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Monday 13 May 2013

On the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth, let's

learn to love the music - yet still hate the manHitler’s favourite composer was a monster, but he should still be celebrated

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Next week there will be a special concert in London honouring a man who

 wrote an infamous anti-Semitic tract “Das Judenthum in der Musik”, and

 whose own musical theatre was acclaimed by Adolf Hitler as the earliestinspiration for his idea of a pure German master race. That man, of course, is

Richard Wagner, and next week’s 200th anniversary of his birth has

occasioned many more celebratory concerts and festivals in the land of his

 birth.

It has provoked c ontroversy there, too: last week a Dusseldorf production of 

 Wagner’s 1845 opera Tannhauser, but with sets based on Nazi concentration

camps, was cancelled after its premiere. The scenes were apparently so

realistic – in terms of the horror of the gas chambers – that some of the

audience needed medical assistance to recover. As the musicologist

Norman Lebrecht observ ed, it was a rather bizarre interpretation,

anyway: T annhauser is set in the Middle Ages and involv es Wagner’s

usual preoccupations with sacred and profane love.

 Yet the intention of the director, Burkhard Kosminski, was simple

enough to understand. In the month of Wagner’s bicentenary, he wanted

to link the music to the ev ents which the composer’s own ideological

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 views seemed to presage: in “Das Judenthum in der Musik”, Wagner had

compared the Jewish influence on music with maggots feasting on a

diseased or dying body, and called for it to be extirpated by “a bloody 

struggle of self-annihilation”. And last month an essay in the German

magazine Spiegel on “Wagner’s Dark Shadow” revealed a letter Wagner

 wrote to his wife Cosima, after she had told him how a fire in a Vienna

theatre, during a perfo rmance of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan the

 Wise, had killed hundreds, about half of them Jews; Wagner replied: “All

Jews should burn to death in a performance of Nathan.”

Nice man. Yet whatever his character, or his views – and whatever formative

influence those v iews may or may not have had on the mind of Adolf Hitler –

it is right to celebrate his anniversary. His music is sublime; manipulative in

the way it plays upon our emotions, certainly – as Daniel Barenboim among

others has pointed out – but then all great music works by somehow tapping

in to our subconscious, rather than appealing to our rational selves.

Barenboim himself has waged a lonely struggle to introduce the music of 

 Wagner to the concert halls of Israel. The conductor makes the simple point

that while Wagner himself was a vile anti-Semite, “his music isn’t anti-Semitic”

and “as a musician, you simply can’t ignore him”. Others have quibbled with

this, arguing that certain of the characters in some of Wagner’s operas

conform to anti-Semitic stereotypes; but Barenboim is right – the music itself 

is no more anti-Semitic than it could be described as right-wing or left-wing.

The arrangement of musical notes is an aesthetic phenomenon, entirely 

divorced from the world of politics, and, indeed morality. Those who would ban Wagner’s music on such grounds are no different from the Stalinists of the

Soviet Union, or the commissars of China’s cultural revolution, who sought to

make the composition of music a slave to political ideology; indeed, they are

even dangerously close to Hitler’s own views on the role of culture.

In a way, this sort of delusion is understandable. Because man cares so much

about music, because it resonates so deeply with us, those whose

switch the lights on in my

hotel room...

MARY DEJEVSKY

Never fall ill at a weekend

- our out-of-hours health

service is a disgraceJANE MERRICK

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7/30/2019 On the 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth, Let's Learn to Love the Music - Yet Still Hate the Man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

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22.05.13 On the 200th anni ver sar y of Wagner 's bi rth, let' s l ear n to love the musi c - yet sti ll hate the man - Comment - Voi ces - The Independent

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compositions we admire are described as “role models”. T his explains why 

rock stars are so frequently importuned by politicians to support their

campaigns – and indeed, some musicians, such as Bob Geldof or Bono, use

their unique status as musicians to promote their own political objectives. But

there is no valid connection, whatever, between the inner abstract world of 

music and the outer world of things and political parties, ev en if at times each

exploits the other.

