The Israeli Chamber Orchestra has just given a concert playing music by Richard Wagner, and what’s more in Bayreuth, the town where he lived and which has been a shrine to him ever since. There’s been a general but unwritten agreement in Israel that Wagner was such a rabid and stereotypical anti-Semite that his music should not be played there. Self-respect came into it. Some are rejoicing on the grounds that this concert breaks a taboo. But taboos arise for the very good reason that they define and protect civilized behavior, and it is a sensible precaution to examine the whys and wherefores whenever someone claims that it is right to be breaking them.
Every year in the 1930s the Wagner festival at Bayreuth was a leading fixture in the Nazi calendar. Adolf Hitler was the regular guest of honor. Of course Wagner cannot be blamed for the fact that Hitler adored his music. But he can be blamed for the fact that his music, even or especially at its most grandiose, promotes a vision of myth and myth-making, so to speak Harry Potter with a full orchestra attached. A kindred spirit, Hitler’s view of the world was also dependent on myth and myth-making, especially where Jews were concerned.
My father could have been a professional musician, and he took me as a teenager to the Bayreuth festival. We met Winifred Wagner, born Williams, whose marriage to Siegfried had made her the composer’s daughter-in-law. On her desk were signed photographs of Hitler and Goebbels. She paid them compliments, and regretted that they could no longer be patrons, they had so loved the arts. Myth-making was everywhere. Quite as creepy is Haus Wahnfried, the family house-cum-museum, where in one gloomy room after another the past of the composer is treated as holy and everything associated with him preserved like relics in a cathedral. Wagner himself has been captured as in a myth of his own making.
Wagner’s music is played everywhere, of course, and so it should be — except in Israel or by Israeli orchestras. More than a taboo, the Wagner boycott in that country is by consent a standing reproach to the fantasies about Jews common to him and to Hitler. That’s not a taboo at all, but a way of saying that some things are so evil that they can’t be normalized.
It's not to say that Wagner wasn't an anti-semite, he was. However, after Hitler, some people might think that Wagner was a primary influence, even reason for the advent of the 3rd reich. Not so. Hitler was attracted to Wagner's music because it's good. Wagner's music, as we know from the movies and television commercials, can be quite stirring.
Anti-semitism was quite common in
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusethe 19th century, and still is. Wagner's contemporaries could surely be quoted thus, had they been as verbose as he was. This is all bad, because the casual attitude given to anti-semites in the 19th century allowed the rise of the 3rd reich in the 20th. So much has changed and for the better, and if we have to discuss anti-semitism from time to time at the expense of Richard Wagner, we are better for it. Not discussing it is dangerous - humanity is not so advanced that the 3rd reich can't happen again.
They played the Siegfried Idyll, a Christmas gift from Richard to Cosima on the birth of their son (if I recall correctly). A lovely piece. I'm not Jewish, but I would certainly understand the refusal of any of the ICO's players to do this job. Perhaps art really is bigger than life.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNRO's Jay Nordlinger would be the one to ask, but my recollection is that the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra already "broke" the Wagner taboo in a concert in Israel some years ago with Daniel Barenboim conducting.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI remember the instance of which you speak. Upon commencement of the piece there was a 'bustle of activity' in the hall in protest to the playing of the music. Quite sedate in comparison to the protests inflicted upon conservative speakers on campuses in the United States.
It is possible to take a stand without being a thug.
(My captcha is 'very nice.' As were the Israeli protestors . . .)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe politics of the Beatles are ignored today as a new, less "revolutionary", generation appreciates the pop music of yesterday. The Beatles of course are not associated with a horrific and gruesome dictator. Were it not for Hitler, Wagner's anti-semitism would be disregarded as simply ordinary and his music regarded as untainted. What were the feelings of Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Liszt, Chopin and others regarding the minorities in their midst? Were they all socially liberal?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCAPTCHA = face the music - you got to be kidding me.
Anyway... ignorant and hateful leftist groups and universities all across the country and Europe push to impose boycotts on Israeli goods.
It’s idiotic.
So is an Israeli ban on Wagner.
Wagner was no mensch...who would argue? But his music was genius.
Banning his music is mere political correctness of the same ilk that we abhor when it comes from the Left. Such a ban makes Israel appear as little as those who try to belittle her.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWho, exactly, is being harmed by Israel refusing to play Wagner?
I belong to a musical theater group here in Jerusalem. A few of us have been jokingly pushing the director for a while to do "The Producers." We know it will never happen. So what? There are plenty of musicals out there, and Mel Brooks doesn't exactly need the money.
Don't underestimate Israeli feelings. At the screening of "The King's Speech" that I went to, you could sense the sudden change in mood in the theater when that newsreel of Hitler was played.
Oh, and there should be a ban on people mentioning what their captcha was.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Nachum,
You are harming yourself by looking small minded and petty. Israel has accepted billions from Germany over the years as reparations. I'm sure on the streets now there are thousands of German cars and countless other German products in the Israeli markets.
Why single out Wagner?
You accept natural gas from Egypt...but most in Egypt share Wagner’s anti-Semitism . Why no boycott? Harry Truman who was instrumental in the foundation of Israel was extraordinary anti-Semitic. So was Richard Nixon who saved Israel by resupplying her in the Yom Kippur War.
I could go on and on, point is, it’s a complex world, there is no black and white. So turning Wagner into a black/white political correctness boycott bone of contention comes off as trite and sophomoric.
This defines the left and thus their #1playbook plan is to attack and smear with political correctness. Israel, so often on receiving end of these attacks, I would have thought you all would know better and be above this nonsense, instead you are reciprocating it.
Lastly, you do not advance your argument making snide remarks about my CAPTCHA comment.
And on that note: unbelievable again...my CAPTCHA for this post is from VW- 'Das Auto' .
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow am *I* being small minded? I'm the one who said he'd like to put on "The Producers," and I enjoy Wagner as much as the next man. But I can certainly understand those who don't, and don't want it on the public stage. (I'd fight, of course, any effort to- a) make that an actual law, and b) restrict private listening.) Lots of things rise above what they are. Classical period synagogues had swastikas as part of their design. I wouldn't wave a flag with one, even if it was blue and white. I was extremely offended when I saw a tour group at the Western Wall the other week using an old Soviet flag as a marker. And yet Israel accepted Soviet support in its early days. The world is complicated.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFirst they came for the Wagner operas...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe creepy myth-making in museums is hardly restricted to Wagner. I find that most "personal" museums that I have been to tend to treat their subjects with the utmost respect and whitewashing. If there is a museum devoted to the memory of Joe Stalin, I'm sure it is unlikely to give the unvarnished truth about the man. It is one of the interesting facets of human nature.
Yesterday, I saw a production of Richard III. The production was of a very high quality, but there is little that can be done with the play to disguse that tt is Tudorean propaganda.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn light of Henry Ford's anti-semitism, should we all swear off Ford products?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is the most stupid column by Pryce-Jones that I've yet read. Intellectual achievements must be viewed separately from the artist's politics or personality. Banning Wagner in Israel would be the equivalent to banning Handel in the US due to that composer's patronage by George III.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem isn't that the Israeli orchestra played Wagner in Germany. The problem was that they played Wagner in Beyreuth. Under the Nazis the town achieved cult status. Playing Wagner in THAT place is like building a German cultural centre near Auschwitz. There's nothing wrong with a German cultural centre, but to build one near a scene of Jewish extermination is insensitive. The George III parallel doesn't hold water; Wagner's writings and music inspired the man who orchestrated the destruction of European Jewry. Such a baleful legacy should not be treated so flippantly, as it was by the Israeli musicians at Beyreuth.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse