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05 Sep 09 - 05:12 AM (#2716624) Subject: Classical Music and the Nazis. Radio 4 From: Owen Woodson Tonight's Archive on 4 (BBC Radio 4. 20.00 hrs BST. Saturday 5th September) is called Five and the Fascists reports the reactions of Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber and Wilhelm Furtwangler to Nazi totalitarianism. The programme synopsis is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mdyyf |
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22 Feb 23 - 07:13 PM (#4165902) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis. Radio 4 From: Joe Offer Here's an interesting Deutsche Welle Program titled Music in Nazi Germany - The maestro and the cellist of Auschwitz | DW Documentary: |
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22 Feb 23 - 08:08 PM (#4165904) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Felipa I saw an item very recently about Erwin Schulhoff. I couldn't find it again but there is an Wikipedia article about this composer, who the Nazis wouldn't have liked even if he weren't Jewish by parentage, as his classical music was influenced by jazz, and his political sympathies were Communist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schulhoff "In the 1930s, Schulhoff faced mounting personal and professional difficulties. Because of his Jewish descent and his radical politics, he and his works were labelled degenerate and blacklisted by the Nazi regime. He could no longer give recitals in Germany, nor could his works be performed publicly. "His communist sympathies, which became increasingly evident in his works, also brought him trouble in Czechoslovakia. In 1932 he composed a musical version of The Communist Manifesto (Op. 82). Taking refuge in Prague, Schulhoff found employment as a radio pianist, but earned barely enough to cover the cost of everyday essentials. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he had to perform under a pseudonym. In 1941, the Soviet Union approved his petition for citizenship, but he was arrested and imprisoned before he could leave Czechoslovakia. "In June 1941, Schulhoff was deported to the Wülzburg prison near Weißenburg, Bavaria. He died there on 18 August 1942 from tuberculosis." |
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22 Feb 23 - 08:20 PM (#4165906) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Felipa Richard Wagner is the composer most popularly associated with the Nazis so I looked for some articles about him. https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/third-reich/wagner-richard/ Richard Wagner "In 1933, the year of Hitler's accession to power, the fiftieth anniversary of the composer Richard Wagner’s death was celebrated at the Bayreuth festival under the theme ‘Wagner and the new Germany’. The links between the 19th century opera composer and the 20th century dictator existed from the Nazi Party’s beginnings, and were to be strengthened and developed throughout the years of Hitler’s reign. Perhaps no other musician is as closely linked with Nazism as is Wagner, and no composer’s music is as tainted with the ideological associations of the Third Reich. "Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on 22 May 1813, one of nine children in a working-class family. Soon after his birth the family moved to Dresden, and later to Prague. As a youth, Wagner was drawn to the theatre, and saw music as an expansion of his interest in the stage. By the time he was ready to begin his studies, he had decided to commit himself to composition, and he entered the University of Leipzig to study music. An early marriage to the actress Minna Planer was undermined by infidelity on both sides, and the struggling musician moved to Riga, Paris, and then back to Dresden, seeking both 2artistic success and to avoid his creditors. He had his first real success with the staging of his opera Rienzi. He also, however, became involved with the underground nationalist movement, an involvement that was to force him into exile after the revolution of 1848. In 1850, he wrote his infamous treatise Das Judentum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), in which he denied that Jews were capable of true creativity. According to Wagner, the Jewish artist can only 'speak in imitation of others, make art in imitation of others, he cannot really speak, write, or create art on his own'. "Wagner suffered years of financial hardship in Zürich, but his slow rise to fame and wealth began with the ascendancy of Ludwig II to the Bavarian throne in 1864. With the king’s financial support, he returned to Germany (this time to Munich) with his wife; he also began an affair with Cosima von Bülow. The affair, along with his controversial operas, injured Wagner’s reputation, and he was pressured to leave Munich. He did, however, marry Cosima, with whom he had three children. The family settled in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, where Wagner constructed a special opera house for the premiere of his epic four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. During these later years, as his popularity grew, so too did his public commitment to antisemitism. Despite his hatred for ‘Jewry’, however, Wagner maintained close personal friendships with many Jews, and did not seem to espouse a clearly developed racial theory. "He died of a heart attack while on an Italian vacation, on 13 February 1883. Almost exactly 50 years later, on 30 January 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. Some days later, the German-Nordic Richard Wagner Society for Germanic Art and Culture released a statement inaugurating