It is true that some of the ancients, such as Plato, saw music as an indicator of 

morality; and in our own time the philosopher Roger Scruton has advanced

similar ideas. Obviously, we c an talk about good and bad music, at least to the

extent of saying, for ex ample, that JS Bach, was a “better” composer than any 

of his children who followed in the family business. But when we talk about a

“bad” piece of music, we never use the word in the moral sense; we only mean

that it doesn’t work well, as an arrangement of notes and harmonies – and

even that is necessarily subjective.

Scruton, a conscientious Christian, argues that “moral virtues and vices” are

present in music, but this seems very misguided. To take the basic Christian

notion of sin, for ex ample: can any piece of music be described as “jealous” or

“envious” or “covetous”? Its composer might be, but that is a completely 

different proposition.

 We can be quite precise about this distinction. That wonderful composer

Richard Strauss, appointed by Josef Goebbels to the presidency of the

Reichsmusikkammer in 1933, wrote a song in gratitude. It ends with the

peroration: “He, I believe, will be my leader.” The “he” – for the avoidance of 

any misunderstanding – was meant by Strauss to refer to Adolf Hitler.

Michael Kennedy, Richard Strauss’s pre-eminent biographer, and a man of 

deep musical sensibilities (as well as one who fought in the Second World

 War), describes this song as “musically delightful”.

Or take the case of Richard Strauss’s contemporary, Wilhelm Furtwangler: I

am hardly unusual as regarding this conductor’s interpretations of 

7/30/2019 On the 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth, Let's Learn to Love the Music - Yet Still Hate the Man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

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22.05.13 On the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth, let's learn to love the music - yet still hate the man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

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Beethoven’s symphonies as unmatched. Possibly the greatest performance he

ever directed of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony was in Berlin in March 1942, in a

concert marking the Fuhrer’s birthday. One critic has described this

performance as “diabolical… demonic” and its conclusion as “one of the most

profoundly horrifying sounds ever recorded”.

 Well, you can see it for yo urself: it was filmed by the Nazis, for broadcast, and

is available in full on YouTube. It is indeed hard to watch as the c amera pansto Josef Goebbels and sundry other acolytes of Hitler, in rapt atttention,

against a background of a hall festooned with giant swastikas. But then play it

again, with your eyes shut, just listening to Furtwangler’s performance with

the Berlin Philharmonic. It is astounding, uplifting, inspirational. It is beyond

good and evil – like Wagner’s greatest music.

REACT NOW

ST RONGLY A GREE A GRE E D ON'T CA RE D ISA GRE E ST RONGLY DISA GRE E

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WANG KING  6 days ago

♫♫♫ - that was the best bit.

REPLY + -1 –

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TAUNTONMISHAP  5 days ago

 Wrong, Mr.King. Wagner never wrote those notes. They are actually the

 beginning of the "Jaws" music.

REPLY + 0 –

SAM GURNEY  7 days ago

Though I am delighted to read a generously sized article contemplating Wagner's music in

a major newspaper, I am rather uncertain about Dominic Lawson's general point. It rests

on an attempted distinction between the aesthetic and musical in Wagner and the

personal, political and moral. I c annot imagine Wagner himself accepting such a sharp and

clear differentiation. Wagner viewed his project as the creation of 'Gesamtkunstwerk'- this

 was what was novel and radical about his innovations and this concept of totality in art

 which unites poetry, music, philosophy and religion is what underlies the rich aesthetic

tapestry Wagner deftly wove with his leitmotifs. Wagner had enormous and holistic

 visions for what Opera could be, hoping to 'redeem' the public with a new, synthesised art

form which would lead the people to a new Weltaanschauung. This makes it a very tangled

affair indeed to attempt to prize apart firstly, the music from the opera's words and their

possible meanings and secondly, from Wagner's philosophy, which is the root of his

productions. In fact, Schopenhauer, Wagner's philosopher of choice, held quite a

different v iew from Mr Lawson that there is 'no connection whatever' between the 'inner,

abstract world of music and the outer world of politics and morality', which is almost quite

fundamental to understanding Wagner; for Schopenhauer morality was to be found in

renunciation, which involved both aesthetic sumblimity and beauty, the most

transcendent form of which was music, which is almost a metaphysical entity, or at least aperfect representation of 'the will' in music. It c an be inferred from this that Wagner's

perceiv ed endeavour was broader than merely composition, but was intended to 'redeem'

the populace through preaching renunciation. Parsifal, for instance, is a Wagnerian epic,

preaching asceticism. Schopenhauer's racism only confirmed Wagner's views that the

