Klarinet Archive - Posting 000480.txt from 2004/01

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Wagner
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:08:45 -0500

Robert Rockwell wrote,
>Instead of hearing and seeing Wagner through the filter
>of real or assumed prejudices, it might be helpful to just
>hear the music per se and if you want to interpret, look
>at the mythological or archetypal content per se.

The problem with that approach is that some of us have already read
Wagner's anti-Jewish diatribes and already know about the "bad" feet of
Alberich, and the Jewish stereotype costumes common to Wagner's own day,
and so forth. With all the will in the world, I couldn't un-read and
un-know those things in order to "just hear the music per se." The music
has a context.

I don't want to try to bully anyone into doing as I do. Nonetheless, my
reaction to Wagner (in part because Dan Leeson's messages on this subject
several years ago led me to do some research) has become so automatic that
it amounts to an allergy. My husband, who is Jewish, does listen to
Wagner, but I can't any more.

When I hear Wagner's music on the radio, the first thing that comes into my
mind is ordinary recognition: "Wagner." The second thing, almost
instantaneously, is visceral disgust, quickly followed by, "Off." And I
switch it off. When I think about Wagner, I can't help thinking about what
hatred of Jews has motivated people to do. These are not abstractions to
me. I think about Nazis lining up people in my husband's family, making
them dig a ditch and then shooting them into this ditch that became their
grave, at Baba Yar. I think about my mother's Czech Jewish ancestors who
were threatened until they converted, in the 19th century. They'd been
erased from living memory. Nobody in my mother's family knew that some of
our ancestors were Jewish until a few years ago.

Advice not to think about things like that just doesn't work for me. It's
like saying, "Don't think about an elephant." (What picture came into your
mind when you read that sentence?) Wagner was dead before Hitler made him
a culture hero of the Third Reich, of course, but the thinking was
compatible, and Hitler's liking for Wagner's opinions was a natural one,
and I although I'm interested in *learning* more about the subject, I don't
want it as any part of my entertainment. I said something similar on a
composer's forum recently and got blasted. I think I was in a minority of
about two. But so be it.

Lelia Loban
E-mail: lelialoban@-----.net
Web site (original music scores as audio or print-out):
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban

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