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?

What I've read about the guy is that he was more nuts control freak like Walt Disney than garden variety hatemonger, though can't say I'm too impressed with Walt Disney either. What's a good Wagner substitute, though? With Disney there's at least Six Flags and Pixar.

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 2:02 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you should REALLY REALLY read the essay aerosmith linked to upthread

also Bruckner understood choruses better than Wagner

Yeah I was gonna say Bruckner.

When it comes to baggage, though, one does have to point out Bruckner was hitler's favorite composer of all. But Bruckner the man was pretty much totally innocuous (while his music brings the cosmic, sub-oceanic, abysmal and bucolic in equal measure).

Bruckner doesn't even come close.

Apart from that, one wonder's what the point is in trying to take issue with somebody who died well over a hundred years ago, we're forgetting how different everything must've been, history combined with a widespread humanist climate can do that sometimes.

xpost Also the first few R Strauss outings are pretty much a humorous grand guignol answer to Wagner. Strauss is equally deft and elaborate but does NOT take himself seriously.

Apart from that, one wonder's what the point is in trying to take issue with somebody who died well over a hundred years ago, we're forgetting how different everything must've been, history combined with a widespread humanist climate can do that sometimes.

Seriously? is it really your position that everybody was a noxious antisemite? it's demonstrably untrue, if so.

Yeah this isn't a 19th century novelist casually using the N-word because that was what people did back then - it's virulent bigotry.

When it comes to baggage, though, one does have to point out Bruckner was hitler's favorite composer of all. But Bruckner the man was pretty much totally innocuous (while his music brings the cosmic, sub-oceanic, abysmal and bucolic in equal measure).

but yeah - I mean - Hitler loved painting, too - nothing wrong with painting. But what he liked about painting wasn't "its very essence opposes the Jewish infestation and uplifts the Aryan spirit," whereas it can be convincingly argued that that's exactly what he likes about Wagner. Bruckner, on the other hand, just a gentle dude thinkin about God. who Wagner was a dick to, btw, which makes me hate Wagner even more.

Wagner was a dick to Bruckner I mean not to God except like maybe broadly speaking

I just figured someone was bound to bring it up so might as well get it over with.

Yeah, Wanger was also, depending on the year, a leech and a dick to Liszt, who was one of the few true bros of the 19c.

Yeah, Wanger was also, depending on the year, a leech and a dick to Liszt, who was one of the few true bros of the 19c.

which we can all learn about from watching Lisztomania btw

Liszt, who was one of the few true bros of the 19c.

think there's a bunch of 19th-century cuckolded husbands who might differ with you on this score

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRd88MPEvAE&feature=related

Rick Wakeman as Thor^^^

lol you guys are getting Phoenix songs stuck in my head - plz stop

some pretty hilar composer caricatures in this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzG1qcav8aA

Seriously? is it really your position that everybody was a noxious antisemite? it's demonstrably untrue, if so.

I wasn't particularly clear but I'm saying that we're so far removed, in time and (what I'm emphasising here) in mind. It's easy to pass the huge differences in modes of thought between now and then, given the widespread default non-thought surrounding what it means to be human today.

>>Liszt, who was one of the few true bros of the 19c.

think there's a bunch of 19th-century cuckolded husbands who might differ with you on this score

Love is NEVER wrong, aero, come now.

One of the worst things Wagner did to Liszt was turn FL's daughter Cosima into an ideological clone of himself, one who DID live long enough to consort with Nazis...

whole movie is hilar, one of Russell's best imho

xp

prettylike: ah, I get you - we are coming at reality from deeply diff. philosophical standpoints in that case - I really think the present day vastly overstates the depths of its differences with the past - to the point where I consider the deepest differences one can name largely cosmetic, and that historians won't say "at this or that point in the late 20th century" (or whatever point one assigns) "some break occurred or finished occurring which drove a rift between the mindsets of preceding ages and the ones that followed" - I think western culture is basically of a comprehensible, apprehendable piece

I purchased an Arghoslent CD before. They are racist, redneck morons but the CD just kills.

