Klarinet Archive - Posting 000075.txt from 2007/05

From: "danyel" <rab@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] art and "circumstances"
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 19:49:40 -0400

As far as I am concerned, this is all there is to be said about Wagner.

I do not quite understand, however, how other jerks, albeit of lesser
magnitude, would be in the position to create art. I tend to believe that in
order to write sensible music, you need a functioning brain. Or not?

curiously,
danyel
www.echoton.de/clar.html

----- Original Message -----
From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
To: <klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 1:12 AM
Subject: RE: [kl] art and "circumstances"

> There may be something of a misunderstanding here. I would not
> dismiss a musical genius and artist like Wagner, simply because
> he was a hateful bigot and an antisemite of enormous magnitude.
> There have been lots of jerks who behaved that way, but whose
> music, or art, or poetry I still value.
>
> But not Wagner. His sin was not so much due to his bigotry but
> rather because he made his bigotry a part of the art works he
> composed. It takes a little doing and a knowledge of medieval
> history to recognize the rancid ideas that he espouses throughout
> Meistersinger or Siefried or Gotterdammerung, but there they are
> there in all their putrid ugliness. So I don't dismiss Wagner
> because I find his politics toxic. I don't listen to Wagner
> because I don't want to hear public displays of antisemitism over
> and over as his works are done again and again. And I stopped
> playing his music some years ago. If I were hired to play
> Wagner, I just turned down the job, saying that I was playing
> somewhere else that night. No big stink. No marching around
> with signs. I just refused to associate with his music (and his
> writings) in any way. It is too painful for me to do so.
>
> Dan Leeson
> DNLeeson@-----.net
>
>

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