the Bayreuth celebrations. Claiming that Wagner had 'wrought for the Germans a self-reliant national art, by having created Bayreuth', it declared that just as Richard Wagner created Der Ring des Nibelungen out of faith in the German spirit, it is the mission of the German people ... to reflect upon themselves and to complete the organisation of the German people, through which, in addition, all the ideal aspirations of the German-Nordic Richard Wagner Society will maintain a real political impact on the state, the nation, and the world around us in the national Germanic spirit of Richard Wagner. "With the support of industrial lobbies and the German military, the Wagner Society promoted its idol’s music as symbolizing a solution to the threat of bolshevism and Jewry, as well as being the purest representation of the glory of the Germanic race. Many members of the Society were also involved with the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Combat League for German Culture). "The Society’s success in promoting Wagner’s music was due as much to its propaganda efforts as to Hitler’s personal predilections. Hitler felt a deep connection to Wagner, and as early as 1924 claimed that his vision of a future Germany was manifest in the composer’s music. Hitler was also influenced by the writings of Wagner’s son-in-law, the ‘race theorist’ Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and became a friend of his children, particularly his daughter-in-law Winifred. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the fascination with Wagner was turned into a kind of national cult. The Bayreuth festival was used as an opportunity to publicise Nazi propaganda. Nazi Party events prominently featured Wagner’s music, including excerpts from Rienzi 2and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. "The precise nature of the relationship between Wagner and Nazism, however, is difficult to pin down. Hitler seldom mentioned Wagner in his writings, and rarely in public; when he did make reference to Wagner, it was not in relation to antisemitism, but rather as a German leader and visionary. Furthermore, Wagner’s music and ideology was not appropriated wholesale, but only where it accorded with Nazi concerns: works like Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, for example, were ignored. Although Wagner’s operas reflect a nationalistic world view that echoes that of Nazism, they cannot legitimately be described as ‘Nazi music’. At the same time, the impact of the composer and his works on the dictator cannot be denied. According to Hitler's memoirs, it was his teenage viewing of Rienzi that made him understand for the first time his destiny: to strengthen and unite the German Reich. For his 50th birthday, he requested the originals of several Wagner operas, and, against the wishes of Wagner's family, took them with him into his bunker. This legacy hangs over the music, which for many can never be freed from the taint of Hitler’s adoration. Wagner’s work is still regarded as controversial today, and is rarely played in Israel." --- The radio programme Owen Woodson refers to is not available to listen to (although the link still works). I should be looking up relevant information about Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber and Wilhelm Furtwangler but not today |
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22 Feb 23 - 08:33 PM (#4165908) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw I love classical music in the broadest sense, and this question has always troubled me greatly. Richard Wagner was a detestable antisemite, and I can't listen to his music. I'm convinced that Hitler would have been his number one fan had they been contemporaries. I've struggled with Richard Strauss, whose music I adore, and Fürtwangler, one of the greatest conductors of all time, but my researches have shown that, despite their naïvety, they were less than enthusiastic about Hitler to say the least, even though their activities during the war might suggest support for the regime. Herbert von Karajan is a different kettle of fish. He was an enthusiastic card-carrying member of the Nazi party. Along with several other conductors who shared extreme right-wing views (Adrian Boult, anybody .). I don't listen to their stuff. I don't really think I'm missing out. |
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22 Feb 23 - 08:38 PM (#4165909) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Just to say, Felipa, that some in your list at the end of your post are the very opposite of what we'd call Nazi sympathisers. |
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22 Feb 23 - 08:40 PM (#4165910) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: GUEST,Jack Campin It's unlikely that Wagner would have given the Nazis the time of day. He wasn't one to take orders. One prominent classical musician who really was an enthusiastic Nazi: Carl Orff. But he gets a free pass from the British musical establishment. |
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22 Feb 23 - 08:47 PM (#4165911) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Felipa Steve Shaw, I can guess that much from the little bit that Owen Woodson and the BBC blurb say about the programme which featured those 5 composers and their various reactions to the Nazi regime and facism. |
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22 Feb 23 - 09:01 PM (#4165912) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw You're right about Orff, Jack. He's another on my personal proscribed list. The Hitler supposition re Wagner means a lot less to me than does Wagner's rabid antisemitism. |
