Thread: Wagner and Israel

Oops. That should read "guilt by association". Finger slip .

Napoleon was a genious causing dead, he didn't interest the human lifes and so sacrificed a thousands of souls. Before Napoleon such a slaughter in Europe never was seen.

I dont think Napoleon was a genius, see Tolstoy.

1) Anti-semitism itself is a concept that I distrust. 'Semitic' defers to almost all the people in the Middle East: both Jews and Arabs regard themselves to belong to the sons of Sem. Thinking about it further, I dislike the stress on 'semitism': it smells of some 19th century popular pastime of dividing humankind into all kinds of 'races'. Nonsense & underbelly stuff. Because of this fuzziness inside the concept I just keep to: hatred towards Jews.

2) Why were & are Jewish conductors among the best interpretors of Wagner's works?

Originally Posted by Hesoos

Napoleon was a genious causing dead, he didn't interest the human lifes and so sacrificed a thousands of souls. Before Napoleon such a slaughter in Europe never was seen.

The 30 Years' War was pretty terrible.

The elephant in the room here is that Wagnerites will always defend Wagner, cos they love his music. Simple as that. They will know all the details of his life and writings and all that, the subtleties. But the OP is asking why is Wagner controversial in Israel. Well, the obvious reason is because he was a racist, simple as that.

In any case, Wagnerites are just as biased for Wagner as I am against.

Below, a long quote (in italics) from a book on music by Jeremy Nicholas, published 2007. Details at googlebooks HERE. Please note that in this chapter on Wagner, most of it is on Wagner's music, his life and inspiration, etc. So Nicholas does give credit for Wagner being a great composer, no doubt about that. It's just these other things, these skeletons in the closet that really can't go without saying if one is talking or writing about Wagner. How is that so hard to accept?

Wagner, as is well known, was the favourite composer of the Nazis. What is not as well known is that half a century before Hitler's rise to power, in 1881, Wagner was advocating 'racial cleansing' (Rassenreinigung). His polemical book Das Judenthum in der Musik was written because of his deep-seated resentment of any Jews who achieved success in his field. Even Hitler's concept of the Final Solution was adapted from Wagner's term Die grosse Losung, though Wagner called only for the expulsion of Jews from Germany. Chillingly, he also suggested that during a performance of Lessing's pro-Jewish play Nathan der Wiese, the theatre should be filled with Jews, locked and burnt down. The Nazi slogan 'Deutschland erwache!' ('Germany awake!') was coined by Wagner - Hitler was merely quoting. The faeces-coloured uniform worn by Hitler's brown-shirt thugs was, most appropriately, inspired by the title of Wagner's diary, The Brown Book.

Originally Posted by TxllxT

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2) Why were & are Jewish conductors among the best interpretors of Wagner's works?

Good enough point, but the majority of people in Israel are not conductors or even musicians. They're not like Barenboim or Solti. They are not all intellectuals like Stephen Fry. Many of them, ordinary people who probably had relatives or knew people who went through the Holocaust, that is what's on their mind. That history.

Opera is probably the last thing on their mind. Plus, many troubles in that region. So I'd extrapolate, who gives a hoot if Wagner isn't performed in Israel? Same as say in other trouble spots around the world (eg. Iraq or Afghanistan). It speaks to Eurocentrism in a way. What we value, others have to value. Well, not really. But that's another issue I'm throwing into the mix here.

Originally Posted by aleazk

I was reading in the news a new polemic because there are plans for interpret the music of Wagner in Israel. As all we know, Wagner was an antisemite, and Hitler was his admirer. Of course, I have the position that the artistic value of Wagner's music is independent of his racists ideas. But I'm not jew. I try to think in their side and is hard. How you reconcile your admiration for a person who have ideas against your own people?

The polemics about attitude toward music and its composer is not limited to Wagner and Israel. For example, the conductor Hans von Bulow admired Wagner and performed his music until Wagner betrayed him with his wife, Cosima Liszt, and married her away from him. Did von Below perform Wagner's music after this traumatic event?

