Counter-Currents
Wagner Bicentennial Symposium
My Wagner Problem—and Ours
James J. O'Meara
1,880 words
“Your themes — they almost always consist of even values, of half, quarter, eighth notes; they are syncopated and tied, to be sure, but nonetheless persevere in what is often a machinelike, stamping, hammering inflexibility and inelegance. C’est ‘boche’ dans un degre fascinant. But don’t think I am finding fault!”
“As for von Riedesel, he had fallen prey to utter confusion. ‘Beg pardon’ he said, ‘if you please . . . Bach, Palestrina . . .’ For him those names possessed the nimbus of conservative authority, and now they had been assigned to the realm of modernistic disintegration. . . . According to [Breisacher], decline, stultification, and the loss of all feeling for what was old and genuine had begun early on and in a place so respectable that no one would ever have dreamt it.” — Thomas Mann[1]
“Yes, it is. It is very strange, but with our race and in our latitude, rhythmic control is the most difficult thing for a musician to achieve. There is hardly a musician among us who can play the same note five times without minor variations. Part of the fault is that rhythm is never taught correctly to young musicians. For the Negro or African, it comes naturally — this sense of rhythm. As for myself, I can tolerate wrong notes, but I cannot stand unstable rhythm. Perhaps I was born in Africa in another existence. Once in Vienna after we had finished a recording session, I surprised everyone by telling them I was going to hear a Louis Armstrong concert. When they asked why? I told them that to go to a concert and know that for two hours the music would not get faster or slower was a great joy to me.” — Herbert von Karajan[2]
What is it about with the fascination on the Right – even the alt-Right – with the music of Wagner? Surely no one – even on the Right – is crazy enough to think that Wagner is sufficient to overthrow the Liberal Hegemony and re-establish Dharma – sweeping in like the Air Cav in Apocalypse Now, blasting out the “Ride of the Valkyries” because “it scares the hell out of the slopes.”[3] Nor is Wagner necessary for such a task.
Nietzsche, of course, can be cited either way regarding what he called The Case of Wagner. But there is stronger and more orthodox Traditionalist support for the anti-Wagner Case; or rather, for the case against the whole of “Western” music, of which Wagner is the epitome.
Take Baron Evola. So-called “classical” music, from Palestrina on, was for him no more than another part of the rotting framework of bourgeois culture, an impediment to be discarded, not mummified and worshipped.[4] It had, by the early 20th Century, split off into its component parts; the chromatic and harmonic “developments” of which Wagner was an exemplar gave rise to increasingly outré experiments, culminating in the arid academicism of Berg, Webern, Schoenberg and other Judaics who were only too glad to lose the goyishe public. The latter, demanding a healthy, danceable, popular music – as Nietzsche did as well – gravitated to jazz. So, the upshot of Western music was a musical culture dominated by Judaics and Negroes.
Alain Daniélou, who had an even better claim to be an authoritative Traditionalist,[5] also had the musical training to make essentially the same case.[6] For Daniélou, the mess starts with the Greeks, who, in their typically intellectualizing and number-obsessed way, misunderstood the system of intervals, creating a 12 tone system that combined the incompatible 5 tone (Chinese) and 7 tone (Hindu) systems. Since Western intervals were from then on inherently inaccurate, the possibilities of expression are defective, no longer matching the states of the world and the moods of the human soul. Bigger and bigger orchestras, then new instruments, like Wagner’s special tubas and Adolphe Sax’s various horns, a favorite of the Negro long before the vuvuzela invaded Europe’s soccer fields. Good Wagnerians like Strauss were finally reduced to hauling actual machinery such as aeoliphones onstage to supplement their increasingly threadbare reserves. Meanwhile, as Daniélou tends us, mediaeval Indian musicians could not just “imitate” nature but summon up actual rain storms!
The history of Western music is the history of various such ad hoc attempts to mend things without any understanding of what the problem was; a history which Westerners, in typical fashion, have labeled as “progress” and demanded the whole world adopt, like their “free markets” and “democracy.”
Unlike Evola, Daniélou sees the popularity of Negro music to lie not so much in its vaunted rhythm as in its “blue” or “bent” notes that seek to coax expression from the Massa’s oddly rigid scales. Though praising African music faute de mieux, the well-propagandized won’t like his sensible suggestion that slavery and Jim Crow kept African music vibrant, through forced separation, preventing homogenization via the “melting pot.” No tears for Bessie Smith denied access to a White hospital here.
