To what degree will you support musicians who (openly, possibly or jokingly) include racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted messages in their music, or who privately hold such beliefs?

Could we keep personal insults like "you enormous Shrek-alike moron" out of this interesting thread please?

Could we keep Geir out of this interesting thread please?

^^^

I apologise. I should know better. I do know better.

There there, Nick. It's hard on all of us...

Forget it, Nick. It's Hongrotown.

definitely agree that they should not be museum-cased, but I don't know that I would go so far as to call them "live arguments" either — like, sometimes when you look at history, you see that a debate has already run its course, one side won and the other lost.

Agree that we're broadly on the same side here; suspect that some of our differences might come from national perspective (you're US right?); I feel like Romantic Nationalism, fragments of a totalitarian past & far-right action keep bursting up in Europe, and none of it is a done deal, so there's a certain amount of suspicion one should maintain: picking at the rush that can come from Wagner's sound wall, asking oneself what one is swooning for, wondering if there won't always be something dark built into these energies, wondering how this relates to kitsch etc etc.

BUT must clarify: I'm not a classical music person. I've listened to Wagner a little, sometimes found it intoxicating (liebestod), sometimes dull. I don't know much.

(& I assume the classical music ppl itt would argue all that questioning is built into Wagner when listened to properly?)

Just wanted to chime in and say I don't think this thread is a cluster fuck at all, it's been ready interesting and esp would like to thank the ppl that really know classical and wagner on the thread, it's been real educational. I feel like any thread that gets long is called a cluster fuck by default sometimes

― Bleeqwot the Chef (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, March 23, 2011 9:59 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark

Seconded. As someone whose knowledge of Wagner is limited to "Kill da Wabbit" and Hitler-as-fanboy, I'm learning a lot here.

xp at the same time tho, it's very dramatic music that kind of requires you to let go/get into it — I mean the dude built a fuckin' crazy-opera house just so he could A. have his works performed in an acoustically-ideal space (the total work of art, y'all!) B. hide the musicians and force the audience to focus on the onstage action. like, on some level, he is trying to force people to "find it intoxicating", right? which is maybe a little harder for all of us, who aren't really able to 'let our guard down' around Wagner, and perhaps shouldn't.

so maybe the argument is that we can never listen to Wagner 'properly' anymore, but his operas should still be staged as a sort of grotesque spectacle that makes us reflect on ~the past~ — also it beats what's on TV

But performance can give a chance to reclaim, redeem, reimagine works, so it's not like we have to stare sceptically at protofascist myth spectacle - good staging can do a lot with the musical, psychological, intellectual force of W? Again, out of depth here, but thinking that objectionable Shakespeare (Shrew) & Marlowe (Jew) can be remade into something worthwhile live (because they come from unusual talents looking at earlier versions of our own fault lines?)

^^^ point about staging is a really good one

there was a really good fred jameson article in new left review a little while ago called "regieoper, or eurotrash?" (!! #shotsfired) — he talked about some of the staging choices in this new L.A. version, which sounded horrific and are possibly biasing me in this issue

okay this was the part that made me lol the hardest:

Certainly there are splendid inventions in the Los Angeles version. The Valkyries, in particular, are enveloped in extraordinarily large and complex shells which open and close on the singers, and may be said to represent these beings in symbiosis with their steeds — an arrangement which solves some hitherto impossible staging problems, and then recompounds them by showing the Valkyries pedalling away on something like celestial bicycles.

(for any other Wagner 'newbies' ITT, there's an excellent episode of WYNC's Radiolab that explores The Ring Cycle that is well worth your time)

if saying something "should not" be performed were actually the same as saying "there should be a law against it," your point might stand. there are all sorts of things I think people shouldn't do which they have a perfect right to do.

they are not the same thing, but one inevitably precedes the other. as soon as enough people think something shouldn't be done, then a law gets passed against it. don't make me list examples...

But I think forcing benign readings onto Wagner is like...really? anybody can read the libretto to Siegfried & see what's going on.

I think "forcing benign readings" is overstating it, but I'll leave the myriad ways Wagner can be handled to the more classically-inclined people on this thread (to which I am a philistine by comparison)

xp

Overstatement begets overstatement!

I mean, I feel like there is a temptation to make this into some sort of hypothetical "given the choice between a world without Wagner and a world without anti-semitism, which would you pick?" — and of course, anyone with a conscience is gonna take the latter eight days a week. but that's not that choice we're given. because both Wagner and the historical moment of his anti-semitism belong to the past

I would hope and assume that his supposedly genius music is more alive as a source of influence than his supposed anti-semitism is though.

