for a most original and honest post, spoken only as a real musician can. Music, like philosophy, often attracts more noise than understanding (please forgive the pun). Your point: "Wagner served the Muse far more than he served Germany" was very insightful. The fundamental characteristic of art is that it transcends the particular on universal human aspirations. Thanks again,
Henry
Daniel wrote:
> The opprobrium attached to Wagner's music - for many reasons, not least
> being Hitler's fascination with it - is easy for musicians to dismiss on
> purely aesthetic grounds, which for a musician must be paramount. I'm
> sometimes a little amused to think how the discussion always seems to center
> around classical music, and the person on the defensive is always the
> classical musician who can't help loving Wagner's music. But, why discuss
> this issue in terms of an art whose cultural significance today is very
> marginal? I'll risk offending people on this list who may have more popular
> taste in music in the hope that they may perceive something new by walking
> in my shoes, for I confess to be one of the Wagner-lovers.
>
> What if I were to claim that virtually all popular music of our time is
> fascist music. As a musician, I would be glad to discuss the basis on which
> such determinations can and should be made, but, rather than bore you all,
> why don't I just enumerate some of the more telling signs of fascism in
> music. First is loudness. Second, a relentless beat. Third, a remorseless
> bass, which together with the aforementioned beat, I like to call the "iron
> boot." These two reflect the brutishness of fascism to an astonishing
> degree. Fourth, let's not forget the glorification of folkish cultural
> streams (such as the blues, in the American instance).
>
> I had much reason to think about fascist music during my days in showbiz. I
> wondered why so much fascist music was coming out of the ghetto. I wondered
> why I liked it so much.
>
> Aye, there's the dirty little secret out in the open. I liked it. Well. . .
> actually, I liked the stuff that was coming out of the ghetto. "White"
> fascist music is really a thing to avoid at all costs, believe me. I even
> liked disco, which was a bit of stretch for a guy with my background. I
> think this speaks more to the issue than any discussion about Wagner. The
> fact is that fascist music can be very appealing (especially IF, as in the
> case of American popular music, one is drinking heavily (this may be a
> general principal that can be also be deduced from the Nazi fondness for
> beerhall songs). For I have to admit that I was inebriated throughout my
> entire career in showbiz, and so I can't really be sure that I'd like
> fascist music so much if I were listening to it today, since I no longer
> drink. Why listen, now that I don't have to anymore? I mean, I didn't like
> it THAT much.)
>
> Wagner, in any case, is a very poor example of fascist music. While his
> music was certainly tending in that direction, by virtue of its
> theatricality, monumentalism, and yes, loudness, yet it was essentially
> grounded in a high-art tradition, a tradition which, of course, predated by
> many centuries the kind of fascism that we are familiar with. The social
> milieu from which it sprang could not have been more foreign to that of
> fascism. Indeed, Hitler was a bitter enemy to most of those who maintained
> and developed the high-art tradition of classical music into the 20th
> century (say, Schoenberg, for example).
>
> I think it is inevitable for any high art to fall out of favor with fascism.
> Art has its own purposes, irrespective of politics. If Meistersinger
> celebrated the German Volk, it did much else besides. What is rarely
> mentioned in terms as explicit as they should be is that Wagner served the
> Muse far more than he served Germany.
>
> Moreover, to emphasize the monumental in Wagner is to see only one facet of
> a limitlessly faceted phenomenon. A master composer is always characterized
> by a kind of multidimensionality. Wagner is supposedly very "big," and very
> masculine, and profoundly pompous. Yet, there is no more touching or tender
> "little" piece in music, nor any more artfully wrought, than Wagner's
> Siegried Idyll.
>
> (I always feel disbelief when I see the same kind of expressions being used
> about another composer, namely Beethoven, who was supposedly the "Great
> Revolutionary". Beethoven, whose political and philosophical sympathies
> tended indeed toward bourgeois ideals, (and whose music was also, by the
> way, put to good use by the Nazis) was as much a man of the court as a man
> of the people. I do not know of any music more sublimely and delicately
> touching, and with more "aristocratic" grace or elitist finesse, than the
> Late String Quartets of Beethoven.)
>
> But one has practically to be a monk or scholar to know and understand such
> things about the music of the classical composers. How many people are
> capable even of reading music in America in 1998? Why not talk about music
> that reflects a present reality in our culture to a vastly greater degree
> than can the music of Wagner. Let's hear some Rolling Stones-lovers, or
> Aretha Franklin-lovers, step up to the podium and speak to the charms of
> their own favorite fascist genres. For that is what most popular music
> really is, unless I have erred in the criteria I suggested above. By those
> measures, no music has ever been more perfectly fascist than "our" very own.
> How could it not be? This is America, folks, and this is American music.
>
> Remember the scenes in Apocalypse now, with the helicopters raining death
> out of the sky. The music was either Wagner or Rock. Dig it!
>
> Daniel