# I'm giving a talk on Wagner



## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

I'm a member of a quasi-intellectual dining club where we each have to give a talk at our meeting on a rotating basis. After consulting with a fellow member he suggested I do a talk on Wagner! I relish the idea obviously.

So... what to say? It's not appropriate to play musical excerpts, as I think it should really be about the man, his art, his influence on other creative minds (Joyce, Eliot, Tolkien), politics, philosophy etc.

I'm not short of books for reference but I'd like to know what you think are interesting aspects that could be explored. What are you favourite interesting Wagner nuggets?

As the meeting involves a civilised discussion after the talk, I'd like my talk to lead into a suitable area to discuss.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

The most interesting thing might be to discuss his influence on other arts, or simply his idea of creating a "complete work of art", which I don't think would require getting into musical jargon at all.

You could get into his ideas about nationalism and (as a side note, but not as a main topic), the anti-Semitism, but please, don't bother with the Nazi thing, because I don't think it's relevant, and it's already been done to death.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

I bumped into some know-it-all recently who claimed Wagner was a Nazi-sympathiser! Proving a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Alexander said:


> I bumped into some know-it-all recently who claimed Wagner was a Nazi-sympathiser! Proving a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.


Speaking of which, is Wagner still banned in Israel?


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Hmmm yeah that's tough, it just depends on how specific you'd want your talk to be. You could talk about the relationship between the man and the works of art he produced, in the sense of how they are kind of two sides of the same coin. Or maybe trace some common themes that were important in Wagner's art, like the idea of redemption and what that meant for Wagner; or the juxtaposition he gives between the needs of the individual and the needs of society, and how the two are in constant conflict in his dramas.

Or following up on what Mahlerian said, talk about his ideas on the complete work of art and how they changed over time, and the role he saw music playing in his his art through different stages in his career and how that affected how he composed.

The idea of tracing his influence on other creative artists seems like a pretty good topic though.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Speaking of which, is Wagner still banned in Israel?


I think Barenboim said something recently about it being an unofficial ban or something. You can hear Wagner there on the radio, but it's considered to be in bad taste to perform his music in the concert hall, although a few conductors like Barenboim himself have played a few of his pieces in that venue. And I think they were well received by the audiences, although they did cause some general controversy after the fact.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Alexander said:


> I bumped into some know-it-all recently who claimed Wagner was a Nazi-sympathiser! Proving a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.


... and clearly demonstrating they were not, by any stretch of the imagination, "a know-it-all!"


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> I think Barenboim said something recently about it being an unofficial ban or something. You can hear Wagner there on the radio, but it's considered to be in bad taste to perform his music in the concert hall, although a few conductors like Barenboim himself have played a few of his pieces in that venue. And I think they were well received by the audiences, although they did cause some general controversy after the fact.


Whatever the official State cant on Wagner and the playing of it, the fact is even the 'first generation' new Israelis, those who were formerly Germans, at least, were more than fond of Wagner. They loved it, and many of them would play recordings in their homes, because they did love it and were more than a little sentimental about some of the better things from their former lives which were missed in their new state and its culture: it became not just music they loved, but a highly yearned-for sentimental bit of business as well.

There was huge controversy when Barenboim did program it in concert, but he was also very aware of that 'secret shame' love of Wagner's music which many an Israeli harbored.

Though entirely understandable, demonizing music based upon a later politician choosing it to symbolize something it clearly never did is an interesting state of affairs as to how people will later regard that music. I'm sure later generations less familiar with the music itself were inculcated with a deep hatred of music which they barely knew first-hand.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

PetrB said:


> ... and clearly demonstrating they were not, by any stretch of the imagination, "a know-it-all!"


People such as this are really "know nothings", but are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they know everything there is to know on any given topic or issue. :scold:


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

samurai said:


> People such as this are really "know nothings", but are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they know everything there is to know on any given topic or issue. :scold:


There is a type so needy / hungry for the limelight that they really don't care whether it is positive or negative attention they are garnering. It is possible they do not even recognize the difference between one sort of attention or the other


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

. This is a talk I did on Wagner if interested.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Brilliant John! There may be some plagiarism about to occur  Very interesting talk. Well done.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Alexander said:


> I'm a member of a quasi-intellectual dining club where we each have to give a talk at our meeting on a rotating basis. After consulting with a fellow member he suggested I do a talk on Wagner! I relish the idea obviously.
> 
> So... what to say?


Perhaps they're quasi-intellectual enough to benefit from a presentation addressing the most stubborn myths that have attached themselves to the man and his music.

If I was on the soap-box, I'd be strongly tempted to take _that_ tack...


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Speaking of which, is Wagner still banned in Israel?


Not banned. Just unwelcome!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

It does somewhat perplex me that people almost say it's a crime for Israel not wanting Wagner's music. It is no crime at all. It was RW's anti-Semitic views that were the grit to the oyster in his music. If public opinion in Israel is against Wagner being played then so be it. Just how much Wagner is implicated in the Holocaust is a matter of debate. But the fact is he is in many people's minds due to his own brainless pamphleteering. And when one visits Yad Vashem one realises that memories are not easily erased, nor should they be.
It is Wagner himself who was the author of the prejudices against him.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A strong and precise statement, PetrB! I would only point out the further shame of critics and analysts who try to read antisemitism and proto-Nazism into the operas themselves. These people are as obtuse and perverse as the Nazis themselves in failing to perceive Wagner's profound denunciation, in the Ring and Parsifal, of the corruption inherent in the pursuit of power - including their own. That message must ultimately be embraced by, and must redeem Wagner's music for, Israelis and all of us. All great art is better than its creators and its appreciators alike, and if Wagner's art is unusually handicapped by the characters of both Old Richard and his Hitlerian worshippers, it will nonetheless win in the courts of posterity.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> A strong and precise statement, PetrB! I would only point out the further shame of critics and analysts who try to read antisemitism and proto-Nazism into the operas themselves. These people are as obtuse and perverse as the Nazis themselves in failing to perceive Wagner's profound denunciation, in the Ring and Parsifal, of the corruption inherent in the pursuit of power - including their own. That message must ultimately be embraced by, and must redeem Wagner's music for, Israelis and all of us. All great art is better than its creators and its appreciators alike, and if Wagner's art is unusually handicapped by the characters of both Old Richard and his Hitlerian worshippers, it will nonetheless win in the courts of posterity.


Sorry, but it is naive not to recognise that Wagner's operas do not have a strain of anti-semitism running through them. It is, as Barry Millington rightly points out, 'the grist in the oyster'. Of course, this anti-semitism would probably not have bothered succeeding generations nearly as much if it had not been for the admiration of Wagner by Hitler and his thugs. 
To read into the Ring a simple denunciation of power is, however, simplistic. There is a glorying in power also inherent in the Ring. The fact is Wagner gives mixed messages. In Parsifal there is the exaltation of purity while glorying in sensuality at the same time. 
As for the music being 'redeemed' - this is far fetched. Opera is entertainment not spiritual experience.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Maybe with the Ring you can say that. Although if not pointed out to me when I first got into it, I never would have noticed.
And what about Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Meister, Tristan, Parsifal?

Nothing remotely anti semetic there. unless i'm again missing something.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Itullian said:


> Maybe with the Ring you can say that. Although if not pointed out to me when I first got into it, I never would have noticed.
> And what about Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Meister, Tristan, Parsifal?
> 
> Nothing remotely anti semetic there. unless i'm again missing something.


Heh, you're not missing anything my friend. The fact is, even suggesting there is an antisemitic subtext in _Der Ring_, let alone any of the other operas is so entirely baseless and devoid of evidence that it should be beneath serious consideration or discussion. There are two basic problems that proponents of these theories have, and are never able to convincingly explain. The first is, as you pointed out, if one had no knowledge of Wagner's life or of his antisemitism, they could never possibly find antisemitic caricatures in the operas. There are no characters who are explicitly Jewish in the operas, like a Shylock or a Fagin. You have to completely twist and contort Wagner's life and art, and combine them in some sort of crazy mish-mash to even come up with such a cockeyed theory. And secondly, and decisively for me in terms of Wagner's intentions, is that Wagner never once commented or insinuated that any of the characters were supposed to be Jewish caricatures. Not in any of his candid comments to Cosima recorded in her diaries, or in any letters or essays explaining the meanings of his works as he saw them. Bottom-line, these interpretations revealing the true, "dark" underside of the operas just don't add up in the actual experiences that audiences have of them, and can't even begin to fit the dramas in any coherent way.


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## SteveSherman (Jan 9, 2014)

I have known Wagner apologists who have actually read Das Judentum in der Musik and still maintain with a straight face that Beckmesser is not a Jewish caricature. This to me is willful blindness.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> Maybe with the Ring you can say that. Although if not pointed out to me when I first got into it, I never would have noticed.
> And what about Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Meister, Tristan, Parsifal?
> 
> Nothing remotely anti semetic there. unless i'm again missing something.


Many people see antisemitism in Beckmesser. To say 'nothing remotely antisemitic' is blinding oneself to the obvious. 
As to Parsifal, just read the debate about it.
One can argue the extent. To deny it seems to be denying the obvious.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> Heh, you're not missing anything my friend. The fact is, even suggesting there is an antisemitic subtext in _Der Ring_, let along any of the other operas is so entirely baseless and devoid of evidence that it should be beneath serious consideration or discussion. There are two basic problems that proponents of these theories have, and are never able to convincingly explain. The first is, as you pointed out, if one had no knowledge of Wagner's life or of his antisemitism, they could never possibly interpret antisemitic caricatures in them. There are no characters who are explicitly Jewish in the operas, like a Shylock or a Fagin. You have to completely twist and contort Wagner's life and art, and combine them in some sort of crazy mish-mash to even come up with such a cockeyed theory. And secondly, and decisively for me in terms of Wagner's intentions, is that Wagner never once commented or insinuated that any of the characters were supposed to be Jewish caricatures. Not in any of his candid comments to Cosima recorded in his diaries, or in any letters or essays explaining the meanings of his works as he saw them. Bottom-line, these interpretations revealing the true, "dark" underside of the operas just don't add up in the actual experiences that audiences have of them, and can't even begin to fit the dramas in any coherent way.