I don't exactly know what any of that means but okay

I mean, "influence" is tricky to talk about because like — he's a popular composer, I'm sure lots of other musicians, of wildly-diverging qualities, have heard his music throughout history, some of them probably absorbed it on some level, others hated it but were still influenced by it, others went on to become composers and deliberately study and imitate his orchestration &c &c — he's part of the musical landscape at this point, sure, but I don't know if that should be attributed to a single "source of influence" so much as the persistence of an aesthetic

Arguably he is just as influential on the likes of Queen than on subsequent "classical" music, apart from Mahler and R. Strauss who were obviously both very obviously influenced by him.

"supposed" anti semitism, nice one geir

Those anti-semitic things that he supposedly "said" and "wrote" "repeatedly" over a number of "years".

yeah but geir has never read them

what's the George Eliot novel about Wagner called?

is this the part where we out Geir for not actually knowing anything about classical music. cuz I'm pretty sure we did that on some other thread

Not about Wagner, about Jewishness though. xp

I'm pretty sure I've known Wagner was anti-semitic as long as I've known Beethoven was deaf. It's wagnerfax #1

wasn't there some thread where Dan was schooling Geir about Mozart or Beethoven and Geir confessed that he only knew a couple of Beethoven's symphonies (the 9th and the 5th I think?) does this ring a bell with anyone?

it likely wasn't me, everything I know I know via performance rather than study

something to do with what you would play for Mozart if he showed up in your living room?

xp to shakes

was that the one?

I am still mad at ILM that no-one made an "odd future Wolfgang tell him all" joke on that thread

I think a majority of ILX was still sleeping on OFWGKTA at that moment

wasn't there some thread where Dan was schooling Geir about Mozart or Beethoven and Geir confessed that he only knew a couple of Beethoven's symphonies (the 9th and the 5th I think?) does this ring a bell with anyone?

You mean this thread?

I don't think that's the one actually...my bad.

Those anti-semitic things that he supposedly "said" and "wrote" "repeatedly" over a number of "years".

Again, hating Jews (and basically all things non-European) in 1880 was about as common among Europeans as insisting the earth was flat was in 1450.

The shape of the Earth was not only discussed in scholarly works written in Latin; it was also treated in works written in vernacular languages or dialects and intended for wider audiences. The Norwegian book Konungs Skuggsjá, from around 1250, states clearly that the Earth is round - and that there is night on the opposite side of the Earth when there is daytime in Norway. The author also discusses the existence of antipodes - and he notes that they (if they exist) will see the Sun in the north of the middle of the day, and that they will have opposite seasons of the people living in the Northern Hemisphere.

yeah that's the thread I was thinking of Tarfumes - thx

I am not a classical music fan at all, but out of what I've heard of classical music, Mozart is the best for me

That's cool brah. You can like whatever you like. You're not obliged to listen to anything.

Yep, the populist choices, but they are the ones who make him still relevant for more than a handful of classical music nerds.

That is completely, completely false, and I know that from personal experience, rather than just assertion. Admittedly you won't hear many of his great chamber music masterpieces on the barren wastelands of Classic FM, but at least as popular as the works you mentioned are the four great operas Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte and Die Zauberflote, plus Die Entfuhrung, the violin concertos, the Gran Partita Serenade, the Piano Quartets, the C major and C minor Masses, the Haffner, Linz, Paris and Prague Symphonies (not to mention favourites like no 25 and no 29), Other Piano Concerts which you've never bothered with no 9, no 13, no 17, no 10, no 20, no 24, no 25 and no 27, the Sinfonia Concertante.....

People go to see concerts with these pieces who are not by any stretch of the imagination "classical music nerds" (really don't know what to make of that phrase, are you being playful, or insulting, or just bludgeoningly stupid, or....?).

Out of Mozart's big production (he composed an amazing lot within his short life), the earliest works are largely forgotten. Yep, they are stored in there because Mozart is a big name, and because Körchel did a good job sorting his work out, but I think few people actually play them or listen to them.

If by "earliest works" you his juvenilia and compositions written before the age of about 14, yes, you're right. But a good deal of his late teenage works have plenty of currency and performances. After that of course he still wrote 'early works' but they are firmly in the canon of regularly played and recorded works.

In the case of most composers from this era, they are remembered for a handful of their work, and then another handful of string quartets etc. that a few nerds dig into while the man in the street are largely unfamiliar with them. Big parts of the production of, say, Mozart and Haydn are still unknown to virtually all people, not unknown as in they know it exists, but as in they've never heard it.

