Wagner’s Lohengrin

[ClassicalMusicLover]

I've been conflicted about listening to Wagner's music for a long time. He was a raging anti-Semite and a horrible human being. Hitler's love for Wagner's music made Wagner even less likable. (But of course, by this logic, if Hitler loved Offenbach's music would it make Offenbach's music taboo? But then again, if I had nearly died in a concentration camp I'd probably feel differently.)

http://myfavoriteclassical.com/wagners-lohengrin/

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

What do you think of other composers who were horrible human beings as well? Do you think that people's personality can be directly heard in the music they compose? Do you think you would listen to his music if you were not aware of how it was inappropriately misused in the twentieth century or Wagner's personality and beliefs? Do you think it would be better or worse to be aware of the context surrounding Wagner's musical/artistic creations and their performance from various different angles? How do you think you would enjoy his music most of all with a well rounded knowledge of the contexts in which it had been composed and performed (and misused)?

[david johnson]

Some creeps can write really good music.

[North Star]

What do you think of other composers who were horrible human beings as well? Do you think that people's personality can be directly heard in the music they compose? Do you think you would listen to his music if you were not aware of how it was inappropriately misused in the twentieth century or Wagner's personality and beliefs? Do you think it would be better or worse to be aware of the context surrounding Wagner's musical/artistic creations and their performance from various different angles? How do you think you would enjoy his music most of all with a well rounded knowledge of the contexts in which it had been composed and performed (and misused)?

Gesualdo had his his wife and her lover murdered, and the history of the Italian Renaissance looks like a prequel to The Godfather. What Wagner did was far more offensive, though - he wrote boring music.  0:)

Seriously, we should be intelligent enough to separate the art from the man. Otherwise you'll end up with idiotic crime novelists destroying Sickert paintings in the belief that since he depicted gruesome things in his works, he must have been Jack the Ripper. 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Gesualdo had his his wife and her lover murdered, and the history of the Italian Renaissance looks like a prequel to The Godfather. What Wagner did was far more offensive, though - he wrote boring music.  0:)

Seriously, we should be intelligent enough to separate the art from the man. Otherwise you'll end up with idiotic crime novelists destroying Sickert paintings in the belief that since he depicted gruesome things in his works, he must have been Jack the Ripper. 

Separating the art from the man is perfectly fine, but it IS somewhat important to those who do contextualise his music that it's possible to understand his perspectives within his world that there are certainly bad things about Wagner and there certainly are ways of viewing that in his works. Even though he was a firm believer in democracy and would have certainly been against that thing what happened in 1933 to 1945.....his family ties to Hitler are somewhat impossible to ignore. Also, a lot of the Wagner family after him certainly had some characteristics of power hungry control freaks........

For people who choose to totally separate Wagner the man and Wagner's music I'd say it's just as naïve as choosing not to listen to his music because he was a shitty person.

[North Star]

Separating the art from the man is perfectly fine, but it IS somewhat important to those who do contextualise his music that it's possible to understand his perspectives within his world that there are certainly bad things about Wagner and there certainly are ways of viewing that in his works. Even though he was a firm believer in democracy and would have certainly been against that thing what happened in 1933 to 1945
For people who choose to totally separate Wagner the man and Wagner's music I'd say it's just as naïve as choosing not to listen to his music because he was a shitty person.

Oh, I agree that the life and thoughts of an artist inform us of their art, to varying degrees, and Wagner's works can certainly have more than a whiff of German nationalism and antisemitism.
What I meant to say was not that we should ignore the artist when considering their art, but rather that we should not punish the art for its creator's defects.

[Florestan]

his family ties to Hitler are somewhat impossible to ignore. Also, a lot of the Wagner family after him certainly had some characteristics of power hungry control freaks........

None of which, of course, has anything to do with Wagner personally.

His anti-semitism seems to me rather as a mere expression of, and rationalization for, his envy towards the succesfull Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Offenbach rather than a systematic, coherent and practically applied social philosophy. He didn't extend it to women, and one of his most beloved friends and ardent supporters and promoters was Hermann Levi, who in 1876 wrote to his rabbi father: "Wagner is the best and noblest of men ... I thank God daily for the privilege to be close to such a man. It is the most beautiful experience of my life".

Besides Wagner, Hitler also liked Bruckner and Kalman (he even offered the latter the "honorary Aryan" status, but was refused), yet you don't see their names blemished by this (as involuntary as Wagner's) association...

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Oh, I agree that the life and thoughts of an artist inform us of their art, to varying degrees, and Wagner's works can certainly have more than a whiff of German nationalism and antisemitism.
What I meant to say was not that we should ignore the artist when considering their art, but rather that we should not punish the art for its creator's defects.

Oh of course, I misunderstood this makes perfect sense, thank you.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

None of which, of course, has anything to do with Wagner personally.

His anti-semitism seems to me rather as a mere expression of, and rationalization for, his envy towards the succesfull Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Offenbach rather than a systematic, coherent and practically applied social philosophy. He didn't extend it to women, and one of his most beloved friends and ardent supporters and promoters was Hermann Levi, who in 1876 wrote to his rabbi father: "Wagner is the best and noblest of men ... I thank God daily for the privilege to be close to such a man. It is the most beautiful experience of my life".

Besides Wagner, Hitler also liked Bruckner and Kalman (he even offered the latter the "honorary Aryan" status, but was refused), yet you don't see their names blemished by this (as involuntary as Wagner's) association...

