," the young man replied with an icy nod. "That pianist is my wife."

-After a performance of Beethoven's "Leonora Overture No. 3" one evening, during which the offstage trumpet call had twice failed to sound on cue, an irate Stokowski raced from the rostrum in search of the deliquent trumpeter - whom he found in the wings, violently struggling with a burly janitor. "You can't blow that damn thing here, I tell you!" the janitor cried. "There's a concert going on!"

-During a rehearsal one day, Sir Thomas Beecham grew impatient with a female cellist. "Madam," he declared "you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands, and all you can do is scratch it."

That'll do for now!


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## confuoco

Respectable french composer Camille Saint-Saens walked-out of famous scandalous premiere of The Rite of Spring during the opening bassoon solo.


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## Yagan Kiely

> I read in a biography of his that reference to bodily functions and such lavatorial language was quite common in the Mozart household. They used to sign off letters with such phrases! Wife and husband, son and mother, just about everybody in the family!


It wasn't just the family, it was Austria and Germany in general.

Mozart was originally named Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, at the age of 7 proposed to Marie Antoinette, probably had Tourette's syndrome, once signed a letter to his father 'Addio, booby looby', and wrote a song called 'Lick my ****'.There is no evidence what-so-ever that Mozart had Touretts's syndrome.

______________________________________________

Would you believe *Ludwig van Beethoven*, born 1770, died 1827? The great musician was reared a Catholic but quit the church and adopted Goethe's Pantheism. Pantheism, as you know, is the doctrine that equates god with the forces and laws of the universe. Although Ludwig van Beethoven composed a Catholic mass (_Missa Solemnis_) which an authority described as "perhaps the grandest piece of musical expression which art possesses," he remained a Pantheist to the end. It is piquant that the musical expert who thus appreciates his mass, Sir. G. Macfarrcn, describes him as "a freethinker" - that is to say, an Atheist - (in the _Imper. Dict. of Univ. Biog._) Beethoven's most authoritative biographers are clear about his views on religion. When he was dying he yielded to the pressure of Catholic friends and let a priest administer the sacraments, but it is admitted that when the priest left the room Beethoven said, in the Latin words of the ancient Roman theater, "Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over." During the years of his full inspiration he had little religious feeling. When Felix Moscheles once scribbled on a manuscript, "With God's help," Beethoven wrote, "Man, help thyself."

Then let's look at *Hector Berlioz*, born 1803, died 1869, a French composer. He composed Catholic church music including the famous _Te Deum_ and _Mass of the Dead_, and indeed he is claimed by the church as one of their own in the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_. Yet Berloiz often stated in his letters that he was an Atheist. In G. K. Boult's _Life of Berlioz_, (1903), on page 298 there is reproduced a letter written shortly before he died, in which he says, "I believe nothing."

We move on to *Alexandre Cesar Leopold Bizet*, born 1838, died 1875 and generally known as Georges Bizet, the composer of _Carmen_, etc. His early death cut short a career of great promise. His letters, which were published after his death by L. Ganderax in 1908 are full of skepticism. In one letter, he says, "I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste."

These are really the great ones, for next is *Johannes Brahms*, born 1833, died 1897, the famous German composer. As he composed the superb _German Requiem_ for Protestant churches, most folk imagine that he was a Christian but he was even less religious than Beethoven. He reveals in his letters to Hersogenberg (_Letters of J. Brahms: the Hersogenberg Correspondence_, English translation 1909) that he was a complete agnostic. The Four Serious Songs which he published the year before he died are described by one critic as his "supreme achievement in dignified utterance of noble thoughts." Yet the words to the first song, as a matter of fact, reject and almost ridicule the idea of personal immortality.

But then what about *Claude Achille Debussy*, born 1862, died 1918, the French composer? He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of eleven and by 1902 his _L'apresmidi d'un faune_ and other compositions were known throughout the world, and he was acclaimed as "one of the greatest musicians of his generation". He was one of the "Neo-pagans" (by self-styling) of that brilliant period, and his funeral was purely secular.

And also included, of course, is *Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart*, born 1756, died 1791. He began to compose at the age of five and conducted a Mass of his own composition at the age of twelve. In the following year the pope made him a Knight of the Golden Spur, and for ten years he was a concert master to the Archbishop of Salzbury. At this time he began to lose his Catholic faith and to get into trouble with the authorities of the church. He joined the Freemasons, who were under the sternest ban of the Church, and turned to opera. Although he wrote a good deal of church music and he is claimed in the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_ as a Catholic, the two leading biographers of Mozart put it beyond question that he was a non-Christian. Wilder gives ample evidence and tells us that on his death bed he refused to ask for a priest and when his wife nevertheless sent for one, the priest was refused, and he was buried without a service in the common grave of the poor. His famous _Requiem Mass_ was composed for Count Walsegg, who paid Mozart but then put his own name on the composition. Ulibichov, the second leading biographer, gives even further evidence that Wolfgang Mozart abandoned the Church.