This is irrelevant guy, we're on a music message board full of music obsessives and music nerds, what the man on the street knows or cares about is not really that important (unless that's what we're talking about..). The fact is people who love classical music or who are curious about music full stop will if they bother to investigate be exposed to many dozens more of Mozart's works than you know about because they are regularly played and consumed and talked about. Do you give a shit that the man on the street is not aware of 'Supper's Ready' but loves 'Follow You Follow Me' ? Would you use the argument that because the man on the street doesn't know these works therefore they are 'for nerds' ? Are you a 'Genesis nerd', or a 'prog nerd' ?
You're omnivorous when it comes to popular music (after 1963, anyway), you listen to things you don't like because it fills in the gaps of pop history, it lets you know what has been created and what impact it had, even if it's not your cup of tea. and more than that you're just a plain fan of music, so you want to listen to as much as you can, it's all good right? Consequently you are something of a (lol) authority on popular music, because you've listened to artists in breadth and depth, the lesser known as well as the chart-topping. You have not done this with classical music, so you do not know whereof you speak. Why can't you admit this? Yet you still speak on classical music as if you knew anything about it. Why the pretense? And why the disparaging terms for those who have listened to it? Do you really think that music should be curated by people who don't have a clue, but who only go on what 'the man in the street' knows?

― henri grenouille (Frogman Henry), Tuesday, October 12, 2010 10:50 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark

EPIC SONNING

um whoops needs some formatting

I am not a classical music fan at all, but out of what I've heard of classical music, Mozart is the best for me

That's cool brah. You can like whatever you like. You're not obliged to listen to anything.

Yep, the populist choices, but they are the ones who make him still relevant for more than a handful of classical music nerds.

That is completely, completely false, and I know that from personal experience, rather than just assertion. Admittedly you won't hear many of his great chamber music masterpieces on the barren wastelands of Classic FM, but at least as popular as the works you mentioned are the four great operas Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte and Die Zauberflote, plus Die Entfuhrung, the violin concertos, the Gran Partita Serenade, the Piano Quartets, the C major and C minor Masses, the Haffner, Linz, Paris and Prague Symphonies (not to mention favourites like no 25 and no 29), Other Piano Concerts which you've never bothered with no 9, no 13, no 17, no 10, no 20, no 24, no 25 and no 27, the Sinfonia Concertante.....

People go to see concerts with these pieces who are not by any stretch of the imagination "classical music nerds" (really don't know what to make of that phrase, are you being playful, or insulting, or just bludgeoningly stupid, or....?).

Out of Mozart's big production (he composed an amazing lot within his short life), the earliest works are largely forgotten. Yep, they are stored in there because Mozart is a big name, and because Körchel did a good job sorting his work out, but I think few people actually play them or listen to them.

If by "earliest works" you his juvenilia and compositions written before the age of about 14, yes, you're right. But a good deal of his late teenage works have plenty of currency and performances. After that of course he still wrote 'early works' but they are firmly in the canon of regularly played and recorded works.

In the case of most composers from this era, they are remembered for a handful of their work, and then another handful of string quartets etc. that a few nerds dig into while the man in the street are largely unfamiliar with them. Big parts of the production of, say, Mozart and Haydn are still unknown to virtually all people, not unknown as in they know it exists, but as in they've never heard it.

This is irrelevant guy, we're on a music message board full of music obsessives and music nerds, what the man on the street knows or cares about is not really that important (unless that's what we're talking about..). The fact is people who love classical music or who are curious about music full stop will if they bother to investigate be exposed to many dozens more of Mozart's works than you know about because they are regularly played and consumed and talked about. Do you give a shit that the man on the street is not aware of 'Supper's Ready' but loves 'Follow You Follow Me' ? Would you use the argument that because the man on the street doesn't know these works therefore they are 'for nerds' ? Are you a 'Genesis nerd', or a 'prog nerd' ?

You're omnivorous when it comes to popular music (after 1963, anyway), you listen to things you don't like because it fills in the gaps of pop history, it lets you know what has been created and what impact it had, even if it's not your cup of tea. and more than that you're just a plain fan of music, so you want to listen to as much as you can, it's all good right? Consequently you are something of a (lol) authority on popular music, because you've listened to artists in breadth and depth, the lesser known as well as the chart-topping. You have not done this with classical music, so you do not know whereof you speak. Why can't you admit this? Yet you still speak on classical music as if you knew anything about it. Why the pretense? And why the disparaging terms for those who have listened to it? Do you really think that music should be curated by people who don't have a clue, but who only go on what 'the man in the street' knows?

