Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Wagner was, in every sense, a man of his century. Besides being a composer, librettist and conductor, he was a tireless writer and proselytizer on subjects as disparate as revolutionary politics, vivisection and racialism. The little man from Leipzig was one of the leading anti-Semitic theorists of his day, venting his views in such pamphlets as Jewry in Music and Heroism and Christianity. Like other prominent anti-Semites, Wagner blamed the Jews for ) most of society's (and his own) ills and offered a solution. "Bear in mind," he exhorted Jews, "that there is but one redemption from...
Fighting words in any language. Still, Wagner should not be blamed for Hitler's final solution, even though it is true that the Fuhrer -- who saw himself as a Siegfried-like embodiment of the Wagnerian Teutonic ideal -- was lionized annually at the Bayreuth festival and Wagner's music sometimes sounded in the death camps. That says more about Hitler than Wagner -- who had by then been dead for a half-century and was not responsible for the misuse of his works by the Nazis...
When Barenboim (an Israeli citizen born in Argentina) announced his plans, the most immediate outcry rose from a small but vocal minority of Jews for whom the names of Wagner and Hitler are inextricably linked. "Like it or not, Wagner is a symbol of Nazism, as sure as the swastika is," said Avram Melamed, a violinist with the Israel Philharmonic. Commented Barenboim at a post-cancellation press conference: "I can't help feeling that there are a lot of people in Israel who still think Wagner lived in Berlin in 1942 and was a personal friend of Hitler...
...prevented. The episode does not speak well for Israeli claims of tolerance and democracy. A decade ago, Zubin Mehta, the Israel Philharmonic's music director, tried to perform a Wagner piece as an encore, but the music was shouted down by members of the audience. At that time, a poll of Philharmonic subscribers indicated that 86% wanted to hear Wagner. Just prior to the abortive Barenboim concert, the Philharmonic musicians voted 39 to 12, with nine abstentions, to break...
Every major orchestra in the world performs Wagner, without whom nearly the entire history of 20th century music is incomprehensible, including the works of such great Jewish composers as Mahler and Schoenberg. Neither Mahler nor Schoenberg could be performed in Nazi Germany solely because they were Jews; should Wagner suffer, in principle, the same fate...