Aslaug's Axe Shed

I love music. I have tastes that span from the great Baroque masters to heavy metal, and that is not just a trite expression … it’s the truth. I tend to dislike standard pop-music (Lady Gaga or Madonna honestly do absolutely -nothing- for me), but maybe once or twice a year, I hear a piece of popular music that has that certain “something” which makes it stick in my mind anyway for a while. It happens, but not often. I am not anti-popular music in any way, I just don’t find that kind of music engaging. Tastes vary, simple as that.

I do listen to a lot of classical music. I don’t think there has ever been a greater musical genius than Tchaikovsky, but that is simply my personal opinion, of course. But if I had to pick out an era that I prefer over all others, I’d pick the Baroque. There is a certain greatness to the music created then. Men like Charpentier, Lully, Bach, Händel and many others created amazing music that still makes me lean back and smile while I just get carried away.

Recently, I’ve posted a couple of links to Youtube on my facebook page. Links to a couple of pieces of music I really like. Charpentier’s and Lully’s “Te Deum” respectively.

An old friend popped up and jokingly commented that he always thought I was a “Ride of the Valkyries”-type of person.

Occasionally, I might refer to that piece of music in something I write (one such reference is actually coming up later in “Defiance”), but if so, it’s always in a very specific setting. Personally, I LOATHE Wagner and I detest his work. But my extremely defensive reaction to what my old friend said on facebook still ended up surprising me.

It led to a bit of introspection. But in the end, I did figure out what it was that made me so angry.

Richard Wagner, for those of you who didn’t know, lived for almost seventy years, from 1813 to 1883. He wrote music with a political agenda … wanting to help foster the “German spirit” through music which he felt was properly German. He wrote acknowledged classic masterpieces like “Parsifal”, “Tristand und Isolde” and maybe most famously, the monstrously lengthy “Der Ring des Nibelungen”.

“The Ring” is a multi-piece work, lasting upwards of 24 hours from start to finish if played in its full extent … which Wagner of course insisted on. Poor audience.

Anyway, the music is bombastic in the extreme, it is often needlessly drawn out, it lacks ANY kind of subtlety and as opposed to the conductors cane used by men like Mozart or Beethoven, Wagner hits the audience over the head with a 30 lbs sledgehammer from start to finish. In my opinion, listening to Wagner is the equivalent of turning myself into a French fois gras goose. I get force-fed music. I don’t get the CHOICE of whether I want to enjoy it or not.

That said, that’s not why I reacted so strongly. So far, what I’ve listed are simply reasons for disliking a specific composer’s music. But in Wagner’s case, there’s more to it. Wagner, to this day, remains a hugely controversial person.

He was a nationalist … as was common in much of Europe when he lived, and he was a raving, foaming-about-the-mouth anti-semite. In fact, his anti-semitism was so rabid, so intolerant and so unreasonable that the Nazis saw him as their “court composer”, despite the fact he’d died sixty years before their assumption of power, and his operas were blared out of the loudspeakers in the deathcamps. People went to the gaschambers with “Parsifal” filling their ears.

But as Wagner died sixty years before these atrocities, can’t I simply ignore that and enjoy the music? It isn’t his fault, after all, that his music was used by such monsters.

WRONG!

Wagner, throughout his life, advocated the kind of hatred that the Nazis took three steps further. He was one of the intellectual fathers of that particular kind of anti-semitic, Pan-Germanic nationalism that led to Nazism. And he specifically, knowingly and openly used his music to advocate his world-view.

That in itself is reason enough for me to shun him like the plague. But there’s more to this.

Heathens like me, who advocate equality between people and the value of each human being as a unique creature, constantly have to defend ourselves against the misconception that all heathens are in fact Nazis. Usually, I can tell from the looks on people’s faces when they find out I’m heathen whether they believe this is the case.

Typically they’ll go “oh …” and sloooowly start to draw away, or if they are seated, they’ll get very quiet and start looking left and right to find a different conversation partner. It’s bloody annoying, and requires explanation every time it happens. It doesn’t even always work, though fortunately, it usually does.

But I can’t be associated with a man like Wagner, who to this day is considered a highly controversial person for his opinions, in many parts of the world. I don’t want Heathens anywhere to be associated with the beliefs Wagner stood for.

But of course … music is simply music, isn’t it? Can’t I separate the man … the composer … on one side, with his beliefs and ideas, and his music on the other?

In most cases, I think that’s entirely possible, but it isn’t when it comes to Wagner. Wagners music was more than notes on a piece of sheet-music paper. It was his political manifesto.

I don’t read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” either. I don’t read Mussolini’s diaries. I don’t read Guido von List’s insane ravings. As historical documents, they might be of interest, vile though they may be, but I am not in a position where I can read that kind of thing. I don’t want to be associated through my religious beliefs, with fascism in any way, shape or form.

Wagner’s music is not simply music. It was written with a clear, political aim in mind. It was meant to further an agenda which led to something which we today, as civilized people, consider practically the pinnacle of evil.

That’s why I won’t listen to it. That’s why I would leave before voluntarily sitting down for an evening to listen to such proto-fascist garbage. I know people who think going to Bayreuth for the Wagner-festival is a great treat. If they want to, I can’t stop them, but privately, I consider it morally questionable. I think their claims that “it’s just music” either speaks of deliberate ignorance or a complete lack of empathy. I had colleagues in the past who were part of a small group who would meet and listen to Wagner’s operas over a good dinner and a glass of red wine. I consider that morally questionable for the same reasons.

I detest the man … and I loathe his music.

And I do not think, in his specific case, that they can or SHOULD be seen as separate things. That may be my personal brand of intolerance, but seeing what Wagner openly advocated, I think it’s the only decent way of looking at it.