# Who worst bigot than Wagner = classical history how come he posterboy of racism



## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

Imean nazi composer yeah we heard of this allll the time ii..e Wagner .Than Stockhausen mild racism according to my sister rant about aphex twin dude getting said by mister Stockhausen he should stop africanity or afro sounding in his music per se..

But what about americans classical composers, who had tie whit the klan, we never heard of this , remenber folks during the early 20th century they were not a groupuscule but million, from what i heard in america, so what the deal is it taboo to talks about em, today as we speak?

Just wondering, and nope even if good i would not , listen to klansman classical even if good, im not againnst the southherner , im not anti whatever , im just cureieous, and will avoid them, tell so i dont have suprises ,since im exploring americans classical composer,

I would like to had i have nothing against americans or german for facts, they did not do nothing to me since my being born in this world , dont approved nazism, but what about klansman(i coined a words for em) .Now since if one of them read this he gonna be mad and think im some anarcho-leftist -communist, nope sir i beleive in everything and nothing , im a natural brewed nihilist,, i have better thing to do than being political racist or not racist or ant-racist , and have no angst again minority,, nationality or religion, what so ever, do you beleive me.

In all fairness i feel Wagner got all the blame so did the germans , has there past keep following them there hunted & stigmatized for life, by what happen and get label nazzi of worst kind , well ok, why crrucified germans and forget klan activity targeting minority and catholic ****** hey? per se, whit all modesty , whit all respect i says, what is an american equivalence to wagner in term of bigotery.

Remenber folks this post , is about knowledge , ignorance my enemy, i want to know from the othher side oof occident bigots of the worst kind , because im a nerd, because i will and avoid em, just like i avoid wagner, but stockhausen ''mild biggotery'' is not that bad in my book, hhe walking on some tight rope of human behavioral sensitivity & emotional cord of sensitive peoples white and colors , or whatever..

Ihope this was a good post, i try hard to find subject no one fought about, im odd :tiphat:
all i can says im not a punk or a skinhead or a metal, gothic (you toss the kitchen sink to label me) im deprofundis a renaissance guy lost in modern time an old soul.

Have a nice day everyone


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

I'm not sure if anyone really compares to Wagner. Didn't he directly inspire Hitler? He has essays about how Jews are degenerate people and how they and their music should not be respected. 

I begrudgingly enjoy his music though and try not to think about his personality. 

I don't know about any other composer with a bad personality. I'd be interested to know if any other composers have notably bad personalities, but I doubt there are any who are worse than Wagner.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I guess there are a lot of types of racism. For a lot of our history casual racism was a norm. But even then some people could see the humanity in people of "the despised race" while others could not, seeing them as no more than animals (at best). We do need to be careful not to judge the past through the lens of our present knowledge. 

And also what of composers who want to stand outside of "politics" and serve a higher god (their art)? Musicians who served in Hitler's Germany may not have been racists or fascists but they seem to have been untroubled by what was going on around them. 

Racism remains common throughout the world. If there was ever an excuse for it, there surely can be no excuse now. But I have no knowledge of its extent among composers. I wonder what stories will emerge in this thread.

I didn't get what Stockhausen is accused of. I doubt he is a racist but he is probably unworldly.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

I'm in the dark over Stockhausen too. Unless claiming your work comes directly from "superior beings"elsewhere in the Universe is considered anti-Earthling(-ist?) or something.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

There have been a few famously racist rock stars: Clapton (who apologised later - which, given that he his career was based on playing a black music form and with black musicians, is hardly surprising) and Phil Collins and, no doubt, Morrissey. Recent political events in UK have led to quite a few others expressing racist sentiments.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Wow. Well. I thought one of Stockhausen's dreams was to unify the whole world with mutual understandings between different cultures through music.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Enthusiast said:


> There have been a few famously racist rock stars: Clapton (who apologised later - which, given that he his career was based on playing a black music form and with black musicians, is hardly surprising) and Phil Collins and, no doubt, Morrissey. Recent political events in UK have led to quite a few others expressing racist sentiments.


Phil Collins? Cite? All i can find about him and racism is "Collins is a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism".


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Eric Clapton had some rant about "Enoch Powell having the right ideas" didn't he? Collins did some song dressed in a sombrero with a Mexican accent, the best example I could find....is there a Canadian Artists FOR racism charity? I'd have thought it wouldn't be all that popular :devil:

Not a musician, but surely Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic outbursts take the biscuit? Unless, of course being drunk at the time is considered a valid excuse? :devil:


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

From what I've read Percy Grainger was pretty spiteful in his private correspondence. Perhaps he thought his views on race were as normal as his taste for flagellation and kinky sex in general.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I don't know who was more bigoted than whom and I don't care. It's interesting from a historical and biographical standpoint, but music is music and if I like it I listen to it and don't think about what the composer said and did in his spare time, especially if he's been dead for two centuries.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

What about Nigel Kennedy???