So far from idolizing Wagner, the Traditionalist should hold him in deep suspicion. Of course, this does not mean one should join or cheer the post-modern wreckers, with their “relevant” productions set in dockside whorehouses, or the academic Grundies tut-tutting about sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and whatever other minority gripe is fashionable. Wagner is a monument of Western Culture, like the cathedrals, probably the closest predecessor to his achievement of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which one appreciates and defends however one may generally and ideologically regret the encroachment of the Semitic superstition on Europe. You play the hand you are dealt, you chose your enemies wisely. To live, Burroughs says, is to collaborate.[7] And, as he (or rather, Inspector Lee) goes on to emphasize, there are degrees of collaboration.
And I am not entirely immune to the charms of Wagner myself. Nothing is easier than to just sit back and let Wagner wash over one.[8] But it is, or should be, a guilty pleasure. As John Simon said, when he was upbraided by a reader for giving a bad review to a play at which he had been spotted laughing or crying as the case may be, of course I responded to the manipulation, that’s what angers me.[9] But unlike Simon, and like Beckett’s Malone, I prefer to remain calm;
I am content, necessarily, but not to the point of clapping my hands.[10]
So Wagner and Western music is a fait accompli, part of the thrownness of our Dasein. Two cheers! What matters is the future. If not Wagner, what?
The future of Aryan music should be, well, Aryan and Futuristic. I’ve suggested elsewhere[11] that rather than classical or metal, to say nothing of “classically influenced metal” or whatever, we should set our sights on what’s called New Age music. It’s technical sophistication and relative lack of interest in rhythm perfectly suits the Aryan Soul. Interestingly, it shares, with metal, the same contempt on the part of the both the soi disant “hip” and the middlebrow mainstream media alike.
Whereas, of course, our enemies are only too glad to see us hang ourselves on the cross of Wagner — at best, interpreted for us by the “finest” artists — Judaics, or course;[12] or at worst, another excuse to tar us with the “Nazi” brush. Meanwhile, our youth’s search for expression in music has exhausted even the domestic Negro’s wares and now seeks “world” music — anywhere but Europe.
Notes
[1] Mann, Thomas: Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend; translation by John E. Woods (New York: Knopf, 1997), Chapters 28 and 37. Both remarks are put in the impudent mouths of Judaics, one a concert promoter, the other a private scholar of hyper-conservative views, based perhaps on Leo Strauss. Mann apologizes in both cases for presenting such unflattering portraits of a people he professes to otherwise find admirable. Le pauvre Mann! He taught us, malgre lui, that the Judaic is always on both sides of every issue!
[2] “Karajan on the music of today,” readable here. “This 1963 Stereo Review interview with Herbert von Karajan was tucked inside a copy of Curt Riess’ 1955 biography of Wilhelm Furtwängler that I bought years ago from a rare book dealer.” Karajan falls victim here to the myth of “natural rhythm.” Actually, “swing” doesn’t involve metronomic rigidity but rather a kind of syncopation; Armstrong invented it himself, and later had to teach it to Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra, which was reputed to be the finest in Harlem. Later, Detroit techno legend Carl Craig returned Karajan’s compliment: “Kraftwerk were so stiff, they were funky.”
[3] To anticipate, is it not interesting that Wagner fits right in with globalist imperialism, the destruction of a traditional society, and ultimate ignominious defeat? And that the Colonel’s antics are greeting with big grins by the Negroes riding along?
[4] Julius Evola: Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2003), Chapter 23, “Modern Music and Jazz.”
[5] Daniélou was the only first generation Traditionalist to actually live for decades in an actual Traditional setting — rural India, far from the Raj or Gandhi. When he encountered the works of his fellow Frenchman Guénon, he gave them his approval, on the basis of the fearsome amount of traditional Hindu sciences he had learned, by memorization, from authentic pandits, not, as with every later Traditionalist, vice versa.
[6] See his Music and the Power of Sound: The Influence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 1995), first published in India in 1943.
[7] Nova Express (New York: Grove Press, 1992), p. 7.
[8] This is the advantage of the Gesamtkunstwerke or, as we would say today, the full multi-media experience. Tolkien has recently acquired the similar benefit of having his books, which I confess to having never found readable, turned into easily digestible films, the Gesamtkunstwerke of our age. On the LOTR films, and movies as the Gesamtkunstwerke of our age generally, see Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies; ed. Greg Johnson. San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012. If my confession of Tolkien’s unreadability sounds blasphemous, I can adduce C. S. Lewis as a parallel — on hearing a colleague describe a new book called The Castle by this Kafka chap, he concluded it was a new, great Myth for our time and eagerly sought out a copy of the book, only to find the actual text to be quite a letdown.
[9] Wagner famously made the same charge of ‘unearned effects” against Meyerbeer in Part One of his Opera and Drama of 1851.
[10] Malone Dies in Three Novels, NY: Grove Press, 1991; p. 174.
