anti-Semitic Art versus Anti-Semitic Artists

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Dear all

I am not Jewish, so perhaps it's not my place to address this issue at all,
but some of the heated debate on the list makes me think that some issues
are being pushed to the exclusion of others. The debate so far does not seem
to have drawn any distinction between ARTISTS who were Anti-Semitic, and the
ARTWORKS that were. 

We admire a lot of great artworks because they are great artworks, not
because the artist was necessarily a good and moral person. I mean, if being
morally uncorrupt was a prerequisite for great art, we'd have to smash all
the Rodin sculptures, all the Picassos etcetc. Cézanne was virulently
ant-Semitic, but he certainly could paint a picture. The difficulty comes
when one has to define who's set of criteria will be used to measure what is
moral and what not.

In my case, I am a white Afrikaans South African musician, and there are
lots of music works that either offend me as art-works, or the artists'
political outlook offend me, both in pre-democratic and post-democratic
times. My people were also put into concentration camps, invented by the
British, and as a nation we carry those scars. But last year I produced the
musical "Peter Pan", in which Wendy at one point encouragers the boys to die
bravely, "like English Gentlemen". Now, I could get on a soap box and yell
that those sentiments were anti-Afrikaner (70% of my nation was wiped out in
that quest to turn Africa into a bit of old England), but really - what
would be the point? It is just a school play. I have to play music by
racists and work with musicians who feel insulted if I address them in
Afrikaans, who are PROUD to rub in my face that they are English and I am
not. It sounds like what some Jewish people (used to?) get quite a lot and
there is a definite sense of Anti-Afrikanerism in this country. But those
Anti-Afrikaners often happen to be good musicians, good composers and
believe it or not, occasionally very nice people.

There are many works out there that manage to say pretty unpalatable things
about groups of people not belonging to their own nationality or race.
"Death of Klinghofer" by Adams for Example, "Pearl-Fishers" by Bizet, not to
mention "Othello" by no less a pair of racist, prejudiced bigots than Verdi
and Shakespeare,  And the nations and languages that gave birth to those
works, the US, France, Britain and Italy, have all had questionable
political involvement's in other parts of the world that have led to the
deaths of many innocent people, all in the service of some or other ideal.

In my own country, the white Afrikaners who should have learnt from their
experience in the Boor War camps, managed then to become the oppressors of
all black people in the country, and this also meant artistic oppression.
Great Black musicians had their careers squashed and there is a wonderful
resurgence of interest in music form those bygone days and a renewed
emphasis on learning various traditional art-forms in the new curricula. But
there are still (Historically white) institutions and artists out there who
made it riding on the back of Apartheid, having been privileged under the
old regime. But we still perform them. The great South African composers who
studied on scholarships at the Royal Academy and everywhere else while their
black brethren were barred from Tertiary Education, well, we're not only
performing them, why, we're still EMPLOYING them! Partly, because they
happen to be pretty good musicians.

My question to the list is this: why is there so much excitement about
Wagner, Strauss, Orff and the boys and their supposed anti-Semitism, while
there is little talk about other composers who might express prejudiced
statements. And also, is the political affiliation of the artist a
pre-requisite for acceptance of that artist? Is it because of the horrors of
the Holocaust that somehow Anti-Semitism is "worse" than other forms of
prejudice? Why do they perform American music in Israel? Was the wiping out
of North-American Indian culture less critical? And why perform Madame
Butterfly's ode to the American flag when it appears that the US could have
stopped the Burundi Massacres but decided not to step in? (I'll not comment
on the US's present political position) Why perform Debussy when the French
colonials devastated every African economy they were involved in? 

Belgium, Italy, Holland, America etcetc. Not a single one beyond reproach -
and yet, some pretty good music being written in those countries even at the
time of those atrocities being committed.

Where I feel the line should be drawn, is with a work that overtly
encourages hatred of another racial or language group. And I firmly believe
that squashing the music would be not nearly as important a contribution to
"world peace" as forcing the issues out into the open and debating them
vigorously. Wagner MUST be included in concerts and curricula so that
students can learn and see what can go wrong, and how a tune is rarely just
a tune. Audiences MUST be challenged to think, rethink and redefine, and
musicians MUST strive to let that intangible thing that music does to one,
happen. I have been transported to other reams by the likes of Strauss,
Orff, and yes, even Wagner - as a student there was one 7 minute snippet
from the Ring which I put on Instant Replay for 3 hours till the neighbours
threatened to call the police... - it was a defining moment in my life and I
love those seven minutes with all my heart. Do I need to apologise for this,
or withhold that snippet of glory from others, just because the guy who
wrote it was an old so-and-so (insert applicable expletives)?

Also, I believe that it is quite sweeping to write off someone like Strauss
because he worked as Nazi-employee. Is that enough evidence to wipe out his
contribution to the music of the 20th Century? Shostakovich is still a gray
area when it comes to his supposed communism. He had to toe the party line
or be executed so yes, there are the "Ode to Stalin" and all those photos of
him shaking hands with Stalin. But then listen to "Katerina Ismailova" and
you'd see he was tremendously critical of the communist realities. So the
issue is less whether he was a communist or not, or whether his music
supported it or not, but whether it was good music to begin with. I see a
parallel in my own country: really good artists and musicians are
"africanising" their art trying to fall in line with the new regime, hoping
to grab a slice of an ever diminishing pie - and a lot of it is of highly
suspicious quality. Where does one draw the line? Karajan had suspicious
political motives, but he pushed CD technology research to serve his
megalomania - do we ban CD's in Israel? Someone who hated globalisation
might ban all american pop-music, in my country, sonmeone who hated blacks
banned all black music. 

The question is, just whose laws will we use to decide what is to be banned
and what not? I think, if a piece bothers you, DON'T BUY THE CD! If
Barenboim will conduct a piece you can not stomach to hear becuase of
whatever associations, DON'T ATTEND THE SHOW. For the rest, rather encourage
performance and debate. All over the world the performing arts are in
crisis, we should be putting our energies into keeping it alive.

I am not trying to challenge the members on the list, it's merely my humble
response to some of the heat generated lately and I'd be very interested to
hear what people think of my comments. If I offend, I apologise in advance,
but then, some of the list's comments offended me!

Shalom U'vracha
Albert

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