# Composer elections!



## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Just for fun: Imagine if the composers ran for president. Who would you vote for and why? 

My vote would go to J. S. Bach (and his vice-president, Felix Mendelssohn). From what I've gathered he had good time management and leadership skills and would make a good head of state in my opinion.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Verdi, the only sincerely liberal great composer ever.

(Vice president, Mozart, not really interested in politics, but promising for his reflexive aversion to authoritarianism and cruelty, his capacity for insight into and sympathy for many different kinds of people, and his basically pragmatic approach to life.)


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

But wouldn't that take time away from composition (or decomposition for that matter in most cases)? Think of how much music Bach wouldn't have composed if he had to do a stint as president. 

I suppose based on that premise I'd go with Robert Schumann (yeah I get it, he went mental but if we're talking American presidents come on, some recent ones have been a tad iffy).


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

William S. Gilbert for President with Arthur Sullivan as VP
Gilbert's penchant for destroying pretentiousness would be perfect.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I would vote for Bill Clinton because he was a fairly decent sax player. Probably never composed anything.

Let me put it this way:

I would rather have a sax-playing president with experience on the job and who composed nothing, than a composer like Beethoven who would be deaf to the voice of the people!!!


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

I would move to Canada.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Verdi, the only sincerely liberal great composer ever.


Oops - forgot about Ives, if Ives is a great composer. And he wouldn't even have to get around the "natural born citizen" thing.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Paderewski. 

Oh wait . . .he already was one.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Somehow I feel like Copland would make a good president, at least from my perspective.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Handel, he was the most cosmopolitan composer of his times and the first great composer in history to show religious tolerance, tolerance of political differences, acceptance of artistic importance of the audiences' demands and performers (mainly singers) and conscious of financial success in the arts. Very few composers today (under artistic freedom of modernism) have that in mind.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> Handel, he was the most cosmopolitan composer of his times and the first great composer in history to show religious tolerance, tolerance of political differences, acceptance of artistic importance of the audiences' demands and performers (mainly singers) and conscious of financial success in the arts.


Those were all just the norm for all composers of commercial opera, starting with Cavalli and late Monteverdi, except religious tolerance, which was just the norm for all composers traveling between Catholic and Protestant areas (e.g. Schütz, Froberger) (unless you're referring to something more particular that I don't know about).


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## Guest (Mar 20, 2016)

I would elect a living composer because I imagine a dead president would be only 75% as effective as a living one.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

hpowders said:


> Let me put it this way:
> 
> I would rather have a sax-playing president with experience on the job and who composed nothing, than a composer like Beethoven who would be deaf to the voice of the people!!!


Modern hearing aids and/or surgery could remedy that.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> Handel, he was the most cosmopolitan composer of his times and the first great composer in history to show religious tolerance, tolerance of political differences, acceptance of artistic importance of the audiences' demands and performers (mainly singers) and conscious of financial success in the arts. Very few composers today (under artistic freedom of modernism) have that in mind.


He'd fit nicely in Taft's bathtub for sure.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

If it was for the United States, preferably one who spoke English and wasn't a monarchist.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

regenmusic said:


> If it was for the United States, preferably one who spoke English and wasn't a monarchist.


Americans don't do Monarchies, they have their own "dynasty's " but as a new country, it's not what one called royal :lol:
On topic, I vote for Verdi :tiphat:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My vote is for Joaquim Raff. Turns out he wasn't that great a composer, but he was a bright guy so he should be quite successful at something. Why not let him make his mark as president?

Spohr for VP, of course, for the same reason. We know he's smart. Didn't he invent the violin chinrest? Certainly more qualified than Dan Quayle.

I do NOT recommend Shostakovich. Who needs a president who's always agonizing over this and that? And if there were a real campaign, Trump would chop him up for dog food. Just sayin'.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

regenmusic said:


> If it was for the United States, preferably one who spoke English and wasn't a monarchist.


There seems to be quite a push for King Donald the 1st  (but not sure if he speaks English)


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

*Abe's Dreadlocks*

Abe, are you wearing one of those big puffy hats, the ones Rastafarians put their long dreadlocks?

(Way to go beyond just civil rights).