[11] See “I’ll Have a White Rock, Please: Implicit Whiteness, Aryan Futurism, & the Godlike Genius of Scott Walker” reprinted in The Homo and the Negro (Counter-Currents, 2012) and more recently “Light Entertainment: The (Implicitly) White Music of Scott Walker,” here.
[12] Another early Traditionalist, Marco Pallis, though also not averse to the charms of classical music – see his essay “The Metaphysics of Musical Counterpoint” in Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 10, No. 2. (Spring, 1976) and online here – was a pioneer in the movement to promote authentic or historically accurate performances of the classical and pre-Bach repertoire, the effect of which was to free us from over a century of romantic — i.e., Judaic – nonsense about sweaty mystical conductors and swooning fiddle virtuosos, filling every performance with enough portamento for a klezmer band.
45 comments
Negro music, at least what is called jazz, is not indigenous to them at all, but exists as a hybrid form based upon a black urban (i.e. Western city) sensibility filtered through the medium of Western instruments (with the possible exception of certain drums which are, apparently, native to the African). Also, the spiritual element in jazz (think John Coltrane-Pharoah Sanders) was not African, either, but an appropriation of Indian-Islamic mysticism. So to even mention jazz as “black” is to rather miss a point. On the other hand, one is often surprised at the musical discipline exhibited by certain negro jazz musicians, a discipline curiously lacking within the race, as a whole, and within the private lives of many of these men.
The greatest Western music includes Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner. Some have wanted to include Handel, but others relegate him to second status alongside Brahms, Schubert, and those writing for smaller venues such as Chopin, plus some of the “nationalist” composers like Sibelius. etc. Those dismissing Wagner often have a political-philosophical reason, or they are worried about his personality. To these we could cite Nietzsche and a few of his followers (think Ludovici). Nevertheless, we can rightly wonder whether Nietzsche was completely honest with himself about it. A jealous man in love with another man’s wife can do and say some weird things.
Anent Herr Karajan. He (in combination with the engineers at DGG–give credit where credit is due) are responsible for some of the most average sounding, and frankly aesthetically unappealing recordings out there. Conductors of the previous generation were more engaging, but then you have to be committed to listening in monophonic (with the exception of the ’55 Keilberth). And anyone listening to negro jazz knows that they never play it the same upon repetition.
Classically influenced “metal.” I think that might be the the Nibelung’s anvils that you are wanting to hear.
Let me be as polite as possible with my reply to this article. Classical music is one of the world’s great art forms, and if this “movement,” if it can yet even be called that, wants to attract the world’s best and brightest, it most certainly should embrace and celebrate classical music, and present itself as the defenders of this great cultural tradition precisely against the proponents of degenerate modern music, from metal to New Age and all the rest.
For WN to embrace a pathetic modern music form instead of classical music — that is, instead of the great tradition of White European culture — would simply drive out many people to whom Western culture is the most important thing in their lives. Or to put it another way, it is precisely the wish to defend traditional Western culture that brought me into WN/radical traditionalism, or whatever you wish to call it.
And given a choice between WN and classical music, I would choose classical music — because such a turn would show me that WN wasn’t what the one thing that it must be, above all else: a defender of the great Western tradition in culture.
Remember: many of the NDSAP turned to politics precisely as a means to save traditional German culture, not the other way around
In cases like this, I have to agree with Dominique Venner’s scepticism with regard to the compatibility of Traditionalism and European ethno-nationalism.
As Dominique Venner has written, “for Europeans, as for other peoples, the only authentic tradition can be their own.” Certainly, “our” music is not, and never can be, Indian traditional music, whatever its particular merits, nor should we make fools of ourselves by promoting the insipid vulgarity of “futuristic” New Age music as “our” music.
The European tradition of classical music is not a “guilty pleasure” because it isn’t “Traditional” enough, it is part of a unique European tradition through which “we” can reach a deeper awareness of who “we” are. If James J. O’Meara doesn’t feel at home in that tradition, that certainly says something about him, but not about classical European music.
I find particularly tiresome his re-hashing of the old modernist claim that the European tradition of classical music ended because its possibilities have exhausted, rather than because it has been actively subverted and destroyed by (predominantly Jewish) modernism, along with everything else that gave Europeans a dangerous sense of pride in themselves and their civilization.
T,
An polite and erudite reply, but I think you rather miss my point, which might have been clearer in the earlier articles I cite rather than this briefer note.
In paragraph one, you laud “our tradition” but in paragraph three you point out that “our” tradition has been subverted by “them.” Once you acknowledge that, the question become only — when did the rot set in? And even more important, why? I simply locate that point much earlier than you do — see the second epigraph.