Another example. Liszt and Brahms did not get along with each other, and even though each of them admired the music of the other, did not perform it.

My personal take on this is that anti-Semitism does creep through in Wagner's music.

And so, Sid... does this antisemitism also find its way into the music of Chopin? Bach? Haydn? Liszt? Anyone having the slightest grasp of history would recognize that most of the great composers, artists, writers, architects, etc... up through the 19th century were raised in environment where antisemitism was prevalent. Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner all made public comments of an antisemitic nature... and yet at the same time, all of them worked with Jewish composers, musicians, and conductors, and had Jewish supporters and friends. Wagner was even known to have had a Jewish lover.

Discerning antisemitic elements in Wagner's music... or Chopin's or Liszt's... involves a lot of speculation and invention upon the part of a critic who has approached the music with a set agenda or bias. There is nothing in the music that clearly conveys an antisemitic message and to suggest otherwise says more about the critic than the composer.

His middle period operas I'm okay with to a degree, eg. Tannhauser or Lohengrin, but I think in The Ring and esp. Parsifal, he went too far. He turned music into a pseudo religion which I think is as I said, megalomania.

He went too far in what way? He turned music into a pseudo-religion? Really? Or did his followers do this? You know enough about art history to know that the 19th century turned the arts as a whole into a sort or "pseudo-religion"... to replace the religion that the Enlightenment and Science had destroyed. In America it was the vast vistas and overwhelming natural splendor that was the source of spiritual experiences, while in the cities and in Europe it was the museums and theaters that became a source of spiritual experience... that replaced the churches.

Is it really impossible to be antisemite, write an essay about the "Judaism in Music" in a negative sense, and then write operas and not include even a bit of your ideology in your libretto?

How many composers, artists, writers from across the span of time were raised in a culture that taught that the Jews, blacks, women, Arabs, Asians... or individuals of other nations were inferior beings? How often do these themes become central to their artistic expressions? Those who continually bring up Wagner's antisemitism imagine that this was a central aspect of who he was... as if he were Hitler himself... plotting daily about the "Jewish Question."

The problem is that Hitler read his own insane ideas into Wagner's works . Take the Ring ; it does NOT glorify Germanic chauvinism or celebrate any teutonic victory over Jews and Judaism. It takes place in a mythical ancient Germany ruled the supreme God Wotan and contains no Jewish characters... the Ring ends with the cataclysmic destruction of Wotan and the Gods through his own lust for power and riches , hardly a glorification of Teutonic racism .

I've always wondered if the reality of the Götterdämmerung the apocalyptic destruction of Germany and the Reich as a result of Hitlers "Will to Power" eventually struck him as he sat in the bunker those final hours as the Russians neared... street by street through Berlin?

The elephant in the room here is that Wagnerites will always defend Wagner, cos they love his music. Simple as that. They will know all the details of his life and writings and all that, the subtleties. But the OP is asking why is Wagner controversial in Israel. Well, the obvious reason is because he was a racist, simple as that.

Is it really as "simple" as that? Wagner is controversial in Israel because he was racist? So why not Liszt and Chopin and Haydn and Bach and almost every composer born before the Enlightenment... if not before WWII?

In any case, Wagnerites are just as biased for Wagner as I am against.

The difference is that those who are "biased" in favor of Wagner are simply biased because they love his music, even while admitting that they reject his politics and even his personality... but most of those who are biased against Wagner are rather dishonest about their bias. Rather than simply saying that they just don't like his music, they need to justify this dislike by painting him as a megalomaniac and a proto-Nazi. I don't particularly like Schoenberg... but I don't need to use his personal life to justify my dislike. It's the music not the artist that I am listening to.

Originally Posted by Sid James

I've said this a million times on this forum, Wagner's personal ideology was based on the pseudo scientific racialist theories of de Gobineau and H.S. Chamberlain. Both where admirers of Wagner's music, Chamberlain (a Brit) even took up German citizenship as a result of his worshipping German culture and Aryan 'race.'

