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I've never really been a fan of Wagner but I don't understand why people refuse to listen/like Wagner because he was an anti-Semite. I've read before that Chopin was anti-Semitic but everyone loves Chopin. Furthermore, anti-Semitism was incredibly wide-spread in Europe and I wouldn't be surprised if the great majority of composers had similar ideologies. After all, Liszt harbored no extreme disapproval of Wagner's marriage to his daughter so probably he accepted Wagner despite his anti-Semitism. Now, I am by no means saying you should like Wagner even if he was anti-Semitic. I just find it curious how people can like Chopin and Liszt but hate Wagner for his anti-Semitism.

Maybe I have something wrong? If so, feel free to clear it up for me because I find this interesting. :p

I've never heard that Chopin was anti-semitic...can anyone confirm this?

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/05/reviews/980405.05drivert.html

Just google "Chopin anti-Semitic" and you will see.

Wagner was a raging antisemite who even published his opinions in a diatribe called Jewishness in Music .

Chopin certain had Jewish associates and acquaintances, including Alkan and Mendelssohn. To my knowledge, the expressions of antisemitism attributed to him were mild and reflected popularly held cultural beliefs. Even in our enlightened times, an apt comparison could be made with ambivalent attitudes toward homosexuality; plenty of people are able to find humor in antigay jokes and stereotypes, or claim they don't "approve" of it, even though they have gay friends and relatives for whom they feel affection, love and even respect.

I don't mean to whitewash anyone's character flaws, but there's a difference between mild ones and severe ones. Personal prejudices expressed privately aren't the same as waging a campaign of vehement extremism. Nobody's perfect, and some people are far more imperfect than others.

I have no basis for an opinion about Liszt, his views or his relationship with Wagner. I've never heard antisemitism imputed to him—but nor is it, generally speaking, to Chopin. Wagner's reputation, on the other hand, seems to be in a class by itself.

Steven

Beethoven was not a pleasant person to be around. Liszt was a...pimp. But the music they write is what people remember them for the most.

Was that before or after his deafness set in?
Was that before or after he took religious orders?
Beethoven and Liszt, maybe. Wagner, maybe not.

Steven

Why is that not the case with Wagner?

I've read some of Chopin's letters, sotto voce, and there are some distinctively anti-Semitic quotes.

It's all the Ring Cycle's fault.

I've read them, too, and I believe the characterization I already offered is accurate.

If you have Chopin's Letters on hand (I do not), perhaps you could quote the relevant language here (stating the context), and people can judge for themselves.

Steven

I would also like to read those quotes akonow, if you have them on hand or remember them.

So be it. Chopin on receiving less than he expected from Pleyel, one of Chopin's publishers, for his preludes: "I did not expect that Pleyel would Jew me..." Chopin telling Juljan about Schelsinger, another one of Chopin's publishers: "Schelsinger has always cheated me; but he has made a lot out of me, and won't want to recieve another profit; only be polite to him, because the Jew likes to pass for somebody."

Have you had enough?

Schumann was also ardently anti-Semitic as was Bach. But Brahms wasn't, bless his soul.

By all means, provide more if you wish. They're all in the same vein, and I don't think they get worse than the ones you mention.

I stand by the description I originally offered. Do you think it was inaccurate, then, or that these off-hand remarks indicate anything on the level of what Wagner wrote?

FWIW, what's the evidence of Bach's and Schumann's alleged antisemitism (and Brahms' lack thereof)?

Steven

I suppose you are right but I will still feel a little sad about one of my favorite composers being such a person.

Regarding Brahms, when an anti-Semitic man was elected mayor of Vienna in 1895, Brahms barked at a dinner party about how anti-Semitism is nonsense.

Schumann spoke to his wife after she noticed a cooling in his attitude towards Mendelssohn and said, "Jews remain Jews; only after seating themselves ten times will [they] offer a place to a Christian. Sometimes [the Jews] pelt us with the very stones we carried to their temple of glory." Now, he did respect Mendelssohn as a confidant and fellow musician but there were always anti-Jewish overtones that he would make to his wife when they were alone. Poor Mendelssohn.

As for dear old Bach, he included his ideology in "St. John Passion." If you read the text, you will see this unfortunate fact.