Sorry but you have to twist and distort Wagner's life and art to come up with the cockeyed theory there is not an antisemitism subtext in his works.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

No, David. You can be contentious and make inflammatory comments all you'd like but it doesn't make up for the lack of support for these claims. Is it _possible_ that there is antisemitism in the operas? Yes, in theory. But if it wasn't important enough for Wagner to ever have mentioned, and if it is so hidden and coded that no one can detect it without pseudo scholars pointing out the "obvious" to everyone and calling them ignorant if it fails to register, it can hardly be said to be an integral element in the works. At best it amounts to being a very imaginative but unsubstantiated (and may I add rather useless) interpretation that only serves those who want to see these things in the dramas. So I wish you well in your fanciful endeavors and bid you adieu.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> No, David. You can be contentious and make inflammatory comments all you'd like but it doesn't make up for the lack of support for these claims. Is it _possible_ that there is antisemitism in the operas? Yes, in theory. But if it wasn't important enough for Wagner to ever have mentioned, and if it is so hidden and coded that no one can detect it without pseudo scholars pointing out the "obvious" to everyone and calling them ignorant if it fails to register, it can hardly be said to be an integral element in the works. At best it amounts to being a very imaginative but unsubstantiated (and may I add rather useless) interpretation that only serves those who want to see these things in the dramas. So I wish you well in your fanciful endeavors and bid you adieu.


Sorry, friend, but it is not fanciful to state the obvious. It seems to me ironic that I am accused of making inflammatory comments about Wagner's anti-semitism when he himself published them for all to see!


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

SteveSherman said:


> I have known Wagner apologists who have actually read Das Judentum in der Musik and still maintain with a straight face that Beckmesser is not a Jewish caricature. This to me is willful blindness.


This goes to prove my point quite nicely, actually. One _has_ to read an essay like _Das Judentum in der Musik_ and interpret the operas through that prism for it to even be _possible_ for one to see antisemitism in them.

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. If a work of art fails to convey a particular meaning on its own, and that meaning is only discoverable through analysis of outside sources and a study of the artist's life, it can be firmly deduced that no such meaning exists in the work of art itself.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> This goes to prove my point quite nicely, actually. One _has_ to read an essay like _Das Judentum in der Musik_ and interpret the operas through that prism for it to even be _possible_ for one to see antisemitism in them.
> 
> The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. If a work of art fails to convey a particular meaning on its own, and that meaning is only discoverable through analysis of outside sources and a study of the artist's life, it can be firmly deduced that no such meaning exists in the work of art itself.


Sorry, friend. We'll just have to differ on this one! You are saying that Wagner wrote his operas completely in isolation from his personal philosophies. That just doesn't add up.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Sorry, friend. We'll just have to differ on this one!


Quite right.



> You are saying that Wagner wrote his operas completely in isolation from his personal philosophies. That just doesn't add up.


No, that's not what I'm saying at all, but I'm sure you know that.  I'm saying an artist's personal philosophies are irrelevant for our judgment of a work of art. Something which is pretty much taken for granted by most.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> Quite right.
> 
> No, that's not what I'm saying at all, but I'm sure you know that.  I'm saying an artist's personal philosophies are irrelevant for our judgment of a work of art. Something which is pretty much taken for granted by most.


You are now proving my point that his personal philosophies are there. To say they are irrelevant is just inconsistent. You might just as well say Beethoven's ideals of freedom and brotherhood are irrelevant for the ninth symphony. They are woven into the fabric.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

DavidA said:


> You are now proving my point that his personal philosophies are there. To say they are irrelevant is just inconsistent.


...what? Haha.



> You might just as well say Beethoven's ideals of freedom and brotherhood are irrelevant for the ninth symphony. They are woven into the fabric.


They are indeed. "Joy, beautiful spark of the divinity, Daughter from Elysium, We enter your sanctuary, burning with fervour, o heavenly being! Your magic brings together what custom has sternly divided. All men shall become brothers, wherever your gentle wings hover."

Really David, you don't seem to have a cogent argument here so let's just quit this nonsense.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> ...what? Haha.
> 
> They are indeed. "Joy, beautiful spark of the divinity, Daughter from Elysium, We enter your sanctuary, burning with fervour, o heavenly being! Your magic brings together what custom has sternly divided. All men shall become brothers, wherever your gentle wings hover."
> 
> Really David, you don't seem to have a cogent argument here so let's just quit this nonsense.


I think to accuse me of not having an argument when all you can say is Haha and quote Schiller just reflects your own paucity of argument.

But I agree! Let's drop it here.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Bruckner too. A memorable film snippet is seeing the Nazi elite in full uniforms mesmerized at a performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony adagio conducted by Furtwangler.

Bruckner and Wagner were the two faves of the Nazi elite.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Beethoven's ideals were stated obviouslt by the use of the poem.
Wagners, if we are to believe they're there, are very obscure. And must be pointed out, and even then dubious.
I think he could have been a lot more obvious if he wished to make that point.
He wasn't shy you know.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

hpowders said:


> Bruckner too. A memorable film snippet is seeing the Nazi elite in full uniforms mesmerized at a performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony adagio conducted by Furtwangler.
> 
> Bruckner and Wagner were the two faves of the Nazi elite.


So Bruckner was a Nazi too then, right?


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Itullian said:


> So Bruckner was a Nazi too then, right?


Let's not forget that the Vienna Philharmonic's New Years Day concerts began under the Nazi regime as well. From wikipedia:



> The first concert, given on New Year's Eve in 1939, was proposed by conductor Clemens Krauss and enthusiastically approved by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, because it served the Reich's purposes of "propaganda through entertainment."


Damn that Johann Strauss and his nefarious music!!


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

> The fact is, even suggesting there is an antisemitic subtext in Der Ring, let alone any of the other operas is so entirely baseless and devoid of evidence that it should be beneath serious consideration or discussion


This overwrought statement doesn't really pass muster, since in fact there's a substantial body of debate on this very issue (particularly, as was already pointed out, vis-a-vis Der Meistersinger). One can make grandiose statements about "beneath serious consideration", but that just means that the people who are seriously considering it will continue the conversation without your input.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

hpowders said:


> Bruckner and Wagner were the two faves of the Nazi elite.


I seem to remember that Beethoven was held in at least the same reverence.

And in fact all three composers are still quite popular. And that proves...? Maybe it only proves that the Nazi leadership had musical tastes not so different from our own.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

peterb said:


> This overwrought statement doesn't really pass muster, since in fact there's a substantial body of debate on this very issue (particular, as was already pointed out, vis-a-vis Der Meistersinger). One can make grandiose statements about "beneath serious consideration", but that just means that the people who are seriously considering it will continue the conversation without your input.


Yeah, and there's a "substantial body of debate" on UFO conspiracy theories too. Doesn't mean most of it is isn't trivial and suspect. But do you actually have anything worthwhile to add yourself, or are you just going to critique a small fragment of my post?


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=antisemitism+in+wagner

But, y'know, I'd understand if you thought the debate wasn't credible, since it only involves fringe sources like The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Alex Ross ("[it] can't be ignored. I have long struggled with it."), and countless others. There have been sober, serious movies about the issue. There have been books written about it. The topic is described in academic journals as "one of the most heated debates surrounding contemporary Wagner scholarship". Many of the people considering the issue reach the conclusion that the antisemitism isn't in the music itself, or those who see a Jewish figure in (say) Alberich are mistaken. But to simply bloviate about the decades of research on this topic as being "beneath serious consideration" is a trite and unhelpful response.

Daniel Barenboim doesn't think the topic is beneath serious consideration. But if you'd rather compare his taking it seriously to UFO conspiracy theories, then I'll be sure to extend a similar lack of respect to your arguments.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

peterb said:


> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=antisemitism+in+wagner
> 
> But, y'know, I'd understand if you thought the debate wasn't credible, since it only involves fringe sources like The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Alex Ross ("[it] can't be ignored. I have long struggled with it."), and countless others. There have been sober, serious movies about the issue. Many of the people considering the issue reach the conclusion that the antisemitism isn't in the music itself, or hose who see a Jewish figure in (say) Alberich are mistaken. But to simply bloviate about the decades of research on this topic as being "beneath serious consideration" is a trite and unhelpful response.
> 
> Daniel Barenboim doesn't think the topic is beneath serious consideration. But if you'd rather compare his taking it seriously to UFO conspiracy theories, then I'll be sure to extend a similar lack of respect to your arguments.


Sigh. Ok, ok. First of all, no need to get worked up about the wording of one sentence in one of my posts. I think I explained my position in the rest of the post that you left out of your quote, and in my following posts in this thread.

When you read and listen to hordes of scholarship and journalism on the subject, none of which at the end of the day amounts to anything more than pure conjecture, it's easy to be a bit dismissive I suppose. I would agree that it would be a serious topic, and one that required a sober debate if there was anything to substantiate these claims. In fact, more than that, I would wonder why anyone would want anything to do with these works if they encapsulated hate-filled and racist messages. It would strike me as perverse that people would celebrate them and yet consider them intrinsically vile in nature. The thing is though, in this case I don't think there is a debate because the claims being made are substantial and credible, but because of the *nature* of the claims. In our post-WWII and post-Holocaust climate where antisemitism appears especially odious because of the horrors witnessed in the death camps, the topic is held in utmost prominence in any forum where it is found to be present in some facet or another. And as the Jewish professor Jacob Katz noted, scholars who were investigating Wagner's life, opinions, and works, began to consider "Wagner's antisemitism the key to interpreting his art and in turn establishing his antisemitism on the basis of this interpretation." And once the suggestion is made, people are virtually obligated to take it seriously. To do otherwise, one is accused of (or fears being accused of) being socially, culturally, and morally ignorant. And at a certain point these claims are just widely accepted as being true, or of containing a grain of truth at the least. So I think that's where we mostly are today with this debate: it's taken for granted that because Wagner was an antisemitic the works must at least be partly antisemitic as well, and that's taken to be the launching off point.

I've already demonstrated why I think the theories are detrimentally flawed to begin with, but let's continue if you wish. The fascinating thing about Wagner's music-dramas is that because they are allegorical and symbolic in nature, and because they are truly mythic in stature, their meanings have continued to be argued over for decades and they keep yielding new revelations. And in interpreting a work like _Der Ring_, it often reveals a lot about the interpreter and the meanings and perceptions _they_ see in the work. Of course, this means that the operas can be seen to contain just about _anything_, and often are! :lol: So for anyone who is familiar with Wagner's essays and antisemitic attitudes who is searching for antisemitism in the operas, it's not hard to construe elements to fit in line with their point of view. And in fact there is a whole cottage industry of scholars and writers who are incredibly adept at "Jew-spotting".

Now, I'm sure we're all familiar with the intentional fallacy, but it's basic principle is that the intentions that an artist puts into a work of art are rendered inconsequential in light of what the actual work of art _is_ or _does_. So let's say Wagner really was attempting to insert a kind of coded antisemitism into the core of his operas. Well, if these coded messages are so well hidden that Wagner or anyone else has to tell you that this is what was meant by them for anyone to actually see it, then Wagner has failed in his intentions. And as I've already said before, these issues just don't register with viewers' actual experiences of these great works of art. Someone who wasn't already well aware of Wagner's antisemitism and not trying to find it in the operas couldn't conceivably posit an antisemitic interpretation from them. However, in this case, to add the icing on the cake, there is no reason to believe Wagner ever even _intended_ any such thing. So the speculation is especially disputable.