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


Pugg said:



Americans don't do Monarchies, they have their own "dynasty's " but as a new country, it's not what one called royal :lol:

Click to expand...

*









Of course not.

One can fake royalty.

One can't fake rich or beautiful. . .








.

. . . or even beautifully expressed singing.

_Viva Verdi!_- and his most illustrious Queen, incidentally.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

regenmusic said:


> Abe, are you wearing one of those big puffy hats, the ones Rastafarians put their long dreadlocks?
> 
> (Way to go beyond just civil rights).


Nope, it's actually Claude Frollo's hat, hence the "burning heretics in Paris" thing. Except that I don't do burning heretics because that's super antiquated and morally questionable.










It seems like Verdi is a popular choice. Hmmm...


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> My vote would go to J. S. Bach (and his vice-president, Felix Mendelssohn). From what I've gathered he had good time management and leadership skills and would make a good head of state in my opinion.


IMHO, the advantages of rolling back our current society to the world-view, standards and level of knowledge of the early 18th century would be limited and cause some quite justifiable objections from the majority of people (except from certain regions of the provinces, and perhaps the richest and ruling 1%).


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Wagner.

Just so we could finally clear up how much or little of a Nazi he really was.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

joen_cph said:


> IMHO, the advantages of rolling back our current society to the world-view, standards and level of knowledge of the early 18th century would be limited and cause some quite justifiable protests from the majority of people (except from certain regions of the provinces, and perhaps the richest and ruling 1%).


Wait, isn't rolling back society to pre-Enlightenment times a fundamental policy of certain actual presidential candidates?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Nereffid said:


> Wagner.
> 
> Just so we could finally clear up how much or little of a Nazi he really was.


Except that it's already very clear that he wasn't and there really shouldn't be any confusion about this. From what I've read from multiple sources he was an anarchist, at least at one point in his life.


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## Boldertism (May 21, 2015)

My vote goes to J.S. Bach as he seems to be the most stable.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Hey, did you know that Frank Zappa ran for president in the 1992 election?! Well, he ran against Clinton for the Democratic slot, but was forced to drop out in the early stages of his campain on account of the discovery of his advanced prostate cancer. So he didn't win... or even come close, but STILL, if by some miracle he had won, America would be very different!


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

violadude said:


> Except that it's already very clear that he wasn't and there really shouldn't be any confusion about this. From what I've read from multiple sources he was an anarchist, at least at one point in his life.


Well yeah, that was my point. Some people are so convinced of the Wagner-Nazi link that it would require several years' worth of direct evidence of actual Wagner actually implementing his actual political ideas to finally persuade them otherwise.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

What no mentions of Tchaikovsky!
Seems like he was a level headed guy to me, could have done the job easily


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Boldertism said:


> My vote goes to J.S. Bach as he seems to be the most stable.


Bruckner and Martinu were actually mummified, so even better


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Haydn man said:


> What no mentions of Tchaikovsky!
> Seems like he was a level headed guy to me, could have done the job easily


What head? (sorry for the bash, but...)


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Haydn man said:


> What no mentions of Tchaikovsky!
> Seems like he was a level headed guy to me, could have done the job easily


If I remember correctly, he was quite the nervous wreck. But I guess since it's 2016, he'd be less shy and more confident in public knowing that people will no longer judge him for his sexuality.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> If I remember correctly, he was quite the nervous wreck. But I guess since it's 2016, he'd be less ashamed of his sexuality and more open and confident in public.


Never mind, then. I'm not moving to Canada - I'm moving to Europe. Or Russia.

Dang, I'd move to North Korea before I dealt with _him_ for president.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

mstar said:


> Never mind, then. I'm not moving to Canada - I'm moving to Europe. Or Russia.
> 
> Dang, I'd move to North Korea before I dealt with _him_ for president.


What's so bad about gay people?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Nereffid said:


> Well yeah, that was my point. Some people are so convinced of the Wagner-Nazi link that it would require several years' worth of direct evidence of actual Wagner actually implementing his actual political ideas to finally persuade them otherwise.


We've had seven years of Obama, and some people are still not convinced that he isn't the second coming of Hitler, the Antichrist, or even that he was born in the US.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> What's so bad about gay people?


