Re: Wagner and friends

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

I've always found the assignment of "meanings" to musical material idiotic. How 
someone can "institutionalize decadence" and "intentionally destroy morals" 
with a delayed cadence or a chromatic melody is beyond my comprehension.

If anything, Wagner's music still utilizes triadic harmony, a distinct holdover 
of the tonal system that had been developing since the late middle Ages. 
Schoenberg's music does not. Perhaps you find this "democratic." Hindemith, in 
his compositional method, argued for the preeminence of the triad based upon 
the natural intervals in the overtone theory. While I do not agree with 
everything Hindemith believes in--and wish I were more familiar with his 
methodology--it would seem foolish to deny the natural order of the harmonic or 
overtone series. Schoenberg did this by discrediting the organization of melody 
along tonal, modal, or triad-harmonic lines.

This is far more disturbing and disrupting than what Wagner did.

Please cite SPECIFIC instances how Wagner's MUSIC did all this. I certainly 
would understand if his dramatic themes were overtly anti-Semitic, how he could 
poison the German population's minds. But, again, it is unfathomable to me how 
such gorgeous  music--yes, gorgeous--could actually be responsible for the 
Holocaust.

Charles Manson scrawled HELTER SKELTER on the walls of his murder victims' 
home. Then did Paul McCartney kill Sharon Tate? We can seek to purge all 
"dangerous," "aggressive," or "sensuous" sounds from our music, but, in the end 
the twisted people will still find evil in it.

I agree heatliy with Albert Combrink. If I were to morally judge artists, I'd 
have to kick my Woody Allen habit. Something I'll never do.

Eliott Kahn






At 10:40 AM 2/27/03 -0800, you wrote:
>B"H Munich
>
>> I do not understand your point. Arnold Schoenberg--a
>> Jew--developed the twelve-tone theory of pitch
>> organization. Does that make him an even bigger
>> antiSemite than Wagner.
>
>Don´t be ridiculous, please. Schoenberg, for
>better or worse, built structures, systems,
>developed concepts of organisation.  Whether or not
>you like the music isn´t the point.
>Every note had equal rights. A democratic,
>egalitarion composer, if you like.
>
>Wagner made a point of creating institutionalized
>decadence, intentionally destroying morals, tastes,
>traditions.
>
>Alex JACOBOWITZ
>
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