This leaves commentators arguing for antisemitic subtexts in the operas with insisting that it just has to be there. Why? Because Wagner was antisemitic, that's why. It was part of his make-up. But this is an absurd assertion. Yes, we can all agree that an artist is the sum parts of his experiences and outlooks, and that his artwork might in some way reflect a part of that. But the human mind is far too complex, and the relationship between an artist and the art they produce far too complicated to say that if an artist holds certain strong beliefs and opinions they _necessarily_ have to be present in their work. So if someone is a communist, and this is part of their personal philosophy, it is a given fact that their artwork has to have a communist bent? And if not overtly so, then it is just inherently woven into the subtext of the artworks? And this goes for all religious beliefs, political stances, personal prejudices and so on? Are we to believe you can reconstruct the biography of any given artist based on their art then? Of course not.


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## Yardrax (Apr 29, 2013)

Wagner was most certainly an anti-semite of some description. He also dabbled in hydrotherapy, discussing it in various passages of his biography. I wonder if I could make an academic career for myself by demonstrating how Wagner's operas are inextricably tied up with supporting alternative medicine, and that the mere act of listening to Wagner implicates the listener as being against science.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Bruckner too. A memorable film snippet is seeing the Nazi elite in full uniforms mesmerized at a performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony adagio conducted by Furtwangler.
> 
> Bruckner and Wagner were the two faves of the Nazi elite.


--
Yeah, you better throw out the operettas of Emmerich Kálmán and Karl May Indian stories-- because Hitler liked those too.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Marschallin Blair said:


> --
> Yeah, you better throw out the operettas of Emmerich Kálmán and Karl May Indian stories-- because Hitler liked those too.


And Stalin loved Mozart's 23rd Piano Concerto -- it was on his record player the night he died. Expunge it!


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

As the initiator of this thread I've been interested to read the replies, although the subject of anti-Semitism is a well trodden path, producing inevitable rancour and heat.

I wonder if I could get some thoughts on what Wagner's effect has been on the arts, particularly up to the modern day? Is it simply a cultural spur which we opera fans can revisit in the opera house? Is it any more relevant than, say, Verdi? (Not that I want a Wagner v. Verdi debate!)


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

The other thing that gets me thinking is the Ring cycle in particular, that [fill in your own superlatives] work of art. Undoubtedly part of its reputation rests in its sheer size. We humans are drawn to epics, from the Iliad to Peter Jackson. As my primary passion is music (yeah, really!) I feel a little sad that no other musician since has realised anything close to that ambition, particularly in terms of scale.


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

SilenceIsGolden, I think you're conflating a number of questions into one:

(1) Was Wagner antisemitic? (I think there is widespread agreement on this one)
(2) Was Wagner's antisemitism expressed in his music?
(3) Did Wagner _intend_ for his antisemitism to be expressed in his music
(4) What was the role of Wagner's music in the culture that allowed the rise of the Nazis?

Specifically, I think question (3), which you dwell on, is sort of profoundly uninteresting, except perhaps to a cultural anthropologist or historian. There are plenty of texts that were written with the loveliest of intentions which yet remain deeply racist and vile. You insistence earlier in the thread that unless Wagner _identified_ a character as Jewish he _clearly_ didn't intend it so is simply not a credible statement. We're talking about a culture that (many years after Wagner, of course) created _Der Ewige Jude_. Antisemitism in Europe was part of the water in which Wagner, Germany, and all of western Europe swam. The cartoonish, stereotypical, presumed attributes of Jews would have been so well-known to Wagner, and indeed to every German, Frenchman, and Englishman, that there would simply be no _need_ to label a Jew as such, just as in modern politics when a Congressman uses the word "thug" he doesn't need to explicitly explain that he's using it as a dog-whistle word that means "Young black man that should be unjustly harassed by the police." Certainly Wagner didn't have to hang a 6-pointed star on Alberich to make George Bernard Shaw, one of his contemporaries, explicitly discuss his ransom scene as an allegory for the relationship between Jewish bankers and Christian states. Lastly, there is a simple commonsense element of "by their fruits ye shall know them." For all I know, the guy who designed the Confederate flag owned no slaves and was personally an abolitionist, but if I see a guy who hangs one on his truck up here in Vermont, I know he's a racist pig.



Alex Ross said:


> In Wagner's waning years, Bayreuth became a mecca for all manner of anti-Semites, Aryan priests, and social Darwinists. The monthly publication Bayreuther Blätter broadcast the racist theories of Paul de Lagarde, Arthur de Gobineau, and, most noxiously, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who married Wagner's daughter Eva and became the intellectual leader of Bayreuth after Wagner's death. Although the composer feared that his disciples would make him look ridiculous, he failed to restrain them. Indeed, he singled out for praise several articles that delivered tendentious racial interpretations of his works...Even in Wagner's lifetime the jabbering, gesticulating villains in the operas ... were sometimes understood as cartoons of Jews."


In sum, my objection to your argument is not the conclusion you reach - I think one can make several fair argument's in Wagner's defense - but the overall tone of "to discuss this _requires incontrovertible evidence_ that Wagner _meant it_. We will never find that evidence, and we can and will still have the serious discussion about it anyway.

The strongest argument is the one you don't actually make, which is that by reacting with horror to the music because Hitler and his cronies liked it, we're letting those morons define the meaning of the music.

Question (4) is the most interesting one to me, but unfortunately is the one least suited to being settled by Two Guys Arguing On An Internet Forum. I'll appeal to authority and cite Alex Ross's excellent book _The Rest Is Noise_ and summarize him as pointing out that much of the music of the latter half of the 20th century was a reaction by modern Western (though interestingly, not Soviet) composers' perceptions that music, and specifically tonal and heroic music, was inherently politically conservative and supportive of fascism. Whether or not Wagner's unquestioned antisemitism was _meant_ to be expressed in his music, it's unquestionable that a critical mass of people, both racist and anti-racist, _understand the music as representing it_. That makes it a discussion worth having, and something that can't be waved away with a "Where does the word 'jew' appear in the score?" type argument.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

peterb said:


> SilenceIsGolden, I think you're conflating a number of questions into one:
> 
> (1) Was Wagner antisemitic? (I think there is widespread agreement on this one)
> (2) Was Wagner's antisemitism expressed in his music?
> ...


Actually, I've spent a little time addressing question 3, but most of my efforts have gone to addressing question 2. And question 4 was never actually a part of the discussion, the closest we ever got to that issue (which _I_ find silly and uninteresting, by the way) was when a few other users have pointed out that several other composers were "used" by the Nazis. As I already said, twice or three times in reference to the intentional fallacy, even if he _intended_ characters to be Jewish caricatures or possess Jewish attributes, or he himself recognized that's what he was doing, it doesn't automatically in turn make the characters Jewish or the operas racist. Whether they are or not is something that is determined by the operas themselves, not the ideas surrounding them or behind them. That there really isn't anything antisemitic about them is demonstrated by the fact that there have been generations of concertgoers who have failed to notice these antisemitic qualities in them, including many intelligent and cultured Jews; and unless the operas are interpreted _through the spectrum_ of Wagner's antisemitism, with that knowledge already in hand, it would never cross anyone's mind to see the characters in that way. And looking at the operas and interpreting them from this antisemitic viewpoint says a lot more about us and our priorities and insecurities than it does about Wagner's artistic goals and the works themselves. Now _that_ would be an interesting discussion to have.



> We're talking about a culture that (many years after Wagner, of course) created _Der Ewige Jude_. Antisemitism in Europe was part of the water in which Wagner, Germany, and all of western Europe swam. The cartoonish, stereotypical, presumed attributes of Jews would have been so well-known to Wagner, and indeed to every German, Frenchman, and Englishman, that there would simply be no _need_ to label a Jew as such, just as in modern politics when a Congressman uses the word "thug" he doesn't need to explicitly explain that he's using it as a dog-whistle word that means "Young black man that should be unjustly harassed by the police." Certainly Wagner didn't have to hang a 6-pointed star on Alberich to make George Bernard Shaw, one of his contemporaries, explicitly discuss his ransom scene as an allegory for the relationship between Jewish bankers and Christian states. Lastly, there is a simple commonsense element of "by their fruits ye shall know them." For all I know, the guy who designed the Confederate flag owned no slaves and was personally an abolitionist, but if I see a guy who hangs one on his truck up here in Vermont, I know he's a racist pig.


I disagree with this line of thinking. The philosopher Bryan Magee has addressed this, and since he has explained himself so much more concisely than I ever could, I will quote what he has to say about it:

"Some writers, in desperation, have tried to argue that, well, yes, it is true that there is nothing _explicit_ in the operas about Jews, and it is true that Wagner never explicitly said that there was meant to be, but there was no need for any such explicitness, because everybody in the audiences of those days would realize that it was Jews who were being represented. Writers like Professor Rose can be endlessly resourceful in arguing that the apparent absence of something is itself a proof of its presence. But in fact most audiences, including most of the Jews in those audiences, failed to perceive the connection we are now being told was self-evident. And Wagner, of all people, would have made it clear to them if he had intended it. There is one basic form of argument that is used over and over again by writers of this sort, not only Rose but nearly all of them. It is that _x_ was already associated in people's minds with Jews, and therefore any public reference to _x_ would automatically be taken as referring to Jews without anyone having to say so. There is a reason why such writers are so persistently driven back on this form of argument and it is that usually they can find no evidence to support what they are saying, and the great thing about this particular form of argument is that it explains the absence of evidence. But it is, I am afraid, simply and in itself a bad form of argument. A concrete example of it, and one commonly used, goes like this. In the middle and late-nineteenth century Europe and the Jews were associated in people's minds everywhere with money; they were seen as being the big moneybags and moneylenders, the international capitalists and bankers, who acquired control of things through acquiring control of the purse-strings. Therefore theatre audiences everywhere would take it for granted that if they see a character being represented on the stage as trying to get control of the world through the power of gold, as Mime and his big brother Alberich are in _The Ring_, then these are obviously meant to be Jews, and there is no need for anyone to spell it out. That this is nonsense is illustrated by the fact that if it were true then the international and rapidly growing socialist and communist movements of the nineteenth century would have been assumed on all sides to be militantly anti-semitic, because their most violent and vitriolic attacks were directed year in and year out against the power of capital and money and all the evils of interest, rent and profit. Yet it is simply not the case that this connection was automatically made in people's minds, and everyone familiar with the relevant history or literature must know that: it was not at all taken for granted that what socialists and communists were really doing was attacking Jews -- though of course in any individual case it might be that they were, and sometimes they did. The logical form of the argument is flagrantly false -- and yet there are whole books whose basic construction consists of a set of variations on it."