Jewry were a serious threat to his grandiose project. Judaism, Schopenhauer wrote, was

the religion of ev il naive realism and materialism. Wagner became, as Nietzsche never

failed to bemoan, a personality cult- he acquired disciples and he wrote profusely and

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22.05.13 On the 200th anni ver sar y of Wagner 's bi rth, let' s l ear n to love the musi c - yet sti ll hate the man - Comment - Voi ces - The Independent

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copiously on his dubious views on race, biology and politics. In fact, Nietzsche refused to

consider him as a musician alone, for Wagner's systematic, entire world-view was

implicated in everything he did- music, politics, morality, philosophy, aesthetic theory 

 were all connected for Wagner. This being so, it must not be forgotten what an important

part politics had played in Wagner's life- he had been a revolutionary socialist, forced to

flee, even. T his is apparent in his depictions of Capitalism in the Ring, for instance. It

requires little ingenuity to guess that, once more, this is woven in his general perspective-

the maleficent, ex ploitative Capitalists, we may justly assume, to Wagner would have

found it's emblem in the idea of avaricious Jewish usurers. I suppose the point I shouldlike to make is that Wagner was a whole, in personality and in art- he was a master weaver,

opposed to atomism and clear distinctions (as his music exemplifies). Plato disliked 'bad'

poets and musicians because he despised negative role models. Mr Lawson appreciates

this point, saying that accomplished people tend to become role models, but he neglects to

persue the point and instead immediately rejects it. In my v iew, if we are to understand

 Wagner properly, then we must be deeply ambivalent about his work, as Nietzsche-

initially an ardent admirer- was, who upon rejecting his philosophy, subsequently found

his Music uneasy. His music, in terms of it's compositional value, also elicits ambivalence-

at time exalting and sublime, at others tedious, bombastic and obtrusive (as Rossini said-

 Wagner has wonderful moments, but dull half hours). But when absorbed in it's unrivalledclimaxes and rich, monochromatic, unfolding beauty, his music becomes captivating,

alluring and 'seductive', even. Those who wish to understand Wagner's art better, perhaps

captured by admiration and the enormous gravity of his personality, perhaps may indulge

in an excess of sy mpathy for the man's perspective, into which his art draws the

mesmerised subject. Of course, this is no ground for supressing it and I shouldn't wish to

deprive anyone of the indubitably glorious pinnacles of a musical exemplar, but his is a

rich dish, where all that is sweet and gourmet sits besides something bitter and is marred

 by a sour aftertaste.

REPLY + 0 –

TAUNTONMISHAP  7 days ago

I'm off to see two "Rings" and a "Parsifal" this year. I 've done as much homework 

at the piano as I can, restudied orchestration and done a lot of reading. The only 

aftertaste I may have is a glass of good Tokay if one is available. It will all be good

for my "Weltanschauung". {Note the correct spelling}.

7/30/2019 On the 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth, Let's Learn to Love the Music - Yet Still Hate the Man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

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22.05.13 On the 200th anni ver sar y of Wagner 's bi rth, let' s l ear n to love the musi c - yet sti ll hate the man - Comment - Voi ces - The Independent

www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/on-the-200th-anniversary-of-wagners-birth-lets-learn-to-love-the-music--yet-still-hate-the-man-8614155.html 9/13

REPLY + 0 –

SAM GURNEY  7 days ago

Correction noted.

