How do feel about composers/performers that promote political/ethical stances that you're against? Quick examples woulf be Wagner or Gergiev.
Or, for example, yesterday, I was searching through a selection of cds by a French composer. However, after reading on wikipedia (maybe not the best source) that he was supportive of the German occupying forces in his country, I didn't feel like listening to him any longer. Is that silly?
I think it's a personal decision to make. For me, it's the music that counts. However, I well understand that a person might find a musician's views so abhorrent that he/she wants nothing to do with that musician.
Artists' political and ethical views are of basically no importance to me.
Quote from: Todd on April 06, 2014, 08:26:51 AM
Artists' political and ethical views are of basically no importance to me.
Ditto. One of my favourite writers is Dashiell Hammett and he was a horror.
I can think of several composers I'd loathe as human beings, but I like their music.
Besides, I believe in the right to be wrong, which most people exercise most of the time.
When I listen to Mengelberg play Bach or Cortot play Chopin I always think - there's a Nazi shit making beautiful poetry. That thought makes the experience of listening to them infinitely more enriching than it would have been had I have been unaware of their political inclinations. It reminds me that human nature is very complex, more complex than I understand.
There's a danger that we demonise evil, make it a thing apart, an inhuman thing. That's what Hollywood does, or did. Knowing about the life and art of evil great poets is an antidote to this tendency to oversimplify.
Quote from: Mandryka on April 06, 2014, 09:07:28 AMThere's a danger that we demonise evil....
Demonise evil, eh? Um, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that evil is already demonic. Kinda like sullying the sewer, maybe. >:D
Quote from: some guy on April 06, 2014, 09:16:12 AM
Demonise evil, eh? Um, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that evil is already demonic. Kinda like sullying the sewer, maybe. >:D
When you demonise it's like making a caricature, a cartoon caricature. It makes the bad stuff safely "other."
Thread Lock in 5... 4... 3...
Quote from: Todd on April 06, 2014, 08:26:51 AM
Artists' political and ethical views are of basically no importance to me.
TROLL ALERT TROLL ALERT TROLL ALERT
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
BANE HIM GOOD!!
Quote from: some guy on April 06, 2014, 09:16:12 AM
Demonise evil, eh? Um, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that evil is already demonic. Kinda like sullying the sewer, maybe. >:D
No. Evil is human.
Quote from: Ken B on April 06, 2014, 08:38:37 AM
One of my favourite writers is Dashiell Hammett and he was a horror.
Off-topic: how was he a 'horror'? I only know his life in gloss, but aside from being duped into naive isolationism by CP devotion, didn't Hammett display some notable courage? E.g. scrambling to make up for his myopia by joining the war effort in spite of compromised health, resisting HUAC bullying, etc. 'Courage' might be overstating it, but he did seem to court personal inconvenience in both taking stands and abandoning them. His later years seem to be a foundering in disillusion and wrecked health, which is discouraging.
I'm interested in reading a bio some day, but the description of him as a 'horror' is surprising.
Quote from: Octave on April 06, 2014, 09:35:12 PM
Off-topic: how was he a 'horror'?
I too would like to know the answer. He was a Communist, but this doesn't automatically qualifies him as "a horror".
I only care if some of my cash is being used to prop up their idiocy so, for example, I wouldn't purchase any of Gergiev's music.
Quote from: Philo on April 07, 2014, 12:52:13 AM
I only care if some of my cash is being used to prop up their idiocy so, for example, I wouldn't purchase any of Gergiev's music.
You made me curious: how is your cash used to prop up Gergiev?
Quote from: Octave on April 06, 2014, 09:35:12 PM
Off-topic: how was he a 'horror'? I only know his life in gloss, but aside from being duped into naive isolationism by CP devotion, didn't Hammett display some notable courage? E.g. scrambling to make up for his myopia by joining the war effort in spite of compromised health, resisting HUAC bullying, etc. 'Courage' might be overstating it, but he did seem to court personal inconvenience in both taking stands and abandoning them. His later years seem to be a foundering in disillusion and wrecked health, which is discouraging.
I'm interested in reading a bio some day, but the description of him as a 'horror' is surprising.