This is not only wrong, but hugely and dangerously wrong. Completely wrong.

- Chamberlain was 28 when Wagner died and had not yet published a single work, so that's just rubbish.

- There's no evidence that Wagner had read or was even aware of Gobineau's ideas prior to 1880, a few years before his death and well after the librettos to all of his operas had been written.

A critical point is that Wagner's anti-semitism, was *not* racialist, as Das Judenthum in der Musik would testify it sprouted because the Jews dominated the Parisian opera scene, a scene which utterly rejected him and he lived many years starving in poverty while watching the trivial, empty music (as he would have seen it) of Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn be celebrated. The rest is simple bigotry although Wagner did make an ass of himself with his pen looking to justify it.

On the other hand the defining nature of Nazism is its root in racialism... If you want to know the prime inspiration of the Nazi party look no further than Henry Ford's The International Jew; Hitler had Ford's picture in his office and a well-worn copy on his bookshelf... will there be protests when Ford markets their 2013 lineup in Israel in the fall?

Originally Posted by Sid James

Wagner, as is well known, was the favourite composer of the Nazis. What is not as well known is that half a century before Hitler's rise to power, in 1881, Wagner was advocating 'racial cleansing' (Rassenreinigung). His polemical book Das Judenthum in der Musik was written because of his deep-seated resentment of any Jews who achieved success in his field. Even Hitler's concept of the Final Solution was adapted from Wagner's term Die grosse Losung, though Wagner called only for the expulsion of Jews from Germany. Chillingly, he also suggested that during a performance of Lessing's pro-Jewish play Nathan der Wiese, the theatre should be filled with Jews, locked and burnt down. The Nazi slogan 'Deutschland erwache!' ('Germany awake!') was coined by Wagner - Hitler was merely quoting. The faeces-coloured uniform worn by Hitler's brown-shirt thugs was, most appropriately, inspired by the title of Wagner's diary, The Brown Book.

The way that this is written and the failure of some google searching to verify these claims would seem to suggest is that this is utter tripe written by some fool with even less of a concern for academic integrity than yourself.

Originally Posted by StlukesguildOhio

He went too far in what way? He turned music into a pseudo-religion? Really? Or did his followers do this? You know enough about art history to know that the 19th century turned the arts as a whole into a sort or "pseudo-religion"... to replace the religion that the Enlightenment and Science had destroyed. In America it was the vast vistas and overwhelming natural splendor that was the source of spiritual experiences, while in the cities and in Europe it was the museums and theaters that became a source of spiritual experience... that replaced the churches.

In fairness, he *did* build a house dedicated solely to his own works, and premiered Parsifal there not as an opera but as a Bühnenweihfestspiel, A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage, banned from being performed anywhere else, and created a yearly festival for which people to make pilgrimage to said house.

You can't say he's blameless.

^^OMG, who said this was like academic, like an academic peer reviewed journal or something? I was putting Wagner in context, that's it. Plus adding what I said was my own biased opinion (just as yours is, if you get off your high horse for a minute). Maybe I should have said Wagner's racist ideologies mirrored those of pseudo scientists like the ones I named.

Yeah, I have absolutely ZERO integrity, cos I don't like the music that you like. Well, that's an opinion of integrity (NOT!).

Anyway, forget it. Forget the whole thing. In a way, you are right. One would have to research properly why Wagner is not much liked in Israel, or controversial there. Or look at the other sources you mention. But he's generally controversial, it seems many either love or hate him, not much in-between. But whatever.

So boils down to, ask the Israeli people, why don't you? Go there and ask them. Maybe you would get answers like 'that was the music that was being played while my relatives where gassed in Auschwitz,' or 'while that happened, Wagner's descendants where dining or watching a Wagner concert with the Fuhrer.'

Originally Posted by Couchie

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The way that this is written and the failure of some google searching to verify these claims ...

Not everything is on the net. & google is very basic searching, there are specialized databases, but I don't have time. Anyway, I read as many books on music as possible, there is much info there that is scarce on the net, stuff you don't read anywhere else.