Richard66 wrote:


That´s also a right notion, but in a certain way he has preworked for the Nazi-ideology.



But some of Wagners theses were directly and personal against Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, he considered as an enemy. So, I´m not surprised Mendelssohn felt attacked.

And even apart from his huge influence on other composers, some of his tunes, and the way he presents them, are just irresistible, at least to me. The Tannhauser and Meistersinger overtures, the Walkurenritte, the Siegfried Idyll - great music and pure genius, however much I dislike his wearing of silk underpants and his bottom-licking attitude with to his superiors.


Many things from the Nazi period are just as aesthetically pleasing as anything else from that time, and I would not condemn them just because (but neither would I buy them just because). Actually I find some of Hitlers' paintings quite pretty (even though they are not great art by any standards), and would not hesitate buying one, provided it was not more expensive than the usual price I'd pay for an amateur painting

I hear that Hitler was fond of Chopin. Of course, he might have just sought out the Jew-haters.

He was very fond of Wagner too, and very fond of his dog. You'd almost start to think he was halfway human ...

I agree at hundred percent to that. But my favorite opera by Wagner is the "Parzival" and the best music he ever has written, is the motif of Parzival, "der reine Thor", which is in a pure and simple c-major. For me this is may be the only place Wagner has shown us, that there is a bit more than obscure ideology in his soul and mind. (As we know Parzival is a seeker of the Saint Grail, that means also he is seeking for God and the pureness.) But from that pureness Wagner seems not to have the faintest idea in most of his other works!
If you compare them with the oratorios by Mendelssohn, "Elias" and "Paulus" f.ex., I only can say, that - just judged from the music itself - in Wagner we have something like the devil and in Mendelssohn we have the pure angel. So, also the music seems to attest to the mind and character of their composers.



I see you are trying to separate the things themselves from the mind of their "creators" and I respect and appreciate that in a certain way! It´s an interesting point of view.

Well, everyone knows that.


That, I didn't know. But it's not surprising that an dictator would like a dog. If he had loved a cat, I'd be surprised.

(See, you managed to make it about pets after all.)

The most funny thing is, that "Puky" is a label on the bycycle of my son (I suppose, it´s a name of brand or so), and Chris made me considerate to the meaning of that name in English . I somehow spontaneously thought, in the context of Wagners ideology this wordplay could be of an adequate use. You see, I´m not only creative concerning music.

Das Judentum in der Musik is (from my second-hand understanding of it) a thoroughly nasty and vicious tract. It actually starts from quite an interesting position i.e. the comparative lack of significant Jewish composers at the time (Mendelssohn's family had I believe converted to Christianity when he was about nine, Alkan was prohibitively obscure and Wagner really didn't rate Meyerbeer). It suggests that Jewish insularity leads to creative sterility and, I believe, advocates self-annihilation and/or the abandonment of Jewish principles as the solution to this problem. It's not hard to see that the idea of the Holocaust could easily spring from a reading of this. Wagner was a great composer, but a foul human being.

And his whiny-ass behavior and treatment of Liszt was deplorable!

The ancient Hebrews were also not producers of art, the Bible and the Temple excepted.

Now, if we change the word Jewish and say, for example, Polish or Croatian, will we not end up having just the same number of great composers?

I remember a book I once read (written in the 1930s, before the War) where there is a chapter called: The Monster and here a most obnoxious character is described. After one like him as much as much as the late Bin we are told it is Wagner who is being described.

Chopin is worth at least three or four.

Absolutely. It's very much to Liszt's credit that he put up with Wagner's incessant demands for money, etc, in the knowledge that subsidising his lifestyle would be for the greater artistic good.

Btw, I was told (by a Polish pianist friend) that history tends to avoid this point, but Chopin was part-Jewish.

But he was half-French, so maybe he is worth only 2 Poles?