During the period when Stalin and Hitler were co-operating Hammett gave public speeches against Lend-Lease and for isolationism that could have been from America Firsters. He defended the Soviet carve up of Poland and attacks on Finland.
Quote from: Ken B on April 07, 2014, 06:08:20 AM
During the period when Stalin and Hitler were co-operating Hammett gave public speeches against Lend-Lease and for isolationism that could have been from America Firsters. He defended the Soviet carve up of Poland and attacks on Finland.
That sounds like adhering to what was then the current CP line, not especially horrorific. Defending Stalin's purges and gulags would qualify. Did he do that?
Personally, the only red line I have is to avoid recordings made under Nazi rule, whether in Germany and Austria, or during Nazi occupation. Which is why, for instance, I don't have and don't wish to get Furtwangler's war era recordings, no matter what artistic merit they are said to have.
And co-operation with the Nazi regime would color my opinion of a composer or performer, but fortunately I don't keep track of which artist did what back then, outside of those mentioned as actually leaving/fleeing Nazi rule. And with performers, I probably wouldn't have much of their recordings anyway because I'm not a fan of "historical" performers.
Quote from: Artem on April 06, 2014, 07:53:31 AM
Or, for example, yesterday, I was searching through a selection of cds by a French composer. However, after reading on wikipedia (maybe not the best source) that he was supportive of the German occupying forces in his country, I didn't feel like listening to him any longer. Is that silly?
Read something similar to that about Messiaen the other day. However, I'm not overenthusiastic about his music to begin with, so that instance of more of an academic question for me rather than a practical one.
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on April 07, 2014, 07:43:14 AMRead something similar to that about Messiaen the other day. However, I'm not overenthusiastic about his music to begin with, so that instance of more of an academic question for me rather than a practical one.
Really? He was captured and sent to a POW camp in 1940 by the Germans, where he composed the
Quoatuor pour la fin du temps. I haven't seen any mention of him supporting Wehrmacht's presence in France.
Quote from: North Star on April 07, 2014, 08:04:27 AMReally? He was captured and sent to a POW camp in 1940 by the Germans, where he composed the Quoatuor pour la fin du temps. I haven't seen any mention of him supporting Wehrmacht's presence in France.
Here's one article including some info on Quartet for the End of Time (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2007/06/23/messiaens-dark-past/), and here's another, with a bit more on Messiaen and his involvement with the Vichy regime. (http://www.overgrownpath.com/2012/01/is-olivier-messiaen-part-of-vichy-myth.html) Interpret how you like.
Quote from: Todd on April 07, 2014, 08:19:42 AM
Here's one article including some info on Quartet for the End of Time (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2007/06/23/messiaens-dark-past/), and here's another, with a bit more on Messiaen and his involvement with the Vichy regime. (http://www.overgrownpath.com/2012/01/is-olivier-messiaen-part-of-vichy-myth.html) Interpret how you like.
"Among the works Messiaen composed in this period are Visions de l'Amen, Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine and Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus." Together with the QET, that's all my favourite Messiaen.
Quote from: North Star on April 07, 2014, 08:04:27 AM
Really? He was captured and sent to a POW camp in 1940 by the Germans, where he composed the Quoatuor pour la fin du temps. I haven't seen any mention of him supporting Wehrmacht's presence in France.
I can't find the quote now (I could have sworn it was here on GMG, but I a search is revealing nothing), but it alleged
1)--the ability to compose and get Quatour composed in POW camp came about because of favoritism from the Germans running the camp
2)--after release from POW camp, he went home, made himself comfortable at the Conservatoire, and seemed to be quite comfortable with the Vichy regime, There was a specific reference to antiSemitism.
Mind you, this was an offhand comment, with no documentation, but the context would not have called for documentation, but that's the only thing I could think of that matched what Artem described in the post that opened this thread.
I'm not keen on Messiaen to begin with, and if I don't listen to him it's because I'm not keen on the music, extramusical matters being irrelevant to my not being keen on the music.
(As I go to post, I see Todd has supplied some actual facts.)
Quote from: Todd on April 07, 2014, 08:19:42 AM
Here's one article including some info on Quartet for the End of Time (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2007/06/23/messiaens-dark-past/), and here's another, with a bit more on Messiaen and his involvement with the Vichy regime. (http://www.overgrownpath.com/2012/01/is-olivier-messiaen-part-of-vichy-myth.html) Interpret how you like.