I've heard rumors those guys are just taking the piss but idk. "Hornets of the Pogrom" as a title sounds like a Christopher Guest take on nsbm for sure though

I don't think so...

yeah but I mean did you ever read any crucial youth interviews? kinda smell misanthrophic art-prank. I don't listen to them just in case don't get me wrong but I think they might be kinda Mentors-level trolling

I'm sorry, I can't stop lolling at their songtitles (Incorrigble Bigotry!)

Speaking of Liszt, going to this on Wednesday, pretty awesome:

CIM ORCHESTRA with LESLIE HOWARD
(Concert Series)

Presented in collaboration with Cuyahoga Community College
LESLIE HOWARD, piano and conductor, guest artist
CIM ORCHESTRA
CARL TOPILOW, conductor

In honor of the 2011 bicentennial of composer Franz Liszt’s birth,
Leslie Howard and the CIM Orchestra will present world premieres
of newly discovered Liszt manuscripts.
Pre-concert talk begins at 7:00 pm.

Awesome! Was just listening to a volume of Howard's complete Liszt series this morning.

xpost The interviewer's italicised commentary is creepier than the band's answers.

I like this bit: "Even though we deal with taboo topics, none are expressed or dealt with in a disrespectful or irresponsible manner."

Says the band with members called Holocausto and Pogrom. I don't think they're just trolling though.

Shall we discuss tomorrow whether rap can be considered music, or merely talking over someone else's music?
― Siegbran, maandag 21 maart 2011 23:44 (Yesterday) Bookmark

?

Siegban

it's my position that what the Nazis saw in these tropes and what Wagner meant by them are one and the same.

Utter bullshit. Every generation re-invents the meaning and uses of art and thought. Wagner's nationalism should be seen in the context of the post-Enlightenment reaction to universals (mostly as posited by the French) and expressing itself in 19th century romanticism and nationalism; perhaps even defensible in some kind of Burkean way if conducted with humility and circumspection. I don't recall Wagner, whatever one thinks of his music, as ever calling for genocide however anti-semitic he may have been and German anti-semitism has pretty deep and complicated roots, ones that were not unknown throught all Christendom, tbf.

I don't think Wagner has to have called for genocide in order to put his nationalistic anti-Semitism in the same lineage as what the Nazis ended up doing, otherwise you are making an argument that veers perilously close to the "but he didn't dress up like a Klan member" line of defense against accusations of racial insensitivity.

Michael White, "I don't recall him as ever calling for genocide ergo he's not in the exact lineage of national socialism" is ridiculous. Most member of the fuckin' SS never "called for genocide" either - you wanna excuse them too? Does a guy gotta get "I'm a nazi" tatted on his face before he's actually a nazi, or can we look at his ideology and call it what it is?

well hold on there, chronologically speaking it was impossible for Wagner to be a Nazi, I will fully back up that argument 100%

acting like Wagner's shit was completely divorced from what inspired Hitler seems... completely wrong tho

chronologically speaking it was impossible for Wagner to be a Nazi, I will fully back up that argument 100%
^^^yes

Pretty sure genocide wasn't a Nazi policy in '33.

Yeah, but looking back, I find something offensive in almost every person in the past. Is that reason to refuse to engage with their work, especially music? I am not fond of Xtianity on the whole, should I throw out my Bach? Porgy and Bess can make me uncomfortable at times. Should I toss it and all of Gershwin?

"but he didn't dress up like a Klan member"

It doesn't matter what the Klan member wears, of course, but the quality of his/her music isn't affected either way, necessarily. Do we know the sculptor of the Venus de Milo's politics? Do we care? The mosaicist from Pompeii, was he racist against Carthaginians or Greeks or Germans? Does Ming dynast vase imply a world view that anyone not from the Middle Kingdom inferior? I dunno and I don't care.