As for why, as Danielou analyzes the situation, the Greek theorists made some elementary mistakes. Ironically, it is the Greek theorists that tried to adopt the Indian system, not me, and gave us a 12 tone system that inconsistently combines the Chinese 5 tones and the Indian 7. Like Ptolemaic epicyles, theorists have been trying to salvage it ever since, which is passed off as “the noble and heroic, ever progressive, uniquely Aryan” history of music that our commentators praise. As so often the case, the Judaic stepped in finally to offer their assistance.
No matter how noble the building, if the foundations have been rotted away, at some point it must be torn down and rebuilt. AND if the method employed in building the foundation is the problem that led to the rotting, there’s no point in simply starting over again with the same mistakes. As Marx said about premature socialism, “it just socializes poverty, and the same shit starts all over again.”
I enjoy luxoriating [?] in the warm bath of Keilberth’s 1952 Bayreuth recordings, but forging the White Republic requires attention to proper selection of principles.
“Take Baron Evola. So-called “classical” music, from Palestrina on, was for him no more than another part of the rotting framework of bourgeois culture, an impediment to be discarded, not mummified and worshipped.”
I have just read the chapter you cite on “Modern Music and Jazz” in “Ride the Tiger”, and I haven’t been able to locate any statement by Evola that dismisses “classical music from Palestrina on”. He does, however, seem to have only disdain for nineteenth century music, in particular that of Wagner and Beethoven, dismissing them offhandedly as merely an expression of “bourgeois pathos and melodrama”.
Without by any means claiming to have an extensive knowledge of Evola (I have only read two entire books by him, as well as Adriano Romualdi’s intellectual biography), it seems to me that his main “issue” with European art is the same as with the rest of European culture since the Renaissance – what he views as its secularist tendencies, its progressive detachment from the realm of the sacred, leading to the notion of the autonomy of art and an autonomous aesthetic realm. “In a civilization of a traditional type, art cannot be anything but religious art, in the superior, not merely devotional sense of the word”, he believes. Of course, one of the things that Wagner attempted to do was precisely to re-establish the sacred and ritualistic character of art – as is most evident in one of his greatest works, “Parsifal”. Clearly, Evola didn’t feel that Wagner succeeded. (I doubt that he would have had a higher opinion of New Age music.)
In any case, while I have found some of Evola’s writings stimulating, he is much less important to me than the greatest works of European classical music, and if I really do have to choose between them, I side with the latter.
The exploration of chromaticism and the limits of the tonal language by Wagner, carried even further by Richard Strauss, Scriabin and others, expanded the possibilities of European classical music while remaining rooted in its tradition. The problem comes when certain modernists dogmatically claimed that the possibilities of that tradition were simply exhausted and had to be thrown down the toilet, and “music” had to start over from the equivalent of a revolutionary tabula rasa. That was what became the ruling dogma after WW2. Composers working in the classical language were marginalized. The same went for painters, sculptors, architects, etc. Classical techniques were no longer seriously taught at conservatories and academies. Young artists and musicians were no longer taught the elements of their native tradition. They were dispossessed of their heritage, to the point of no longer even being able to understand it.
There was no historical necessity in this, it is not the final consequence of some sort of intrinsic rot in the foundations of our civilization, which therefore deserves to be swept away and replaced by New Age music. Had WW2 not ended the way it did, European music, painting and sculpture would no doubt have developed along different lines, as they already were well underway in doing. Artists in Italy and Germany had begun developing a style of monumental sculpture that was different from nineteenth century “bourgeois” naturalism, while still remaining firmly rooted in the classical tradition.
There have been composers who have integrated aspects of atonality with the tonal tradition, like Shostakovich, and others, like Arvo Pärt, who compose in an entirely tonal idiom, although one that is quite different from that of the nineteenth century.
Again, it is not Western civilization that is dying (or already dead) because it is intrinsically exhausted, or because that is its destiny, or because it is doomed, irrelevant and doesn’t deserve to continue to exist. All of that, in the end, is just another justification for making us disappear as a race (spiritually and physically). And it seems to me that the modernist “revolution” in art is part of a quite conscious and intentional strategy to deprive us of a cultural foothold and a sense of identity, which are necessary to survival.
Teiwaz’s comment expresses my own feelings precisely. I especially would like to single out this:
And this:
Exactly.
If Evola had trouble with Beethoven and Wagner, then that simply makes me think less of Evola. Beethoven is a fixed point of greatness at the pinnacle of Western culture, and one judges a writer based on how deeply he perceives that greatness, not judges Beethoven on the basis of some 20th-century writer’s assessment. Using the term “bourgeois” as a criticism? Spare me. It’s a completely empty term, utterly meaningless. (A) That is irrelevant to Beethoven’s art, which poured out of his very soul, and which he bled onto the page, and (b) that’s the kind of faux-criticism a Marxist would make. Utter rubbish.
