Re: why play wagner?


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Posted by Tongue in Cheek on July 05, 2002 at 11:29:02:

In Reply to: why play wagner? posted by gc on July 03, 2002 at 22:38:19:

Well, perhaps you have a point. We tend to be a bit blind when it comes to authors and their politics.

Wagner is okay to perform because it's argued that the music is better than the man. But the Horst Wessel Lied is a pretty little tune, and Leni Riefenstahl's "Sieg des Willens" is a marvelous masterpiece of cinematorgraphy. The Third Reich had some really stirring marches, so why not perform a bunch of those at your next band concert?

Orff was quite the Nazi (some revisionists suggest that this was merely a minor peccadillo and not a full-blown personality flaw) yet we perform his "Carmina Burana". Brecht was a staunch Marxist.

It's likely that Wagner was merely reflecting the rise of German nationalism; the blame for popularizing the whole mess might lie closer to Otto von Bismarck, who after all, had the vision of a unified Deutsches Volk.

In point of reality, humans are fickle creatures and will do what they do. Perhaps we ought to get our revenge on old Richard and set the Ring to different lyrics, say, a saga about the struggles of US oil interests?

But that might not work for everything--even if Horst Wessel's little ditty were re-set with lyrics about the struggles of Mother Teresa, it'd still be the Horst Wessel anthem to most folks.



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