Even *Niccolo Paganini*, born 1782, died 1840, the great Italian violinist and composer, is among the non-theists. Like so many other distinguished freethinkers he was very precocious, composed a sonata when he was eight years old and made his first public appearance at the age of eleven. He became the greatest violinist of his age. His chief biographer, Count Conestabili, who was orthodox, admits that Paganini practiced "religious indifferentism", and states, sadly, that his hero neither received the last sacrament nor had any religious service at his funeral. He was well known as "an Atheist."

Can it be that we own all of the great ones? For next is *Franz Peter Schubert*, born 1797, died 1828, the Austrian composer. He wrote two Masses and a large amount of other Catholic music, yet like Beethoven and Mozart, he was a skeptic. In his _Dictionory of Music_, Sir George Grove says that "of formal or dogmatic religion we can find no trace" in his life. That's in Volume IV, page 634. He quotes Schubert saying of creeds and churches, "Not a word of it is true." Also, one can read Elly Ziese in _Shubert's Tod_. There it is noted that Catholic biographers say that the man who wrote the beautiful _Ave Maria_ must have been a Catholic, although "he has no external connection with the Church." One might as well say that all the artists who painted beautiful Venuses must have believed in the goddess Venus. Perhaps the answer is that only the religious art form was accepted, or acceptable, at that time.

And, then of course comes *Robert Schumann*, born 1810, died 1856, the German composer. He tells us in his letters that he rejected Christianity in his early years and followed Goethe's pantheism. One great advantage of Goethe's system in this difficult period, when skepticism itself was in evolution, was that one could talk freely about god and not mean much. In any case Goethe naturally appealed to these artists, and both Schumann and Beethoven openly adhered to this doctrine.

What! We have *Richard Strauss*, too. Yes, the German composer, born 1864 and died 1949. He played the piano at the age of four and began to compose at the age of seven. He conducted the Bayreuth Festival in 1894 and was General Musical Director of Prussia. He was a close student of philosophy and expressed his own freethought convictions in the symphonic poem based upon Nietzsche's work, _Also Sprach Zarathustra_, which the clergy angrily denounced, and in Till Eulenspiegel's _Lustige Streiche_, which has been described as "one of the most brilliant dramatic scores ever penned."

Just these men alone in our ranks should satisfy an Atheist, but there is also *Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky*, born 1840, died 1893, the famous Russian composer. He took up law but quit it for music and became the greatest of Russian composers with songs, cantatas, operas, and piano pieces. From his letters, edited by his brother, it appears that until late in life he was a theist but he seems in the end to have become an Atheist after reading Flaubert's letters. "I have, he said, "found some astonishing answers to my questions about god and religion in this book." (See _Life and Letters_, p. 688.) But I wonder what the brother edited out of the book when he recounts that Tchaikovsky was unconscious when his brother summoned a priest to smear him with sacrament, then, in death.

The last one here is *Wilhelm Richard Wagner*, born 1813, died 1883, the greatest of German dramatists and composers. All admit that he was an Atheist and radical for he took part in the revolution of 1848. Finally when he composed _Parsifal_ in 1882, Nietsche charged him with lapsing into mysticism, and it is clear that he was in a romantic and mystic mood - but all the experts admit that he never returned to the Christian faith. Otto Hartwich says, "Wagner . . . had little taste for the other-worldly speculations of dogmatic theology and none at all in the Church's ethic - hence the bitterness of Nietzsche who thought it the worst feature of Christianity -." But the British musical critic who wrote on Wagner, Ernest Newman, reminds us that by the age of fifty all his greatest work had been done while he was an Atheist and his intellectual powers were at their greatest.


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## YsayeOp.27#6

Rachovsky said:


> Robert Alkan was supposedly reaching for a copy of the Talmud, when the bookcase toppled on him and killed him.


Did you mean Charles-Valentin Alkan?


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## YsayeOp.27#6

confuoco said:


> Brahms fell asleep when piano genius Liszt played him one of his works.


When Bruch showed Brahms the score of his first violin concerto, Brahms limited his comments to remarking the high quality of the music paper.


