Litnet

Hello, 

Vir die wat belangstel is 22 Mei 1813 'n belangrike dag met die geboorte van Richard Wagner in Leipzig en Wagner 'n persoon waaroor daar nog steeds debatteer word en is die donker skaduwee van Wagner nog steeds lank indien onlangse kritiek ter harte geneem word maar poog Nike Wagner om dit te temper soos volg: 

"Should we allow ourselves to listen to his works with pleasure, even though we know that he was an anti-Semite?"

Wagner en Hitler word dalk nou gereeld in dieselfde asem genoem en gebaseer op die volgende wat tekenend van die debat is:

Wagner's hateful essay "Judaism in Music" offered Hitler an idea of how far one could go with anti-Semitism. The composer invokes the downfall of the Jews. Characters like Mime in "Siegfried" and Kundry in "Parsifal," he argued, are evil caricatures of the supposedly inferior Jews. Köhler felt that "Parsifal" anticipated the racial theories of the Nazis, quoting propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as saying: "Richard Wagner taught us what the Jew is."

In the 1920s, Wagner's daughter-in-law Winifred invited the young Hitler to attend the Bayreuth Festival on the Green Hill in the Bavarian city of Bayreuth. When he was in prison writing "Mein Kampf," she sent him ink, pencils and erasers. 

According to Köhler's interpretation in 1997, the Green Hill was a fortress of evil and Wagner the forefather of the Holocaust.

Daniel Barenboim aanvaar hierdie argument glad nie: 

Barenboim: Wagner can't be held directly responsible for that connection. But Wagner was a terrible anti-Semite. His 1850 essay, "Judaism in Music", is one of the worst anti-Semitic pamphlets of all time. Hitler made Wagner into a prophet. But Hitler, of course, reinterpreted even the worst things Wagner wrote about the Jews in a way for which Wagner cannot be held responsible. I understand, of course, the associations with the Nazis some people have when they hear something like "Lohengrin."

Hierdie brief is dus nie my ontleding van Wagner en die belangrikheid van Wagner en is slegs beperk tot daardie gedeeltes van Wagner se werke waarvan ek hou en sal nie uiting vind in hierdie brief nie maar het as doel bogenoemde inleidende notas en dan die seisoen van alles Wagner wat huidiglik te hore is op BBC Radio 3 en dit te deel met belangstellendes hier.

Om te begin BBC Radio 3 se 'Sunday Feature': 

Wagner: Making a National Hero
Duration: 45 minutes
First broadcast: Sunday 19 May 2013

Stephen Johnson explores the worlds of Wagner's heroes and how his Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Siegfried and Parsifal were created from a particularly Wagnerian concoction of ancient Norse legends, medieval German myths and current political thinking at the dawn of Bismark's Germany. He finds out how Wagner himself became a different sort of national hero through the efforts of Cosima, his zealously loyal widow, and then through misinterpretations of his writings about nationalism by the Third Reich.

Stephen talks to conductor Donald Runnicles, Wagner experts Barry Millington and Barbara Eichner, writer and opera director Adrian Mourby, Ring expert Edward Haymes, and Cosima's biographer Oliver Hilmes. 

Daardie program kan hier geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01shy5m/Sunday_Feature_Wagner_Making_a_National_Hero/

Dit kan opgevolg word met die volgende program van BBC Radio 3 se 'Nightwaves': 

Wagner and antisemitism
DURATION: 19:18

It is of course 200 years this week since the birth of the composer who perhaps excites more strong opinions about his life and work than any other. Professor Paul Rose, Barry Emslie and Dr Barbara Eichner discuss Wagner and antisemitism. 
Can one see it, hear it even, in his characters and music? And if so, does it matter? Anne McElvoy asks the questions.

Daardie program kan hier geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01shytq/Night_Waves_Wagner_200_Michael_Landy_Prague/

Bogenoemde kan saam geluister word met die volgende program ook van BBC Radio 3 wat uitgesaai was 18 Oktober 2012: 

Wagner
Duration: 45 minutes
First broadcast: Thursday 18 October 2012

In the late 1860s Wagner, already hailed as a genius, was in the process of bringing the first two parts of the Ring Cycle to the stage; Nietzsche was an upcoming classicist and philosopher, the youngest man ever to have been made Professor in a German university.

