Doubly Wrong on Wagner in Israel
It was disappointing to see Jewish Ideas Daily, one of my favorite websites, defending the notion of Wagner performance in the State of Israel. The composer’s deep association with Nazism has kept his music off the concert stage since the founding of State of Israel, despite occasional attempts to reverse the unofficial ban. Recently, Israel’s beleaguered Wagner Society twice failed to obtain a venue for a “semi-private” concert of Wagner’s music, whatever that might mean. Tel Aviv University and the Tel Aviv Hilton both cancelled the Wagner Society.
“The latest attempt to perform Richard Wagner’s music in Israel has ended in farce, deceit and discredit to art and nation,” wrote the novelist and musical amateur Norman Lebrecht in England’s Jewish Chronicle, reposted in Jewish Ideas Daily. Those are strong words for an issue that evokes deep anguish among Israeli Jews, and with good reason. In August 2011 I discussed the substance as well as the hype of the Wagner ban at Tablet magazine, concluding–with trepidation and reluctance–that the Israelis are right to suppress Wagner’s music, even though there are strong arguments against the ban.
Lebrecht quotes the eminent conductor Daniel Barenboim in support of Wagner performance. One problem is that the Israeli left has made the issue of Wagner performance a battering-ram against the whole concept of Israeli national identity. As I wrote in Tablet:
Barenboim is Wagner’s most passionate apostle with an Israeli passport (though the conductor also claims citizenship in “Palestine”). For years Barenboim has linked Israel’s informal ban on Wagner performance to the occupation of the West Bank, which he likens to the Nazi occupation of Europe. In a January 2005 speech at Columbia University titled “Wagner, Israel, and Palestine,” Barenboim excoriated the Zionist impulse that leads Israel to defend itself against cultural as well as military foes, arguing that peace will come only when Israel drops its defenses against both. The speech was a memorial to the late Edward Said, the Palestinian rejectionist who had arranged for Barenboim’s “Palestinian” identity papers. In Barenboim’s view, Israel should embrace the composer who wrote the theme music for the Third Reich, just as it should embrace Arab extremists who learned their anti-Semitism from the grand mufti of Jerusalem’s pro-Hitler wartime broadcasts from Berlin.
The conductor for the recently cancelled Wagner performances was to have been a Barenboim protege, Asher Fisch, the chief conductor of the Israeli Opera. As it happens, I know Asher; our daughters were in school together, and we shared a few meals over the years. He is a brilliant conductor who led a distinguished “Rigoletto” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York some years ago, as well as Wagner cycles in Seattle Adelaide, and other important venues. I wish we could get him to New York to replace Fabio Luisi at the Met. It pains me to take issue with Asher’s elevated artistic judgment, but I think that he is doing the wrong thing in this particular case.
There is a deeper problem than the symoblic use of the Wagner issue to attenuate Israeli nationalism. And that is the character of Wagner’s music itself. Wagner gave sensuous form to the self-destructive narcissism that infiltrated Western culture at the end of the 19th century. His compositional brilliance serves the culture of death; it negates everything that Judaism and its daughter religion, Christianity, affirm. Yes, there were many Jewish musicians who performed Wagner, and there are plenty of Jews who liked Wagner, including Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. Yes, one needs to know Wagner to understand Mahler, as Mr. Lebrecht observes (although personally I find Mahler a windy, bathetic, self-pitying bore). I agree that these matters require attention; in a review of the Met’s new Ring cycle, I append a short music appreciation class on Wagner’s musical sleight-of-hand.
There are many good reasons for the Israelis to sanction the public performance of Wagner. But there is also one very good reason not to. Again, from my Tablet discussion:
Art, nonetheless, does not reside in the clouds of Mount Parnassus. It has consequences in the real world in which ordinary humans live and suffer, and society in extreme cases must draw a line. Wagner may not have been the only anti-Semite among the composers of the 19th century, nor even the worst, but he did more than anyone else to mold the culture in which Nazism flourished. The Jewish people have had no enemy more dedicated and more dangerous, precisely because of his enormous talent. In a Jewish state, the public has a right to ask Jewish musicians to be Jews first and musicians second. With reluctance, and in cognizance of all the ambiguities, I think the Israelis are right to silence him.
Israel is the only real democracy in its neighborhood and an island of western civilization in a sea of feudal tribalism.
I am glad to learn that all of Israel’s more pressing problems have been solved so that they can devote attention to this issue.
David – Thank you for the enlightening column. I might add, that as an American, I think 1st Amendment considerations would trump here (although, Israel, obviously, is not subject to such considerations). If somebody wanted to play Wagner, fine with me. The error would be in those who showed up to listen.
Agree with both of the above posters.
If anyone cares to show up for Wagner, let the moral crime be on their shoulders, as well as the promoters. In any event, it is an unofficial ban, which is at it should be.
