Re: Carl Orff & fellow travelers

[Jonathan Delatizky <delatizky...>]

Shooting from the hip (my reference material is all at home and I'm not), my
recollection is that Orff (like Karajan) was an enthusiastic supporter of
the 3rd Reich.  I have no issue with those who choose to avoid his music.
In spite of the superficial appeal of his compositions, you won't really be
missing much.

Furtwangler is a complicated case, one that has been debated at length in
many venues.  While he stayed in Germany and conducted throughout the Nazi
and war years, there's at least one view of him as essentially apolitical,
in a naive attempt to differentiate the music (and culture)  he loved from
the (to him, transitory) political turmoil of the period.  He is credited
with attempting to shield and help many Jewish musicians, though in the end
most of his efforts were unsuccessful and only deferred the inevitable.

There's a fairly lengthy article about him (and many of the usual suspects)
at http://www.classicalnotes.net/features/furtwangler.html.  Two of the
references identified in that site, the books by John Ardoin and Sam
Shirakawa, are well worth reading.  The latter work also explores the roles
of many of Furtwangler's contemporaries.

I have a slightly different take on Wagner.  I choose to interpret his
nominally Jewish stereotypes instead as satires of the worst characteristics
of the German national character, and thereby invert his intent.  Works for
me.  And his Aryan supermen (in the Ring) make a royal mess of whatever they
do - look what happens by the end of Gotterdammerung!  They're just as
foolish, venal, and incompetent as any untermensch.  So where's the glory -
how can these archetypes be taken seriously as Exemplars of the Great German
Race?  Siegfried - pshaw!  What a loser!

<j>

Jonathan Delatizky         When it comes to lamentations
delatizky (at) bbn(dot)com     I prefer Aretha Franklin
+1-617-873-3366            to, let's say, Leonard Cohen
                          Needless to add, he hears a different drum - L.
Cohen




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