M.W and Teiwaz already covered what I was going to say, which is a shame because I really wanted to leave a comment.
How about this: (it’s on topic, i swear)
I found myself talking a “deconverted white nationalist” on youtube a few days ago who had “given up” because he had gotten bored. So I asked him if he had heard of Casper David Friedrich or Arthur Schopenhauer perhaps? He said No. I pressed him a little further on something more current, ‘surely you’ve heard of William Luther Pierce at least?’ i asked, about to tell him to look up what Pierce had to say about Aesops Fables in terms of history, but again, he said No. He hadn’t even heard of William Pierce, let alone Friedrich, Schopenhauer, or Wagner.
I wonder then how this “former white nationalist” arrived at the point where he considered himself even to be a white nationalist? Without the knowledge and empathy toward this fall from grace that our people have suffered, then a persons will for our cause is one almost entirely superficial (the limited reasoning of economic man) and no different from a passing fad or a passing fetish. Which, in essence, renders a person like that of very little use to us in terms of the quality of person that our people have time and time again expressed their desire to engage with; Kevin MacDonald, Tomislav Sunic, William Pierce, David Duke etcetera.
“Read up on all of that beauty and genius that most people don’t know exists,” I said, “then make that the basis of your race.”
Articles drawing the attention of readers to the historic antipathy of jewry towards the likes of Wagner and Shakespeare; so eagerly dismissing and throwing away all of western art and literature “because it’s anti-semitic” now that they themselves are able, simply proves to the intelligent people among us the obstinate and degraded nature of these jews and their narrow minded followers which is what we have been trying to show them.
Further, each and every artist, musician, philosopher and writer (every genius) they dismiss as “anti-semitic” only goes to turn that genius into a martyr for the cause of humanity, and each time they do it, it’s a really great conversation point for ordinary people to discuss and explore the reasons why so many of our greatest thinkers and doers were so “anti-semitic” in the first place.
“Surely no one – even on the Right – is crazy enough to think that Wagner is sufficient to overthrow the Liberal Hegemony and re-establish Dharma”
I find it hard to believe that was the point.
Unless it was. In which case I really am in the wrong place!
I agree completely. “Dharma”? What do I care about “Dharma”? Answer: nothing at all.
The very thing that makes White European man worth preserving is because he gives birth to masters such as Beeethoven, Wagner, Friedrich, Milton, Byron, Goethe, Karajan, and so forth.
If White European man abandons these titans and turns to “Dharma” or Enya or metal or whatever other irrelevancies, then he’s no longer worth preserving and might as well miscegenate himself into non-existence, then he’s no better than any other race.
I am against the Judaic world order precisely because it spits on those great luminaries, and the tradition of which they are a part. Someone who opposes Wagner is, to me, no different than the Culture-of-Critiquers who do stage defamatory productions set in “dockside whorehouses” or concentration camps or what not: a cultural enemy.
WN, if it is to be worth anything, must be for White Europeans who love their own cultural heritage and learn about it and cherish it and defend it and feel it in their blood as something that resonates with them deeply, that is part of their soul, that they love as they love their own father, not for White Europeans who turn their backs on their own history and seek out foreign cultures with which to supplant it — be they Indian or whatever else.
And I only accept the term “Aryan” as something I can strive for if it means “White European,” not if it sets Indian ideas over traditional White European ones.
Is the author saying that we should throw out the 12 tone system (and almost all classical music and pop music) and become New Age aficionados? Good luck getting people on board with that. I personally don’t like much Wagner music because it was part of the Romantic period of art and music that holds no interest for me. BTW, does Enya count as New Age? I actually like some of her music.
Dear Avid Fan:
Inherit my mantle and surpass my achievements. Your comment on disliking Romantic music interests me. What do you prefer? As for Enya, without her, how could anyone die a heroic death in LOTR?
James J. O’Meara in blockquote:
Enjoying some fava beans, and a nice Chianti with that liver?
For the merging of metal and classical, Epica is the band to look at. They have lyrics that are right along with our sort of metapolitical thinking. Sensorium, in particular, is a song worthy of consideration.
“Is the author saying that we should throw out … almost all classical music … and become New Age aficionados? Good luck getting people on board with that. ”
Really? We don’t need to “throw out” classical music; it’s already gone. Have you looked at the sales of classical cds vs. New Age? People have been fleeing from the concert halls for literally a century; only the genre of “popular” music changes. Classical music exists today only as a tax write-off for rich Jews. As document earlier this week on this site, even the Nazis hated Wagner; even Hitler couldn’t force them to sit through Meistersinger once a year.
