Art that Shook the World

BBC is available pretty much everywehere on the continent, Paul. As arts documentaries go, last night's Wagner wasn't too bad, though I could imagine a show with a little less anchor (Portillo doing a Palin in the Bayreuth conductor seat) and a little more Wagner. I could have imagined asking more conductors (indeed, composers, singers!) about Wagner, and adding a little more depth.It was interesting to hear the tuba guy explain that for the orchestra Bayreuth means playing as loud as you can, because of the pit construction. I would have liked more of those insights.

But I guess the idea was the viewer would get dizzy if there weren't constant shots of Portillo's beefy hands over the Rhine. A few years ago Dutch tv televized a complete Ring in the Amsterdam Music Theater, plus a 'the Making of' doc, without, AFAIRC any star walking one through the whole dizzying experience. Nice Rhine Maidens though...

Herman

One more thing. Inevitably there was a discussion of Wagner's anti-semitism (yawn), with the grand-granddaughter (or something ) Nike sensibly explaining that in the mid 19th C being an anti-semite was a different thing from being one in the Thirties.

Apart from the fact that it's very hard not to imagine Wagner being an ardent anti-semite in the Thirties (and Hitler was a warmly received guest at the Wagners' home) one only has to think of Schumann's close friendship with Mendelsohnn, or the large number of Jews in Brahms's circle to see that Nike's statement doesn't make a whole lot of sense, after all.

It would have been more interesting, obviously, to have interviewed Daniel Barenboim, instead of Zubin Metha, D.B. being one of the great Wagner conductors of our time, who in fact [i[did[/i] play a Wagner overture out in Israel, as an encore, last year, the first time ever...

Herman

...and by pure chance I've been giving Furtwangler's 1953 Ring its second full listen recently - I'm currently up to side 20! I've been playing it on the Planar 3 in the second system whilst I'm on the net, which I guess is some form of sacrilege.

Tony.

So what's it like, Tony? (I'm more into Böhm - and I never make it really deep into a single recording, being too impatient for this kind of stuff.)

I could have done without that bit where Portillo was sprawled across the Psychologists couch saying things like "If one is in love with power can one ever truly be in love?". There was something slightly peculiar about it.

Does any else watch BBC Four? It seems to get a bad presi from many but I really like it. Obviously they are short of money and have to show each programme many times but they have shown some great documentaries (especially the one about North Korea and the 1966 football team and the one about whaling in Japan) and their main weekday 8pm news bulletin is absolutely fantastic (Its the new C4 News).

Matthew

BBC4 filmed the Charles Lloyd/ Mc Coy Tyner/Bobby Hutcherson concert last week, and are showing it soon. I can assure everyone that the Mc Coy Tyner set was superb.

John

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So what's it like, Tony?

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I’m no classical expert at all, and as it’s the only version of The Ring I have ever heard so I have no point of reference. I found it very cheap second hand around the time Vuk was at his most intolerant of all things not Furtwangler, so I got it as much as anything to see what all the fuss was about. I’m really none the wiser, but I can tell you with some certainty that it is a truly crap recording – sounds like one cheap and poorly placed mic was used for the whole thing!

Tony.

Still you're on side 20, so it looks like either Wagner or Furtwängler has cast a spell on you, somehow.

Herman

(Or you're just scared of Vuk )

Herman: ...Nike sensibly explaining that in the mid 19th C being an anti-semite was a different thing from being one in the Thirties.

In the same way that being anti-racist in the mid 1970s was different from being one in the early 2000s, perhaps?

JD

Boy, you sure like to quote my stuff, don't you, JD?

However, to answer your question: I don't know. In the sense that I don't know what you're getting at.

(My fault probably - being distracted by the beauty of the quote )

Herman

The best bit in the documentary was, just after the footage of Hitler waving on the balcony at Bayreuth to a saluting crowd, about three seconds of Portillo on the same balcony, with the wind gently blowing his locks and the cries of Sieg Heil still fading from the previous footage; certainly put all the subsequent psychobabble about the mutual exclusivity of love and power into context.<p>

I wholeheartedly agree about the Rhinemaidens!

Well, Herman, what I was getting at was that I find it difficult to understand how being an anti-semite in the 1850s could in any meaningful sense be different from being an anti-semite in the 1930s. I don't believe there is a difference but I'm interested to learn what this claimed difference might be, and why it was sensible of Nike to quote it.

JD

Being an anti-semite(or anti-anything) at a time when being anti-semite(or anti-anything) was normal, expected, and in no way considered reprehensible is, of course, quite different from expressing those views in our so-called enlightened times where it seems you cannot express any view at all for fear of someone taking offence or calling you racist.

So who is going to apologise for the atrocities committed on Neanderthal Man - The UN, the Pope,
you?

cheers

Nigel

Well, Jeremy, I think what Nike Wagner was trying to say was that long before Hitler and the Holocaust, being anti-semitic would not be as reprehensible as during or after Hitler.