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Fredx2098 said:


> I'm not sure if anyone really compares to Wagner. Didn't he directly inspire Hitler? He has essays about how Jews are degenerate people and how they and their music should not be respected.
> 
> I begrudgingly enjoy his music though and try not to think about his personality.
> 
> I don't know about any other composer with a bad personality. I'd be interested to know if any other composers have notably bad personalities, but I doubt there are any who are worse than Wagner.


I haven't read any of Wagner's writings, but did he call for genocide?


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Kontrapunctus said:


> I haven't read any of Wagner's writings, but did he call for genocide?


No, as I understand it mostly a lot of tripe about Jews being incapable of creating art, and their success being a symptom of degeneracy in German culture. A despicable character no doubt. He mainly echoed the convention antisemitism of his age, but most people in his age didn't trouble themselves to write pamphlets and newspaper articles about it.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Baron Scarpia said:


> No, as I understand it mostly a lot of tripe about Jews being incapable of creating art, and their success being a symptom of degeneracy in German culture. A despicable character no doubt. He mainly echoed the convention antisemitism of his age, *but most people in his age didn't trouble themselves to write pamphlets and newspaper articles about it.*


It is the commitment of his poisonous views to print that distinguished Wagner as a committed and almost fanatical bigot, from the casual bigots of his age.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Judith said:


> What about Nigel Kennedy???


What about Nigel Kennedy?


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## Byron (Mar 11, 2017)

DavidA said:


> It is the commitment of his poisonous views to print that distinguished Wagner as a committed and almost fanatical bigot, from the casual bigots of his age.


A fanatical bigot who befriended and surrounded himself with Jewish artists and musicians.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Baron Scarpia said:


> What about Nigel Kennedy?


Nigel Kennedy is bigoted against conductors. "I think conductors are completely over-rated anyway, because if you love music, why not play it? Why wave around and get off on some ego ****? I don't think the audience give a ****** about the conductor. Not unless they've been pumped full of propaganda from classical music writing or something. I mean, no one normal understands what the conductor does. No one knows what they do! They just wave their arms out of time."

But so is Stephen Kovacevich, who says "Conducting is the last bastion of quackery outside of the medical profession."


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Byron said:


> A fanatical bigot who befriended and surrounded himself with Jewish artists and musicians.


...and who repeatedly betrayed those most loyal to him, Jew and non-Jew alike. Scum, but he wrote music beautifully.


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## Byron (Mar 11, 2017)

Baron Scarpia said:


> ...and who repeatedly betrayed those most loyal to him, Jew and non-Jew alike. Scum, but he wrote music beautifully.


As far as I understand it, he had just as much propensity to be generous and loyal. In other words, he was a human being, full of good and bad qualities alike, and not easily categorized.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I don't know who was more bigoted than whom and I don't care. It's interesting from a historical and biographical standpoint, but music is music and if I like it I listen to it and don't think about what the composer said and did in his spare time, especially if he's been dead for two centuries.


I agree entirely. Having racist political opinions or ideologies can be one aspect of a musician's non-musical life worth studying, but to me those are among the secondary "footnote" issues, not the primary issues. As we've discussed at some length, there have been plenty of racist artists who would give Wagner more than a run for his money, Vincent D'Indy for one. The only real difference is, Wagner thought it worthwhile to publish lengthy essays expounding upon his racist ideas. With D'Indy, IIRC, one has to look at his private letters, which he didn't necessarily envision being published for permanent public scrutiny. (If I'm wrong about that, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's worth looking back at whatever I've read about him.) Other artists may only have said racist things that were recorded by witnesses.

So Wagner gets a beating because he thought his racist ideas important enough to publish for the general public, whereas other racist artists either didn't do that at all or did it much less, or were much less important artists. That's fair enough, but the whole thing is still a footnote topic for me.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Byron said:


> As far as I understand it, he had just as much propensity to be generous and loyal. In other words, he was a human being, full of good and bad qualities alike, and not easily categorized.


I think he is easy to categorize, as a person.


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## Byron (Mar 11, 2017)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I think he is easy to categorize, as a person.


By all accounts he was a loving, attentive father. Where does that fit into your category?


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

In other words

Cambridge
University
Netball
Team?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

It is funny how Wagner is bashed for antisemitism, but people forget that we do it with hindsight after the experience of the holocaust. Antisemitism was quite common in Germany and Austria in those times and certainly did not have the extremely negative connotation that we associate with it now.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

fluteman said:


> So Wagner gets a beating because he thought his racist ideas important enough to publish for the general public, whereas other racist artists either didn't do that at all or did it much less, or were much less important artists. That's fair enough, but the whole thing is still a footnote topic for me.


I do not think it is insignificant that he decided to publish (and republish) these views. There is a difference between a person who accepts a prejudice of his or her age without questioning it and someone who takes it upon him or herself to become a public advocate of those views. The latter implies that he thought deeply about these views and took them to heart.

It is not going to stop me from listening to the music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Byron said:


> By all accounts he was a loving, attentive father. Where does that fit into your category?