But even if what you're saying were true, and there was no need to _label_ characters Jews for them to be Jews, it would still stand to reason that Wagner would have to know this, right? I mean, if it were true for everyone else because it was part of the cultural _zeitgeist_, than it would be true for Wagner as well and he himself would recognize these characters as Jews. But this isn't the case. In all of his synopsis of his operas and essays on them he never makes that connection. In fact, there is only one instance where he analyzed any of his operas in terms of race, and this was in a discussion he had with Cosima one morning that she recorded in her diary:

"This morning we went through all the characters of _Der Ring des Nibelungen_ from the point of view of race: the gods white; the dwarfs yellow (Mongols); the blacks the Ethiopians; Loge the half caste."

Now who knows what Wagner meant by any of this, it just goes to show the kinds of strange discussions people have in the privacy of their own home. But it does go to show that it's not true that Wagner equated characters like Mime and Alberich with Jews. When you watch or listen to a commentary of _Der Ring_ and a commentator is quick to add during a discussion of Mime "oh, we all know what Wagner really meant here, this is an antisemitic caricature", that person is severely off base. That wasn't on Wagner's mind at all, actually. Apparently Wagner didn't have any idea of what he was on about. 



> In sum, my objection to your argument is not the conclusion you reach - I think one can make several fair argument's in Wagner's defense - but the overall tone of "to discuss this _requires incontrovertible evidence_ that Wagner _meant it_. We will never find that evidence, and we can and will still have the serious discussion about it anyway.


Should there be serious discussions about Wagner's antisemitism? Absolutely. But I object to the idea that there needs to be a serious consideration given to a topic that is dubious, unsupported, and incredible. This particular discussion isn't about Wagner's antisemitism in general, it's about the claim that his antisemitism infiltrates the operas and DavidA's remark that someone who doesn't see the antisemitism there is just being obtuse! If people honestly don't detect anything antisemitic in these operas in our experience of them, and there's no evidence to back it up, then it may make others feel good to be able to pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves on how socially and culturally aware they are for being such good detectives, but it doesn't make for a very constructive debate since again, everyone can interpret these works differently.



> The strongest argument is the one you don't actually make, which is that by reacting with horror to the music because Hitler and his cronies liked it, we're letting those morons define the meaning of the music.


I didn't make that argument because Hitler and the Nazi's never interpreted the operas as antisemitic tracts.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Anyways, peterb, I don't get the feeling that you're having a discussion and debate with me per say, but have your own preconceived notions that you are very adamant on addressing. Some of which are extraneous to the points I was making. You seem to feel that this topic is severely important and deserves to continue to be hashed out. As for me, rightly or wrongly, I just don't feel the same. I've read and listened to enough on it, most of which is so unpersuasive and seems to be based on false assumptions, exaggerations, and misconceptions that I feel like it's gotten to the point of "beating a dead horse". Which might have contributed to my general "dismissive" attitude that you took so much offense to. In any case, my main interest is in Wagner's operas and my passion for them.

I have no interest in following you down the path of discussing the cultural influence of Wagner's music and it's alleged impact on the rise of the Third Reich. I just don't believe art and music has all the much social import, and don't take seriously the consideration that it could be a motivating or contributory force in an event like the Holocaust. I find the idea a bit ludicrous, to be honest. But there have been plenty of writers who have addressed these issues and attempted to refute these claims. For instance, the gentleman who pens the "Think Classical" blog spends a lot of time addressing this particular topic. So I urge you, and anyone else who is interested in it, to read some his his blog entries and debate with him about it until your heart's content. Book Review - Joachim Köhler "Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and his Disciple"

As for me, I think I'm going to bow out of the discussion at this point, so I wish you all the best.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

I hope you don't bow out without some words on what you think Wagner's impact has been on the arts from his time until today. It's always tough to know whether an artistic world lives in the shadow of someone, or would have been much the same if that person had stepped in front of a tram at 17.

(Similar discussions are had in the pop field about the Beatles I guess.)


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Alexander said:


> I hope you don't bow out without some words on what you think Wagner's impact has been on the arts from his time until today. It's always tough to know whether an artistic world lives in the shadow of someone, or would have been much the same if that person had stepped in front of a tram at 17.
> 
> (Similar discussions are had in the pop field about the Beatles I guess.)


Haha, sure. Well let's see. Like I mentioned in another thread on a different topic, it's so difficult to define the parameters of influence on creative artists because the concept of influence is so elusive and impossible to pin down. You can certainly go by stated influence by artists like the symbolist poets, or implied influence in the literary style of an artist like Marcel Proust, or references to Wagner in other works of art like T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_. You can perceive similarities and structural links in the music of many later composers including Debussy, Schoenberg and 20th century film music composers. But what was the influence of Richard Wagner as an artist on the arts overall? Possibly just as a supreme example of an artist with visions for enlarging the the possibility of expression, and an ability to channel the many conflicting dimensions of his character into fundamentally challenging works of art.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Sorry, but it is naive not to recognise that Wagner's operas do not have a strain of anti-semitism running through them. It is, as Barry Millington rightly points out, 'the grist in the oyster'. Of course, this anti-semitism would probably not have bothered succeeding generations nearly as much if it had not been for the admiration of Wagner by Hitler and his thugs.
> To read into the Ring a simple denunciation of power is, however, simplistic. There is a glorying in power also inherent in the Ring. The fact is Wagner gives mixed messages. In Parsifal there is the exaltation of purity while glorying in sensuality at the same time.
> As for the music being 'redeemed' - this is far fetched. Opera is entertainment not spiritual experience.


Actually finding antisemitism_ in_ the operas is indeed a strain. No one has yet succeeded in doing it.

There are characters in the Ring who glory in power, Alberich and Wotan chief among them. Look at where it gets them. In Parsifal, the knights of the Grail and aspirant Klingsor try to eschew sensuality in pursuit of a bogus "purity," and look at where it gets _them_. Parsifal, in rejecting Kundry, eschews not sensuality but psychic regression (yes, this opera is difficult).

As for entertainment, opera was more than that for me at the age of 10.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Actually finding antisemitism_ in_ the operas is indeed a strain. No one has yet succeeded in doing it.
> 
> There are characters in the Ring who glory in power, Alberich and Wotan chief among them. Look at where it gets them. In Parsifal, the knights of the Grail and aspirant Klingsor try to eschew sensuality in pursuit of a bogus "purity," and look at where it gets _them_. Parsifal, in rejecting Kundry, eschews not sensuality but psychic regression (yes, this opera is difficult).
> 
> As for entertainment, opera was more than that for me at the age of 10.


I think you are very I'll read. Many people seem to find the antisemitism there with no strain whatever!

As for me, I'm afraid I've advanced a little since the age of ten. If I want something profound I don't look to opera to provide it!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Alexander said:


> I hope you don't bow out without some words on what you think Wagner's impact has been on the arts from his time until today. It's always tough to know whether an artistic world lives in the shadow of someone, or would have been much the same if that person had stepped in front of a tram at 17.
> 
> (Similar discussions are had in the pop field about the Beatles I guess.)


I think it's an interesting point as Wagner's vision of the complete theatrical experience for mass audiences was rather hi-jacked by the movies.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

It's touching how many words are being ent trying to defend RW's works from the charge of antisemitism. Would have surprised old Richard who was quite blatant about his anti-Semite feelings!


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Actually finding antisemitism_ in_ the operas is indeed a strain. No one has yet succeeded in doing it…. Parsifal, in rejecting Kundry, eschews not sensuality but psychic regression (yes, this opera is difficult).


Wikipedia has some interesting quotes from around the premier of _Parsifal_ - I didn't follow up the sources themselves, so treat with caution until verified. If true, it's a bit disturbing, and hardly a strain.



> The conductor of the premiere was Hermann Levi, the court conductor at the Munich Opera. Since King Ludwig was sponsoring the production, much of the orchestra was drawn from the ranks of the Munich Opera, including the conductor. Wagner objected to Parsifal being conducted by a Jew (Levi's father was in fact a rabbi). Wagner first suggested that Levi should convert to Christianity, which Levi declined to do.[58] Wagner then wrote to King Ludwig that he had decided to accept Levi despite the fact that (he alleged) he had received complaints that "of all pieces, this most Christian of works" should be conducted by a Jew. When the King expressed his satisfaction at this, replying that "human beings are basically all brothers", Wagner wrote to the King that he "regard[ed] the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble about it".[59]


EDIT: I found a Google Books link for the chapter Wikipedia gets that last quote from: http://books.google.com/books?id=FE...eathridge wagner&pg=PA159#v=onepage&q&f=false


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

peterb said:


> Wikipedia has some interesting quotes from around the premier of _Parsifal_ - I didn't follow up the sources themselves, so treat with caution until verified. If true, it's a bit disturbing, and hardly a strain.


The conductor of the premiere was Hermann Levi, the court conductor at the Munich Opera. Since King Ludwig was sponsoring the production, much of the orchestra was drawn from the ranks of the Munich Opera, including the conductor. Wagner objected to Parsifal being conducted by a Jew (Levi's father was in fact a rabbi). Wagner first suggested that Levi should convert to Christianity, which Levi declined to do.[58] Wagner then wrote to King Ludwig that he had decided to accept Levi despite the fact that (he alleged) he had received complaints that "of all pieces, this most Christian of works" should be conducted by a Jew. When the King expressed his satisfaction at this, replying that "human beings are basically all brothers", Wagner wrote to the King that he "regard[ed] the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble about it".[59]

I thought this was pretty common knowledge!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Interesting what Barry Millington has to say about Parsifal in 'The Sorcerer of Bayreuth':

The relevance of all this to the heady concoction of ideas in 'Parsifal' can scarcely be denied (despite the best attempts of some who ought to know better). Only by expunging Jewishness, Wagner is saying, can humanity regenerate itself and achieve its full spiritual potential. For most of his adult life Wagner had harboured a fantasy: the liberation of the world from impure racial elements, and in particular from Jews. That is part of the message he intended to convey in 'Parsifal,' though it by no means defines the whole. 

and

It is all too easy to be diverted from the work's ideological orientation, or to wish to suppress it, on account of the transcendentally rapturous quality of the music. Certainly it has an aura unique even to Wagner's oeuvre. Debussy famously described the score as 'lit from behind', while Wagner himself said that his instrumentation would be 'like cloud layers that disperse and reform'. Nietzsche, too, for all his ambivalent relationship with the work ... , had to admit that the music was 'incomparable and bewildering': just a few bars were enough to transport him to realms otherwise inaccessible. But what makes 'Parsifal' truly remarkable is the fusion of the transcendental and the morally virtuous with an insidious ideology that was questionable even in Wagner's day, and that in the light of history most civilized people would come to regard with contempt.
That is the Faustian bargain on offer, however, if we are to understand 'Parsifal' as its creator intended. Of course there are ways of recalibrating, even subverting, the message - and these have been fully and rightly explored by stage directors seeking to interpret the opera for modern-day audiences - but 'Parsifal' remains a work whose glory will always be shrouded in its dark ambiguities." ("The Sorcerer of Bayreuth," Pages 238-240)


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I seem to remember that Beethoven was held in at least the same reverence.
> 
> And in fact all three composers are still quite popular. And that proves...? Maybe it only proves that the Nazi leadership had musical tastes not so different from our own.