So, if Hitler couldn’t do it, what kind of monster totalitarian system can we imagine that would force everyone to listen to Wagner sole because it’s their duty as Good White Citizens? What would the point of that be? As I say, Wagner is neither necessary nor sufficient for the White revolution.
Venner is just a classic “crackpot realist”. Traditionalist like Evola and Danielou are far more “realistic”. Find out why people are fleeing “classical” music, change accordingly, win.
The good news, if the “right” could only open their eyes, is that MOST people hate classical music for the RIGHT reasons. Even Karajan admitted he’ d rather listen to Louis Armstrong. We can build on that, IF we are more interested in winning than in “conserving” the music of Judaic “vituosi.”
Just ask Virgil Thompson:
VT: The sophistication of the Rolling Stones or the Beatles is very slight compared to what Ornette Coleman does, which is multirhythmic, polytonal, in an elaboration of musical device that the classical world can hardly match. Alain Daniélou thinks that the wildness with which the adolescent world takes on the pop stuff – has for the last ten or more years – is simply a reinstatement of the old Greek corybantic troupes.
JR : I think he’s right”
(From the New York Review of Books, September 26, 1968)
The Beatles and Rolling Stones, or Coleman? What a profound contradistinction. Almost like saying that a Big Mac is as not as nutritious as a Whopper because it doesn’t contain a slice of tomato.
These discussions ought to turn upon a transcendental theory of aesthetics, and not just what one “happens to like.” Any theory of aesthetics that has been wholly subsumed under politics, or social fashion, or mere technique, or base eros is not a real understanding of aesthetics because these temporal limitations tend to deny the hierarchical nature of the aesthetic experience. Here we can learn from Schopenhauer’s critic of music. And as the Classical aestheticians understood, art is a gift from the Muses, but even they exist in order, from vulgar to royal. Plato’s Socrates knew this a long time ago, although it has taken us more than a while to forget it.
You can’t POSSIBLY be misunderstanding the Karajan point that badly.
The reason he said that was to shame his orchestra, because they were not keeping time, but accelerating or decelerating. It was a dig at the orchestra, like a shaming from a drill instructor, saying that even these negro musicians would have more success staying in tempo than the orchestra was.
He was not ACTUALLY going to go to a Louis Armstrong concert. It was to get them, for heaven’s sake, to play in tempo.
He used to say all kinds of things to try to get the orchestra to play in unison — once even saying, in frustration, that he’s like to “throw a rope around them, pour gasoline over them, and set them on fire.” That too was not something he was ACTUALLY going to do. Sometimes, as a conductor, you have to call them out, like a drill instructor, to get them to play right, and these digs were one method of doing so.
Oh, just as they hate Shakespeare and all great literature, hate Rembrandt and all great painting, etc., and listen to rap and hip-hop and watch Jewish TV and Jewish movies, etc?
What kind of argument is that?: “The people in a Judified world don’t like it, therefore it’s no good.” Because that’s the argument you’re making.
You’re looking at people at the tail end of a lifetime of degenerate brainwashing and cultural-suppression and deeming their indoctrinated selves representative of some kind of natural inclinations.
The reason they don’t like it is because they’ve never been exposed to it, especially from a young age; they haven’t grow up with it, they don’t feel it as their own. It’s been suppressed, and in its place, debased tribal noise has been drummed into peoples’ skulls.
By that line of reasoning, WE should just try to “adopt” whatever’s on the Top 40 charts. I.e., WE should pander to the lowest common denominator.
The point of the great cultural tradition in Western art was to elevate man above his basest, most primitive self. The Judaic culture is to reduce man to something barely above an ape.
If we pander like they do, we’re no better than they are. In fact, we’re worse, because they at least destroyed Western culture because it was something foreign to them; we’d be abandoning it when it’s our own.
The Classical Tradition has an abundance of marches and music that puts one in a martial mood. This is what we need now. You seem to want more luxurious or Dorian type modes.
Also Irish Revolutionary Songs are good for putting one in the right mood. Hitler like the Harvard Fight song.
Our Classical Music is very big and kind of like team sports. Sometimes one does want the solitary musician. But our Tradition has that kind of virtuosity as well be it piano, violin, or Spanish Guitar. Is it enough? Tagore said ours was the music of the day whereas theirs was the music of night. There might some Truth there. So No, we don’t give up Classical. But sure, we should be open to new Movements of the Spirit.
Ok James,
What are your top New Age artists? I’m a stranger in a strange land when it comes to New Age, and from what I understand there’s quite a bit of variation therein. I’ll give it a whirl and report back.
Gee, James you really are trying to be a provocateur aren’t you?
The funny thing about conductors is that they are responsible for the rhythm or pace of a piece of music. So, it seems to me that Herbert Von Karajan is projecting his own lack of rhythm. If it is stilted, it is his fault as the musicians are required to follow him.