The soapbox moralizers don't want to hear subtleties, Byron.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Fredx2098 said:


> I'd be interested to know if any other composers have notably bad personalities, but I doubt there are any who are worse than Wagner.


You'd be surprised. If we eliminated from our concerts and recordings composers who had "bad personalities", a whole bunch would be gone. Composers have the same foibles as any of us. But we should not judge them from a historical perspective: the past is like a foreign land; they do things different there. Consider society today. How do you think someone from 1850 would judge us? Yes, Wagner was an anti-Semite - and so were millions of others back in his day. Yet his favorite conductor was the Jew, Herman Levi. Yes, Florent Schmitt was sympathetic to the Nazis, but that's not going to stop me from listening to his music. Karl Bohm seems to have been an ardent Nazi, but he still turned out some fine Bruckner, Beethoven and Mozart. Geniuses can often be quite difficult people and Wagner was no exception. Many of the great composers and conductors we awful people in real life.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Byron said:


> By all accounts he was a loving, attentive father. Where does that fit into your category?


A deeply flawed person who was attentive to his children? (Including children fathered with his best friend's wife, presumably.)


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> You'd be surprised. If we eliminated from our concerts and recordings composers who had "bad personalities", a whole bunch would be gone. Composers have the same foibles as any of us. But we should not judge them from a historical perspective: the past is like a foreign land; they do things different there. Consider society today. How do you think someone from 1850 would judge us? Yes, Wagner was an anti-Semite - and so were millions of others back in his day. Yet his favorite conductor was the Jew, Herman Levi. Yes, Florent Schmitt was sympathetic to the Nazis, but that's not going to stop me from listening to his music. Karl Bohm seems to have been an ardent Nazi, but he still turned out some fine Bruckner, Beethoven and Mozart. Geniuses can often be quite difficult people and Wagner was no exception. Many of the great composers and conductors we awful people in real life.


I can't think of any composers who I am convinced had particularly admirable characters. I'm not concerned if a composer is a creature of his or her age. There are a few who were used their influence to be worse than their age.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I refuse to judge people solely on their opinions. Opinions are just words, it is actions that matter. Show me that Wagner was a crook, that he murdered someone, that he was a rat etc. Then I will despise him. Antisemitism is not enough.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I can't think of any composers who I am convinced had particularly admirable characters.


<cough><cough><haydn><cough>


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

KenOC said:


> <cough><cough><haydn><cough>


Quite so! Possibly he muttered some things to Mrs. Haydn while sitting in his chair at home that we would not consider acceptable today, but he conducted himself with decency.

With that note, I'm done with the subject.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I do not think it is insignificant that he decided to publish (and republish) these views. There is a difference between a person who accepts a prejudice of his or her age without questioning it and someone who takes it upon him or herself to become a public advocate of those views. The latter implies that he thought deeply about these views and took them to heart.
> 
> It is not going to stop me from listening to the music.


Yes. Isn't that exactly the point I just made? And not only did Wagner think deeply about these views and take them to heart, he felt his views were so important that the whole world needed to know about them. It's still a secondary issue for me.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

fluteman said:


> Yes. Isn't that exactly the point I just made? And not only did Wagner think deeply about these views and take them to heart, he felt his views were so important that the whole world needed to know about them. It's still a secondary issue for me.


Sorry, I misinterpreted your turn of phrase "Wagner takes a beating" to imply that he took a beating unjustly. We are in agreement.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Wagner never, to my knowledge, proposed or encouraged a single anti-Jewish action. And yet we revile him, while giving Martin Luther, whose views were far more rabid, an easy pass. And yes, he was a composer too, if not quite so long-winded.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

KenOC said:


> <cough><cough><haydn><cough>


Leonard Bernstein was another admirable composer. The trouble was, for most of his life he worked so hard to do so much for family, colleagues, close friends, not-so-close friends (many of whom, well-aware of his generous nature, took advantage of him excessively), and the world in general and everyone in it, towards the end of his life he became bitter and resentful of the burden this placed on him and how it prevented him (in his opinion) from doing everything he could have done as a composer. This in turn led him to do and say some rather nasty and selfish things towards the end, which is sad, especially when one considers that the burdens he so resented were largely self-imposed.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Wagner never, to my knowledge, proposed or encouraged a single anti-Jewish action. And yet we revile him, while giving Martin Luther, whose views were far more rabid, an easy pass. And yes, he was a composer too, if not quite so long-winded.


He didn't kill anyone, no. Those anti-Jewish tracks may very well have deprived musicians of their livelihoods and from high high cultural position gave cover to anti-Semitic politics of the time.

And I don't give Martin Luther a pass. A worse influence than Wagner, certainly.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

fluteman said:


> Leonard Bernstein was another admirable composer. The trouble was, for most of his life he worked so hard to do so much for family, colleagues, close friends, not-so-close friends (many of whom, well-aware of his generous nature, took advantage of him excessively), and the world in general and everyone in it, towards the end of his life he became bitter and resentful of the burden this placed on him and how it prevented him (in his opinion) from doing everything he could have done as a composer. This in turn led him to do and say some rather nasty and selfish things towards the end, which is sad, especially when one considers that the burdens he so resented were largely self-imposed.


