Re: Barenboim and Wagner

[Alex J. Lubet <lubet001...>]

Responding to the message of <001801c10a10$726ec0e0$6501a8c0 (at) 
afour1(dot)il(dot)home(dot)com>
from jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org:
> 
> You make some valid points, Joel. Governments should not interfere in what
> music can or cannot be heard. However, there are still those of us who feel
> that the playing of Wagner (in the faces of Holocaust survivors) is still in
> very poor taste.

I think you're both right.  Let's not forget that Wagner was a flaming 
anti-Semite, no doubt about it.  It wasn't just his music that inspired Hitler. 
Some recent scholarship has pointed to anti-Semitic imagery in some of the 
operas (metaphorically cast in terms of ancient Teutonic legends).  I'm one of 
those people who can't bring himself to get too close to Wagner, so I'll have to
admit I can't render much of a judgment on that question.

I need to deal with this question on a day-to-day basis.  I have really no 
choice but to teach some Wagner since it's quite impossible to convey a sense of
Western music history without him.

Another dilemma for a lot of folks is Karl Orff, another bona fide Nazi.  With 
Orff it's not just the compositions, but his Schulwerk pedagogical method for 
young children, which a lot of people admire greatly and who deal with the 
context from which it arose (the schools of the Third Reich) in various ways.  I
once taught a 20th century music class to non-music majors in which one of the 
students was a wonderful older German woman.  She'd never heard Carmina Burana 
before (which I taught in the context of music in Nazi Germany).  After the 
opening few bars of bombastic repetition, she declared that it was brainwashing,
exactly what Hitler was trying to accomplish.

In general, I admire Barenboim.  I was impressed at the musical exchange he was 
trying to create between young Israeli and Palestinian musicians.  His partner 
in the exchange was Edward Said, whom I admire a whole lot less, especially 
since the notorious rock throwing incident.



Alex Lubet, Ph. D.
Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music
Adjunct Professor of American and Jewish Studies
University of Minnesota
2106 4th St. S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612 624-7840 612 624-8001 (fax)

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