Thanks!
Quote from: Ken B on April 07, 2014, 06:08:20 AM
He defended the Soviet carve up of Poland and attacks on Finland.
This is bad enough, but if it's "horror" then how would you qualify FD Roosevelt and Sir Winston Churchill, who not only shook hands with, and praised no end, the man directly responsible for the carving up of Poland and attacking Finland, but joined him in carving up Germany and partitioning the whole Europe?
Quote from: Florestan on April 07, 2014, 09:40:28 AM
This is bad enough, but if it's "horror" then how would you qualify FD Roosevelt and Sir Winston Churchill, who not only shook hands with, and praised no end, the man directly responsible for the carving up of Poland and attacking Finland, but joined him in carving up Germany and partitioning the whole Europe?
And don't forget who declared war on Finland. It's rather easy to point fingers now, but those people had some really difficult choices to make - Finns too - but that doesn't make them monsters.
Quote from: North Star on April 07, 2014, 09:44:37 AM
And don't forget who declared war on Finland. It's rather easy to point fingers now, but those people had some really difficult choices to make - Finns too - but that doesn't make them monsters.
Right. But Hammett had no difficult choices to make.
Aren't we forgetting Carlo Gesualdo, who literally got away with murder? :D
Seriously, while I deplore some musicians' character--Wagner is a prime example, and not just for his antisemitism--in the end only the music counts.
The composer himself is usually quite removed from the recreation of the music (and usually long dead), so Gesualdo's multiple murders, Wagner's vicious anti-Semitism, and Saint-Saens pederasty don't get in the way of my enjoyment of the music. I'm not that bothered by Casella or Malipiero's love for Mussolini, either, though I would probably not miss their music much.
Performers are not as easy to separate from their art, but it can be done. I just recently read that Cortot denounced people during WWII, so that does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Quote from: Daverz
Performers are not as easy to separate from their art, but it can be done. I just recently read that Cortot denounced people during WWII, so that does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
This is odd but true. It doesn't seem rational, and it's not even a matter of still being alive. Maybe it's because performers in our age make a big to do about their politics and or idiocy. That seems to invite a reaction. Maybe it's because it's easier to give up one reading of a work than the work itself.
Quote from: Ken B on April 07, 2014, 11:19:52 AM
Right. But Hammett had no difficult choices to make.
Of course not. He lived in an age where most writers and artists were leftists, and Stalinist for that matter. He just swam with the flow.
Much more "horror" than poor Hammett (whose influence on the world at large was basically nil) was the highly influential Jean-Paul Sartre who, although perfectly aware of the totalitarian and murderous nature of the Soviet regime, kept praising it and propagandizing for it enthusiastically in order "not to crush the hope of the world working class". Now there you have a real bastard.
Quote from: North Star on April 07, 2014, 09:44:37 AM
And don't forget who declared war on Finland.
England, of course, just as they declared war on Romania, which was fighting the USSR alongside Germany for exactly the same reasons as Finland.
Quote
It's rather easy to point fingers now, but those people had some really difficult choices to make
Yes, it is easy to judge and condemn
post factum but one never knows how one would have acted and reacted back then. We (and I mean we GMG-ers) are all more or less liberal today, but had we lived in the 4th decade of the last century I wonder how many of us would have been liberals and how many of us communists or fascists? ;D
Quote from: Todd on April 07, 2014, 08:19:42 AM
Here's one article including some info on Quartet for the End of Time (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2007/06/23/messiaens-dark-past/), and here's another, with a bit more on Messiaen and his involvement with the Vichy regime. (http://www.overgrownpath.com/2012/01/is-olivier-messiaen-part-of-vichy-myth.html) Interpret how you like.
That's how I like. :).
Quote from: Benjamin Ivry
After the French surrender in 1940, Messiaen was imprisoned at Görlitz in Silesia. There, a German sergeant took a liking to Messiaen after learning he was a composer. He gave Messiaen extra rations of bread to eat and allowed him to write undisturbed in the afternoon. The product of these afternoon sessions was the Quartet for the End of Time, which the other prisoners were even commanded to stand and listen to when it was first performed in the camp.
