@ ihno
I was hasty and thought that Schumann was still on the editorial board in 1850 - but he wasn´t.
That's what a discussion is for.
But concerning Wagner, it seems to me your perspective is much too limited. It seems to me you think ONLY about the composer and musician.
That's a misunderstanding. I was talking about Schumann. You wrote "I'm not a Wagnerian" and I just wanted to separate Schumann from Wagner and think that was sufficient.
For the following I’m refering to the work of the Social-Historian Jakob Katz here, who did a close analysis of the life of Wagner and the different stages of his anti-Semitism, published in 1985 (maybe it's the work "The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner's Anti-Semitism, published in 2002 in english)". Of course there are always new debates about that. But I don’t follow that debate closely. Katz still is accurate though.
According to Katz Wagner had a “philo-Semite phase”, which ended in 1849 (end of the revolution, flight to Switzerland). Only afterwards he became the anti-Semite we know.
When Schumann and Wagner had contact, Wagner was still in close relation to Meyerbeer. Schumann received a praise from Wagner about the French-jewish composer Fromental Halevy, which was meant to be published. As for Schumann, I would have to do some research and read his letters.
As for composer/political being, that is an interesting aspect you mention here. And again of course a very wide field.
If I would only listen to the music of composers who were "gay-friendly", I don't know how many cds would be left. Tschaikowsky and Handel all day, thanks…
Back to Wagner: It's possible to draw a line from Hitler to Wagner but not the other way around. That would be an anachronism. Sometimes people ask "Is it allowed to like Wagner?". I see it like Barenboim, who played Wagner in Israel in 2001 for the first time since 1938. Of course you're allowed to.
But remember the old saying - there are more books and articles written about Richard Wagner than about anybody else, next to Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonapart. No other single person in Europe from the 1850s until World War I had such IMMENSE influence on every imaginable branch of culture. Charles Baudelaire was a strong wagnerite and so was Stephane Mallarmé. There were influential wagnerites not at all only in Germany, but also in (among other places) France, England,USA and - Russia!
There are more books about Wagner than books about Hitler?
Yes I know of Wagner's influence, though I’m hesitant to say he might have been the most important person of all. The musical scene of Germany (which includes Austria) influenced the whole world at that time.
The big quarrels between different groups of german composers and musicians from the mid-1850s on - Wagner,Liszt and Bruckner contra Hanslick,Brahms etc - was the civil war of musical romanticism - different warparties, but fighting on the same turf and with basically the same weapons; or to put it a bit differently : within the same conceptual framework. Within the Classical Music-framework, constructed by (among others) Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner, building upon philosophical foundations from a few earlier thinkers, poets and critics such as JG Herder, Ludwig Tieck and ETA Hoffman.
And Schopenhauer…
Well, there were always economical interests in those quarrels too. When Wagner declared the symphony dead he didn't just have ideas about art in mind, no, he also wanted to promote his own works and kick Brahms’ fat(?) ass. Brahms btw. was the leading figure of the academics but never really participated. He just allowed to his name to be used but kept out of it.
Schumann anyway was long dead at this point. I think he was indifferent to all of this. For his fourth symphony he considered to have the title of a “Symphonistische Phantasie” (symphonistic/symphonic fantasy) but then didn’t do that.
About the difference between anti-semitism and anti-judaism, I think you make much to much of it. Sure, "modern" anti-semitism is based on "modern" racial biology, while "old fashioned" anti-judaism is at rock bottom a lovely pice (heavy irony here!!!)of cosy christian theology. But the main point of BOTH those discourses are one an the same - the discrimination of jewish people in western society. The difference is a difference in contex and in rhetoric.
No, this is important. The historical science knows four kinds of hostilities against jews: Anti-Judaism, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism and a fourth form that claims that today's jew would benefit from the Holocaust. There are big and major differences between each of them and they can mix in all kind of different forms.
Simply put: For the anti-Judaists, jews are a religious community. For the anti-Judaists Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a german christian, for the anti-Semists he was a jew.
Jews that lived in an anti-Judaistic society could still have a baptism, become christian and live on their lifes without discrimination (more or less). Many german jews decided to go that way.
Actually there were many different discussions in Germany between 1780 and 1870 about that question. In summary: Some reformers like Christian Wilhelm Dohm (Age of Enlightenment) promoted the "Assmiliation" of the jewish communities in Germany, which meant nothing else but to turn the jews into german christians. Ironically "friends" like Dohm and enemies of the jews agreed in this point: Jews have to become germans, they have to assimilate. And they couldn't understand how some jews could refuse this "grateful offer".
The racial anti-Semitism on the other hand, that came up in Austria and Germany in the 1870s and 1880s didn't offer an escape from discrimination any more. It came up in a time, when the church lost its influence. The modern anti-Semitism was a reaction to the Emancipation in many german countries, it evolved from Anti-Judaism but not without a major change in quality.
The significance of Wagner's "Judenthum" now is that he was one of the first to use this new different kind of hostility. You see him directly at the turning point from the anti-Judaism to the early forms of modern anti-Semitism.
You see that clearly in the beginning of the article, when Wagner says that the emancipation / assimilation was somehow a good thing but won't work. So he directly refused the idea that being jewish is just being a part of a religious community but something you find in the character of the person.
So when Hitler came to power and in 1935 with the Nürnberger Reichsbürgergesetze (Nuremberg Laws) many Germans were surprised that they suddenly were considered to be jews and had to face discrimination and persecution. Those were the descendens of Jews who became Christians at some point and who thought, that according to the anti-Judaism, they could live an life in equality.
But once again thanks for correcting my factual mistake about Schumanns editorship!!!
Always again...
You're just trying to prevent me from posting more about Schumann anyway...
edit: I hope I can make myself clear, english is obviously not my mother-tongue.
ents of the nineteenth century - that´s obviously not the case.