And I guess to some extent that's true. Being an anti-semite now would either have you denying the reality of the Holocaust (as of course many do; just as there are too many moslem radicals who nauseatingly claim all Jewish New Yorkers were warned ahead of the 9 / 11 attacks and called in sick), or saying one hates Jews so much it's OK they're killed (see Saddam Hussein and his Scuds during Desert Storm, and moslems celebrating every time a Scud hit Israel). Before Hitler many gentiles had perhaps have vague xenophobic feelings about Jews just because they were different, without wanting to hurt them. The writer Virginia Woolf was married to Jewish Leonard Woolf, and occasionally makes incongruous remarks in letters to her sister Vanessa, for instance.

I was saying that Nike W had a point to some extent, but not enough. Historicizing & contextualizing is good, but when I contextualize I can see contemporaries of Wagner having excellent cordial relations with Jews, so one had a choice. It wasn't "normal" or "expected"; maybe it just wasn't that abnormal. Remember in Wagner's time Victorian England had a PM called Disraeli. Also one can't help feeling that Wagner's anti-semitism was more than a little instrumental in making nazi anti-semitism respectable. So Nike was only seemingly sensible. In the end there's just no way out of this Wagner thing.

For Wagner all means were justified by the end, which was him living in luxury at last, writing the Ring and Parsifal and getting the Bayreuth theatre. His is a thoroughly troubling life to contemplate, and so is his art, in which there seems to be no good life: all his heroes are irrevocably hurt and halved and most of them want to die.

Herman

Nigel Cavendish: ...in our so-called enlightened times where it seems you cannot express any view at all for fear of someone taking offence or calling you racist.

Do people often call you a racist, Nigel?

Nigel Cavendish: So who is going to apologise for the atrocities committed on Neanderthal Man - The UN, the Pope, you?

Since I can't believe you're insane enough to hold the UN, the Pope or me responsible for atrocities committed against Neanderthals, I can only assume that your words were an attempt at cutting wit. If you want people to be amused or impressed instead of scratching their heads in puzzlement then the secret is to try and say something that's actually relevant to what the other person said. Give it a try sometime, you might get to enjoy it.

Finally, Nigel, inasmuch as anything you said is worthy of being taken seriously it is duplicated by Herman so I'll cover that point when I reply to his post, if you don't mind.

JD

[This message was edited by JeremyD on SUNDAY 14 July 2002 at 23:03.]

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(Or you're just scared of Vuk )...

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Me, scared of Vuk, erm, nah, honest guv, never, hmmm, where is side 21 then...

Tony.

Herman: Well, Jeremy, I think what Nike Wagner was trying to say was that long before Hitler and the Holocaust, being anti-semitic would not be as reprehensible as during or after Hitler...

...I was saying that Nike W had a point to some extent, but not enough. Historicizing & contextualizing is good, but when I contextualize I can see contemporaries of Wagner having excellent cordial relations with Jews, so one had a choice. It wasn't "normal" or "expected"; maybe it just wasn't that abnormal. Remember in Wagner's time Victorian England had a PM called Disraeli. Also one can't help feeling that Wagner's anti-semitism was more than a little instrumental in making nazi anti-semitism respectable. So Nike was only seemingly sensible. In the end there's just no way out of this Wagner thing.

What bothered me before this post is what appeared to be the implicit assumption that we should judge Wagner by the standards of the dominant culture of his time rather than by our own standards. From my point of view, placing someone in their historical context might well help explain how they came to be the person they were but it doesn't therefore follow that we should judge them by their standards - or the standards of their peers - rather than by our own.

Getting back to the present [excellent post btw Herman] perhaps the way out, for Wagner, is to recognise that he and his music are two different things. Understanding who Wagner was might well explain a lot about his music, but the fact that he was a racist doesn't mean that we need an excuse to listen to his music...

Incidentally, I don't really agree with in-between part that I left out of the above quotation. This is partly because I'm sure that the vast majority of racists of all kinds (at least in the UK) still have no wish to kill the groups they despise, and partly because genocide of Jews in Europe happened long before Hitler - albeit on a far lesser scale...

JD

Ross: There is a very clear and demonstrable link between Wagner's politics and his music.

On first hearing Wagner, without knowing anything about him, I found his music ugly and deeply unpleasant to listen to. I was hardly surprised to learn that Wagner supported the kind of views that Hitler later adopted.

I must confess that since then I have avoided Wagner as much as possible, so if his music has racist content - rather than inspiration - I was not aware of it.

JD

[This message was edited by JeremyD on SUNDAY 14 July 2002 at 23:45.]

Vuk: This certainly rivals Stallion's best for the most ambitous combination in one posting of naivete, self-importance and arrogance.