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23 Feb 23 - 06:15 AM (#4165933) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Apart from the aforementioned Herbert von Karajan and Orff, other enthusiastic Nazi supporters were the conductors William Mengelberg, Karl Böhm and Clemens Krauss. Another Nazi card-carrier was the singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. If you enjoy the Vienna Philharmonic's somewhat tedious annual New Year's Day concert, you may not wish to know that it was founded in 1939 by the Nazi Clemens Krauss, enthusiastically supported by Joseph Goebbels. During the war the orchestra expelled its Jewish musicians (replacing some of them with Nazis), several of whom were subsequently murdered in concentration camps. Nice. And don't get me started on the orchestra's anti-women policy. Do a head count next Jan 1 and you'll see that the Vienna Phil still has a long way to go in putting that right. You could argue that art and politics should be kept separate. That's valid and respectable, but, for me, the other argument is what holds sway. I have a lot of choice as to what I listen to, and I don't want to listen to music which, for me, is tainted by having been composed or performed by antisemites or Nazis. We can all draw our red line wherever we want, and that's beyond criticism. |
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23 Feb 23 - 11:10 AM (#4165966) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Stilly River Sage This is on the blurb for the BBC program today: Five and the Fascists I visited the Internet Archive and was able to gather this extra information that appeared on the BBC Link on Sept. 8, 2009: FIVE MUSICAL GIANTS Parts might be searchable elsewhere. |
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23 Feb 23 - 02:02 PM (#4165976) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: GUEST,matt milton For me, it's easy to hear why Wagner was so easily co-optable into the Nazi programme: his music sounds to my ears pompous, martial and triumphalist. And the narrative and words to his opera Lohengrin are quasi-fascist, they're about the ascent to power of a strong 'born leader'. |
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23 Feb 23 - 02:08 PM (#4165977) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw I know that Toscanini was a fierce opponent of Mussolini and that Bruno Walter once remonstrated with Fürtwangler over what he saw as his giving succour to the Nazi regime. Klemperer left Germany in 1933 and made his career in America and later in London. He was known for his humanitarian stances. Erich Kleiber was an opponent of Naziism and he also left Germany in 1933, moving to South America. That would have been an interesting meeting of the five. I suppose that Fürtwangler was given a tough time by the other four, but who knows. Carlo Maria Giulini, who I saw conducting Bach's B minor Mass in the early 70s, was something of a hero in the Italian resistance during the Nazi occupation, often putting his life in danger. Heroes and villains, eh? |
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23 Feb 23 - 05:09 PM (#4165994) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw I couldn't agree more, Matt. His ego was massive and he thought he was going to sweep away what he saw as all the twee operatic stuff, with its arias and recitatives and trivial plots (as if the Ring wasn't full of trivial plots...). Goodbye opera, hello vast music-dramas. Well his influence as far as I can see was brief and it bypassed many composers. You'd be hard-pressed to find much of his influence on other composers beyond the early 20th century. Of course, I'm biased, because I can't bear his music coming as it did from a man of detestable character, but, to me, his brave new world was actually a dead end. |
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23 Feb 23 - 05:57 PM (#4165998) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Joe_F W. H. Auden, who admired Wagner's music & musicianship but detested everything else about him, wrote an essay called "The Greatest of the Monsters" in which he goes into some detail about his general vileness. He makes it clear that Wagner would have been a Nazi if only he had lived long enough (there is a quotation from him that could have come right out of _Mein Kampf_), but he was also financially dishonest on a scale that reminds one -- well, never mind -- and was so self-centered that he was an embarrassment in company. The essay (in _Forewords & Afterwords_) is highly entertaining even if, like me, you know and care nothing about Wagner. |
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23 Feb 23 - 06:37 PM (#4166002) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw You can glean an awful lot about the character of the man from his music, even if you only read the sleeve notes. But take a closer look via reading a bit more about him, and you'll find an incredibly bad man. |
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24 Feb 23 - 04:39 AM (#4166023) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: GUEST,matt milton I've been generally lucky in that few of my musical heroes have turned out to be bad uns. One exception, relevant to this thread: the German pianist Wilhelm Backhaus. I used to love his Chopin recordings - they are extraordinary, genuinely great music. Then I learned he was a Nazi in a very complicit cowardly way. A part of me thinks that in practical, real=world terms it makes little difference whether I tacitly endorse this music by listening to it: he is long-dead, nobody gains or loses anything by me listening or not listening to him, nobody even knows or cares. But the few times I listened to his music after I learned of his unnecessary complicity with the regime (he was a Swiss citizen, he was free to travel) I just felt grubby and soiled and turned it off. I felt similarly listening to David Bowie and Led Zeppelin after I heard about the Lori Maddox stuff. |