You are missing the point. Hitler also loved Alsatians but we don't vilify them, unless we happen to get on the wrong side of their teeth.

It's just that Hitler's vile antisemitism echoed that of his composer-hero. Wagner's antisemitism wasn't just his private view. He published tracts about it. That's where the problem lures for many people. History!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Sorry, I've listened to Parsifal many times. Never even thought of anti Semitism.
And i'm sure no one else would either unless someone implants the thought.
It's an amazing work.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> Sorry, I've listened to Parsifal many times. Never even thought of anti Semitism.
> And i'm sure no one else would either unless someone implants the thought.
> It's an amazing work.


Sorry, mate, but there's an awful lot of implanting been done then - not least by the composer himself!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Sorry, mate, but there's an awful lot of implanting been done then - not least by the composer himself!


Only by people who wish to see it.
None of my friends even remotely would have thought of it.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

If I felt as you do I would give away my Wagner recordings.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> Only by people who wish to see it.
> None of my friends even remotely would have thought of it.


Wagner not one of your friends, then?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> If I felt as you do I would give away my Wagner recordings.


Of course, this is the Faustian pact Wagner makes with us. The problem is it's there, however much we might try to kid ourselves it is not!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Of course, this is the Faustian pact Wagner makes with us. The problem is it's there, however much we might try to kid ourselves it is not!


A rationalization my friend.
I have no Faustian bargain. Its not there to me.

His works must be pretty amazing to make a deal with the Devil for.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> A rationalization my friend.
> I have no Faustian bargain. Its not there to me.


Sorry mate, but it's there! Choose to close your eyes if you like. But it's there!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

It's not there my friend.
Look as you might.

I wouldn't make a deal with the Devil.

You must think his works are pretty amazing to make a deal with the Devil for.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

*Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama,* and which was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs-musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Influence on music:

Wagner's later musical style introduced new ideas in harmony, melodic process (leitmotif) and operatic structure. Notably from Tristan und Isolde onwards, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system, which gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, which include the so-called Tristan chord.[193][194]

Wagner inspired great devotion. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner's music. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were greatly indebted to him, as were César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and numerous others.[195] Gustav Mahler was devoted to Wagner and his music; aged 15, he sought him out on his 1875 visit to Vienna,[196] became a renowned Wagner conductor,[197] and his compositions are seen by Richard Taruskin as extending Wagner's "maximalization" of "the temporal and the sonorous" in music to the world of the symphony.[198] The harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (both of whose oeuvres contain examples of tonal and atonal modernism) have often been traced back to Tristan and Parsifal.[199] The Italian form of operatic realism known as verismo owed much to the Wagnerian concept of musical form.[200]

*Wagner made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting*. His essay "About Conducting" (1869)[201] advanced Hector Berlioz's technique of conducting and claimed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison. He exemplified this approach in his own conducting, which was significantly more flexible than the disciplined approach of Mendelssohn; in his view this also justified practices that would today be frowned upon, such as the rewriting of scores.[202][n 17] Wilhelm Furtwängler felt that Wagner and Bülow, through their interpretative approach, inspired a whole new generation of conductors (including Furtwängler himself).[204]

Wagner's concept of the use of leitmotifs and the integrated musical expression which they can enable has influenced many 20th and 21st century film scores. The critic Theodor Adorno has noted that the Wagnerian leitmotif "leads directly to cinema music where the sole function of the leitmotif is to announce heroes or situations so as to allow the audience to orient itself more easily".[205] Amongst film scores citing Wagnerian themes are Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which features a version of the Ride of the Valkyries, Trevor Jones's soundtrack to John Boorman's film Excalibur,[206] and the 2011 films A Dangerous Method (dir. David Cronenberg) and Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier).[207


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Influence on literature, philosophy and the visual arts.

Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant. Millington has commented:

[Wagner's] protean abundance meant that he could inspire the use of literary motif in many a novel employing interior monologue; ... the Symbolists saw him as a mystic hierophant; the Decadents found many a frisson in his work.[212]

Friedrich Nietzsche was a member of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870s, and his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, proposed Wagner's music as the Dionysian "rebirth" of European culture in opposition to Apollonian rationalist "decadence". Nietzsche broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties and a surrender to the new German Reich. Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the later Wagner in "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche contra Wagner".[213]

Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner.[214] Edouard Dujardin, whose influential novel Les lauriers sont coupés is in the form of an interior monologue inspired by Wagnerian music, founded a journal dedicated to Wagner, La Revue Wagnérienne, to which J. K. Huysmans and Téodor de Wyzewa contributed.[215] In a list of major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, Bryan Magee includes D. H. Lawrence, Aubrey Beardsley, Romain Rolland, Gérard de Nerval, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rainer Maria Rilke and numerous others.[216]

*In the 20th century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived"*,[217] while Thomas Mann[213] and Marcel Proust[218] were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is also discussed in some of the works of James Joyce.[219] Wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which contains lines from Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung and Verlaine's poem on Parsifal.[220]

Many of Wagner's concepts, including his speculation about dreams, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud.[221] Wagner had publicly analysed the Oedipus myth before Freud was born in terms of its psychological significance, insisting that incestuous desires are natural and normal, and perceptively exhibiting the relationship between sexuality and anxiety.[222] George Groddeck considered the Ring as the first manual of psychoanalysis.[223]


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Itullian said:


> Influence on literature, philosophy and the visual arts.
> 
> [snip] *In the 20th century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived"*,[217].


It must be mentioned, however, that Auden commented on a photograph of Wagner with, "A very bad hat indeed..."


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

Itullian, I think you're misunderstanding the point. No one here is saying, for example, "If you listen to Wagner you're an anti-Semite." The only point i've been trying to make here is that there are credible arguments that anti-semitism informs both the works ("total works of art", as you yourself pointed out...) and their effects, and that discussion of that is legitimate.

"I don't hear it, so it doesn't exist" is well and good, but there were plenty of people who didn't see racism in that awfully cute Little Black *****, either. If it's the case that Jews are perhaps more sensitive to these portrayals than others, it might be simply because they've found themselves at the pointy end of those portrayals more than non-Jews. Something to think about.

Stephen Fry in his worth watching (and on Netflix streaming) documentary _Wagner and Me_ described the situation with a metaphor: "Imagine a great, beautiful, intricate tapestry of infinite colour, that has been stained indelibly. It's still a beautiful tapestry, with miraculous workmanship and gorgeous colour and silken texture, but that stain is real." For some people, that stain ruins the whole work. Others will be able to look past it to enjoy the other parts of the tapestry. There's no universally correct right or wrong answer to how one copes with this - it is, in the end, a matter of taste. There have been (and will be) other artists who were despicable human beings who made sublime works of art. The question of whether we can separate the artist from his art is one we will always have to grapple with.

The point of view that "the stain doesn't lessen the beauty of the art" doesn't really bother me. I quite enjoy Wagner, despite his works' problems. I'm just a bit nonplussed by the attempts to claim, not even that the stain doesn't exist, but that it so obviously doesn't exist that it's _beneath discussion._ I suspect that's what's got DavidA's goose as well, although obviously I can't speak for him. But I think I've presented enough evidence in this thread to put the claim that it's _not a seriously debated topic_ to bed


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Maybe there are credible arguments. But I think that goes the other way as well.
Wagner was an anti semite.
Do I see it in his operas? no, I don't. sorries.

I think because he was anti semetic, people wrongly read that into his operas.

And that's the way I see it. I see no stain on the picture. sorry


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Well, there should be enough material in this thread for Alexander to give that talk on Wagner. Unless he decided to give up and just run away, run away...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> I think you are very I'll read. Many people seem to find the antisemitism there with no strain whatever!
> 
> As for me, I'm afraid I've advanced a little since the age of ten. If I want something profound I don't look to opera to provide it!


A logical fallacy and two offensive remarks in four brief sentences!

Welcome to the dark side of Talk Classical, Woodduck.

1) What "many people seem to find" in Wagner's operas, or in anything else, proves nothing about what is actually in them. 2) You have no idea what I have or have not read and have no right to pronounce such a judgment (even if you qualify it by "I think." 3) Your implication about my mental age deserves the sort of rejoinder I decline to make out of politeness.

Thank you for your explicit confession that you cannot find profundity in the operatic works of great composers, Wagner in particular. It provides a useful context for any other remarks you have made on the subject.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

peterb said:


> Wikipedia has some interesting quotes from around the premier of _Parsifal_ - I didn't follow up the sources themselves, so treat with caution until verified. If true, it's a bit disturbing, and hardly a strain.
> 
> EDIT: I found a Google Books link for the chapter Wikipedia gets that last quote from: http://books.google.com/books?id=FE...eathridge wagner&pg=PA159#v=onepage&q&f=false


I am familiar with Wagner's antisemitic remarks. Yes, I find them disturbing, as I do all bigoted remarks. Now I turn to, listen to, watch, study _Parsifal_. Where, exactly, is the antisemitism in this work? No, not in what people say about it, not in what it "suggests" to minds primed with expectations of finding antisemitic "clues," but in the text and music of the work itself? Robert Gutman devoted a large section of his book, _Richard__ Wagner: the Man, His Mind, and His Music_ to "exposing" _Parsifal_'s racist premises and scenario. His efforts are indeed strained, as are all such futile efforts to turn Wagner's operas into tracts.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A meta-argument on the arguments about the supposed antisemitic content of Wagner's operas:

What is said about works of art, _even by their creators_, is not to be taken as truth about the content or meaning of the works themselves. I am a practicing artist (visual and musical), and I know that neither my ideas or intentions about what I create, nor anyone else's views of it, can encompass, or stand in for, the artwork itself, or claim a reality which must be accepted by anyone else. When people ask what my work means, I tell them that they must experience the work and arrive at their own answer. Everyone's answer will be different, and that is as it should be. The actual, objective meaning of a work of art resides neither in the work nor in the views of anyone experiencing it, but in the interaction of the two. That interaction is capable of as much variation as the perceptions and understandings of those who experience the work, and therefore the meaning of the work is not fixed but is limited only by the range of possible perceptions and understandings the specific material reality of the work, and the specific nature of human consciousness, will allow.