? No thing. The question is "What's so bad about Tchaikovsky". And the answer is just about everything.
But that's just my opinion on the matter.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Tchaikovsky with Trump for VP
nice balanced combination :devil:


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I would vote for Wagner replacing Merkel and King Ludwig of Bavaria for vice-chancellor (or the other way around, they would work in tandem anyway). Wagner was in no way a Nazi, but he was also unapologetic about putting the interests of his own people first. And King Ludwig wanted to make his Bavaria into "a land of poets and musicians". We would also need a Bismarck in the cabinet though, in order to counter the unrestrained idealism of this couple.


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## Guest (Mar 20, 2016)

Although I have never thought Wagner was a Nazi, I have also never understood why so many people feel such a powerful need to make the distinction. Wagner was anti-Semitic, which was, without a doubt, one of the qualities that makes "Nazi" such a buzzword to begin with. Yes, he may have had different views on authoritarianism, but in the case of Wagner, it's not like we're choosing between "Nazi" and "good person" here.

[Not to mention it's pretty impossible to predict who would've been what during WWII - I maintain the belief that threats to one's entire career/life or being held at gunpoint are often enough to change a man's mind]


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

I'm guessing my politics fall fairly closely in line with Frederic Rzewski; he is only 77, so maybe a late addition to the current hubub is called for. 

Rzewski for President, 2016! 

Actually a Bernie / Freddie ticket would (ideologically) makes sense!!!!


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I would vote for Wagner replacing Merkel and King Ludwig of Bavaria for vice-chancellor (or the other way around, they would work in tandem anyway). Wagner was in no way a Nazi, but he was also unapologetic about putting the interests of his own people first. And King Ludwig wanted to make his Bavaria into "a land of poets and musicians". We would also need a Bismarck in the cabinet though, in order to counter the unrestrained idealism of this couple.


Wagner was, imo, a prototype nazi. Maybe not in the sense that he was part of the Germany in the 1930s, but all the typical traits of nazis were in him - that's what explains his rabid, disgusting anti-semitism. He believed that Jews were ruining everything and that only 'true German art', 'true German thought', etc. was correct. How is that not nazi?

Election: Haydn for President of the United States of America. The Haydn dictatorship would include mandatory listenings to Symphonies 94, 100 and 104 every day . 
Something tells me that Rimsky-Korsakov would've been a better choice .


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## Guest (Mar 20, 2016)

If we're talking the US, doesn't the pres have to be an American? That would narrow the field.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> If we're talking the US, doesn't the pres have to be an American? That would narrow the field.


They have to be a native-born US citizen in order to be president. That's one of the reasons the idiotic "birther" conspiracies about Obama gained traction; if he had not been born in the US, he wouldn't even be eligible for the position.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> They have to be a native-born US citizen in order to be president. That's one of the reasons the idiotic "birther" conspiracies about Obama gained traction; if he had not been born in the US, he wouldn't even be eligible for the position.


Not only is Obama not an American, he's also a Muslim Atheist, Communist, Nazi, white genocider.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Dizzy Gillespie


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

violadude said:


> Not only is Obama not an American, he's also a Muslim Atheist, Communist, Nazi, white genocider.


Don't forget 'liberal'.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

_Some _composers had some administrative and leadership experience that trumps (pun intended) all y'all suggestions... *cough cough*


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> They have to be a native-born US citizen in order to be president. That's one of the reasons the idiotic "birther" conspiracies about Obama gained traction; if he had not been born in the US, he wouldn't even be eligible for the position.


............................


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

violadude said:


> Not only is Obama not an American, he's also a Muslim Atheist, Communist, Nazi, white genocider.


Obama is not beyond reproach, to put it lightly, imo. This is, however, steering into the field of politics and away from music.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

The problem with this proposition is that you have to be US-born to be a candidate. This somewhat restricts choice, but let's go for Roy Harris and Charles Ives, with Leonard Bernstein as Secretary of State.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

dogen said:


> If we're talking the US, doesn't the pres have to be an American? That would narrow the field.


Ted Cruz was born in Canada, but is an American citizen. Legally he can be president of the US.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Obama is not beyond reproach, to put it lightly, imo. This is, however, steering into the field of politics and away from music.


Ya, I only wish the reproach made sense.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


Morimur said:



Don't forget 'liberal'.