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24 Feb 23 - 09:28 AM (#4166046) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw I suppose we could regard those legendary musicians who lived in Germany during the Third Reich as having been unlucky in some regard, in that they had to make choices that wouldn't have been needed to be made in better times. I'd always consider the following points when judging as to whether I could stomach listening to their music: Many of them were non-political, or politically-naive, either unconsciously or misguidedly helping the regime by remaining in Germany and continuing to perform. Others were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler, in some cases card-carrying members of the party. Some were troublingly inconsistent, sometimes making antisemitic statements whilst at the same time protecting the Jews in their extended families or their orchestras, or refusing to distance themselves from their Jewish music-making partners. There are clear-cut cases such as Karajan, Backhaus, Schwarzkopf, Orff, Walter Gieseking and Alfred Cortot who actively supported the Nazis. Then there are the dodgy geezers, such as Fürtwangler, Richard Strauss and Wilhelm Kempff (my favourite pianist of all time), who stayed in Germany, kept on performing, even hobnobbing with some of the worst Nazis in high places on occasion, but who, on the whole, were politically naive. Strauss was known for "holding his nose," and he also has the excuse that his daughter-in-law was Jewish. For me, those clear-cut cases I avoid. The dodgy geezers aforementioned, I don't. I fully respect the view that we could just ignore all this and enjoy these "greats" for their music. I also concede that I may be being too "nice" to some of those marginal cases because I love their music. There would be a big hole in my life if I never listened to Kempff, for example, which is, of course, biased. For me, as I said before, I'm lucky that I have so much choice as to what performances I can listen to. |
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24 Feb 23 - 09:55 AM (#4166049) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Not Nazis this time, but there's the case of the stellar conductor Valery Gergiev (a personal friend of Putin), who openly advocated the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and who has refused to speak up against the invasion of Ukraine. He has put on performances that were explicit propaganda events. He's lost quite a bit of work as a result of all this and he doesn't exactly have my sympathy. The politically-outspoken pianist Igor Levit, born in Russia, said “Being a musician does not free you from being a citizen, from taking responsibility, from being a grown-up.” “PS,” he added: “And never, never bring up music and your being a musician as an excuse. Do not insult art.” |
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24 Feb 23 - 11:23 AM (#4166054) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: GUEST Bernard Levin was a journalist who was Jewish and lived through the Nazi period. He loved Wagner's music. If he could do it ... |
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24 Feb 23 - 01:23 PM (#4166062) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Daniel Barenboim, also Jewish (and the victim of antisemitic abuse from the conductor Christian Thielemann) conducted Wagner in Israel in the teeth of fierce protests. I don't think there's any right or wrong or black or white in this issue. |
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25 Feb 23 - 08:35 PM (#4166154) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Jack Campin It's intriguing that the musical establishment has so thoroughly erased most of the committed anti-fascists of the era. How often do you hear anything by Erwin Schulhoff, Alan Bush, Charles Koechlin, Luigi Nono, Karl Amadeus Hartmann?... If the anti-fascists can't get a hearing at all, the fascists can simply profit from "any publicity is good publicity". |
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26 Feb 23 - 03:11 AM (#4166162) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: The Sandman Music in Nazi Germany, like all cultural activities in the regime, was controlled and "co-ordinated" (Gleichschaltung) by various entities of the state and the Nazi Party, with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the prominent Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg playing leading – and competing – roles. The primary concerns of these organizations was to exclude Jewish composers and musicians from publishing and performing music, and to prevent the public exhibition of music considered to be "Jewish", "anti-German", or otherwise "degenerate", while at the same time promoting the work of favored "Germanic" composers, such as Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner. These works were believed to be positive contributions to the Volksgemeinschaft, or German folk community. The Nazis promoted Aryan ideologies through heavy censorship and cultural control, blacklisting Jewish compositions, banning specific concert hall performances, and controlling radio content in order to promote nationalism through cultural unity. By controlling the mediums of communication the Reich Chamber of Culture was able to dictate public opinion in regards to musical culture, and reaffirm their hegemonic beliefs, promoting "Aryan" works consistent with Nazi ideology. Composer and conductor Richard Strauss was appointed to be the head of the Reich Chamber of Music, but was later forced to resign because of his association with the Jewish librettist of one of his operas. |