A self-referential statement if ever I saw one. Which is not to say that I think Stallion is self-important and arrogant - merely that Vuk is.

To be fair, I could leave out the naivete. Vuk is anything but naive.

JD

What you're running up against this way, Jeremy, is the fact that art is not necessarily meant to be pretty all the time, or supportive of one's own nice views. Way I see it, one of Wagner's allures is this mix of evil, danger and beauty - after all that is what it's about.

And there's very few great artists who do not embody to some extent what they are about, even if this means bad things. Otherwise you're not that interested, and it's hard to get that visceral appeal. You don't go into the arts (as if!) to say, in all kinds of intricate ways: "I'm a nice guy / gal. Let's go pick flowers." This is one of those things that confuses the Shostakovich debate, too. People want to pin him down to one position (an anti-commie ironicist, preferably), but the man is not available for pinning down.

BTW excellent post Ross.

Herman

... a smug git.

cheers

Nigel

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You just have to ignore the context and think about the music - do you like it.

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Very true. Also the Hitler / Nazi connection is pretty flimsy when you consider that Wagner died in 1883. Even if he held some nasty racist views, he held them long before Hitler turned these views into horrific acts of mass murder. In my opinion the views held by later generations of the Wagner family has no relevance at all to discussions about Richard Wagner’s music – who cares what they think / thought?

Tony.

Herman: What you're running up against this way, Jeremy, is the fact that art is not necessarily meant to be pretty all the time, or supportive of one's own nice views.

What you're running up against this way, Herman, is the fact that I never suggested otherwise. Frankly, I'm baffled that you could have construed such an infantile viewpoint in what I've said.

Herman: Way I see it, one of Wagner's allures is this mix of evil, danger and beauty - after all that is what it's about.

I would not wish to persuade you othewise. But that doesn't mean that Wagner has or should have any allure for me. People are different - accept it.

Herman: And there's very few great artists who do not embody to some extent what they are about, even if this means bad things. Otherwise you're not that interested, and it's hard to get that visceral appeal. You don't go into the arts (as if!) to say, in all kinds of intricate ways: "I'm a nice guy / gal. Let's go pick flowers."

Indeed.

Herman: This is one of those things that confuses the Shostakovich debate, too. People want to pin him down to one position (an anti-commie ironicist, preferably), but the man is not available for pinning down.

My answer to this is that, in general, it is the art itself rather than the artist that makes its impression on me. In fact, when this is not the case then it is probably symptomatic of my dislike of the artist in question [i.e. their work].

As for Shostakovich, I have just the sort of 1-dimensional view of him that you complain about, simply because I know very little about him.

My point is, however, that were I to learn more about Shostakovich it is most unlikely that it would change my experience of his music to any significant degree. This is not to say that knowledge about the composer, the composer's culture and circumstances etc. cannot influence my perceptions - simply that I do not choose to seek out such influences, and that rarely if ever have such influences resulted in a gestalt shift in my experience of an artist's work.

When I listen to music I prefer the naive approach of direct experience, focusing on the moment of now. To me the rest is just history.

JD

If there's racism in The Ring then it's well hidden and has to be sought. What the Ring has is dwarves, giants, jaded gods, a fecund torso, loads of incestuous passion and betrayal with gorgeous tunes.

It's strange how we search for subliminal racism and don't really mind the sex and violence. A sign of our times?

IMO it's a work of genius that will provide entertainment and stimulation for a lifetime.

I recommend Jeremy seeks out an Anna Russell CD with her guide to the Ring, that should put it into perspective.

Paul

I am in two minds about Wagner’s anti-semitism. On the one hand, I do see it as a product of his time, an attitude that was in general currency and which would have been shared by many others who are not the subject of demonisation. On the other, I am deeply disturbed by the overt links to German mythology and Aryanism. Consequently, when I listen to Wagner, which I do often, I am torn between being seduced by the music and singing, and being repelled by the words – I don’t think that this is at all unusual.

Joyce was a man who understood Wagner profoundly – Tristan and Isolde are mentioned in the opening chords of Finnegans Wake– and it is no coincidence that Joyce chose a wandering jew, Leopold Bloom, as the “hero” of Ulysses. It is interesting to note that Joyce, who chose a life of exile and poverty, eventually completed a masterpiece that embraced all of humanity, whereas Wagner, who chose patronage and decadance, perfected an artform that emphasises principally the isolation of the individual. This passage from Nestor shows the kind of anti-semitism that would have been common and current in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe;

He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

-- Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen it Coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is dying.

He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.

-- Dying, he said, if not dead by now.

The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.

His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he halted.

-- A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not?

-- They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this day.

On the steps of the Paris Stock Exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabbles of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew the years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.

-- Who has not? Stephen said.

-- What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.

-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

-- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

-- That is God.

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

-- What? Mr Deasy asked.

-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.