In light of this, the question of whether Wagner's operas "contain" antisemitic meanings cannot be answered by referring to anything anyone, _including Wagner,_ has said about them. Those who wish to find antisemitism in them may and will do so, for reasons of their own (some of which reasons may be interesting to explore - but that is perhaps a subject more for psychology than for aesthetics!). What these people cannot legitimately do is argue that those who do not see antisemitism are somehow deficient in knowledge or perception. If person A regards Alberich or Klingsor or any other Wagner character as representative of Jewish stereotypes, that is what that character means to person A. There is no reason whatsoever for person B to make the same interpretation, or for person A to claim that he alone is correct. But further: if Wagner himself had said somewhere that he intended these characters to represent Jews (which he didn't, by the way), person B could be completely justified in saying that the composer had failed in his effort, that the attempt to portray "Jewishness" was unsuccessful, and that despite the creator's intentions no antisemitic meaning was contained the work. In fact, of course, there are no Jewish characters in Wagner's operas. All attempts to read "Jewish" traits into his dwarfs, pedants, and sorcerers are matters of individual perception, interpretation, and choice.

It is a choice which no one is obliged to make, and which I have no need to make. And I can't help but notice that those who do seem to need to make this choice refer constantly, not to internal aspects of the operas themselves, but to Wagner's, Hitler's, and others' statements, writings, and behaviors. This approach to interpretation is, again, a choice which is not obligatory in any attempt to discover meaning in the works. Is it possible for the works to "have" meanings so derived? Only for those to whom such an approach is necessary. These particular meanings are a part of the infinite spectrum of meanings which can be found in the interaction between artwork and audience - but the meanings are located _in the interaction, not in the works themselves._ Those who perceive antisemitism when they listen to or watch a Wagner opera have a right to their perception and may attribute it to any factors they wish, but they may not insist that those factors ought to give rise to the same perception in others.

I realize that my theory of meaning in art is not the only possible theory, and that many will contest it. I also concede that the question of how Wagner's antisemitism influenced his operas has intrinsic interest, at least for its potential to suggest possible ways of looking at the composer's extraordinary legacy, and for understanding our reactions to it. What I hope, though, is that this way of looking at the meaning of his work might defuse some of the dogmatism which plagues discussions of the subject.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> Beethoven's ideals were stated obviouslt by the use of the poem.
> Wagners, if we are to believe they're there, are very obscure. And must be pointed out, and even then dubious.
> I think he could have been a lot more obvious if he wished to make that point.
> He wasn't shy you know.


Indeed he wasn't. Great comment.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

peterb said:


> Itullian, I think you're misunderstanding the point. No one here is saying, for example, "If you listen to Wagner you're an anti-Semite." The only point i've been trying to make here is that there are credible arguments that anti-semitism informs both the works ("total works of art", as you yourself pointed out...) and their effects, and that discussion of that is legitimate.
> 
> "I don't hear it, so it doesn't exist" is well and good, but there were plenty of people who didn't see racism in that awfully cute Little Black *****, either. If it's the case that Jews are perhaps more sensitive to these portrayals than others, it might be simply because they've found themselves at the pointy end of those portrayals more than non-Jews. Something to think about.
> 
> ...


You put it very well. I am absolutely gobsmacked at the attempts here to try to prove, in spite of Wagner's intense anti-semitism which he put into print, that the works are pure as the driven snow. Fry was interesting - you could see the tension between his Jewishness and his worship of Wagner. He actually describes Wagner as 'a nasty little man' and does not deny the problem even though he himself worships at the shrine as a committed Wagnerite.

Of course people who listen to Wagner are not automatically anti-Semitic, any more than people who have Karajan's recordings are Nazis. But to say that it isn't there when it has been hotly debated since Wagner's day seems incredible. Mahler, for instance, is quoted that had no doubt of that Mime had Jewish characteristics built into the part.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Revenant said:


> Well, there should be enough material in this thread for Alexander to give that talk on Wagner. Unless he decided to give up and just run away, run away...


I haven't given up or ran away. Why would I? I've read all of this with great interest. However I'm not sure whether or not his works are anti-Semitic is a suitable topic for my talk, as it wouldn't lead anywhere constructive, as demonstrated here.

As for the anti-Semitism in the operas, given the combined writings of Wagner and Cosima, one would expect to read comment on such things, and yet we really don't. The reason is of course that Wagner was consumed by and passionate about far more things than hating Jews. That seems an uncomfortable truth to many commentators who want to reduce him to this one attribute. We can barely conceive of the effort required to write these operas, months and years at the piano writing, composing and transcribing. Because he hated Jews? Really? Come on!

This "odious little man" (nice bit of sizism there Mr Fry), whilst clearly having some bad opinions wins great respect from me for never taking the easy path in life. He wanted to make something truly great, and he succeeded. And here we are today as testament to it.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Alexander said:


> I haven't given up or ran away. Why would I? I've read all of this with great interest. However I'm not sure whether or not his works are anti-Semitic is a suitable topic for my talk, as it wouldn't lead anywhere constructive, as demonstrated here.


Have you decided on a topic then, Alexander?

I was thinking a little on your question about comparing Verdi and Wagner, and while it may not serve as a good basis for an entire talk, it might be interesting if you introduce your talk by discussing how Wagner is in many ways is a prime example of a "reflective" artist, while Verdi is a prime example of the "naive" artist in reference to Schiller's _On Naïve and Reflective Poetry_.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

What about Beckmesser in Meistersinger? Not anti-semitic? You are living in a dream world.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

hpowders said:


> What about Beckmesser in Meistersinger?


Beckmesser was a broad caricature of Wagner's own critics, especially Hanslick. Now, Hanslick was in fact Jewish, and this more likely than not did affect the way the role was written, but I'm not sure it would have been all that different if Wagner's target had been a non-Jewish critic.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Alexander said:


> I haven't given up or ran away. Why would I? I've read all of this with great interest. However I'm not sure whether or not his works are anti-Semitic is a suitable topic for my talk, as it wouldn't lead anywhere constructive, as demonstrated here.
> 
> As for the anti-Semitism in the operas, given the combined writings of Wagner and Cosima, one would expect to read comment on such things, and yet we really don't. The reason is of course that Wagner was consumed by and passionate about far more things than hating Jews. That seems an uncomfortable truth to many commentators who want to reduce him to this one attribute. We can barely conceive of the effort required to write these operas, months and years at the piano writing, composing and transcribing. Because he hated Jews? Really? Come on!
> 
> This "odious little man" (nice bit of sizism there Mr Fry), whilst clearly having some bad opinions wins great respect from me for never taking the easy path in life. He wanted to make something truly great, and he succeeded. And here we are today as testament to it.


Good. You're a faithful soul in that you endeavor to persevere in spite of, shall we say, a plethora of riches. You now have plenty of material for your talk, should you wish to confine yourself monomaniacally to one aspect of the Wagner Problem. This should be a welcome challenge. And don't feel too badly about Mr. Fry. He's very tall and perhaps his nose is out of joint a bit.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Beckmesser was a broad caricature of Wagner's own critics, especially Hanslick. Now, Hanslick was in fact Jewish, and this more likely than not did affect the way the role was written, but I'm not sure it would have been all that different if Wagner's target had been a non-Jewish critic.


In fact, it's only because we know so much about Wagner's life and opinions that we even make these connections (caricature of Wagner's critics or a particular critic). With most artists, including most of the great composers, we know relatively little about their lives and can't begin to make reductionisms of this sort.

Let's just look at Sixtus Beckmesser for what he is. He is a town clerk and a respected member of the community. He is a typical pedant, and Beckmesser's expertise in the rules cannot produce from him the living feeling which inspires generous and truthful art. There is no trace of Jewish cantorial style in Beckmesser's serenade in act II; the music is markedly Germanic in its outlines and Wagner uses it as the basis for the immense finale that ends the act (see musicologist John Warrack's discussion of it in _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Cambridge Opera Handbooks)_). His limping and squirming in act III don't have anything to do with a perceived Jewishness, they are the result of him having taken a beating from David the night before. And finally, he is quite likeable even though he can be a spiteful fellow, and in performance he often steals the show.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

He could have been a goldsmith or a moneylender, but no, Beckmesser is the Town Clerk. Why be so coy about it, Herr Wagner? The fact that he ascribes Beckmesser with negative qualities - him being the villain of the piece and all - and ascribing "the Jews" with negative qualities does not add up to _therefore he is Jewish_. There were a lot of non-Jews that Wagner didn't like (and vice versa). It all comes down to whether you want to read something into it or not.

I resent the remark that I am in a dream world. Please keep your ad hominem comments out of it.

Edit: SilenceIsGolden has the same thought at the same time as me!


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> Have you decided on a topic then, Alexander?
> 
> I was thinking a little on your question about comparing Verdi and Wagner, and while it may not serve as a good basis for an entire talk, it might be interesting if you introduce your talk by discussing how Wagner is in many ways is a prime example of a "reflective" artist, while Verdi is a prime example of the "naive" artist in reference to Schiller's _On Naïve and Reflective Poetry_.


The question is whether it's possible to lead a discussion without getting stuck in the mire of anti-Semitism. Thanks for the pointer towards Schiller. I'll try to check it out. We seem to have come a long way from the era of Eliot, Joyce, Auden and others. Perhaps I might explore Wagner's effect on the European artistic world prior to (say?) 1930. I think that could be interesting. The contemporary reports of visits to Bayreuth by Mark Twain, Tchaikovsky and others are certainly quite entertaining. Being in letter form means they could be read aloud fairly well.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Alexander said:


> The question is whether it's possible to lead a discussion without getting stuck in the mire of anti-Semitism. Thanks for the pointer towards Schiller. I'll try to check it out.


No problem. I'll fill-in what I think are some of the more thought-provoking aspects of the subject a little more and how they could be relevant, that way you can decide if it's something you think worthy of exploring (or appropriate for you given audience).

In his essay, Schiller writes "Poets will either _be_ nature, or they will seek lost nature. From this arises two entirely different modes of poetry which, between them, exhaust and divide the whole range of poetry." Naive poets, or artists, are one with the world and traditions in which they live. Their work speaks to us directly and is unabashedly affirmative. Examples of naive artists might be Homer, Mozart, Shakespeare, and Verdi, who's music is vital and full of goodness and humanity. Sentimental or reflective artists produce work that represents loss, rupture, distance. It often defies tradition, and deals _irrationality_, and it's goal is to heal the hurts of the human condition. Some examples of sentimental artists might be Virgil, Eugene O'Neil, and Wagner, whose music breaks the shackles of convention and is infused with insatiable longing.

Now maybe you don't find all that nearly as interesting as I do, but like I said, just something that came to my mind when you asked for comparisons of Verdi and Wagner.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Beckmesser was a broad caricature of Wagner's own critics, especially Hanslick. Now, Hanslick was in fact Jewish, and this more likely than not did affect the way the role was written, but I'm not sure it would have been all that different if Wagner's target had been a non-Jewish critic.





