[Sid James]

Interesting how the OP mentions Orff & R. Strauss. Both of them composed music for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, I believe. I'm not a huge fan of either of these composers, so it doesn't really effect my estimation of them. I think Stravinsky's description of Carmina Burana as "neo-neanderthal" was spot on. It was good to hear this work in live performance, but as far as listening to a recording of it repeatedly, one gets quickly bored. As for Strauss, his Metamorphosen was a kind of musical admission that he had probably made some mistakes in how he dealt with the regime. Strauss was later asked by a journalist why he didn't go to live in America with the rise of the Nazis, and he apparently said something to the effect that there were 50 opera houses in Germany that he could work at, but only about 2 in the USA. In Metamorphosen, with it's sentimentality and longing for the pre-Nazi past, one gets a sense that Strauss wished that this had never happened, he was glad it was over like a bad dream...

 

[Sid James]

Not only was it more musically beneficial for Strauss (at the time) for him to remain in Germany, but he also had Jewish relatives he wanted to protect. By putting himself in a position of power he was able to postpone their being taking to concentration camps. I don't remember the exact details but as I recall he managed to save one of his closest in-laws (daughter in law I think), though the rest of her family ended up being taken away regardless. Strauss has gotten a bad rep. personality wise, and while some of it was justified, people in the past have over exaggerated it when they believed him to be a Nazi sympathizer.

Yeah, but at the same time Strauss, as president of the music union in Germany, oversaw the total destruction of Jewish musical life in that country. I don't think that he was a Nazi sympathiser - no more than Furtwangler was - but I kind of see him as kind of like a businessman staying in Germany because it was better for him to stay in the music business by staying in the country. It was a matter of business acumen and political expediency more than doing what was morally or ethically right. Perhaps it's easy for us now, seperated from these events by more than half a century, to judge what these men did. But I believe what Thomas Mann - the great German writer, who also left, as he disagreed with the regime - said something to the effect that those who remained silent in the face of all the atrocities were perhaps the greatest sinners of them all. Food for thought, indeed...

 

[Sid James]

Actually, Wagner was just as a rabid anti-semite as Hitler. I've got some quotes in a book to that effect. I'll get it out later & post some of them here. I remember one quote in which Wagner advocated locking Jews in a synagogue and burning it down. Chilling stuff, considering what happened in the gas chambers a few generations later. Wagner was basically a c*** & a user (sorry for being primitive, but I can't put it in any other way, having read those horrible quotes). Most of his relationships with Jews were based on sponging money off them, like with Meyerbeer. Richard liked the high life and was constantly in debt, so a little money from a Jew was very useful to him. & Meyerbeer's letter of recommendation was useful too...

 

[Sid James]

Yes, I understand your point, starry. My mother said she read something somewhere to the effect that Chopin & Tchaikovsky were pretty big anti-semites as well. But not all composers were, look at Brahms' relationship with the Hungarian Jewish violinist & composer Joachim (dedicatee of a number of his works). So anti-semitism wasn't necessarily a sign of the times, it depended on the individual person. The thing with Wagner is that his views were extremely similar to those of the Nazis, and had Nazism occured during his lifetime, he undoubtedly would have been an ardent supporter. Basically, he was a very unpleasant man, but that doesn't diminish his music...

 

[Sid James]

Thanks, RBrittain, I didn't know that about the relationship between Wagner & Levi. It seems that as he got older, Wagner realised that he might have been wrong about the Jews earlier (as you say).

& Nix's post makes me think of the political issues that underpin some of the greatest pieces in the classical repertoire. Just look at Beethoven's Eroica symphony, so firmly tied to the political context of the times. I've always kind of thought that Hindemith's Mathis der Maler symphony is like a modern Eroica. Eisler's Anti-Fascist Cantata was also a response to history as it had happened, I haven't heard it, but apparently it's his best work...