Lenny was a generally good guy, but I didn't think of him because I don't consider him much of a composer. I wasn't aware of any nasty or selfish quotes.

Now, I've broken my promise to be done.


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

Jacck said:


> It is funny how Wagner is bashed for antisemitism, but people forget that we do it with hindsight after the experience of the holocaust. Antisemitism was quite common in Germany and Austria in those times and certainly did not have the extremely negative connotation that we associate with it now.


Ahh, yes. It's all hunky dory because it was popular back then. Let's all make sure to always follow the popular opinion.

Any type of prejudice is bad no matter what the context or circumstances. Everyone being racist doesn't make it okay, it makes them all bad people.


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> You'd be surprised. If we eliminated from our concerts and recordings composers who had "bad personalities", a whole bunch would be gone. Composers have the same foibles as any of us. But we should not judge them from a historical perspective: the past is like a foreign land; they do things different there. Consider society today. How do you think someone from 1850 would judge us? Yes, Wagner was an anti-Semite - and so were millions of others back in his day. Yet his favorite conductor was the Jew, Herman Levi. Yes, Florent Schmitt was sympathetic to the Nazis, but that's not going to stop me from listening to his music. Karl Bohm seems to have been an ardent Nazi, but he still turned out some fine Bruckner, Beethoven and Mozart. Geniuses can often be quite difficult people and Wagner was no exception. Many of the great composers and conductors we awful people in real life.


I specifically said that it doesn't stop me from enjoying his music. I don't care if everyone was racist. That doesn't make it okay or better. It makes it worse in my opinion. To just blindly follow the crowd shows a lack of personal refinement, and his essays show a dangerous obsession with it. I have no idea how a normal modern person is judged, because I've always been judged as a strange alien person, in real life and here, because I dare to form my own opinions. An antisemite saying that they like a Jewish person is the same as modern people who say things like "I hate gays/*******, but some of my best friends are gays/*******, so I'm not racist/homophobic." It doesn't make a difference.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Baron Scarpia said:


> He didn't kill anyone, no. Those anti-Jewish tracks may very well have deprived musicians of their livelihoods and from high high cultural position gave cover to anti-Semitic politics of the time.
> 
> And I don't give Martin Luther a pass. A worse influence than Wagner, certainly.


There was only one tract, _Das Judentum in der Musik_. It was not a "popular" kind of essay, it dealt with the subject of "Jewishness in music" in a rather eccentric and esoteric way, it wasn't widely read, there was plenty of disapproval among the few who cared enough to read it, and its political influence is really impossible to determine but seems likely to have been negligible. It didn't advocate any sort of political action against Jews, and in fact it pointed out that Jews had been treated shamefully by European society.

After his brief youthful flirtation with the revolutionary socialist-anarchist movement, Wagner took no active part in social reform. He was known as an eccentric character who was frequently satirized in the press for both his "music of the future" and his quirky lifestyle (his affairs, his extravagance, his silk underwear, etc.). His thoughts on Jews don't seem to have interested or impressed many people, and it may come as a surprise that Hitler himself never gave evidence that he had even read _Das __Judentum_. Wagner's ideas were really rather complicated and his feelings ambivalent despite his harsh remarks, and he was always perfectly happy to have Jewish friends and associates who were in turn happy to overlook his cranky theorizing.

An interesting article discussing _Das Judentum_ is here: http://thinkclassical.blogspot.com/2012/02/wagners-judaism-in-music-guide-and.html

Among other things it points out that Wagner's writings need to be read in the original German, since his writing style was convoluted and available translations are apt to be inaccurate, biased, and outdated. We tend to think we know what Wagner thought and said, but most of what we "know" is based on less-than-reliable accounts based on previous less-than-reliable accounts translated from nearly impenetrable German prose.

Prejudice in any form is to be deplored, but when we criticize historical figures for it we should do our homework and try to get an accurate picture. That can be difficult in Wagner's case.


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> There was only one tract, _Das Judentum in der Musik_.


It is almost two, because he republished it with an addition which doubled the length of it years later. And according to his Wikipedia profile he was an incessant writer of newspaper articles on the topic, and neither supported nor disavowed anti-Semitic politicians who invoked him.

In my mind, a person who sits at the dinner table muttering the standard prejudices of the time perhaps is only guilty in a passive sense, and a captive of his era. Someone who is publishing books and writing newspaper articles is culpable in an active sense. I personally find him an unpalatable character, although his music is something separate.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Baron Scarpia said:


> Lenny was a generally good guy, but I didn't think of him because I don't consider him much of a composer. I wasn't aware of any nasty or selfish quotes.


There was the way he treated José Carreras during the _West Side Story_ recording. Not a shining moment.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Baron Scarpia said:


> Lenny was a generally good guy, but I didn't think of him because I don't consider him much of a composer. I wasn't aware of any nasty or selfish quotes.
> 
> Now, I've broken my promise to be done.