Click to expand...

*

'_Il_-liberal.'

Unless of course the police state at home and imperialism abroad and bank bailouts the world over are '' liberal . ''


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


violadude said:



Not only is Obama not an American, he's also a Muslim Atheist, Communist, Nazi, white genocider.

Click to expand...

*
Of course.

Obama (_née _ Barry Soetoro) is really a false-Left-cover powerless puppet who takes his marching orders from Chase Manhattan Bank.

His bailout of Wall Street exceeds all of the bailouts of every preceding president combined.

His administration's harassment of whistle-blowing journalists is legendary: James Risen of the_ New York Times_, James Rosen of _Fox_, journalist-in-hiding Glenn Greenwald, the acclaimed documentarian Laura Waitress (who's currently in self-exile in Berlin)- and scores and scores of other press people- were (are) harried, harassed, and prosecuted under the fascist ""Espionage Act.""

The mythology that Obama is all about school teachers, labor unions, and transparency is buncombe.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Of course, as far as TC is concerned, Obama's greatest crime against humanity is that he asked John Williams to compose something for his first inauguration. :devil:


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Any posts beyond here continuing the off-topic debate over Obama will be subject to deletion.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I think we need someone with a new perspective. How about a Medieval composer?


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Wagner was, imo, a prototype nazi. Maybe not in the sense that he was part of the Germany in the 1930s, but all the typical traits of nazis were in him - that's what explains his rabid, disgusting anti-semitism. He believed that Jews were ruining everything and that only 'true German art', 'true German thought', etc. was correct. How is that not nazi?


As far as I remember, he was not a fan of the French and their music either. His short story "A Pligrimage to Beethoven" also contains a satyrical caricature of an Englishman. Is that also rabid and disgusting, or are only the "chosen people" sacrosanct?

Wagner was basically telling the Jews they should assimilate instead of forming "parallel societies", in the modern German political lingo. I believe we already discussed the topic of assimilation vs parallel societies in another thread, but I will restate that I personally see eye to eye with Wagner on this, no matter whether it is the Jews, the Turks, the Russians, the Americans or any other ethnic group living in Germany. I believe even Merkel, a weak politician as she is, has made statements to that effect.

The worst choice for head of state would probably be Bach. All that weeping about one's own sin sounds good in music, but is just about the last thing Germany needs more of, as a country. I would put him in charge of the Ministry for Family Affairs: to help solve the demographic problem, you know 

As for the USA, if it wasn't for the native-born requirement, I would nominate Tchaikovsky - someone as gentle and non-belligerent as possible.


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## Guest (Mar 20, 2016)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Wagner was basically telling the Jews [....] I will restate that I personally see eye to eye with Wagner on this.


Welp, raise your hands if you need popcorn.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Any posts beyond here continuing the off-topic debate over Obama will be subject to deletion.


Why do I find the fact that a mod had to post this really funny?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

hpowders said:


> Ted Cruz was born in Canada, but is an American citizen. Legally he can be president of the US.


Actually that is open to question. Article 2 of the constitution does not define "natural-born citizen" and the question has never made it to the Supreme Court. The assumption that (say) Cruz qualifies is widespread, but some hold a contrary view, and the issue has not been adjudicated.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

nathanb said:


> Welp, raise your hands if you need popcorn.


Raise your hands if you have only read one thing out of my entire post.

Ah yes, and for Belarus I nominate the Prussian king Friedrich the Great who was also a composer. The country is in dire need of Prussian order.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Raise your hands if you have only read one thing out of my entire post.
> 
> Ah yes, and for Belarus I nominate the Prussian king Friedrich the Great who was also a composer. The country is in dire need of Prussian order.


But he was also a misogynist.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> But he was also a misogynist.


You mean he would force those two-legged hens who have somehow found themselves in possession of a driving license to actually learn the rules and obey them? That would be great.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

violadude said:


> Ya, I only wish the reproach made sense.