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26 Feb 23 - 06:03 AM (#4166164) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Do give your sources, Dick. I'll save you you bother of telling us that you copied and pasted that from wiki. |
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26 Feb 23 - 07:56 AM (#4166170) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: The Sandman whats wrong with wiki Shaw? pick a fight with someone else |
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26 Feb 23 - 08:55 AM (#4166172) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Dave the Gnome Nothing wrong with Wiki, Dick, but quoting your source is accepted practice in any discusion. |
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26 Feb 23 - 09:15 AM (#4166175) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Stanron Since when was Mudcat a PHD forum? |
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26 Feb 23 - 09:18 AM (#4166177) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Dave the Gnome Never has been, Stanron. Just talking common courtesy |
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26 Feb 23 - 10:32 AM (#4166183) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Nowt wrong with wiki, Dick. I use it all the time and you'll always know when I've quoted from it. It's bad form not to say so, frankly, and it's all the more annoying when we can plainly see that the chunk of text you've lifted has a style completely different to yours. |
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26 Feb 23 - 12:56 PM (#4166199) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Jack Campin The reason why you should never quote Wikipedia: it changes. They KNOW they're unreliable which is why their stuff is open to editing. Post a link (something Dick doesn't understand how to do) and anyone who follows it will get the current, updated version. Copy a screed of text and it could be bollocks nobody's got round to fixing yet. There is no point in EVER reading one of Dick's paste jobs. Just google and read the original page instead. |
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26 Feb 23 - 01:46 PM (#4166204) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw :-) But, Jack, if you do decide quote it in your severe unwisdom, at least tell us that you quoted it... |
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26 Feb 23 - 03:22 PM (#4166206) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Big Al Whittle I wonder whxt Hitler's position was on Fish and chips |
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26 Feb 23 - 03:27 PM (#4166207) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Owing to Hitler Your fish will be littler (A sign seen in a chippie during the war, according to my dad, possibly dubious...) |
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27 Feb 23 - 10:06 AM (#4166269) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw It can be tempting to dwell on the villains, but there are heart-warming stories about the musicians who were once-exiled but who made good after the war. On another tack, I've just been reading about the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. She spent a year in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, surviving because cello players were hard to replace in the women's orchestra in the camp. She testified against some of the camp commandants in the Bergen-Belsen trial after the war. There's much music in her family, and her son, Raphael Wallfisch, a renowned cellist in his own right, help to found the English Chamber Orchestra, who I saw a number of times on the South Bank when we lived near London. Anita is still going strong at the grand age of 97. |
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27 Feb 23 - 01:59 PM (#4166313) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: robomatic There are posters who sound like they are quoting when they are not. Or are the type to post quotes from memory (guilty) inaccurately. Or simply don't mention the depth of their non-caring, i.e. they are BS-ing. I'm interested in the BBC program referenced, so thanks for bringing this up. I'm somewhat influenced by an artist's beliefs, but often let that slide if I'm already a fan. In the case of Wagner, there have been some great meta-Wagner references including some priceless Loony Tunes ("What's Opera, Doc?"). I agree with the observation that Wagner has some great moments and some terrible half-hours. So I take the moments as they come. |
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01 Mar 23 - 05:36 AM (#4166462) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: GUEST,jim bainbridge I'm a Geordie musician who made a partial living playing unamplified mainly Irish music in Ireland for several years. The summer tourist crowds had a high proportion of German people, and I was always struck by very well informed they were about such as Seamus Ennis & Johnny Leary rather than Irish commercial stuff. One very pleasant German explained that traditional German (a blanket term anyway!) music had become so debased by its use and promotion by the Nazi Party, that most were ashamed of it. The consequence being a search for an alternative, and the Irish tradition being fairly prominent and lively (!) it was latched on as an alternative. Not always welcomed by Irish musicians as Germans & Europeans generally tend to clap their hands in all the wrong places!! |