― henri grenouille (Frogman Henry), Tuesday, October 12, 2010 10:50 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark

FIXED

I was reading that thread like 'lol omg classic Geir' and then realized it was from Oct 2010, which is even more lol.

aerosmith in fine form on that thread too

"Again, hating Jews (and basically all things non-European) in 1880 was about as common among Europeans as insisting the earth was flat was in 1450."

Pretty sure that not everyone was openly advocating for the genocide of Jews in 1880.

I mean Wagner produced like ACTUAL ANTI-SEMITIC BOOKS. It's not like he was just whispering "I hate jews" to his friends.

Was not aware he did. I thought he was first and foremost Hitler's favourite composer because of all the "Arian" bombast in his music and "stage shows".

Long xpost. My mistake on Rocky Horror: it's Patricia Quinn in the credits, but the lips on the Rocky Horror poster are Lorelei Shark, the model from disco demolition night. That is all.

Was not aware he did. I thought he was first and foremost Hitler's favourite composer because of all the "Arian" bombast in his music and "stage shows".

Geir if you would only read the thread before making assertions. We spent a fair few posts describing & linking to discussions of Wagner's active side-career as a professional anti-semite. He wrote a book called "Jewishness in Music." This is not a secret, it's commonly mentioned when discussing Wagner.

Want to voice my agreement with the point about modern staging and how it can be used to reflect on Wagner and conceiveably rehabilitate whilst also condemmning him. I saw Parsifal at ENO a fortnight ago and the staging clearly presented the implications in the libretto, that the Grail Knights ARE a mad cult whose obsession and insanity has cut them off from reality. The stuff about 'pure blodd' in the last act is thus shown to be a feature of the morbid old-world religious-mania in an inherently bankrupt philosophy.At the end Kundry doesn't die, instead she goes off with Parsifal along the train tracks that lead out of the Grail Knights' compound (tracks which 'lead straight to Auschwitz' in the phrase of one reviewer.) The idea is that Parsifal and her are now happily in love. I haven't seen any other productions of Parsifal, but the funny thing is that the music, aside from some triumphalism in the last act, generally supported the director's vision. It is a score for a horror film, certainly in the first two acts, and this reinforces the feeling that we are looking at some kind of bizarre, horrifiying, Sci-Fi relaity in which civillization has broken down and only primitive, magical beliefs and superstitions can be clung to. In this light the anti-semitism of the lines about 'pure blood' make complete sense, and become reclaimed. The Grail Knights and their mania stand as a warning. If Wagner did not mean this to be the case, his music certainly proclaimed it.

The art is better than the artist.

Which reminds me of what George Steiner said in a BBC profile of Wagner in 1997, which handily is transcribed online:

Narrator

In the last year of Wagner's life his racist views became more extreme. The only way to redeem "the lower races" as he called them was by an infusion of the pure blood of Christ whom he believed was not Jewish but Aryan. Cosima's diaries show that he was increasingly preoccupied by what he regarded as "the Jewish problem". While he was composing Parsifal, he read that 400 Jews had died in a fire in a Viennese synagogue. Wagner made the drastic joke to Cosima that perhaps all Jews should be burned.

Professor George Steiner

You can go at that in a number of ways. My own conviction is people like ourselves—ordinary people—cannot grasp what is going on in the mind of a titanically complex creator who can create Parsifal and then say absolutely barbaric inhumanities. So I say that the man who has given us what he has, musically, lies outside my range of understanding. That doesn't mean it doesn't make me bitterly disturbed, ill at ease, but that—to put it very vulgarly if I may—that's my problem and not his.

Narrator

Richard Wagner died in Venice on the 13th of February, 1883. He was nearly 70. Wagner's legacy has been immeasurable. His music stands at the threshold of modern Western classical music and his influence on such composers as Mahler, Schoenberg and Debussy was immense.

Robin Holloway

Wagner has influenced virtually every composer since, with some exceptions like Stravinsky, who were very anti-Wagner. But the violence of their hatred is a form of tribute—a form of being Wagnerian by default, by opposite.

Roger Norrington

I find it difficult to see this man writing music. I can see him running a country, or at least an airline, or probably owning a few. But I can't see him writing music.

Magic Fire Music

Professor George Steiner

How can you have among the highest achievements of beauty or speculative elegance and audacity of the human mind and conscience and guts and viscera on the one hand, and the awfulness on the ohter? Wagner's music, as they say it in court, is Exhibit A.