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## axkman

It appears that Mozart's patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, was musically illiterate. So the story goes, he complained to Mozart that Karl Ludwig Fischer, the first Osmin in Die Entfuhrung sang too low! For a bass! Mind you, Fischer composed In Cellar Cool, the popular bass showpiece, and if you've ever heard Malcolm McEachern's rendition of this piece, and if Fischer had a similar range, there may be just the tiniest fraction of truth in that comment.


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## kiwipolish

On average, Mozart composed about 5 hours of finished music per year of his life. Bach less than 2 hours and a half. Beethoven 1 hour and a half. Chopin 45 minutes.

Beethoven's 5th symphony lasts 31 minutes under Karajan, 50 minutes under Celibidache and 77 minutes under Maximianno Cobra.


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## axkman

That's very interesting, Kiwipolish - any idea how long it lasts under Klemperer? Judging by some of his other Beethoven recordings, it could be close to Cobra


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## Havergal

Can anyone recommend a good recording of Cage's 4' 33"?


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## Badinerie

Try it on SACD. Its Deafening!


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## Guest

*Schoenberg *was alleged to have said "One day Newspaper Boys will be whistling my music" ?


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## Yagan Kiely

That's hilarious.

Pierre Shaefer said “…Unfortunately it took me forty years to conclude that nothing is possible outside DoReMi… I think of myself as an explorer struggling to find a way through in the far north, but I wasn’t finding a way through. There is no way through. The way through is behind us.”


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## trojan-rabbit

Perhaps not really relevant to this, but Rachmaninoff smoked some twenty strong cigars a day, and still lived till the age of 70, and performed right up to his death.


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## Guest

kiwipolish said:


> Beethoven's 5th symphony lasts 31 minutes under Karajan, 50 minutes under Celibidache and 77 minutes under Maximianno Cobra.


Why do we [in general] play the classics slower to day, except for the odd "Period Instrument" recording, I realise this has been discussed before but it is still interesting,
There is one heck of a difference between 31min and 77 are you sure that's correct? I have not heard Cobra.
Just checked my Carlos Kleiber/VPO 33min


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Got any more...................................


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## St Matthew

Classical music is the most conservative genre there is, it's older audience is holding back it's future. Essentially classical music is a dying-out old, wrinkled up, cancer patient waiting to die because it is refusing a future cure.


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## KenOC

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Got any more...................................


Musicologists now believe that Beethoven faked his deafness and paid Schindler to compose most of his works.

(Maybe possible actually. See http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/world/asia/japanese-beethoven-samuragochi-hearing/index.html )


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Yagan Kiely said:


> The last one here is *Wilhelm Richard Wagner*, born 1813, died 1883, the greatest of German dramatists and composers. All admit that he was an Atheist and radical for he took part in the revolution of 1848. Finally when he composed _Parsifal_ in 1882, Nietsche charged him with lapsing into mysticism, and it is clear that he was in a romantic and mystic mood - but all the experts admit that he never returned to the Christian faith. Otto Hartwich says, "Wagner . . . had little taste for the other-worldly speculations of dogmatic theology and none at all in the Church's ethic - hence the bitterness of Nietzsche who thought it the worst feature of Christianity -." But the British musical critic who wrote on Wagner, Ernest Newman, reminds us that by the age of fifty all his greatest work had been done while he was an Atheist and his intellectual powers were at their greatest.


Compared to what other people probably have, I haven't read enough about the other composers, but I have read a lot about Wagner. Based on his letters and notes he wrote in the books he had on philosophy and other source material for his ideas, operas, and so on..........it seems like Wagner may well have thought reincarnation happened. He really thought highly of Buddhism and Hinduism and speculated that Jesus was in fact from Tibet, and that that accounted for his presumed spiritual sophistication. I wrote a paper on Wagner a while ago and remember reading about some of the scribbles he wrote that used Buddhist terminology and describing reincarnation. I never remembering reading a definitive statement, like "I, Richard Wagner, believe XYZ", about almost anything, in spite of that he wrote so much about what he allegedly was thinking. Possibly he was an atheist, but so are most Buddhists and many Hindus.....so I doubt it would be accurate to describe Wagner as an atheist in the way we think of atheism in the 21st century.

Additionally I think it would be inaccurate to think that Wagner was anti-Semitic for his whole life. He wrote in a letter towards the end of his life with his last mistress that the only problem he had with Jewish people was that Germany 'wasn't ready to assimilate them', or something, and that Germans were stupid, too stupid to understand him, and he wanted to move to the US and re-start his whole creative vision. I think it was Minnesota he had his eye on.

If people really cared to research Wagner, they would be amazed at how idiosyncratic (and subject to revision) his views really were.


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