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01 Mar 23 - 11:00 AM (#4166516) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: The Sandman I cannot seperate the person from the music. Iam not able to enjoy a composers music if his political attitude involved or supported nazi war crimes, however we are all different. |
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01 Mar 23 - 12:49 PM (#4166522) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw You could see the whole of humanity as part of a spectrum of imperfection, morality being a big aspect of that. Let he who is without sin, etc. But we're all entitled to have either no red line at all, or to draw it wherever we like. In addition to that, we can't be expected to have scrutinised every artist/musician/composer in depth before giving them a pass, as that would take more than a lifetime of scholarship on top of the day job. I listened to music conducted by Karajan for decades before I read about his enthusiastic membership of the Nazi party. I think that the least we can do before making heroes out of our favourites is to take at least a little look at their backgrounds. In fact, that usually helps to enhance appreciation of them: I've read several biographies of Mozart and Beethoven, and I love their music all the more as a result, in spite of their little foibles (Mozart was very big on poo, farts and botties, for example). Richard Strauss and Wilhelm Fürtwangler did naughty things during the war but they were living their lives in very unlucky times, not exactly hindering the regime but not praising it to the rafters either. Not good, but they just scrape through for me. But, as I love their output, I'm a bit biased. Complicated, innit... |
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01 Mar 23 - 06:02 PM (#4166556) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Jack Campin I get what Jim Bainbridge is saying. I once heard a German folkie say why he wouldn't do old German material - "there is blood on those songs". This is changing, a bit. There are German musicians who do the German equivalent of Playford, but it isn't exactly stadium-filling. Then there are the Teutonic-folk-rock types who use a lot of runic imagery and doomy electronics and shade into the fascist metal scene. And on the left there are the people who do fusions with the music of immigrant cultures like the Turks and Kurds. But nobody seems to be trying to defuse the connotations put on German folksong by the Nazis. I would like to be proved wrong. |
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01 Mar 23 - 06:40 PM (#4166564) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Time heals wounds, but slowly. On a much lighter and definitely trivial note, for the last couple of years of her life (she died in 2020), my ancient mum lived in a care home near us in Cornwall. I often used to pick her up to take her for a drive round the seaside (it's quite nice round here). She was very immobile and profoundly deaf, so we couldn't really talk in the car at all until we'd parked up somewhere. On the road into Bude town centre there's a Lidl. One day, we'd driven in silence from the home and I thought she'd fallen asleep. But as we passed Lidl I heard this sotto voce "Booo..." Then, a bit louder, "Boooo!" "What's up, mum?" "Germans..." "Hey, mum, the people who work there are all from Bude! All English! There are absolutely no Germans around here that had anything to do with the war!" "I don't bloody care. It's too soon..." :-) |
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02 Mar 23 - 10:05 AM (#4166616) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Felipa I happened to see this citation in the bibliography of a thesis I was looking at; I haven't tried to look up the book, but someone here may like to do so. FRÜHAUF os – HIRSCH Lily (eds.), Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture, Oxford – New York, Oxford University Press 2014 |
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03 Mar 23 - 03:57 AM (#4166718) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Dave the Gnome Going off on a slight tangent, there are musicians in many genres that have really bad attitudes even today. Morrissey for instance seems to have completely lost his marbles. Not that I would go to see him anyway! A lot of pop stars are role models for younger people and more than ever it is important that they should not encourage their fans to take up extremist views. Closer to home there are even folk performers who, while being good musicians and song carriers, have terrible personal attitudes. There are some I would not go to see if they were on in my living room :-( |
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03 Mar 23 - 05:34 AM (#4166725) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw We had Vin Garbutt at our club many times, and he would occasionally sing that anti-abortion song. His opinion was at polar odds with mine and I always wrestled with the issue of whether he should have been using his platform to advance his viewpoint. On the other hand, I've seen Dick Gaughan three times, a chap whose political views more or less exactly chime with mine, and he certainly didn't hold back, many of his songs shooting his left-wing politics from the hip. So whaddya do? They were both doing the same sort of thing (though in very different ways), I agreed with one but not the other... (My answer was to not stop going to see either of them...) I never saw Peter Bellamy, yet I understand that his