SilenceIsGolden said:


> In fact, it's only because we know so much about Wagner's life and opinions that we even make these connections (caricature of Wagner's critics or a particular critic). With most artists, including most of the great composers, we know relatively little about their lives and can't begin to make reductionisms of this sort.


This is such a splendid example of how complex the relationship between an artist and the art they create is, and how any attempts to correlate occurrences in an artist's life to characters and attributes in art works is a severe over-simplification of the artistic process, I'm going to expand on this thought.

The reason that it is assumed that Beckmesser is a caricature of the famed Viennese critic Hanslick is because in an earlier draft of the opera the character's name had been Viet Hanslich. Hanslick, by the way, had a Jewish mother and a Christian father, and for this Wagner considered him Jewish. It should be noted that Wagner's antisemitism was highly peculiar and unique; there are numerous examples of him calling someone a Jew who had no Jewish heritage whatsoever, while he maintained strong friendships with many actual Jews. Anyways, the fact that the character was named Viet Hanslich could very well indicate that Hanslick was at least a partial inspiration for the character. It also could have been Wagner's way of taking a jab at Hanslick, since the critic was invited to attend a reading of the text of _Die Meistersinger_ in a private home in 1862, and Wagner subsequently changed the name. However, here is the problem with simply pronouncing that Beckmesser is a caricature of critics, or of a particular "Jewish" critic: Wagner first conceived the basic outline of _Die Meistersinger_ in *1845* during a trip to the Marienbad spa that also yielded the ideas for _Lohengrin_ and other projects. In 1845, the only contact that Wagner had had with a young Hanslick was when Hanslick introduced himself and stated that he was an _admirer_ of _Tannhäuser_. Hanslick only became hostile to Wagner's operas at a later date. And of course 1845 was still years before Wagner had written _Das Judenthum in der Musik_. So it's simply not possible that Beckmesser could be the caricature of a critic like Hanslick and nothing more.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

hpowders said:


> What about Beckmesser in Meistersinger? Not anti-semitic? You are living in a dream world.


I guess I am. I see nothing Jewish about Beckmesser.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> In fact, it's only because we know so much about Wagner's life and opinions that we even make these connections (caricature of Wagner's critics or a particular critic). With most artists, including most of the great composers, we know relatively little about their lives and can't begin to make reductionisms of this sort.
> 
> Let's just look at Sixtus Beckmesser for what he is. He is a town clerk and a respected member of the community. He is a typical pedant, and Beckmesser's expertise in the rules cannot produce from him the living feeling which inspires generous and truthful art. There is no trace of Jewish cantorial style in Beckmesser's serenade in act II; the music is markedly Germanic in its outlines and Wagner uses it as the basis for the immense finale that ends the act (see musicologist John Warrack's discussion of it in _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Cambridge Opera Handbooks)_). His limping and squirming in act III don't have anything to do with a perceived Jewishness, they are the result of him having taken a beating from David the night before. And finally, he is quite likeable even though he can be a spiteful fellow, and in performance he often steals the show.


Of course people make the connection from Wagner's outspoken antisemitism which was extreme even for the day. Protectionists claim that although the man was an obnoxious racist, yet the works somehow come up smelling of roses. No-one seriously claims Beckmesser is a Jew but his mangled speech patterns invoke Mauscheln. The bizarre travesty language attributed by Germans to Jews. He is a plagiarist and a thief, lacks musical sensitivity and is profoundly incapable of matching text to music, things that Wagner accused the Jews of. 
Now of course, if we didn't know Wagner's opinions from his own writings, then such connections might not be so easily made. As it is, they are undeniably there, except to the protectionists. 
And as to Becknesser being 'quite likeable' - I think the first to contradict you on that would be RW himself!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Alexander said:


> The contemporary reports of visits to Bayreuth by Mark Twain, Tchaikovsky and others are certainly quite entertaining. Being in letter form means they could be read aloud fairly well.


This always amuses me:

"The great master, who knew so well how to make a hundred instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their souls in mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only in barren solos when he puts in the vocal parts. It may be that he was deep, and only added the singing to his operas for the sake of the contrast it would make with the music. Singing! It does seem the wrong name to apply to it. Strictly described, it is a practicing of difficult and unpleasant intervals, mainly. An ignorant person gets tired of listening to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter how pleasant they may be. In "Parsifal" there is a hermit named Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another character of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die."

Mark Twain on Parsifal


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Of course people make the connection from Wagner's outspoken antisemitism which was extreme even for the day. Protectionists claim that although the man was an obnoxious racist, yet the works somehow come up smelling of roses. No-one seriously claims Beckmesser is a Jew but his mangled speech patterns invoke Mauscheln. The bizarre travesty language attributed by Germans to Jews. He is a plagiarist and a thief, lacks musical sensitivity and is profoundly incapable of matching text to music, things that Wagner accused the Jews of.
> Now of course, if we didn't know Wagner's opinions from his own writings, then such connections might not be so easily made. As it is, they are undeniably there, except to the protectionists.
> And as to Becknesser being 'quite likeable' - I think the first to contradict you on that would be RW himself!


That's quite a spin on things David, but thank you for your input. I don't see the drama representing the same things as you do, I guess. And I'm sure you're aware that Jewish composers weren't the only ones he criticized for being unable to produce worthwhile music.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Me thinks thou protesteth too much DA. 

Many masterpieces aren't appreciated when first performed.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> That's quite a spin on things David, but thank you for your input. I don't see the drama representing the same things as you do, I guess. And I'm sure you're aware that Jewish composers weren't the only ones he criticized for being unable to produce worthwhile music.


Actually it is the protectionists who put a 'spin' on things. Touching but not, I'm afraid, facing what is, IMO, the obvious.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Actually it is the protectionists who put a 'spin' on things. Touching but not, I'm afraid, facing the obvious.


Maybe so. Although if what you're saying were true, the antisemitic "references" strike me as being incredibly obscure and clandestine. But so be it.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> Maybe so. Although if what you're saying were true, the antisemitic "references" strike me as being incredibly obscure and clandestine. But so be it.


They have also struck an awful lot of people as being pretty obvious, given Wagner's views on the subject!


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

DavidA said:


> They have also struck an awful lot of people as being pretty obvious, given Wagner's views on the subject!


Yes apparently, even though you'd have to be a linguist among other things to pick up on them.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> They have also struck an awful lot of people as being pretty obvious, given Wagner's views on the subject!


Not obvious to anyone I know.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> Not obvious to anyone I know.


I suggest a bit of reading round!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> I suggest a bit of reading round!


I don't like scavenger hunts!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Let me see if I get the picture here. 

Wagner, at various times in his speech and writings, attributes a wide range of unattractive traits to Jews, making them an all-purpose repository for almost everything he dislikes in art and culture. Tradition and the culture of the day supplement Wagner's list with still more ugly semitic stereotypes. Ultimately there is virtually no human flaw, vice, or corruption for which which Jews are not scapegoated in this age-old and culture-wide plague of bigotry. 

All this is history.

Now, in this context, Wagner, known antisemitist, creates numerous dramatic representations of characters, human and fantastical, who play the role of villains or antagonists in stories dealing with fundamental human motivations, issues and conflicts. When three or four of these widely varied villainous characters end up exhibiting a few of the numerous, ubiquitous negative traits and behaviors attributed by Wagner and by widely accepted stereotypes to Jews, we are offered this fact as incontrovertible evidence that these characters are representations of Jews and Jewishness, and that Wagner's dramatic works are intended as antisemitic screeds. 

Well now. That makes perfect sense.

Doesn't it? Or...


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Let me see if I get the picture here.
> 
> Wagner at various times in his speech and writings attributes a wide range of unattractive traits to Jews, making them an all-purpose scapegoat for almost everything he dislikes in art and culture. Tradition and the culture of the day supplement Wagner's list with still more ugly semitic stereotypes. There is virtually no human flaw or vice from which which Jews are exempted in this age-old and culture-wide plague of bigotry. All this is history.
> 
> ...


Yeah well that seems to be the level at which these theories operate, which basically amounts to one big witch hunt. The thing that gets me is the blatant contradictions that arise from attempting to follow these arguments to their logical conclusion. So Mime and Alberich are Jews because they lust after the gold, but Wotan and the giants and other characters who do the same are not? And then there's a figure like Hunding, who is most definitely painted in a negative light, and has to be considered one of the villains of the opera, and yet he is one of the few characters who doesn't lust after the gold and isn't accused of displaying "Jewish" attributes.

They also don't take into account Wagner's subtlety as a dramatist and his ability to imbue just about all of his characters with complexity and ambiguity so that very few of them can be seen as black and white, good and bad. Even many of the antagonists are sympathetic figures. I've never even considered Beckmesser to be a villain, I've always seen him more as a comic foil.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Maybe Tristan and Isolde are Jewish  :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SilenceIsGolden, your indefatigableness in ramming your head into this brick wall has been an inspiration. Had you not been here, with your background of knowledge and eye for fallacy, I might have felt the need to enter the fray with greater frequency, with consequences to my nerves I would rather not think about. My love for Wagner's profound works has outlasted much of my factual recall (I studied him intensely decades ago but little recently), so I've felt grateful and privileged to watch you at work here, saying what needs to be said. Of course one can never say enough about a genius of this magnitude and complexity, who as a man was small enough to turn races and nationalities into objects of hatred but who, as an artist, was incapable of trivializing his huge visions with such petty and superficial notions. Wagner probed the human condition and, as you imply, almost every one of his characters, embodying some mix of traits common to us all, is granted its share of dignity and power in his vision of the human struggle.

This skirmish may not be over, but I had to pause to thank you for your effort.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> I don't like scavenger hunts!


You don't have to scavenge very far!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> Maybe Tristan and Isolde are Jewish  :lol:


Nah. French. Wagner hated the French. He wouldn't have passed up a chance to hand them a _Todestrank._


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Wagner apologists have had to acknowledge Wagner's racism, since there is no way to deny something that was so well documented by Wagner himself. Recognising that they cannot defend him on that ground, they then deny that any racism is expressed in his "music dramas". Some, after peeling away the veneer of fairy tales, are horrified at what they discover in the dramas, as was Thomas Mann in 1940. So, they then try to defend the music by divorcing it from the drama, which is completely contrary to the mandate of the composer's Gesamtkunstwerke. They naively claim that music alone is amoral, i.e., that it cannot communicate any moral or political messages. As such, the operas are stripped down to mere tone relations in order to prevent and insulate them from the identification of possible racist propaganda.
With all that is now known, it is clear that under the spell of compelling, emotionally charged music, Wagner's apologists are deluding themselves and insist on wearing critical blinders.
No less an admirer than the Jewish composer Gustav Mahler freely admitted the Jewish nature of Mime: "No doubt with Mime, Wagner intended to ridicule the Jews with all their characteristic traits -- petty intelligence and greed -- the jargon is textually and musically so cleverly suggested; but for God's sake it must not be exaggerated and overdone...."