There are plenty of reproaches that make sense.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> As far as I remember, he was not a fan of the French and their music either. His short story "A Pligrimage to Beethoven" also contains a satyrical caricature of an Englishman. Is that also rabid and disgusting, or are only the "chosen people" sacrosanct?
> 
> Wagner was basically telling the Jews they should assimilate instead of forming "parallel societies", in the modern German political lingo. I believe we already discussed the topic of assimilation vs parallel societies in another thread, but I will restate that I personally see eye to eye with Wagner on this, no matter whether it is the Jews, the Turks, the Russians, the Americans or any other ethnic group living in Germany. I believe even Merkel, a weak politician as she is, has made statements to that effect.
> 
> ...


hm, no, any chauvinistic comments made about other people are disgusting as well, be they Jews, Russians, French, etc. And no, I do not agree with you about the 'assimilation' issue - Wagner, upon finding out that the majority of the visitors of his play are Jews, claimed that he wished the entire theatre to be burned down. These are assimilated Jews, people like Mendelssohn, for eg. - another person whom he denigrated, claiming that Mendelssohn apparently had no talent. To me personally, Wagner is pretty disgusting as a person, but I won't deny that he could write great music.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

nathanb said:


> Although I have never thought Wagner was a Nazi, I have also never understood why so many people feel such a powerful need to make the distinction. Wagner was anti-Semitic, which was, without a doubt, one of the qualities that makes "Nazi" such a buzzword to begin with. Yes, he may have had different views on authoritarianism, but in the case of Wagner, it's not like we're choosing between "Nazi" and "good person" here.


I feel it's important to make the distinction, for no other reason than besides being inaccurate it simply isn't constructive to label all antisemites as "Nazis" or "proto-Nazis", no matter how repugnant you consider their views or how awful you think they were as human beings. You are undoubtedly correct that Nazism emphasized racism, but the Nazi ideology also advocated fascism, territorial expansion, and the superiority of the Aryan race. And as a point of fact, there are no other consistencies between Wagner's personal philosophy and Nazism, in fact in several important ways they are complete antipodes. But when you label someone a Nazi it carries those other connotations involving that overall ideology with it, and by calling Wagner a Nazi or proto-Nazi it implies that there was a direct link or influence between him and Nazism, which simply isn't true. This is how assumptions and misconceptions are started. When you call a man a Nazi who had direct involvement on the front line of battle in support of democracy in 1849 during the Dresden uprising, who became a supporter of Constantin Frantz with his model of European federalism in which independent European nation states would be united by a European constitution based on the American constitution, or who held a lifelong belief in socialist pacifism, the term becomes practically meaningless.

Lumping them together also doesn't get anyone any closer to a clearer understanding of Wagner's antisemitism, either, which was of a quite different nature than that practiced by Hitler and the Nazis. Wagner's antisemitism didn't involve advocating to strip Jews of their civil rights and physically removing them from German society. What Wagner actually said was that Jew and Gentile should become "united and without difference" through assimilation. The historian Joachim Fest explains what this means:

"Even the famous sentence about the Redemption of Ahasvar that concludes the essay about "Judaism in Music" means nothing less than the annulment [Aufhebung] of the peculiar role of the Jews in society through the transformation of their relationship. First through revolution, the opposites of Jew and non-Jew are annulled in an aesthetic world-order, where they will emerge "united and without difference" from one another. Seen from the standpoint of predominantly pre-revolutionary thinking, he saw in the Jews, not a biological element, but rather a symptom of the illness of a materialist civilisation, where once it has been overcome, the Jews are freed of the daemonic power that drives civilisation to its decay. With Hitler it is totally different. He thought of all Jews as being undeliverable from the stigma bound to their ancestry and blood, from which they could never get away."

However dated Wagner's ideas on assimilation can be regarded today, relative to the sociopolitical discourse of his era it fell on the progressive and liberal side of the political spectrum. This isn't an attempt to try to defend such a dated position as being of relevance in our day and age, it is merely an attempt to understand Wagner relative to the background of the socially normative thinking of his age, rather than falsely reading it as though it were something written in the sociopolitical context of the 1930s, almost a century after the publication of _Judaism in Music_. Holocaust scholar Saul Friedländer, a respected author of one of largest and most comprehensive academic studies of the Holocaust ever published, has even stated that Wagner's liberal assimilationism would have been considered "ideologically unacceptable" to the National Socialists.