Yes I agree and I think it was rooted in the success of Grand Opéra in particular. I think the envy for success may have been some part of it, but I do think it has more to do with how he viewed the industry in particular, how the Opéra was run as a business, generating revenue etc. I'm pretty certain Wagner did not want to compromise artistic integrity for the ability to generate revenue from visual spectacle and shallow audience-pleasers (that the audience would barely pay much attention to anyway).

[Jaakko Keskinen]

and one of his most beloved friends and ardent supporters and promoters was Hermann Levi, who in 1876 wrote to his rabbi father: "Wagner is the best and noblest of men ... I thank God daily for the privilege to be close to such a man. It is the most beautiful experience of my life".

Of course, this was before Wagner went completely nuts with his Aryan philosophies á la Gobineau and started to abuse Levi vehemently about him refusing to baptize himself before conducting Parsifal. 

[Walther von Stolzing]

Oh, I agree that the life and thoughts of an artist inform us of their art, to varying degrees, and Wagner's works can certainly have more than a whiff of German nationalism and antisemitism..

I realize that starting in the twentieth century the tendency has arisen to treat works of art as journeys into the inner life of their creator, and to act like the best way to understand them is by not looking at what they say but by trying to see what they reveal about the person who made them, but I don't detect even the slightest scent of antisemitism in the operas. Thought experiment: if we knew absolutely nothing about the life and opinions of Wagner, would we in anyway be inclined to see them as colored by antisemitism, or to consider antisemitism a key to unlocking their meaning? To me the answer is such an obvious "no" that it's hard to see why it is worthwhile in pursuing the matter any further.

Of course, this was before Wagner went completely nuts with his Aryan philosophies á la Gobineau and started to abuse Levi vehemently about him refusing to baptize himself before conducting Parsifal. 

Actually, Levi wrote the letter to his father in April 1882, about 4 months before the first performance of Parsifal. Of course you are right that Wagner and Cosima made some hurtful remarks towards Levi, and that Wagner flirted with the idea of having him baptized before conducting the first performance. Yet in the end Levi went on to conduct most of the 16 performances of the opera that following summer, unbaptized, and after the final performance Wagner went up to Levi's father, shook the rabbi's hand and said "Your Hermann, as my alter ego, really ought to bear my name, Wagner."

In any case, I think Florestan's main point that Wagner's antisemitism never took any kind of consistent or coherent form is basically correct, and that the Jews became a kind of amorphous entity in Wagner's mind, who he perceived as hostile to his main goal in life in achieving a wide acceptance of his grandly conceived artwork, and on whom he blamed many of the ills that befell him. Gobineau's philosophies actually didn't have as big of an influence on Wagner as is sometimes reported; he did not even read anything by Gobineau until December of 1880, and when he did he disagreed with as much as he agreed with. In his late essay 'Know Thyself', Wagner even wrote a response to Gobineau's general theory:

"The blood of the Saviour flowing from his head, from his wounds on the cross — who would commit such an outrage as to ask whether it might belong to the white or any other race?

We have to keep a hold of the fact that the efficiency of the noblest races' domination and exploitation of the lower races, justified entirely in naturalistic terms, has established a completely immoral world order. A possible sameness of all people made equal to each other through the intermixing of races can only lead to an aesthetically ordered world if this sameness were conceivable when grounded on a universal moral consensus such as the true Christianity..."

Jacob Katz, professor emeritus of Jewish educational and social history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and author of a worthwhile book on Wagner cooberates this position when he observes that "Wagner was far from being bound to a system of thought or from aiming at one. His creative power was devoted to the realization of artistic plans, while his ideas...original as they might seem, lack disciplined composure and consistency." They were, says Katz, hardly more than "inspirations of the moment, often expressions of the transient phases of his intellectual development, and sometimes emotional reaction to events and experiences."

[Jo498]

The most rabid antisemite in the Wagner family was Houston Stewart Chamberlain who became his son in law (more than 20 years after Richard's death) and the one with the closest ties to Hitler and other leading Nazis was Winifred (née Williams), the wife of Wagner's son Siegfried (and mother of Wieland and Wolfgang)... what is it about these Brits...?
Goebbels in his diary about Winifred: "Ein rassiges Weib. So sollten sie alle sein. Und fanatisch auf unserer Seite." [roughly: A hot chick. They should all be like that. And fanatically on our side]  [Could one say "a racy woman" in English? the implication is not anything racial but attractive and of a fierce temperament]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Wagner

[Spineur]

I stumbled on this video of Thomas Mann discussing Lohengrin prelude and the influence it had on him.  I thought this may be interesting to the GMG Wagner/Mann fans

https://www.youtube.com/v/tH5jx-I1Z3o

It is in german, but there is a text translation as well.

[ritter]

I stumbled on this video of Thomas Mann discussing Lohengrin prelude and the influence it had on him.  I thought this may be interesting to the GMG Wagner/Mann fans

https://www.youtube.com/v/tH5jx-I1Z3o

It is in german, but there is a text translation as well.

That looks interesting, Spineur. Will watch it soon. Thanks for posting it! 

[musicrom]

Anti-Semitism is something I detest (and I hope everybody today does as well), but I don't think it's right to judge Wagner's music based on that. That being said, I don't like the vast majority of the music I've heard of his. Probably doesn't help that I don't like opera, so my knowledge is limited to preludes, overtures, and a little bit of his non-operatic works.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I stumbled on this video of Thomas Mann discussing Lohengrin prelude and the influence it had on him.  I thought this may be interesting to the GMG Wagner/Mann fans

https://www.youtube.com/v/tH5jx-I1Z3o

It is in german, but there is a text translation as well.

Very interesting. Thank you, Spineur, I am intrigued. (I shall ask my girlfriend about this as she speaks German and will be able to help me in understanding this haha).