The friendship that developed between the two is documented in a vast collection of letters and writings, reflecting one of the most resonant cultural and philosophical scenes of 19th century Europe.

In a special edition Anne McElvoy maps the intellectual development which informed Wagner's work.

Daardie program kan hier geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nb0r2/Night_Waves_Wagner/

Hierdie is dan die inleidende program wat saam geluister moet word met die volgende reeks programme wat poog om die intellektuele onderbou en invloede van Wagner se werk. Hierdie reeks was uitgesaai in die week war verby is. 

Wagner and German Idealism

Professor Roger Scruton explores the philosophical background that influenced the young Richard Wagner. The German universities of his youth were in a state of intellectual ferment in the aftermath of the greatest philosopher of modern times, Immanuel kant. Out of this came a school of philosophy known as German Idealism. Wagner was particular influenced by the most famous of these philosophers, Hegel. And, even though Wagner was later to radically revise his philosophical views, the ideas of Hegel can still be traced in his great cycle of music dramas, The Ring: the notion that nothing human is permanent, and all must perish in the spirit's ongoing search for self-knowledge. And the essence of this spirit, Hegel argued, is freedom. Wagner took this idea one step further. Freedom, for Wagner, was not only a political phenomenon, it was also a profound spiritual reality, revealed in the moment of sacrifice. 

Daar kan hier na dit geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01shyby

Wagner and the Philosophy of Revolution

Professor Anthony Grayling looks at the crucial years before and after the Dresden uprising of 1849 when Wagner was manning the barricades with revolutionaries such as Mikhail Bakunin. After the death of the philosopher, Hegel, in 1831, a group of his followers, the Young Hegelians argued that the forces of freedom and reason would continue to conquer everything in their way. Into this heady mix came the attacks on religious orthodoxy of Ludwig Feurbach and the political and economic theories of Proudhon. Wagner drank this all in greedily. And during his years of exile in Switzerland these ideas bubbled away and were reborn in his own philosophical essays concerning the artwork of the future aimed at remaking society along utopian socialist lines. 

Daar kan hier na dit geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01shyvt

Wagner and Schopenhauer

Professor Christopher Janaway on Wagner's life-changing encounter with the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1854 he read Schopenhauer's masterwork, The World as Will and Representation; and it hit him like a thunderbolt. Wagner discovered a thinker who endorsed his own developing views on the role of music and gave him a new way to think about his perpetual struggles with desire and erotic love. It also convinced him of the futility of political agitation. It can be argued that Wagner bent these ideas to his own purposes; and that Tristan and Isolde, written in the aftermath of this great encounter, is really a Schopenhauerian experiment gone wrong: instead of losing desire and attachment, the two lovers intensify both to the extreme. It was only in his last opera, Parsifal, that Wagner finally produced a music drama that seems in many respects at peace with the ascetic ideal of his philosophical hero, Arthur Schopenhauer.

Daar kan hier na dit geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01shyvw

Wagner and Nietzsche

Michael Tanner looks at the relationship between two titans of German culture, the 55-year old composer Richard Wagner and the precocious 24-year old philologist, who was destined to become the great philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Out of their heady late-night chats about Schopenhauer, Euripedes and Socrates came Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. The relationship was to darken and turn sour in later years when Nietzsche accused Wagner of "slobbering at the foot of the cross" in his final opera, Parsifal. But to the end Nietzsche was to regard his encounter with Wagner as one of the most important events of his life.

Daar kan hier na dit geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01shyvy

Wagner and Adorno

Professor John Deathridge explores the posthumous reputation of Wagner in the 20th Century as seen through the lens of the philosopher Theodor Adorno who had pertinent things to say about Wagner's appropriation by the fascists, his infamous anti-semitism, and the related issues of German culture post-World War 2, the culture industry and mass culture in general.

Daar kan hier na dit geluister word: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01shyw0

Baie dankie

Wouter