REPLY + 0 –

EVERTONIAN  8 days ago

Dominic Lawson oversimplifies a complex problem. He says "T he arrangement of musical

notes is an aesthetic phenomenon, entirely divorc ed from the world of politics, and,

indeed morality", but even if you were to accept this doubtful claim (which at a stroke

 would negate the composer's intentions in works like "T he Planets") it seems to have

escaped his notice that operas (and songs) have words as well as music, and these can most

definitely have anti-Semitic, left-wing or right-wing meanings. In any case, if you follow 

the logic of Dominic's argument, then if I were to v isit his house and find that he has

original paintings by Adolf Hitler on his walls, then the conclusion he would want me to

draw is that he finds Hitler's paintings aesthetically pleasing, and that Hitler's political

ideology and activities are irrelevant. In fact, it would of course say rather more about

Dominic than that he had poor taste in art. Wagner lovers may not like the analogy, but

their love of his music combined with a deliberate refusal to consider other aspects of the

man as relevant to their aesthetic judgement is no different in principle. It's just that they 

like Wagner's operas, but presumably don't rate Hitler's paintings.

REPLY

+ 1 –

SLIDEMAN  7 days ago

The reason that we think we can read Holst's 'intentions' in the music is that we

have been told what they are. I think the idea that music can 'express' moral or

political ideas has only become possible since the modern onrush of biographical

information, provided by media, academics, writers & poets etc. all of whom are

7/30/2019 On the 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth, Let's Learn to Love the Music - Yet Still Hate the Man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

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22.05.13 On the 200th anni ver sar y of Wagner 's bi rth, let' s l ear n to love the musi c - yet sti ll hate the man - Comment - Voi ces - The Independent

www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/on-the-200th-anniversary-of-wagners-birth-lets-learn-to-love-the-music--yet-still-hate-the-man-8614155.html 10/13

keen to corral music for a particular viewpoint. When it comes however to people

about whose biography we know next-to-nothing, this is shown to be impossible.

Of course one tends to assume, from a musician's era or background, that they 

may be an average product of their historical milieu (Catholic believer,

Protestant, Nazi, hippie), but that has nothing to do with the actual music (which

may be a clever pastiche). One could listen to Francis Poulenc for years blissfully 

unaware of the fact he was 'gay' for instance. Only once this sort of information

 becomes available via the culture do people claim to see 'gayness' in his music, or

Szymanowski's or whoever 's. And even if Holst did have 'intentions' of a socialkind, what is the encoding and decoding mechanism which links the composer

and the listener via the music? How does one 'read' an intention from music?

Schumann thought Mozart's 40th Sy mphony was of 'Grecian lightness and grace',

 yet the more modern Alfred Einstein thought it a 'tragic masterpiece'. T hey can't

 both be right. The real answer is it's neither. That kind of characterisation

depends on the listener and his or her pre-formed v iew of what music is supposed

to be about. But it isn't 'about' anything, nor can it 'express' anything. It's not a

language, despite the fact that it is often referred to as such. This is not the great

loss that people might think. It liberates us, and music, fro m time and events. As

to words, as you point out, they can convey direct meaning. That's why all thetreatments of this issue that I have seen rely almost exclusively on vocal music.

But you can set the same words to any music that fits, and you can set a piece of 

music to any words you choose (frequently done furtively by children in church,

I believe). There is only a conventional relationship (based on rhythm) between

music and words, not an 'organic' one.

REPLY + 0 –

GURNEMANZ  8 days ago

Bashing Wagner as a human being has become a template for every article about him, with

the ubiquitous "Hitler's favorite composer" canard as well. How about writing some

concealed facts about him, such as those that he was a pacifist, anti-imperialist, anti-

militarist? Or that his friends by and large greatly enjoyed his company, that he

encouraged whichever personal effort in their own careers they wished to undertake. And

contrast his antisemitism with the fact that in his last years almost all his key associates

 were Jews, chief conductor at Bayreuth Levi, chorusmaster Porges, personal pianist and

7/30/2019 On the 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth, Let's Learn to Love the Music - Yet Still Hate the Man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

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22.05.13 On the 200th anni ver sar y of Wagner 's bi rth, let' s l ear n to love the musi c - yet sti ll hate the man - Comment - Voi ces - The Independent

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transcriber of the scores Rubinstein, promoter of his works Neumann, and that he

cherished them all as human beings as well as associates. Wagner was an extremely 

complex individual and any attempt at his definite characterization would require

selective and/or out-of-context quotation and cherry-picking of events. True, he had a

side that was best avoided, but also a humane, jov ial and charming one that surfaced far

more often then people realize.