politics might not have harmonised with mine... There are others who views were clear enough (Roy Bailey: what a star...), some whose views, whilst not explicitly stated, one could glean, and others who you'd never work out (and it may never have occurred to you to even try). I consider that we're all entitled to our views and to be either damned or praised for expressing them, but as long as they are never couched in malicious intent, ignorance, hatred or prejudice I could live with all of them. When it comes to those musicians who stayed on in Nazi times, there were some who were naive (which is not necessarily to say blameless), those who wanted to keep their careers afloat and who therefore turned a blind eye even though they might have been aiding the regime, and those who were enthusiastic Hitlerites who WANTED to help the regime. As I've said, they all had the unlucky extra burden of being forced to make decisions beyond the boundaries of their musical talents. All three categories contained seriously flawed human beings. But I'm one of those as well. So what to do? (My answer is to reject the last category, the Karajans, the Krausses the Orffs and the rest, but live with the others) We have the freedom of choice as what to accept or reject, something not true in Nazi or Stalinist times. All I'd say is there a little more virtue in just looking back at the history. If we still decide to ignore it, that's fine. But ignoring it isn't the same as not knowing. |
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03 Mar 23 - 06:39 AM (#4166737) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw "There are some I would not go to see if they were on in my living room..." Totally off-topic, but you reminded me of a saying of the great Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly (aka God), talking about his Merseyside rivals Everton, "If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I'd draw the curtains." (He also said that there were two great teams on Merseyside, Liverpool and Liverpool reserves). He didn't mean it! Sorry, now back to the fray... |
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03 Mar 23 - 07:48 AM (#4166744) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Jack Campin The sort of German composer the BBC doesn't want to talk about. Karl Amadeus Hartmann Morally unexceptionable. But beyond the pale for the Beeb because he was a socialist. |
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03 Mar 23 - 12:39 PM (#4166764) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw Hartmann hasn't been proscribed/banned by the BBC exactly, but his music is, admittedly, seriously under-represented. He was out of favour after the war with most of the leading (German) conductors of the time, which may have helped to marginalise him. Not sure that his apparent sidelining is completely to do with his socialism. |
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05 Mar 23 - 03:57 AM (#4166919) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: GUEST,R J M The Third Reich: Classical Music and the Nazi Leadership, 1933-1945 Jackie Metzger Conclusion The two cases of Furtwangler and Karajan portrayed here indicate the importance of the world of culture and art to the Nazi regime. All the evidence shows that before the top echelon leaders would apply themselves to murderous racist policies, they were intimately involved in efforts to control art in the Reich on all fronts. “Decadent Art” was curtailed as antithetical to new artistic conventions of the Reich and the world of jazz was also targeted. Clearly, the magnificent achievements of German classical music could be retained as a beacon of light for the new Germany but naturally within the limits of new parameters. The narratives of Furtwangler and Karajan help to illustrate the tensions that began in 1933, and the different paths that two prominent musicians chose in confronting the Third Reich. |
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05 Mar 23 - 07:38 AM (#4166932) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: Steve Shaw My scholarship isn't up there with that of Jackie Metzger, but the different paths taken by that particular pair of musicians has always intrigued me. I'm not sure in Karajan's case that "confronting" is quite the right term: Karajan embraced the regime with a degree of enthusiasm, whereas Fürtwangler was in constant battle with the top dogs, including Hitler himself. He never joined the party and he refused to give the Hitler salute. He refused to allow the Jewish musicians to be thrown out of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (which he regarded as "his" orchestra) and he openly condemned, at some risk to himself, the regime's antisemitic policies. He tried to get Jewish soloists such as Yehudi Menuhin and Pablo Casals to play in his concerts, but they refused, not because of him but because of the regime. Hitler and Goebbels regarded him as so indispensable to Germany's prestige that they often yielded to his demands - they could easily have gone the other way and they even discussed whether to send him to a concentration camp. So that's the kind of man he was. But he did stay and he did conduct concerts that were used to legitimise the regime and he must have known that. His priority was to preserve his orchestra. Whether he should have had different priorities is something to ponder. |
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05 Mar 23 - 09:50 AM (#4166938) Subject: RE: Classical Music and the Nazis From: GUEST,R J M My scholarship isn't up there with that of Jackie Metzger, so I accept her scholarship and accept her greater knowledge |