Well, one of my grandmothers—not the Jewish one!—actually used to use one of the same expressions Chopin did; when haggling unsuccessfully over the price of something she was selling, she would say she got "Jewed down." Of course, this was long before the era of political correctness, when unsophisticated ignorance wasn't generally questioned. But I assure you she was no more antisemitic than your average non-Jew, and I've never believed that the use of such unfortunate expressions was a defining characteristic of her (or Chopin's) personality.

Thanks for the details about the other composers!

Steven

Before I say this, let me say, that I am Jewish, although many people do not consider me a jew because my beliefs have more in common with the mysticism behind all the world religions, of which the erroneous concepts of morality, ethnocentricity, and anthropocentricity, are the detractors of.

(Hyperbole here) I think Wagner was such a great musical philosopher, that his own venerated predecessors are to him what the homophonic chants of the early portion of this millennia are to music as we know it. Okay, maybe not, but his ideas to me were a great, great advancement for music as being transparent to transcendency - that is, to invoke religious experience, as opposed to for poetic purposes, or the creation of sauvity/ beauty. His musical philosophy stemmed from a profound insight that I believe marks the entry into the 4th "cakra" - a moral relativism by which all aspects of the Self(everything in the Universe/personality), apparent as much as human creativity can allow for, are revered - that is to say, one is not indignant at why "good people die and bad ones live", or have ethical judgements - each personality is viewed as a portion of a beautiful mandala, no matter how morally repugnant - thereby, one can appreciate with awe and wonder the terrible deeds of the villains of myth, and not take myth as a story with a moral - but as a Divine Comedy of inconceivable sublimity. This is why Star Wars is so resonant with people. Instead of judging the turbulent middle section of a story as "fallen from grace", it is given its own value, its own dramatic and spiritual grace, born out of the spirit of its opposite and vice versa.

Wagner was basically the George Lucas of the 19th century.

Obviously, this seems to contradict Wagner's own personality, because he ethically judged Jews as lesser...But turn your attention now to Star Wars. George Lucas made it after reading Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a THousand Faces", a book that layed out comprehensibly the basic points of myth, and told about exactly what myth is. It is the story of the Universe - the engagement of all aspects of pure consciousness in a psychic split (neurosis), whereby "maya" ("illusion, space-time") prevents these entities from seeing their oneness with eachother. The hero, by attaining enlightenment, can overcome the will-to-power which keeps the entities in conflict and restore peace.

One thing about Joseph Campbell - he was anti-semitic. One of his main influences, like Wagner, included Schoepnehauer (Jung and James Joyce though, too). Both Campbell and William Blake shared in common this view: "That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them and the same will it be against Christians." This is the ethnocentricity that I was referring to, which is one of the obstacles to the objective viewpoint of all personalities, no matter the content of what, on the magnificent mandala - this view, "You worship God in your Way, I'll worship Him in His", prevents myth from being transparent to transcendence, because all the entities cannot be recognized as holy, and a part of holiness. For all beings must be recognized as the center of the universe, not just one - not "There is no God in all the world but in Israel". Historically and mythologically, (if things like the Cain and Abel myth are read symbolically, as well as another Sumerian dialogue that appeared about 1500 years earlier than the Cain and Abel story. It's about a herder and an agriculturalist competing for the favor of the goddess. The goddess chooses to prefer the agriculturalist and his offering. Well, the Jews come into this area, and they're not agriculturalists, they're herders. And they don't have a goddess, they have a god. So they turn the whole thing upside down, and make God favor the herder against the agriculturalist,) we Jews have been fulfilling the archetype of the younger brother who wanders and supplants people from their homes. But, as any true prophet would realize, each race and religion, is God's Holy People, that yours is but one of many - that to assert local, tribal dominance is to secularize holiness.

This is why Wagner and Joseph Campbell were not happy with the Jews. Even though both of them cited other reasons, that much to do with physical appearance (Wagner) or alleged "pretentiousness", these were merely the foam of spite atop depths of harbored prejudice based on the admitted sanctified chauvinism of the Jews.

They were self-contradictory with this though - instead of recognizing this aspect of the Jews as an archetype to be marveled at, they themselves dissociated themselves from it, which is what they accuse Jews of doing to the rest of the world.

For, people do have differences, and so do families, and so do communities, and so do races, but these are archetypes, each existing for the grace of the other - there are only qualities, there are no flaws.

Ah, Wagner himself comes out to defend his cause. But, in all seriousness, I did want to hear your opinion on this matter. Thank you for that mammoth of knowledge though; I did not know many of the things that you brought up about Wagner. Perhaps now I will try a little harder to tolerate him although his music doesn't really speak to me anyway. :p Cheers!

Beethoven suffered major health problems for the last 30 years of his life but was very much a humanitarian and in touch with the natural world - Wagner was the opposite - not a nice man at all, maybe even scoundrel would not be too strong a term.

Actually when Wagner married Liszt´s daughter behind his back, Liszt broke contact with them both for several years, so I would not say that he gave his approval in the least.
He didn´t approve of Wagners anti-semitism either for that matter, but has rather complained in writing over Wagner´s opinions, in letters for example. But Liszt was according to legend an overly nice person, and could accept faults in his friends, even though he didn´t share their views.

I have read many many accounts on Beethoven being arrogant and ill-tempered.

Anyways what I meant by my previous post was, people should appreciate music in that way. Perhaps I should've inserted a "should" between "people" and "remember".

trigalg693,

Thanks for revisiting and clarifying your remark about Beethoven.

Could you explain the epithet you used for Liszt?

Steven

Well, I remember friends talking about getting Jewed, back when we wouldn't have thought anything of the term but that it somehow stood for getting ripped off.

Another one I hear often is going Dutch on the bill, which means everyone pays their own way.

I think Welshing out means to bail out of something, but I'm not sure.

And it's occurred to me that getting 'gipped', another one I heard often in school, could be a reference to gipsys. Not sure on this one either.

It's usually spelled "gypped", from "gypsies", I think. And I think you can be pretty sure.

I actually didn't know that thanks for clearing that up.

I actually didn't know that thanks for clearing that up.

Wagner's music represented the German soul to Hitler. This music was strongly promoted in Nazi Germany while "non-aryan" music was banned. I feel that's part of the reason that some people have an aversion to listening to his music. I recently saw a documentary about young students in Hamburg who formed a resistance group against Hitler's regime. The student who survived made me realize what restrictions on music existed during that era. He said how wonderful it was to hear again the music of Mendelssohn and Cesar Franck on the organ after the war.

The phrase, "Sweet water from a foul well" comes to mind.
When Eric Fenby first entered Delius' house in order to take up his position as the composer's amanuensis he felt a sense of "evil" in the atmosphere. Delius seems to have been a most unsympathetic, egotist..but what beautiful music he wrote!
Delius was also anti-semitic as were, apparently, a number of his contemporaries on the British musical scene.
I think I would respect Wagner more had he remained consistent in his prejudices. There are letters written to Meyerbeer in the early part of Wagner's career in which he refers to him in terms of "honoured" and "esteemed" master, but when Wagner no longer needed Meyerbeer's help he began to dish out the poison about him. Still, I'm prepared to forgive him all that in return for Tristan.
Maybe, if we started to dig too deeply into the private lives of many of our most revered composers we might uncover facts about their characters that sit uncomfortably with our view of them as gods inhabiting the heights of Parnassus.

I´ve heard that the reason Wagner disliked jews was because he was very bitter about the music-scene in his time, having not become famous himself, he resented many other musicians who hade made it, and I guess he chose to focus on the jewish ones, like Mendelsohn for instance. Just a typical frustrated composer, blaming others for his lack of success, despite all the generous help he recieved from Liszt in producing and promoting his works on stage.

I don´t generally care about composers personal affairs, but all the vile stories I´ve heard about Wagner has actually tainted his music for me. I would not want to be associated with him on any level, to me his piano music just isn´t great enough to merit the will to ignore his personality flaws, which, at least to some degree, should be present in his music.

Getting 'Jewed down' is still common parlance up here. And let's not forget 'Indian giver'. Wagner, I really enjoyed your writing- very thought provoking. Folks, read Beethoven's Nephew. He was quite definitely a nutter (and not the nice type).

FWIW ... is it considered credible or questionable (to the extent that there are could be two sides to the story and, after all, LvB isn't here to defend himself)?

For some strange reason, that title reminds me of another work in which sensational allegations were debunked by some as post-mortem character assassination. "Uncle Dearest"?

Steven

It was written by two psychoanalysts with plenty of documentary evidence. You do know he got his nephew forcibly taken away from his mum? The nephew later shot himself.