Perhaps he would have been happy in Bill Clinton’s voodoo sax/sex club.
No. Karajan was known as having faultless rhythm, so much so that in one of the famous scientific experiments in which he participated, his ability to keep tempo was technically measured, and it turned out to be so accurate that the experimenter concluded that he “must have a metronome in his head.” But orchestras can be willful, and in particular have a tendency to play ever faster, so they sometimes demand extraordinary persuasion to be kept in time. If that weren’t the case, if conductors could simply magically keep them in unison, then conductors wouldn’t need rehearsals at all, and every piece could be performed on sight, just with the conductor time-beating. Even the best conductor/orchestra combination takes practice — often LOTS of practice — to get in synch.
“Conductors … are responsible for the rhythm or pace of a piece of music” — yet, but they don’t physically manipulate the players, they can only lead them; and if the musicians are willful, they need considerable rehearsal time (and yes, sometimes the kind of browbeating that a drill instructor might deliver) to play together.
Even the legendary Toscanini was known to storm out of rehearsals with the Vienna Philharmonic when they weren’t cooperating.
A metronome in the head is not the same kind of rhythm that blacks supposedly have. Tick tock is not rhythm. It’s counting.
The article contains minor incorrect details: neither Berg nor Webern were Jewish, actually after 1938 Webern became a Nazi sympathiser. (His music was nevertheless banned by the regime.)
“Normal” (tonal) classical composition goes on to this very day. It was never discontinued, it just wasn’t supported any more after WW2. In Germany, the US occupation authorities even had a specific policy of encouraging “modern” (atonal and ever more radical) music and discouraging anything that had anything to do with the post-Romantic tradition.
Actually even though the first fully atonal composer was a Jew (he didn’t actually invent it, he was just the first one to go all the way), it’s much more typical of Jews to write syrupy pop music (or even classical music with syrupy and easily accessible melodies, Mendelssohn being a case in point), and selling it to the masses. Amy Winehouse is a much more typical Jewish “composer” than Schoenberg. Selling syrupy trash is what they excel at. Modern compositions were simply a tool they used to destroy the classical tradition, but obviously modern classical would have happened anyway. It just wouldn’t have been so dominant.
I haven’t heard much modern classical, so I will not judge here whether there’s any value in it. However, having read about Webern’s Nazi sympathies and Messiaen’s anti-Vatican II traditionalist Catholicism and his compositions based on birdsong lighted up some interest in me, but I haven’t so far had the time to explore.
Excellent comment.
I think the smartest thing the WN Right could possibly do vis a vis Schoenberg is actually parse his music theoretically and realize how downright committed and devoted that he really was to the Western music tradition. He wasn’t like Jackson Pollock, just throwing up a bunch of spatterings onto the canvas. His was a very disciplined sort of music.
Twelve-tone composition is pretty much Western, regardless of whether or not some Jew jumped along for the ride. It is the Faustian expression of grasping toward the limits of possibility.
And yes, do yourself a favor and check out Messiaen! I also like Iannis Xenakis, one of his students. This is not pleasant music! It’s the construction of cantilevers and inclined pylons reaching to the beyond.
Ah, here you have the other side of the problem.
Izak (note the name) slyly undermines what I do perceive as a sincere and worthwhile (if misguided, due to zeroing in on the wrong target) effort by Mr. O’Mera to de-Judify music.
But Izak comes in and suggests that no, we should embrace the Judaic degeneracy.
Neither option is necessary. Neither option is desirable. Neither option is warranted.
In fact, BOTH Schoenberg and Amy Winehouse are typically Jewish — the one individual destroys great music through its abstractness (yes, just like Picasso or Jackson Pollock does in painting) and the other through schmaltz.
As ever, the NSDAP took the right approach — not because they got everything right, but when it came to art (which was the true love, and the reason they did all that they did), they had the correct instincts, decrying BOTH abstract rubbish such as Schoenberg AND negro music.
“Normal” (tonal) classical composition goes on to this very day. It was never discontinued, it just wasn’t supported any more after WW2. In Germany, the US occupation authorities even had a specific policy of encouraging “modern” (atonal and ever more radical) music and discouraging anything that had anything to do with the post-Romantic tradition.”
This is an excellent point, and one that we must consider above all others.
The situation has an exact parallel to visual art, where traditional, non-abstract painting still exists, though it is ignored and condemned by the Jewish-controlled art establishment. See the excellent Web site called The Art Renewal Center (www.artrenewal.org) on this.
An equivalent project could and should be created for the classical tradition in music. I know of a few composers who continued writing in the tonal Western tradition (Havergal Brian, Howard Hanson) in the 20th century, but am not as familiar with their works as I should be. Undoubtedly there are many more who slave in obscurity, and others who would have been great composers but gave up, owing to the anti-Romantic cultural climate.
