Talk:Das Judenthum in der Musik
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I moved all the controversy about Wagner and anti-Semitism here. I deem it best if we choose from one of the following editorial alternatives:
- have a separate article for this controversy
- eliminate this article, and cover the controversy in the bio article.
There's no point in trying to make the case (or refute it) in 2 separate places.
And for the record, I don't really have an opinion one way or another on whether Wagner was anti-semitic. I'm Jewish; I love Jews, Judaism and Israel; but I don't hate people for hating me, because as my dear departed grandmother taught me, it takes too much energy to hate. --Uncle Ed
- Having a separate article was a bad idea from the start. If we get a really detailed discussion, e.g. about the Bayreuth Circle and the rest of the Wagner clan, we might want to move it to another article, but otherwise it should be part of the Wagner page.
- If we keep this article, we need to have at least the key facts in the main article so as to not give a skewed picture of the person Richard Wagner.
I don't understand the point of this article. Most of it isn't about "Judaism in Music", but about Wagner's anti-Semitism, which is duplicated in the Richard Wagner article (where IMHO it is more suited, since there it can be viewed in context.) More problematically, it doesn't describe any of the main points of "Judaism in Music"; the few paragraphs which talk about it contain little more than a laundry list of various anti-Semitic quotes (which, I might add, is copied verbatim from this newsgroup post (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=20001028151437.02379.00000195%40ng-fy1.aol.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain)).
For these reasons, I recommend this article for deletion. -- CYD
- Yes, the Wagner article is mostly tamed and back to normal, covering music and anti-semitism, two of the three points of interest in Wagner's life, so this one can go. However, I do believe that the anti-Semitic quotes, or some of them, should be pasted back into the main Wagner article (in spite of being a "laundry list" and "copied verbatim", empty phrases implying something but saying nothing). Someone should look at the article itself and dig some more out about how Jews make tinkling empty music. Ortolan88
Right. But the existing laundry list isn't even very good, because it takes quotes out of context. For example, look at the reference to Ahasuerus and "going under", which may be is found in the last paragraph here (http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagjuda.htm). It obviously refers to conversion to Christianity - still an anti-Semitic remark, but obviously with a very different meaning than the article implies. -- CYD
- That highlighted "here" (http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagjuda.htm) above is the Wagner essay itself, which you don't have to read too far before you come across some pretty unpleasant stuff. I do hope someone will summarize it for the main Wagner article. My musical knowledge is all rock and roll, so I wouldn't do it justice. Ortolan88
Here's a precis of "Jewry in Music", which is in its original is fairly impenetrable stuff.
Statement of Purpose: "explaining that unconscious feeling which proclaims itself among the people as a rooted dislike of the Jewish nature" especially with regard to music.
Argumentum: Jews have taken control of the world through money and now have taken control of art. Jews look like outsiders. They cannot serve as actors because the very image of them as "hero or lover" is ludicrous. They are therefore unfit subjects for art, and therefore incapable of expressing any artistic utterance. The Jew also invariably speaks with an accent: their mother tongue is foreign, and they cannot express themselves in our language. They speak in "a creaking, squeaking, buzzing snuffle": they garble their syntax and grammar. Hearing them we can think only of how unpleasant they sound, we cannot think of what they mean. The Jew does not engage us as human, but only speaks with us for his own profit or vanity: he cannot convey emotion to us. Song is but elevated passionate speech. Jews, incapable of conveying emotion in speech, cannot convey it in song.
Let us examine the Jew's place in music. Jews are incapable of acting, speaking emotively, or singing: how then can a Jew be a musician? "The cultured Jew…is the most heartless of all human beings": he relates to people only in terms of money. He can buy and pay for culture, but it remains a luxury for him, not an expression of self. Since Jewish art is a superfluity, it can express nothing but the trivial and indifferent. Jews, being monied, have no need for deep expression, so when they turn to art, it is art of the "moment": speech without content, a babbling parroting of human art.
The true artist is connected with his "Folk", but Jews are aliens in our society. They cannot learn how to create art, only how to mimic it. The only music they know they learn from the synagogue, a music that is repulsive: the sound of "horror mingled with the absurd", a "sense-and-sound-confounding gurgle, jodel and cackle." The Jews' musical nature is utterly unlike our own. He is incapable of apprehending the depths of our Folkish music: he can only attend to its surface. Yet when he attempts to mimic our music, it seems " outlandish, odd, indifferent, cold, unnatural and awry". The Jew has no true passion that might lead him to create true art.
Mendelssohn is a typical example. He is talented, cultured, honorable, yet unable to produce Art. He mimics Bach, yet Bach made art through his humanity, pointing toward Mozart, pointing in his turn to Beethoven. Bach can be imitated, as his music contains a large measure of the Formal: but Mendelssohn cannot mimic Beethoven, for Mendelssohn has no Content. Listening to Mendelssohn, we can feel a sense of Tragedy, perhaps, in his resignation to his own inability to produce art.
This is more than we feel listening to any other Jew composer. [Meyerbeer] (Wagner alludes to him but does not name him) is popular because the public lacks taste, and because he assuages their boredom. He is incapable of serious artistic expression, and this incapacity is both the the sign, and the result of his Jewhood. That Jews are popular composers demonstrate that music has become debased and lifeless. Just as insects eat only dead flesh, the Jews swarm over the corpse of dead Music, destroying it as surely as worms destroy a carcass.
It may be objected that I have said there are no true Jew poets, yet Heinrich Heine is popular. This is possible only because there is no longer any true poetry. Heine is the conscience of Judaism, and therefore tells only lies.
There is one more Jew to mention, a writer, Börne. He redeemed himself by ceasing to be a Jew. The only redemption for a Jew is to cease to be a Jew: to annul himself.
Quotes "with all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them" " the Jew … rules, and will rule, so long as Money remains the power before which all our doings and our dealings lose their force" "The cultured Jew…is the most heartless of all human beings"
Some of this might belong in an article, presumably Richard Wagner. (The talk page there is too long for me to edit without truncation, perhaps someone could archive the old stuff?). It would have to be made shorter: perhaps someone else might choose those elements they think pertinent. -- Someone else 04:45 Dec 13, 2002 (UTC)
- At this point, it seems that it may be a good idea to keep this as a permanent entry, as this is an important article of Wagner's. (Consider how many books, articles and journal articles quote it, or how many people have used it to justify their opinions.) RK