Sure, but I wouldn't assume that to be a bad thing on its face or that there was no reason for it.

Unfortunately, there are all kinds of mothers. The nephew's self-destructive behavior could have had much more to do with his mother's parenting than anything Beethoven did or did not do.

Steven

Ah..., O..K..?

I enjoy all of these composers. Wagner has indeed suffered by association with the Nazis. And obviously the Nazis found something of a kindred spirit in Wagner, the appreciation of german myth and the willingness to scapegoat a powerful minority group. I've never heard anything in Wagner's operas that's overtly antisemitic. If you're aware of something please bring it to our attention. My mother was a big fan of opera so I grew up in a house where fat ladies were singing every Saturday on the radio and I developed something of an aversion to opera. However in my adulthood I've had the opportunity to actually see some opera and it's actually a quite enjoyable experience. It's not exactly quality drama as the stories are usually a bit nutty, but the music is often gorgeous. Having said that I've never actually seen a Wagner opera nor listened to one as a whole.

However, Wagner is widely regarded among music historians as a ground breaker. He took chromaticism to a completely new level. As an orchestrator he found new sounds in the orchestra and invented new instruments. He paved the way for Mahler, Bruckner and Strauss (Richard) as well as much of where music headed in the 20th century.

As for davaofthekeys claim that Wagner was a "frustrated composer who blamed others for his lack of success." Wagner may have blamed others, but he was very successful in his time and since. How many composers have been able to arrange to have a special venue built simply to perform and memorialize their own music as Wagner did at Bayreuth?

Was Wagner's music effective? Listen to The Ride of the Valkyries, The Immolation Scene, or Das Liebestod. This is music that will always have be perceived as beautiful by many (though not all). It is music that impacted the course of music history. I personally think it's a bit crazy to apply 21st century attitudes and mores to the appreciation of music composed well over a century prior. If Wagner showed us anything it's that even the most flawed individual can tap into something divine and create music of stunning beauty and lasting impact.

http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/Ring/Ring3_Siegfried.htm

kbk,

With all due respect—and I suspect I'm not the first to notice this or even comment on it—communication is frustrated rather than furthered by enigmatic epigrams.

If a topic is worth contributing to and you have something to say about it, why not say what you mean instead of tossing off cryptic one-liners?



Steven

I mean - 'You can-not be serious! That ball was in!' Or how about - 'The facts speak for themselves?'

Q.E.D.

There might well be documentary evidence of what you suggested, but the facts you offered are not it and are, in fact, quite irrelevant.

Steven

So, you're all for taking children away from their mothers then? And using one's international status to do it? Do you know any of the facts of the case? It all smacks of too much Madonna to me or Michael Jackson for that matter (both had similar upbringings). You're not a social worker by chance?

All for it? Of course not. But there are times, obviously, when it's in the best interest of the child.

Do you imagine all mothers to be Madonnas? (The Madonna, not Madonna Ciccone.)

Why would you expect anyone to automatically conclude that taking his nephew away from his mother was evidence that LvB was a "nutter," or was the reason for the nephew's self-destructive impulses? If that's your "evidence," I do hope the authors of the book were able to make a more compelling argument.

Steven

Steve Chandler, I know what you mean, obviously Wagner was not unsuccessful throughout his entire life, but he did go through some very though (and long lasting) hardships, for instance living in exile for 12 years with practically no income, while having to rely on Liszt to stage his works. I can certainly see why he would recent other musicians who could work freely during this time.

Music evokes strong emotions and can bring back some disturbing memories from the past. I found an article in the website below that addresses these emotions from various points-of-view about Wagner. I found it very thought-provoking.

The Controversy over Richard Wagner

We must not forget though that Friedrich Nietzsche's work was made central to the Nazi ideology (although selectively). His ideas of an Ubermensch became the equivalent of a pure Aryan to the Nazis. So to the Nazis, Nietzsche justified their actions whereas Wagner only cheered them on. Yet, for some reason, Nietzsche became popular again in the late 20th century and he was again recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the 19th century. And, if I'm not mistaken, I have to read The Anti-Christ this year for AP Literature. Clearly, Nietzsche's philosophies were misused by the Nazis but this misuse proved a much darker purpose than Wagner's music in this tyrannical regime.

Ahhh, thanks, got mi y's and i's myxed.