You could read all about him if you care. As for him not being much of a composer, you're more than entitled to your opinion, but the fact is that on the whole his music is much better known, more popular and frequently performed than the music of many of his 20th-century American contemporaries who were considered more important composers than he when they were alive and active. And I think part of that was due to the many hats he wore that together with his star charisma took attention away from his work as a classical composer: Broadway musical composer, conductor, television celebrity, lecturer, proponent of social causes, etc. But as Woodduck alluded to above, as the years pass, a composer's reputation is gradually less colored by the life he led.

Edit: Your use of the nickname "Lenny" actually demonstrates my point. You are apparently old enough to remember the man, and the way everyone who met him or even just saw him on stage or on TV instantly felt they were his close friend, rather than just his music.


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## OperaChic (Aug 26, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> There was only one tract, _Das Judentum in der Musik_. It was not a "popular" kind of essay, it dealt with the subject of "Jewishness in music" in a rather eccentric and esoteric way, it wasn't widely read, there was plenty of disapproval among the few who cared enough to read it, and its political influence is really impossible to determine but seems likely to have been negligible. It didn't advocate any sort of political action against Jews, and in fact it pointed out that Jews had been treated shamefully by European society.
> 
> After his brief youthful flirtation with the revolutionary socialist-anarchist movement, Wagner took no active part in social reform. He was known as an eccentric character who was frequently satirized in the press for both his "music of the future" and his quirky lifestyle (his affairs, his extravagance, his silk underwear, etc.). His thoughts on Jews don't seem to have interested or impressed many people, and it may come as a surprise that Hitler himself never gave evidence that he had even read _Das __Judentum_. Wagner's ideas were really rather complicated and his feelings ambivalent despite his harsh remarks, and he was always perfectly happy to have Jewish friends and associates who were in turn happy to overlook his cranky theorizing.
> 
> ...


There's an excellent book, Stewart Spencer's _Wagner Remembered_, that's compiled from reminiscences of those who knew and interacted with Wagner first hand. It allows us a glimpse into Wagner's personality and character beyond the caricatures of him that have been created of him posthumously as if he were some sort of composite of all his worst features. One thing that becomes clear is that even in his lifetime he was a polarizing figure, and those who were moved by his music and sympathetic to his artistic goals admired and idolized him, often even finding him rather charming! To those who were uninterested in his music he was often summed up as temperamental and disagreeable. A fascinating and complicated man to be sure.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I've often suspected that Wagner's attitudes toward Jews were bound up with his money problems. For instance, many music publishers were Jewish, and I think he felt he was treated unfairly. "Jews have taken control of the world through money and now have taken control of art." Beethoven's relationships with publishers prompted even him into mild anti-Semitism on rare occasion, as when he complained of a publisher "playing a Jew trick" when paying him.

Similarly, the Jew Meyerbeer helped Wagner financially from time to time. But when he would no longer do so, Wagner turned on him viciously in _Das Judenthum_. "Meyerbeer is popular because the public lacks taste, and because he assuages their boredom. He is incapable of serious artistic expression, and this incapacity is both the sign and the result of his Jewhood."


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Who worst bigot than Wagner? This one is not in the classical music realm, but rivals Wagner for anti-Semitism: Henry Ford.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Who worst bigot than Wagner? This one is not in the classical music realm, but rivals Wagner for anti-Semitism: Henry Ford.


Hitler admired Ford and kept his portrait next to his desk. There's actually a Wagner connection:

"On February 1, 1924, Ford received Kurt Ludecke, a representative of Hitler, at home. Ludecke was introduced to Ford by Siegfried Wagner (son of the composer Richard Wagner) and his wife Winifred, both Nazi sympathizers and antisemites. Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused." (Wiki)


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Fredx2098 said:


> Ahh, yes. It's all hunky dory because it was popular back then. Let's all make sure to always follow the popular opinion. Any type of prejudice is bad no matter what the context or circumstances. Everyone being racist doesn't make it okay, it makes them all bad people.


I agree. I did not say that antisemitism was good. But we all have different prejudices and having some silly opinions/prejudices is not a serious crime. I would need to know the context of Wagner's life to know why he held those prejudices


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

Jacck said:


> I agree. I did not say that antisemitism was good. But we all have different prejudices and having some silly opinions/prejudices is not a serious crime. I would need to know the context of Wagner's life to know why he held those prejudices


I don't feel like I have any prejudices, but if I do, I certainly don't voice them, and I certainly don't write essays asserting them. Of course there's nothing to do about Wagner but talk, but he seems to have been an unsavory fellow from what I've read. I love the guy's music though.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

I'm prejudice against juicy oranges eaten by Judges (JOEBJs)


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Baron Scarpia said:


> A deeply flawed person who was attentive to his children? (Including children fathered with his best friend's wife, presumably.)


