Klarinet Archive - Posting 000087.txt from 2007/05

From: "MPWord -- Vann Turner" <vjoet@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Wagner
Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 20:08:55 -0400

As a fairly educated person, I read. I've read that there is no hint of the
anti-semitism in Wagner's librettos. I've recently read on this board that
they are rife with anti-semetism. I guess I'll have to get translations and
read them for myself to determine for myself if it is there.

(Honestly, though, I probably won't take the time to do that. For I don't
see a person being of this time and culture is something to castigate him
over years later.)

Now any person is certainly free to invite into, and free to exclude from,
his/her experience whatever pleases. This can certainly be done on a
political basis. I, for one, will not drink French wine for political
reasons.

But if I were to claim French wines were bad wines, I'd make myself a fool.
They aren't. They are generally very fine wines.

Methinks people have made themselves fools here when they castigated
Wagner's music. They want it to be bad music for they don't like this
personal antisemetism. But from his pen and heart came some of the most
sublime music the world has witnessed: Tristan und Isolde, Gotterdammerung.
They take my breath away.

Perhaps we should also toss away most Germanic and Austrian composers, and a
good number of the French, if our criteria for judging music has become
whether or not the composer held the common views of his time. Methinks that
is silly.

Vann Joe
(Amateur)

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