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From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Music and nazism
Message-ID: <1043@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 15:57:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.1043
Posted: Tue Aug 13 15:57:46 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Aug-85 02:55:49 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
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> I wasn't going to add to this at all - the responses to this have been
> quite good and to the point in addition to being informative (I even
> agreed with Rosen - egads :-).  Music is to be judged on musical grounds,
> not political grounds.  Performers and performances are to be judged
> also on musical grounds.  Whether the composer/performer has a particular
> political position, is of a particular race, is of a particular religion, etc.,
> is immaterial, except to the extent that it affects the quality of the
> composition/performance.  Even her/his personality is completely immaterial
> when judging the product.

Yes and no; there's at least one real-world exception that comes to mind:
Wagner.  First, he himself was a notorious anti-Semite.  Second, his music
was adopted by the Nazis and was used as a symbol of the Third Reich.  (He
himself was dead by that time.)  That doesn't mean that his music is bad;
however, many people object to having it played because of the (non-musical)
images in evokes in them.  For example, Wagner's music is never played by
Israeli orchestras.  When Zubin Mehta attempted to do so -- he's the
conductor of the Israel Philharmonic -- many musicians walked out.  An
analogy might be the swastika emblem -- it was an ancient symbol with no
particular evil connotations; I've even seen it inscribed on the walls of
ancient synagogues.  But that could never be done now, and rightly so.


		--Steve Bellovin

P.S.  Just because I'm explaining this doesn't mean I agree with it; I'm
quite ambivalent.  An ironic footnote to all this is what happened to
the New York Philarmonic -- also conducted by Mehta -- on its recent Asian
tour.  Malaysia requested that they drop several works by Jewish composers
from the program; Mehta initially agreed, but cancelled the visit to Malaysia
entirely when folks complained.