That describes rather a lot of people. Wagner was probably perfectly normal. Not even a worthy candidate for the Jerry Springer Show.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm with those who feel that great music is still great music (and I _will _listen to and enjoy it) even if the composer was an awful person .... but only when this is in the historical past. If the bigoted person (composer or performer) is still alive I will be much more likely to avoid their music. On the question of "that was a common view back then" and "the past is a different country" it seems to me that yes our views on several issues were deeply wrong and that adopting the same views is not something we can condemn. After all we can't expect a musician of genius to also be a genius in philosophy. But I still expect people to have a moral compass and I think this is particularly the case with artists, who are after all concerned with feeding our souls. But the place I look to find evidence of that is in their art rather than in their lives.

But, for the living, it is important to me that I do not support the work of people who hold objectionable views and if they act objectionably - and we have seen plenty of examples, recently - I will definitely avoid them.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> I'm prejudice against juicy oranges eaten by Judges (JOEBJs)


Yes but JOE BJs could be taken alarmingly out of context


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm with those who feel that great music is still great music (and I _will _listen to and enjoy it) even if the composer was an awful person .... but only when this is in the historical past. If the bigoted person (composer or performer) is still alive I will be much more likely to avoid their music. On the question of "that was a common view back then" and "the past is a different country" it seems to me that yes our views on several issues were deeply wrong and that adopting the same views is not something we can condemn. After all we can't expect a musician of genius to also be a genius in philosophy. But I still expect people to have a moral compass and I think this is particularly the case with artists, who are after all concerned with feeding our souls. But the place I look to find evidence of that is in their art rather than in their lives.
> 
> But, for the living, it is important to me that I do not support the work of people who hold objectionable views and if they act objectionably - and we have seen plenty of examples, recently - I will definitely avoid them.


This illustrates my point very well. In time the man fades away, his art remains. A good example of this today is that many people don't want to see Woody Allen movies due to some questionable conduct in his personal life. I won't be around to see it, but in 50 years all that likely will have been forgotten.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm with those who feel that great music is still great music (and I _will _listen to and enjoy it) even if the composer was an awful person .... but only when this is in the historical past. If the bigoted person (composer or performer) is still alive I will be much more likely to avoid their music. On the question of "that was a common view back then" and "the past is a different country" it seems to me that yes our views on several issues were deeply wrong and that adopting the same views is not something we can condemn. After all we can't expect a musician of genius to also be a genius in philosophy. But I still expect people to have a moral compass and I think this is particularly the case with artists, who are after all concerned with feeding our souls. But the place I look to find evidence of that is in their art rather than in their lives.
> 
> But, for the living, it is important to me that I do not support the work of people who hold objectionable views and if they act objectionably - and we have seen plenty of examples, recently - I will definitely avoid them.


This is a perfectly reasonable stance, and some people did take it with respect to Wagner. On the other hand, it was impossible to deny or ignore the importance of Wagner the composer, and lots of people, especially musicians, were willing and able to ignore the more disagreeable parts of his character and devote themselves to working on behalf of his art. Wagner's chosen conductor for _Parsifal,_ Hermann Levi, even defended Wagner's to his rabbi father, saying that Wagner's views on Jews were not a mere vulgar antisemitism, that Wagner was really "noble," and that it was the greatest privilege of his life to work for him. Some have tried to portray Levi as a "self-hating Jew," but that image doesn't accord well with his known character, intellect and professional stature. It does seem that he was able to maintain a balanced view of the situation, even despite Wagner's offensive and ridiculous suggestion that he convert to Christianity (a suggestion made all the more ridiculous by the fact that Wagner's own version of Christianity was unorthodox enough to make the idea of "converting" to it problematic).


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Edit: sorry... maybe this post wasn't within the limits of the TOS... family-friendly site, after all...


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## Guest (Aug 7, 2018)

eugeneonagain said:


> That describes rather a lot of people. Wagner was probably perfectly normal. Not even a worthy candidate for the Jerry Springer Show.


He wrote a book in which he compared Jewish composers to maggots devouring the corpse of German culture. I think he would have worked just fine on Jerry Springer.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

The fact that Wagner became so hugely famous as a composer is the reason few can really compare in infamy as well. His infamy is more famous than most composers.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> The fact that Wagner became so hugely famous as a composer is the reason few can really compare in infamy as well. His infamy is more famous than most composers.


That is exactly right, and why I mentioned Vincent D'Indy (1851-1931). He was a staunch, ultra-far right French monarchist from an aristocratic family. This was not a joke, as a descendant of the Bourbon dynasty was nearly restored to the French throne in the 1870s. And he was at least as anti-Jewish as Wagner. But few care today, if they ever did.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

fluteman said:


> That is exactly right, and why I mentioned Vincent D'Indy (1851-1931). He was a staunch, ultra-far right French monarchist from an aristocratic family. This was not a joke, as a descendant of the Bourbon dynasty was nearly restored to the French throne in the 1870s. And he was at least as anti-Jewish as Wagner. But few care today, if they ever did.


D'Indy's anti-semitism was directly influenced by Wagner's, as was his work, although his work incoporates some of that Wagnerism via Cesar Franck. Also his musical style developed individually after imbibing the atmosphere of the Franckist school.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

deprofundis said:


> ...In all fairness i feel Wagner got all the blame so did the germans , has there past keep following them there hunted & stigmatized for life, by what happen and get label nazzi of worst kind , well ok, why crrucified germans and forget klan activity targeting minority and catholic ****** hey? per se, whit all modesty , whit all respect i says, what is an american equivalence to wagner in term of bigotery...


I think Wagner was one of the most odious individuals in music, and not only for his racist ideology. Its true however that situated in context, Wagner's racism can be tied to the overt nationalism of the times. The theory of the race (rassenkunde) and its various offshoots had numerous supporters, such as de Gobineau and H. S. Chaimberlain. The Dreyfuss affair is a case in point in how racism became entrenched in the apparatus of governments way before the 1930's.

Racism exists everywhere, and America's history of slavery is the nearest equivalent of Europe's with anti-semitism. Since you mention America I don't know of any musician there (who can be considered to have equal status to Wagner) who was so deeply racist. There has been an ongoing controversy about a statue of Stephen Foster in Pittsburgh being removed because of its depiction of a slave. That debate brought up similar issues in terms of the difference between commemorating things like slavery and glorifying them. Wagner continues to touch a similar raw nerve, and I think these issues will forever remain controversial and cannot be fully resolved.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tue-of-stephen-foster-and-black-banjo-player/


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## RogerExcellent (Jun 11, 2018)

Sid James said:


> I think Wagner was one of the most odious individuals in music, and not only for his racist ideology. Its true however that situated in context, Wagner's racism can be tied to the overt nationalism of the times. The theory of the race (rassenkunde) and its various offshoots had numerous supporters, such as de Gobineau and H. S. Chaimberlain. The Dreyfuss affair is a case in point in how racism became entrenched in the apparatus of governments way before the 1930's.
> 
> Racism exists everywhere, and America's history of slavery is the nearest equivalent of Europe's with anti-semitism. Since you mention America I don't know of any musician there (who can be considered to have equal status to Wagner) who was so deeply racist. There has been an ongoing controversy about a statue of Stephen Foster in Pittsburgh being removed because of its depiction of a slave. That debate brought up similar issues in terms of the difference between commemorating things like slavery and glorifying them. Wagner continues to touch a similar raw nerve, and I think these issues will forever remain controversial and cannot be fully resolved.
> 
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tue-of-stephen-foster-and-black-banjo-player/


Sid When did you get back?


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

Sid James said:


> I think Wagner was one of the most odious individuals in music, and not only for his racist ideology. Its true however that situated in context, Wagner's racism can be tied to the overt nationalism of the times. The theory of the race (rassenkunde) and its various offshoots had numerous supporters, such as de Gobineau and H. S. Chaimberlain. The Dreyfuss affair is a case in point in how racism became entrenched in the apparatus of governments way before the 1930's.
> 
> Racism exists everywhere, and America's history of slavery is the nearest equivalent of Europe's with anti-semitism. Since you mention America I don't know of any musician there (who can be considered to have equal status to Wagner) who was so deeply racist. There has been an ongoing controversy about a statue of Stephen Foster in Pittsburgh being removed because of its depiction of a slave. That debate brought up similar issues in terms of the difference between commemorating things like slavery and glorifying them. Wagner continues to touch a similar raw nerve, and I think these issues will forever remain controversial and cannot be fully resolved.
> 
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tue-of-stephen-foster-and-black-banjo-player/


John Powell was a white supremacist.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Had the wrong people not fallen in love with Wagner’s music, his reputation might have been only half as bad, not to excuse his anti-Semitic writings, of course. People forget that his screed on the Jews was published in the magazine started by Robert Schumann, though he wasn’t the editor of the publication at the time. But he must’ve approved. Wagner went as far as he did because he was determined to get his music heard and felt that lesser composers, according to him, like Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, we’re standing in his way. So he found a way to attack them and tried to destroy their reputations. But he never advocated the extermination camps, did he? People also forget that the American Henry Ford was a staunch anti-Semite who caught the attention of Hitler. So anti-Semitism has been in the air at various times in history, especially when people are looking for a scapegoat to blame all their ills on. As bad as Wagner was, he could’ve even been worse, and it took a sociopath like Hitler and his henchmen to take anti-Semitism to a level of madness that was unprecedented on the planet. Anne Frank!


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

Larkenfield said:


> Had the wrong people not fallen in love with Wagner's music, his reputation might have been only half as bad, not to excuse his anti-Semitic writings, of course. People forget that his screed on the Jews was published in the magazine started by Robert Schumann, though he wasn't the editor of the publication at the time. But he must've approved.