The Wagnerian scholar Bryan Magee has written about what characteristics Wagner's antisemitism did take, its causes and its symptoms, and makes the observation that:

"To an important degree, then, Wagner's anti-semitism, his hatred of the French, and his nationalism flowed from a common source, which was a desire to see a united Germany self-confident in its own culture, undominated and uncontaminated by non-German cultural influences, the proud custodian of the greatest of all traditions in the greatest of all the arts, and carrying that tradition forward into the future with outstanding new composers on par with those of the past. This was his vision, and he hated with a ferocious hatred anything or anyone that stood in the way of it's realization. It had obvious continuities with the hopes for national regeneration that had been held by the radical Young Germany movement in which he had joined so enthusiastically in his early twenties. And nobody at the time would have considered any of it in any way at odds with a left-wing outlook -- quite the contrary."

What is clear, and undeniable, and completely reprehensible is that Wagner held some noxious personal prejudices that he felt the need to voice publicly, and that since he was not only a composer but an important public figure, he must take his share of the blame for the antisemitism that invaded German social an political attitudes. And he has both in the past and the present been held more accountable than other antisemites who kept their views private and has more of a stain on his legacy because of it. Being widely recognized as a horrible racist would seem to be bad enough that it not be necessary to make erroneous claims about his links to Nazism.



HaydnBearstheClock said:


> And no, I do not agree with you about the 'assimilation' issue - Wagner, upon finding out that the majority of the visitors of his play are Jews, claimed that he wished the entire theatre to be burned down. These are assimilated Jews, people like Mendelssohn, for eg. - another person whom he denigrated, claiming that Mendelssohn apparently had no talent. To me personally, Wagner is pretty disgusting as a person, but I won't deny that he could write great music.


You certainly aren't the first to hold that opinion. But Wagner's call for assimilation isn't even an argument. It's what he wrote: a self-annihilation of the Jews through their voluntary acceptance of assimilation into Christian society -- the fate of Ahasverus. And when Wagner republished _Judaism in Music_ in 1869, far from urging for some kind of extermination of the Jews in the addendum, he distances himself from interpretations of his essays as an expression of "Medieval Jew hatred" that is "so shameful in an age of Enlightenment".

The remark about the theater burning down was actually made in a different context. It wasn't in regards to visitors of a production of one of his works, but a tasteless joke made in private to his second wife Cosima after they got word of reports of a fire in a theater in a Jewish neighborhood in Vienna during a performance of the play about a Jewish merchant called _Nathan the Wise_. How do we know it was a joke, and not an assertion of his true beliefs? Well, the diary entry from Cosima reads "He makes a drastic joke to the effect that all Jews should be burned at a performance of _Nathan the Wise_." It's also happens that this occurred just a month before Wagner wrote a letter to the father of Joseph Rubinstein, a Jewish pianist who was a bit emotionally unstable and who lived with the Wagner family for years, asking Joseph's father for his continued support for Joseph, and warning of possible "regrettable excesses" (suicide) should Joseph be pushed too hard to end his association with Wagner. We may assume that this was one Jew whom Wagner would not have liked to see burned in the theater.

His remarks about Mendelssohn are actually more varied and contradictory. Wagner had actually known Mendelssohn, and had found him both likeable and admirable. In his essay _Judaism in Music_ he uses Mendelssohn as an example in an attempt to make an extremely contrived point. He didn't say that Mendelssohn had no talent, quite the opposite, that he had a prodigious musical gift, but tries to turn this around to fit the thesis of his essay and writes "He showed us that a Jew can possess the greatest talents, the finest and most varied culture, the highest and most delicate sense of honour, and that none of these qualities can help him even once to move us to the depths of our being as we expect to be moved by art, and as we are when one of our own great artists simply opens his mouth to speak to us." He's comparing Mendelssohn to the likes of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart and basically saying look how badly Mendelssohn holds up against those three. As if many composers do. In later years, his remarks to Cosima as recorded in her diary contain numerous, more genuine expressions of admiration, including his offhand statement to her that he often found himself humming themes from Mendelssohn's compositions.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

^ So I'm just wondering... If we counted up all the posts on TC, would there be more about Wagner and Nazism or Schoenberg and atonality?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> There are plenty of reproaches that make sense.


There are. But not by the group of people I was referring to in my previous post (#44)


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