Strikes me that when Israel allows traitorous arabs who side with genocidal enemies to sit in its parliament, the legal argument for an official ban on playing some overwrought music seems ridiculous by comparison, as does any time spent talking about a Wagner ban, official or unofficial.
Wagner was a racist pig. No argument.
Wagner was also one of a small handful of composers who can be characterized as “the greatest of all time.” Every composer who followed Wagner had a terrible problem to solve: how do you follow Wagner? Some tried to emulate him (e.g., Humperdinck). Some tried to apply some of his innovations to other forms than opera (e.g., Bruckner). Some tried to morph Wagner’s expanded chord palette into a more colorful, “impressionistic” style (e.g., Debussy). And some (e.g., Schoenberg) gave up on tonality itself. Some composers were more successful than others at dealing with Wagner, but it doesn’t change the fact that Wagner was there to be dealt with.
The voice-leading of Wagner’s music, the revolutionary use of chromaticism, the orchestrations, the expert use of dramatic and programmatic elements, all serve to place Wagner as one of the most influential composers of all time. That influence lives to this day. Pulling the Wagner influence out of music would be like pulling the backbone out of a lion and expecting him to hunt.
> And that is the character of Wagner’s music itself. Wagner gave sensuous form to the self-destructive narcissism that infiltrated Western culture at the end of the 19th century. His compositional brilliance serves the culture of death; it negates everything that Judaism and its daughter religion, Christianity, affirm.
I respect your opinion that Wagner was so noxious we should not perform his music. But I disagree. There is another view of music (most famously propounded by Stravinsky) that music doesn’t have any extra-musical meaning. It’s just sound.
Play it because the sounds are gorgeous. If it helps, Wagner’s music is all that’s left of his grandiose theories of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the notion that the greatest art of all was the art that incorporates all arts. Wagner’s philosophy was warped. His skills as a librettist were dubious. The plots of his operas were often puerile to the point of ridiculousness. The Gesamtkunstwerk is dead. All that remains is the gorgeous music.
Play Wagner’s music. Teach the following generations what kind of a pig he was. Teach them how half-baked and hateful his philosophy was. But play his music.
Is there a similar aversion in Israel to play Richard Strauss?
I’ve done my bit as a music critic to make Wagner’s music better understood, and I agree that it MUST be understood — but Israelis can make do with DVD’s. Richard Strauss served the Nazi culture ministry (in part to protect a Jewish daughter-in-law, in partial mitigation). Bruckner (who had no particular opinions about Jews of which I’m aware) was Hitler’s favorite composer. But the Israelis want to draw a line somewhere, and it is appropriate to do so in the case of Wagner.
Bruckner was a devout Christian. He adored Wagner, but like you I’ve never read anything to suggest he shared Wagner’s anti-Semitism. It’s embarrassing to share Hitler’s tastes on anything, but Bruckner is one of my favorite composers, too — along with Dmitri Shostakovich, whose outlook and music couldn’t be further apart than Bruckner. Bruckner’s symphonies are all dedicated to the Lord — it’s what “Praise Jesus!” sounds like when you’re a 19th century Austrian composer. Shostaovich’s music is the product of a bitter, sarcastic man who lived most of his life under the commissars’ thumb — a just but powerless (and godless) man in an unjust society.
Regarding Strauss, I think he was more of a jerk than a villain. If my recollection is correct, he accepted membership into the Nazi Party (like Herbert von Karajan), but whether he was or not, he was certainly celebrated by the Nazis. Strauss struck me as apolitical. He reportedly said something to this effect: “I was Germany’s greatest composer before the Nazis, during the Nazis, and will be so after the Nazis.”
So many more necessary and appropriate lines that need to be drawn by the Israelis – are not being drawn.
So Israel allows filth like Lady Gaga and Madonna, but bans Wagner for being a narcissistic composer with typical lowlight reel 19th century ideas? Childish. One might oppose public blasting of Wagner for all sorts of reasons, of course, but private concerts are another matter entirely. There are so many things Israel could suppress, and probably ought to, instead of Wagner.
This affirms to me that the secularist Turkish elite was and is still the most capable leadership of the Middle East, and the Ottoman Empire its best quality state. The most rational compromise, is that no state should ever officially sanction a religion, but might simply observe what religion its people follow. Israel takes it too far sometimes, but especially this time. This isn’t even legislating morality; it’s imposing one opinion over another by force.
Lots of high quality elites were Nazi party members, but much of it was like American elites being Communists in the 60′s. Very few, if any, of the intellectual classes ever directly helped in war or genocide, but racial science was just the standard of the time. The political orientation (actions are another matter) of artists and composers shouldn’t distract from the quality of their work. It’s incidental, except when it isn’t, and even then you just pick out the parts you like. Or don’t, but allow others. Enough of a minority in any imaginable country would want to hear Wagner that he shouldn’t be silenced.
