Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
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Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139976
Apparently, people have a beef with an Israeli orchestra playing Wagner, because Hitler liked Wagner and Wagner was antisemitic.
Criminy - if we go this route on everything than nobody should own German Shepherds because Hitler liked German Shepherd dogs, and nobody should read or appreciate any writer or artist who hated Jews (a good portion of the European population until after 1945).
People have to get over this incessant overattachment to symbolism. Wagner's music doesn't change because of his antisemitism. It is what it is. If he's good he's good. If he's not he's not. It's like the writing of Evelyn Waugh - it's still good even though he was a son-of-a-bitch.
Apparently, people have a beef with an Israeli orchestra playing Wagner, because Hitler liked Wagner and Wagner was antisemitic.
Criminy - if we go this route on everything than nobody should own German Shepherds because Hitler liked German Shepherd dogs, and nobody should read or appreciate any writer or artist who hated Jews (a good portion of the European population until after 1945).
People have to get over this incessant overattachment to symbolism. Wagner's music doesn't change because of his antisemitism. It is what it is. If he's good he's good. If he's not he's not. It's like the writing of Evelyn Waugh - it's still good even though he was a son-of-a-bitch.
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Re: Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
Leonard Bernstein, in trying to convince the Israeli Philharmonic to play Wagner, made a further point: how could they convincingly play Mahler, Berg, etc (all composers influenced by Wagner) if they didn't play Wagner himself?
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.
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Re: Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
It's ridiculous.
Get the works of Cicero and Seneca out of the libraries! They didn't like Jews!
No more reading of Diderot and Bacon! They didn't like Jews!
George Washington, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Kaiser Wilhelm, Vladimir Lenin, Hilaire Beloc, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, HL Menckin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, HG Wells, Charles Lindbergh....Napoleon...Charles De Gaulle...Truman Capote... Voltaire...they all didn't like the Jews...
Face - MOST PEOPLE DIDN'T LIKE THE JEWS -- for most of the last 2000 years - they were blamed for the bubonic plague and poisoning the well, they were blamed for "killing christ" - they were considered greedy, insular, shifty, grasping and covetous! that was common thinking among non-Jews in most places around the world.
The history of antisemitism cannot be wiped out by banning antisemitic artists, writers and other figures. We must acknowledge the hate that was prevalent throughout history, face it, accept it, get through it....it's real. It's the way people were. It's something we would do well to acknowledge can happen again, regardless of how much we may claim to be above it all. Europe in the 1990s is a prime example - Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Bosnia.....religious and ethnic hatred is something humans are capable of and will murder each other for under the right circumstances - burying it symbolically does nothing but make us "forget history" and be "doomed to repeat it."
Get the works of Cicero and Seneca out of the libraries! They didn't like Jews!
No more reading of Diderot and Bacon! They didn't like Jews!
George Washington, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Kaiser Wilhelm, Vladimir Lenin, Hilaire Beloc, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, HL Menckin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, HG Wells, Charles Lindbergh....Napoleon...Charles De Gaulle...Truman Capote... Voltaire...they all didn't like the Jews...
Face - MOST PEOPLE DIDN'T LIKE THE JEWS -- for most of the last 2000 years - they were blamed for the bubonic plague and poisoning the well, they were blamed for "killing christ" - they were considered greedy, insular, shifty, grasping and covetous! that was common thinking among non-Jews in most places around the world.
The history of antisemitism cannot be wiped out by banning antisemitic artists, writers and other figures. We must acknowledge the hate that was prevalent throughout history, face it, accept it, get through it....it's real. It's the way people were. It's something we would do well to acknowledge can happen again, regardless of how much we may claim to be above it all. Europe in the 1990s is a prime example - Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Bosnia.....religious and ethnic hatred is something humans are capable of and will murder each other for under the right circumstances - burying it symbolically does nothing but make us "forget history" and be "doomed to repeat it."
Re: Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
Evelyn Waugh was a good writer?
...huh.
...huh.
"The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement but few can argue with it."
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Re: Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
I agree with you except lenin hated all religions he was a communist after all.Coito ergo sum wrote:It's ridiculous.
Get the works of Cicero and Seneca out of the libraries! They didn't like Jews!
No more reading of Diderot and Bacon! They didn't like Jews!
George Washington, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Kaiser Wilhelm, Vladimir Lenin, Hilaire Beloc, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, HL Menckin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, HG Wells, Charles Lindbergh....Napoleon...Charles De Gaulle...Truman Capote... Voltaire...they all didn't like the Jews...
Face - MOST PEOPLE DIDN'T LIKE THE JEWS -- for most of the last 2000 years - they were blamed for the bubonic plague and poisoning the well, they were blamed for "killing christ" - they were considered greedy, insular, shifty, grasping and covetous! that was common thinking among non-Jews in most places around the world.
The history of antisemitism cannot be wiped out by banning antisemitic artists, writers and other figures. We must acknowledge the hate that was prevalent throughout history, face it, accept it, get through it....it's real. It's the way people were. It's something we would do well to acknowledge can happen again, regardless of how much we may claim to be above it all. Europe in the 1990s is a prime example - Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Bosnia.....religious and ethnic hatred is something humans are capable of and will murder each other for under the right circumstances - burying it symbolically does nothing but make us "forget history" and be "doomed to repeat it."

The Pope was today knocked down at the start of Christmas mass by a woman who hopped over the barriers. The woman was said to be, "Mentally unstable."Trolldor wrote:Ahh cardinal Pell. He's like a monkey after a lobotomy and three lines of cocaine.
Which is probably why she went unnoticed among a crowd of Christians.
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Re: Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
"It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries." V I Lenin on Anti Semitism.
Regardless of who is an anti-semite, should have no bearing on whether anything else they have done ought to be banned from use because they were anti-semites. Adding to Coito's mention of Ford. such a ban would not be very short of prohibiting the use of Volkswagens because they were originally commissioned by Hitler, and built to his specifications, from price to body shape, or Porsches because its designer started off by implementing Hitler's commission.
Having said that, Wagner's music should not be played by anybody! It's pretentious, boring bloatware created by an obsessive mind.
Regardless of who is an anti-semite, should have no bearing on whether anything else they have done ought to be banned from use because they were anti-semites. Adding to Coito's mention of Ford. such a ban would not be very short of prohibiting the use of Volkswagens because they were originally commissioned by Hitler, and built to his specifications, from price to body shape, or Porsches because its designer started off by implementing Hitler's commission.
Having said that, Wagner's music should not be played by anybody! It's pretentious, boring bloatware created by an obsessive mind.

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould
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Re: Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
They should play it for the lulz! 

What I've found with a few discussions I've had lately is this self-satisfaction that people express with their proffessed open mindedness. In realty it ammounts to wilful ignorance and intellectual cowardice as they are choosing to not form any sort of opinion on a particular topic. Basically "I don't know and I'm not going to look at any evidence because I'm quite happy on this fence."
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The Net is best considered analogous to communication with disincarnate intelligences. As any neophyte would tell you. Do not invoke that which you have no facility to banish.
Audley Strange
Re: Should Israeli Orchestra Play Wagner?
Gee, I wonder when those Israelis are going to boycott Netanyahu and Lieberman since they are anti-Arabic? Or is this only an anti-Jew thing? And this thread is in the wrong forum or I am posting in the wrong forum.
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