REPLY + 6 –

TAUNTONMISHAP  9 days ago

If one had spent in excess of 40 years researching Wagner, one might have found out that

there was far more to him than an abhorrent anti-semitism very common at that time. A 

true revolutionary, whether political or musical, is never a welcome fellow. Wagner was

 both. Such people have a tendency to upset chiefly those who have vested interests. An

anti-vivisectionist, one with a great concern for the welfare of animals, latterly almost a

Buddhist, anyone with a modicum of imagination could probably imagine Wagner in one

of the characteristic gigantic rages which would have resulted from his knowledge of thecompletely inhuman ideas of the Nazi regime, the Sov iet regime, and other regimes since.

 As so often in other spheres, agendas are probably at work where Wagner is concerned,

and ones which have little to do with music. Had he been alive in the 'thirties the Nazis

 would likely have offed him as a revolutionary threat and a dangerous political

inconvenience. It is worth pointing out that no evidence exists that Wagner ever killed

anybody , nor did he co nsort with those who did. It is also worth pointing out that Strauss's

 wife Pauline was frequently ex tremely rude about the Nazis. And Furtwangler? Probably 

overrated when compared to Knappertsbusch, Keilberth, Krauss, Cluytens and their work 

at Bayreuth and elsewhere.

REPLY + 2 –

DONNA HUGHES  8 days ago

Many people just regurgitate the bad stuff they've read or heard and never do any 

original source research to see where the truth might be, and as you say, others

have agendas to promote. It doesn't seem as though anyone can speak about

7/30/2019 On the 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth, Let's Learn to Love the Music - Yet Still Hate the Man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/on-the-200th-anniversary-of-wagners-birth-lets-learn-to-love-the 12/13

22.05.13 On the 200th anni ver sar y of Wagner 's bi rth, let' s l ear n to love the musi c - yet sti ll hate the man - Comment - Voi ces - The Independent

www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/on-the-200th-anniversary-of-wagners-birth-lets-learn-to-love-the-music--yet-still-hate-the-man-8614155.html 12/13

 Wagner without at least an obligatory trashing of the man.

REPLY + 2 –

GRARP THE BAKER  9 days ago

Ordinary peo ple can say the most dreadful things about each other (e.g. foo tball fans of 

rival clubs) and nobody takes it too seriously . But we are very disappointed when we learnthat great artists have such flaws. We ex pect higher principles, quite unreasonably,

perhaps. It is also difficult to gauge quite what anti-Semitism meant before the Holocaust

 became public knowledge. It may have been on a par with being anti-American today, for

example.

REPLY + 3 –

DONNA HUGHES  9 days ago

If y ou think that Wagner's music was beautiful and sublime, then you should recognize

that if Wagner wrote it then it was a reflec tion of the same thing in the man. Enough of 

 beating up RW but cov eting his music! T here were Jews who were friends and colleagues

of Wagner, ev en though they knew what he had written, so there must have been

something likeable about him for those who actually DID know him - something that made

them like him in spite of his faults.

REPLY + 3 –

7/30/2019 On the 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth, Let's Learn to Love the Music - Yet Still Hate the Man - Comment - Voices - The Independent

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/on-the-200th-anniversary-of-wagners-birth-lets-learn-to-love-the 13/13

22.05.13 On the 200th anni ver sar y of Wagner 's bi rth, let' s l ear n to love the musi c - yet sti ll hate the man - Comment - Voi ces - The Independent

www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/on-the-200th-anniversary-of-wagners-birth-lets-learn-to-love-the-music--yet-still-hate-the-man-8614155.html 13/13

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