My answer to the original question is that very often offensive people let their offensiveness ruin or marr their art. Inasmush as they don't and their work is good, I'll enjoy it at whatever level I enjoy it.

well hold on there, chronologically speaking it was impossible for Wagner to be a Nazi, I will fully back up that argument 100%

Also while his racial views are well matched to theirs, the rest of his political thinking is not. He was on the left, not the right.

xp

this is the point of the thread tho! I don't think anybody's called for a background check on every artist they get into, but we're talking about the issues involved in enjoying the art of somebody who you know to be a scumbag, and by scumbag we can narrow it down to something like "actively endorsing hatred of a societal group thru their art". I pretty much fall into the "if I like the art enough I'll let anything slide" camp but I'm not sure that it's a good camp or a personally justifiable one.

I don't know how helpful Left and Right are (at all really but especially with regard to Wanger and Nazis. Afaik Wanger was never a Socialist in any meaningful sense, whereas the early Nazi party did have several ranking members who wanted the party to take its Socialism seriously.

My answer to the original question is that very often offensive people let their offensiveness ruin or marr their art. Inasmush as they don't and their work is good, I'll enjoy it at whatever level I enjoy it.

^^^a gentleman and a scholar, folks

Most member of the fuckin' SS never "called for genocide" either - you wanna excuse them too? Does a guy gotta get "I'm a nazi" tatted on his face before he's actually a nazi, or can we look at his ideology and call it what it is?

Listen, most of the Germans under the gangster Nazi regime were desperate sheep or opportunists; morally irresponsible, reckless even. (I'm reading a bio of the Warburgs and the amount of sheer confusion even amongst the German Jewish community as to what to make of the Nazis in the early 30's is heart-rendingly sad). The Nazis were pretty clear about ridding germany of Jews and their 'nefarious' influence.

Was Wagner an anti-semite? Yes. Had there been no Wagner, could you still have ended up with Hitlers and Goebbels and Rosenbergs and Luegers? Very probably.

xpost but Wanger was active in the mid-century revolutionary movement and had to flee the country for fear of arrest, which is kind of actively left, no?

I think that when people are dyed in the wool visceral racist type people, they wont have what it takes to create mindblowing music. Maybe I am naive. But barring Siegfrieds Funeral March, everything else Wagner did was wank. People who become obcessed with racial bullshit aint ever gonna create great music. The best music has always come from people who are lost to the music.

Left in the sense of being anti-monarchist and wanting a united, democratic Germany.

I should admit here that I prefer Wagner's music w/o vocals, generally so I am a bit of a philistine on the subject.

I think that when people are dyed in the wool visceral racist type people, they wont have what it takes to create mindblowing music. Maybe I am naive. But barring Siegfrieds Funeral March, everything else Wagner did was wank. People who become obcessed with racial bullshit aint ever gonna create great music. The best music has always come from people who are lost to the music.

Don't believe any of this, sorry.

I should admit here that I prefer Wagner's music w/o vocals, generally so I am a bit of a philistine on the subject.

This box set is your friend:

http://www.amazon.com/Ring-Tristan-Parsifal-Orchestral-Adventures/dp/B0043VLWXQ/ref=sr_shvl_album_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1300832866&sr=301-2

Maazel's "Ring Without Words" concoction hits all the good bits but is too breathless presto-change-o; the standard orchestral chunks miss too much good music. I recommend the above for the vocal-allergic.

I pretty much fall into the "if I like the art enough I'll let anything slide" camp but I'm not sure that it's a good camp or a personally justifiable one.

this is generally me too actually, but I don't think this principle is one worth defending - think more it's one to be overcome personally, as it places one's own pleasure above all - to take things over to metal, I care more about the friends who'd think "aerosmith you're better than that" if they found out I was listening to nazi metal & diggin' it than I do about the pleasure I might take from said metal, and that's actually a functioning principle for me (not a "what if my friends found out principle" since as been discussed elsewhere I don't have irl friends): would I want people to know I take pleasure in racist music by racists? No; I'd be ashamed; so I avoid Wagner. I don't argue that others should not listen to him, but when somebody says "I just look past the racism," I feel kinda like "it's a bourgeois privilege to be able to overlook racism."

and yes I am keenly and painfully aware that both Wagner is responsible for some of the most achingly gorgeous melodies in the history of music.