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Obviously, for those who see Wagner as some for of cultural messiah and have an almost religious devotion to him and his works, no argument will suffice.
> Wagner apologists have had to acknowledge Wagner's racism, since there is no way to deny something that was so well documented by Wagner himself. Recognising that they cannot defend him on that ground, they then deny that any racism is expressed in his "music dramas". Some, after peeling away the veneer of fairy tales, are horrified at what they discover in the dramas, as was Thomas Mann in 1940. So, they then try to defend the music by divorcing it from the drama, which is completely contrary to the mandate of the composer's Gesamtkunstwerke. They naively claim that music alone is amoral, i.e., that it cannot communicate any moral or political messages. As such, the operas are stripped down to mere tone relations in order to prevent and insulate them from the identification of possible racist propaganda.
> With all that is now known, it is clear that under the spell of compelling, emotionally charged music, Wagner's apologists are deluding themselves and insist on wearing critical blinders.
> No less an admirer than the Jewish composer Gustav Mahler freely admitted the Jewish nature of Mime: "No doubt with Mime, Wagner intended to ridicule the Jews with all their characteristic traits -- petty intelligence and greed -- the jargon is textually and musically so cleverly suggested; but for God's sake it must not be exaggerated and overdone...."


In regards to your Gustav Mahler quote, we've already covered that ground enough times that you should know my opinion on his interpretation, whether you agree with me or not. I don't know that his perceptions in this case have anything concrete to do with Wagner's character Mime, or goes to uncover some hidden message, rather than telling us something about Mahler through the way he saw the character. Mahler was aware that Wagner was an antisemite (who wasn't/isn't?), and he was a Jew living in a hostile antisemitic climate, after all. I don't begrudge him his interpretation, I just don't relate to it.

I can only speak for myself in saying that I engage with Wagner's music dramas on their own terms, and don't see the relation between him and his operas any differently than I do any artist and their art. That is, as artistic constructs that have little to nothing in common with the details of their lives, their day to day outlooks or opinions. It's not as if we don't know what Wagner's profoundest artistic convictions were, and what his commitments and goals were in terms of the art his was creating. There's possibly never been a great artist who has tried to make that as clear to us as he did. And the thoughts he had about his works have absolutely nothing to do with racism. I believe the operas communicate messages that are far more insightful, revealing, sophisticated, profound and impalpable than mere crude, superficial political and antisemitic ideology. And I believe that, for people who find something disturbing in the works, like Thomas Mann or possibly anyone who engages with these music dramas at a serious level, that what makes them feel uneasy when they listen to Wagner is something much deeper than this and not connected with racial questions at all.

You can continue to judge me and call me an apologist for it if you wish, but I don't think the discussion is getting us anywhere at this point.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Wagner probed the human condition and, as you imply, almost every one of his characters, embodying some mix of traits common to us all, is granted its share of dignity and power in his vision of the human struggle.


Yeah, absolutely. What makes his antagonists so much more than one dimensional traits, what makes them so full-bodied and captivating is that while we don't always agree with their actions we can usually identify something of ourselves in them, or at least understand and sympathize with their motives.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

DavidA said:


> Obviously, for those who see Wagner as some for of cultural messiah and have an almost religious devotion to him and his works, no argument will suffice.


No argument will suffice also for those who believe the world revolves around Mount Zion, and who consider the loyalty to the same Mount and to the people living around it to be the ultimate standard of a person's morality: like them - and you are OK, dislike them - and you are pure evil.

Another good thread gone to hell...


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> No argument will suffice also for those who believe the world revolves around Mount Zion, and who consider the loyalty to the same Mount and to the people living around it to be the ultimate standard of a person's morality: like them - and you are OK, dislike them - and you are pure evil.
> 
> Another good thread gone to hell...


I'm sorry, but your conclusions are preposterous. Many in history have commented on the fact of Wagner's antisemitism. But that does not make them Zionists!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> I don't think the discussion is getting us anywhere at this point.


Quite! We do at least agree on something!

PS We can also enjoy the music!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> Maybe Tristan and Isolde are Jewish  :lol:


And how about Fafner and the Forest Bird? Fafner sits contentedly on his gold and his scales (don't "punnish" me for that one!), and that very talkative bird is obviously a _shadchan_, a matchmaker ("Oy, Siegfried, Bubala, so why is it you're not married to that nice girl on the rock?").

Surely I cannot be the first person to notice that even the animals in Wagner's operas are antisemitic stereotypes. Obviously all you Wagner worshippers are in deep denial.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

It comes down to the detractors cant deal with how mind bogglingly awesome
his music dramas are so they HAVE TO pull out this claptrap.

that's the psychology going on here folks.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> It comes down to the detractors cant deal with how mind bogglingly awesome
> his music dramas are so they HAVE TO pull out this claptrap.
> 
> that's the psychology going on here folks.


I think you are really scraping the barrel!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

SiegendesLicht said:


> No argument will suffice also for those who believe the world revolves around Mount Zion, and who consider the loyalty to the same Mount and to the people living around it to be the ultimate standard of a person's morality: like them - and you are OK, dislike them - and you are pure evil.
> 
> Another good thread gone to hell...


They cant deal with how monumentally awesome his works are my friend.
That's the whole thing here.

They stand before him in wonder and terror like Maestro Verdi did.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> I think you are really scraping the barrel!


In wonder and terror my friend.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Quite! We do at least agree on something!
> 
> PS We can also enjoy the music!


How can you?...................


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> And how about Fafner and the Forest Bird? Fafner sits contentedly on his gold and his scales (don't "punnish" me for that one!), and that very talkative bird is obviously a _shadchan_, a matchmaker ("Oy, Siegfried, Bubala, so why is it you're not married to that nice girl on the rock?").
> 
> Surely I cannot be the first person to notice that even the animals in Wagner's operas are antisemitic stereotypes. Obviously all you Wagner worshippers are in deep denial.


Yes, and perhaps Wagner didn't actually write Das Judenthum in der Musik either!


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Yes, and perhaps Wagner didn't actually write Das Judenthum in der Musik either!


Oh come on David, that was pretty funny.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> How can you?...................


Of course one can enjoy the music. Actually, what puts me off Wagner the most is the regarding of him as some sort of cultural (or more) messiah by the faithful. The problem with Wagner is that the power and the beauty of the music almost hypnotises us. It makes us forget that he was 'an odious little man' (Stephen Fry's phrase) who had particularly disgusting traits in his philosophy of race. The music almost makes us forget the yawning length of his turgid libretti and the mind-boggling nonsense he often conjures up on stage, with stage directions that are all but impossible to carry out (as his grandson, Wieland recognised). But such talk is heresy to the faithful who worship at the shrine of the Bayreuth Sorcerer.
Why I keep dear old Richard at arm's length. His music can be thrillingly great entertainment but nothing else.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> They cant deal with how monumentally awesome his works are my friend.
> That's the whole thing here.
> 
> They stand before him in wonder and terror like Maestro Verdi did.


Only if you haven't seen through the myth of the Wagner cult.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Only if you haven't seen through the myth of the Wagner cult.


Nothing to see thru my friend.
Cult? hahahaha


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Of course one can enjoy the music. Actually, what puts me off Wagner the most is the regarding of him as some sort of cultural (or more) messiah by the faithful. The problem with Wagner is that the power and the beauty of the music almost hypnotises us. It makes us forget that he was 'an odious little man' (Stephen Fry's phrase) who had particularly disgusting traits in his philosophy of race. The music almost makes us forget the yawning length of his turgid libretti and the mind-boggling nonsense he often conjures up on stage, with stage directions that are all but impossible to carry out (as his grandson, Wieland recognised). But such talk is heresy to the faithful who worship at the shrine of the Bayreuth Sorcerer.
> Why I keep dear old Richard at arm's length. His music can be thrillingly great entertainment but nothing else.


Fry practically worships Wagner.

And that's a mind boggling rationalization.
The only honorable thing to do if one holds such beliefs is not patronize the music.
Sorries.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> They cant deal with how monumentally awesome his works are my friend.
> That's the whole thing here.
> 
> They stand before him in wonder and terror like Maestro Verdi did.


Of course Verdi didn't have the benefit of internet forums where he could learn from real experts how evil Wagner's operas are and how he should regard them as mere entertainment. Wonder and terror? That pathetic old organ grinder!


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

Itullian said:


> Fry practically worships Wagner.
> 
> And that's a mind boggling rationalization.
> The only honorable thing to do if one holds such beliefs is not patronize the music.
> Sorries.


Well, except that's _not_ the only honorable thing to do; there are plenty of people (like Fry, among others) who enjoy the music while accepting the stain that Wagner's words put on it. Adults do that sort of thing all the time. I mean, you can hum your "America, love it or leave it!" sort of tune all you like, but I assure you that doesn't require anyone to actually leave it.

Sorries.

Personally, apart from the antisemitism kerfuffle, my opinion on Wagner's music is best captured by Rossini, who famously quipped "Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour." Perhaps more seriously, the biggest problem with Wagner is how people insist on performing the operas in German, when it's clear to anyone who has heard them that they'd be far superior in their original Italian.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

DavidA said:


> I'm sorry, but your conclusions are preposterous. Many in history have commented on the fact of Wagner's antisemitism. But that does not make them Zionists!


They did not limit discussions of Wagner to Das Judentum in der Musik. I am sure if Thomas Mann or Gustav Mahler somehow showed up here, they would not try to derail every Wagner thread with bickering over that little essay, as if it was the only thing Wagner ever produced.

I have seen it many times before and I wil say it again: the only ethnic/national attitude of Wagner that is really of importance, is his attitude to his fellow Germans, since it at least partially provided direction and inspiration for his work. We would not have the Ring today, if Wagner did not choose to explore the world of Germanic myths. He would have composed something equally great, but it would just not be the same. Whatever Wagner thought about Jews, Frenchmen, the English (there is a pretty unfavorable portrayal of an English tourist in his story "A Pligrimage to Beethoven"), the Chinese or the aboriginal tribes of Hawaii, is irrelevant to the music.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

peterb said:


> Perhaps more seriously, the biggest problem with Wagner is how people insist on performing the operas in German, when it's clear to anyone who has heard them that they'd be far superior in their original Italian.


Huh?...........


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

This thread, as so often with discussion of Wagner, is starting to slip into ad homs, insults and a certain amount of emotional hyperbole, after a promising start of respectful interchange. Some posts have been removed.

Please return to the OP's original topic which was a request for a topic for a talk about Wagner.


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Huh?...........


 Glad someone was reading closely enough to see the joke.

Possibly relevant to this thread, Alex Ross is giving a lecture on Wagner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that is apparently related to his in-progress book _Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music._ Admission is free, and information on it can be found here.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Temporarily closed for repairs ...


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