So, we have an imprisoned composer and pianist, a music-loving and benevolent guard (actually more than one), three other imprisoned players and the result is one of the most beautiful and moving pieces of music ever written. Every person whose moral compass is not altered by ideology would see in all this a marvelous sign of the power of music to bring out man's capacity for goodness and beauty even in the most adverse circumstances; not so with Mr. Ivry, who sees nothing more than a Nazi commission.
Quote from: Benjamin Ivry
Insofar as Nazi officers made the work materially possible to compose, and incited Messiaen to write it, his Quartet was a Nazi commission. Messiaen himself never explicitly denied this, stating decades later in an interview, "As Germans always admire music, wherever it may be found, not only did they leave me my scores, but an officer gave me pencils, erasers, and music paper."
The first sentence is a non sequitur. Nowhere in his statement does Messiaen imply that the German officers incited him to write exactly what he wrote It seems that they just let him do his business as he saw fit, their only contribution being "pencils, erasers and music paper".
Quote
In the 1960's, he went so far as to object when an American recording was published with a cover design of a swastika torn into pieces: "This hideous and stupid drawing is the complete opposite of what I intended to do!"
If I understand him correctly, he implied that he intended not to tore apart, but to reunite flesh-and-bones human beings on a level far higher than any earthly ideological conflict.
To come back on topic, I tend to avoid artists, writers, philosophers and scientists only if there is clear evidence that they committed, or knowingly supported, persecutions and murders --- as the above-mentioned Sartre, for instance. Other than that, subscribing to this or that ideology in an age when "the time [was] out of joint" makes no difference to me.
That Ivry article is a cheap hit piece on a great composer. The Quarter was "a Nazi commission"? Gimme a friggin' break. >:(
Quote from: Artem on April 06, 2014, 07:53:31 AMHow do feel about composers/performers that promote political/ethical stances that you're against? Quick examples woulf be Wagner or Gergiev.
Depends. I have no problems listening to Wagner. He's dead and the global society has come a long way since the times when even the brighter folks easily succumbed to dumb prejudices.
But I wouldn't go to a Gergiev concert. Befriending and supporting a leader that is against everything I believe in? No, thank you. Sure, that particular decision is easy - I've never been a fan anyway. Let's say one of my favourite composers turns out to be a child molester. Don't know if I'd stop listening to him altogether but for me, the music, the beauty of it, would be forever tarnished. Maybe it is genuinely possible to separate the artist and the art, but I'm able do it only to a certain degree. And if the artist is someone I consider a 'good person' (in very broad terms, I don't expect artists to be saints), my connection with his / her art is usually deeper.
Quote from: Daverz on April 07, 2014, 05:39:40 PMI just recently read that Cortot denounced people during WWII, so that does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
'Bad taste in the mouth' is a good way to put it. And when there's too much of it, I tend to opt out.
Quote from: Florestan on April 07, 2014, 11:39:32 PM
Of course not. He lived in an age where most writers and artists were leftists, and Stalinist for that matter. He just swam with the flow.
Much more "horror" than poor Hammett (whose influence on the world at large was basically nil) was the highly influential Jean-Paul Sartre who, although perfectly aware of the totalitarian and murderous nature of the Soviet regime, kept praising it and propagandizing for it enthusiastically in order "not to crush the hope of the world working class". Now there you have a real bastard.
Indeed. Nicely flayed by Conquest in The Great Terror.
Quote from: Velimir on April 08, 2014, 08:07:04 AM
That Ivry article is a cheap hit piece on a great composer. The Quarter was "a Nazi commission"? Gimme a friggin' break. >:(
Judging from this, and Ivry's biography of Poulenc, his writing is a load of merde which isn't worth anyone's time to read.
Well, on the long run, Camus easily wins over Sartre ... though the later found it fun to make fun of his humanistically so superior colleague.
The Ivry piece is crap indeed - mixing together too many things, well-known and speculative ones.
As for the topic - I do like to know. And I don't think man and work can or should be totally separated. How to deal with it is personal of course, everyone may have his or her own reactions and stance - and mine is: I'm not always actively seeking it, but if I stumble of things, that might as well ignite my curiosity and I'll do some digging. It's rarely ever about black or white, but all shades of grey - has been, is and will be. There's no easy way out.