No I disagree there, Schumann took no role in the NZfM after 1843, when he sold the paper to Franz Bendel (Judenthum was published in 1844). Schumann would never have approved an article attacking Mendelssohn. Schumann took deep offense at Liszt for Liszt's disparagement of Mendelssohn, and for his description of the Piano Quintet as 'Leipzigerisch' (a dig at Mendelssohn). Schumann consistently praised Mendelssohn despite very little encouragement heading the other way.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Eusebius12 said:


> No I disagree there, Schumann took no role in the NZfM after 1843, when he sold the paper to Franz Bendel (Judenthum was published in 1844). Schumann would never have approved an article attacking Mendelssohn. Schumann took deep offense at Liszt for Liszt's disparagement of Mendelssohn, and for his description of the Piano Quintet as 'Leipzigerisch' (a dig at Mendelssohn). Schumann consistently praised Mendelssohn despite very little encouragement heading the other way.


Hmmm... It isn't a secret that Robert and Clara Schumann were overtly antisemitic. I found this in an article on Meyerbeer:

_Schumann complained [referring to Meyerbeer's use of "A Mighty Fortress" in Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots"]: "It is too much for a good Protestant when he hears his most hallowed song bawled forth from the stage." In letters to his wife Clara, Schumann also expressed anti-Semitic hatred of Mendelssohn, but his published views on Meyerbeer were more influential, as Conway explains. Schumann's attack on the supposed evil inherent in Meyerbeer's very being would inspire later anti-Semitic articles by the composer and music critic Theodor Uhlig, a Wagner devotee, and later by Wagner himself in his notorious 1850 tract "Das Judenthum in der Musik" ("Jewishness in Music" or, as Conway translates the title, "Jewry in Music")._

I've read elsewhere that Schumann once said to Clara of Mendelssohn, _"Jews remain Jews … don't put yourself out too much."_

The more I investigate, the less anomalous Wagner's antisemitism appears.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Hmmm... It isn't a secret that Robert and Clara Schumann were overtly antisemitic. I found this in an article on Meyerbeer:
> 
> _Schumann complained [referring to Meyerbeer's use of "A Mighty Fortress" in Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots"]: "It is too much for a good Protestant when he hears his most hallowed song bawled forth from the stage." In letters to his wife Clara, Schumann also expressed anti-Semitic hatred of Mendelssohn, but his published views on Meyerbeer were more influential, as Conway explains. Schumann's attack on the supposed evil inherent in Meyerbeer's very being would inspire later anti-Semitic articles by the composer and music critic Theodor Uhlig, a Wagner devotee, and later by Wagner himself in his notorious 1850 tract "Das Judenthum in der Musik" ("Jewishness in Music" or, as Conway translates the title, "Jewry in Music")._
> 
> ...


Schumann's anti-semitism was far less overt than Wagner's. Schumann detested Meyerbeer artistically, just as he detested some of Liszt's work (Liszt wasn't Jewish). It is easy then to retroactively rationalize the hatred of the music and make some generalized ethnic connotation (for the 19th century mind). There is almost no trace of anti-semitism in Schumann's dealings with Mendelssohn. Still, Bendel's and Schumann's views were often diametrically opposed on many subjects, so there is no reason to suppose Judenthum met with Schumann's approval in any way. How could it when you read Schumann's encomia of Mendelssohn.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A funny Schumann story involving Mendelssohn. He had attended a performance of the Italian Symphony and written a review. It was very enthusiastic. He wrote about Mendelssohn’s insight and accuracy in evoking the Italian countryside, an orgy of brigands in the finale, and so forth.

Just after the review went to print, Schumann discovered that he had actually heard the Scottish Symphony.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

Yes, the 19th century saw all sorts of ridiculous things in the name of program music. Bulow wrote something about one of Chopin's Preludes supposedly depicting Chopin trying to recover his inspiration by hitting his head with a hammer! Then fast semi-quavers depicting blood trickling from his head...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> A funny Schumann story involving Mendelssohn. He had attended a performance of the Italian Symphony and written a review. It was very enthusiastic. He wrote about Mendelssohn's insight and accuracy in evoking the Italian countryside, an orgy of brigands in the finale, and so forth.
> 
> Just after the review went to print, Schumann discovered that he had actually heard the Scottish Symphony.


I wonder what he thought when he heard that very Scottish pentatonic tune in the scherzo. Angus in Italy?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

In fairness to Schumann on the Mendelssohn symphonies:

"_Scotland is rarely mistaken for Italy, but it is not entirely criminal that Robert Schumann would later assume one for the other in a review of Symphony No. 3 since neither of Mendelssohn's travel symphonies remembers its inspiration in any obvious way (the Salterello finale of the "Italian" notwithstanding). Without the nicknames, in fact, it could be credited as an honest mistake for anyone to hear the open vistas, religious gravity and mighty architecture of Italy in both pieces."_

http://www.utahsymphony.org/insight/program-notes/740-mendelssohn-symphony-no-4-in-a-major-op-90-"italian"?tmpl=component&print=1


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## RogerExcellent (Jun 11, 2018)

Maybe he got his Single Malt and Grappa mixed up


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