It’s ironic to hear that Bruckner was Hitler’s favorite. He’s like Wagner without the flamboyant opera, a great substitute.
“For years Barenboim has linked Israel’s informal ban on Wagner performance to the occupation of the West Bank, which he likens to the Nazi occupation of Europe.”
Indeed, the best way to distance one’s self from Nazism is to play Wagner!
/sarc
I am reminded of my first encounter with Steve Clemons. It was obviously my last.
It’s not complicated.
Wagner makes us think about the Nazis. We don’t like to think about the Nazis. So we don’t want to hear Wagner. There’s lots of other good stuff to play. Barenboim tries to make this into a moral failing on our part.
You give the Nazis too much credit. Wagner is intellectually and spiritually many orders of magnitude above their tastes.
No, no, it’s all about us. Wagner doesn’t make US happy, so we don’t want to listen to Wagner. Right or wrong, it makes US think about the Nazis. We’d rather listen to something else instead.
without Wagner we would never had the great animated Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoon ‘What’s Opera Doc’ which has music from the Ring Cycle and Tannhauser.
Maybe so, but “Rabbit of Seville” was much better, mainly because Rossini is better than Wagner.
As I believe Mark Twain said, “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds”.
I must of course defer to Mr. Goldman when it comes to classical music, and I make no claims that I understand the medium at all. I’m a strictly “I know what I like” sort of fellow when it comes to High Art (or prety much anything else, for that matter). However, to see what the fuss was about, I bought a CD of passages from the Ring Cycle, and what struck me was how uneven it was: pockets of sublime brilliance here and there drowned in a sea of self-important, blaring, cacophonous bombast. It was really exceedingly odd. Parts of it were truly transporting, and the rest of it made me want to stop up my ears.
I far prefer Beethoven. Some may think it hackneyed, but the 4th movement of the 9th Symphony almost never fails to move me to tears.
> Maybe so, but “Rabbit of Seville” was much better, mainly because Rossini is better than Wagner.
Right. And a spoonful of meringue is much better than thick, juicy T-bone steak.
Meringue has its uses.
When I need steak, there are other places I can go where it is prepared more to my taste, with a bit less Sturm und Drang.
I never saw Bugs Bunny’s “What’s Up Doc”. But since we are on close to the subject, who can forget the Gilligan’s Island musical adaptation of Hamlet with music from Carmen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JQ8yF04y9o, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXId5jOTxdg)?
In The Silmarillon Tolkien wrote a little paragraph about how Morgoth developed the cold/ice to damage his enemies. But cold and water made snow and, without foresighting it, Morgoth caused something beautiful like the snow flakes to exist.
The same is for Wagner. His music is incredible, the rest not so much. Allow the music to be and the people to enjoy it. The rest is for the trash bin of history.
I detest Barenboim’s politics. I detest Wagner’s politics. I detest narcissism. I hate Hitler and the Nazis. I don’t know enough about the politics and personal lives of Strauss and Bruckner to comment on their true souls. But all these issues are subordinate to the issue of freedom and democracy. The Israeli state should not be involved one way or another. In fact, there is no official ban that I know of. Individuals should act to bring in Wagner or ignore him, but individuals should make that choice. Israel thus shows it is a democracy and has a chance to shine next to the dull and vapid wastelands of countries surrounding it and the perverted intellectual class that understands nothing about freedom and democracy. May the debate continue and may the best ideas win out.
There is no official policy toward Wagner. Rather, it is a matter of moral suasion by the institutions of civil society.
“Yes, one needs to know Wagner to understand Mahler, as Mr. Lebrecht observes (although personally I find Mahler a windy, bathetic, self-pitying bore).”
though perfect for Visconti movies
not enough martial for you !!!
“bans Wagner”
What ban? As far as I know, the Israeli government has no laws constituting a ban. Individual institutions and audiences have every right to decide whom they do or do not want to hear.
That’s why the “progressive left” (including Barenboim), who would take perverse joy in forcing an anti-Semitic and to a certain extent Nazi icon like Wagner upon others, are quite simply boorish louts.
“For years Barenboim has linked Israel’s informal ban on Wagner performance to the occupation of the West Bank, which he likens to the Nazi occupation of Europe.”
Barenboim’s behaviour is the most boorish of all, like a spoilt child. And he has plenty of opportunity to do Wagner in his posts abroad; he should leave Israelis alone.
How is this “unofficial ban” any different from the idea of “degenerate music” during Hitler’s reign? Despite the fact that it is not enforced by the state it seems to be very much the same thing to me. If someone pays for a ticket to hear Wagner then let them hear Wagner. Otherwise if you do not want to hear Wagner do not pay for the ticket and stay away from the symphony hall or opera house that night. Also Wagner has been played on Israeli radio and television for a number of years (according to this article posted September 25, 2012) If this is true then why would the “ban” still hold in the case of classical performers?