Furthermore, the NSDAP were right not to endorse Webern, just as they were to right not to endorse the painter Emil Nolde, a modernist who was also an NSDAP supporter. They took the correct approach: “Your political support is wanted, but your style of art undermines the great tradition, which is what we need to defend and bolster and celebrate in the face of its attackers.”
If the NSDAP had continued, we would today still have a living tradition in tonal Western classical music, just as we would still have representational painting, poetry that wasn’t abstract gibberish, and so forth.
Izak (note the name) slyly undermines
Yes. This contributor often finds ways to defend Jews, minimize the significance of their influence, and criticize their critics, James J. O’Meara in this case.
Look, I’m sorry, but New Age music is fucking awful.
It’s just awful. It’s terrible. Nothing good comes from it. It’s the ultimate in syncretistic weak-willed milquetoast wussy crap. I realize I’m being a tad vulgar, but broadly speaking, no one respects it except for dorks, dweebs and other assorted nerdlingers.
Maybe instead of trying to demonize everything about the post-medieval history of Western civilization, we ought to examine the basic thrust of how it all went and figure out why it turned out how it did. What I see as a fairly consistent theme in the development of Western music is its bombasticity. It’s very intense music. The Baroque was a highly intense era, where new technologies were utilized to create impossibly complex and mind-bending melodies, taking the polyphonic approach of the Renaissance and amplifying it tenfold. The Classical period brought us operas that dealt with intense, life-or-death questions and gave them a strong and grandiose presence never seen before. The Romantic period opened up a whole bunch of tonal possibilities and experimented with tension and expectation. We all might hate modernist music to some degree or another, but regardless of Schoenberg’s influence, I see the opening up of tonality and experiments with chromaticism and rhythm as a uniquely and distinctly Western phenomenon, and I’m very proud of the some of the better and more tasteful examples of this sort of melodic and rhythmic play (among the examples, Messiaen, Dutilleux, and Antheil).
Rock music, whatever its worth, has always opted for extremity and bombasticity, not in rhythm or tonality, but in sheer timbre. Blacks might have invented rock, but the white man kept increasing the gain and distorting the string tones more and more, adding more and more noise, bringing the listening experience to new plateaus of strength and boldness, to the point where some of it (Slayer, for instance) becomes a test of physical endurance, for both the musician and the listener. The threshold between “mind” and “body” is crossed.
If “The White Republic” is going to have Enya as their officially state-sponsored musician, then I will seriously have to consider partying down with the negroes (and apparently negrified whites) and their scary, spooky “rock and/or roll music” elsewhere.
Whites don’t need to have their “souls soothed” with depressingly bland New Age schlock. Young white men are crying out for manly, libidinous music that speaks to them, and that’s why so many of them prefer Eminem and Insane Clown Posse to hacks like Enya. It’s not because they’re being brainwashed by the evil Jews, or victims, or anything like that. It’s because neither the music industry nor most of the underground is offering life-affirming alternatives to what people see as predominately black music, and as much as we can complain about the despondent state of black influence on pop culture, there are basically no themes in your average gangsta rap song that don’t show up in the Old Norse flytings. Boasts about violence? Check. Boasts about getting laid? Check. Insults and put-downs to the effect of “you have exclusively passive anal intercourse with other men”? You betcha.
Plus I’m really failing to see how anyone can say that New Age music is “traditionalist” when it doesn’t affirm any sort of metaphysical worldview or have any consistent or approachable symbolism that is consonant with any sort of exoteric or esoteric doctrine. If Rene Guenon had anything to say about New Age, he’d probably view it as completely counterinitiatory. You gotta remember, Guenon loves Dante, and Dante was highly influenced by Guillaume de Machaut. I think the most “traditional” music would probably revive isorhythm and assign symbolic or allegorical concepts to the overarching rhythmic cycles in each motet, or something like this. But then, the evil modern Jew-loving decadents of classical music did this in the 20th century, so you know… I guess we can’t win…
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Negrified music is not “scary” or “spooky” (how very culture-of-critique of you to imply a “phobia” to a reaction that is actually disgust); it’s just the worst kind of baseness.
I have no great love for New Age music, but I would certainly rank it above rock, or metal, or any other negrified musical form.
Yes, white men want powerful music (powerful, not “bombastic” — your use of that term is very culture of critique as well; throw in “pretentious” and you will out yourself, as if your name doesn’t already). But the point of the Western art tradition was to elevate and ennoble the masculine in achieving the Sublime. Rock music of all sorts merely diminishes man to his simian component.
The difference between Beethoven and rock music is like the difference between an NSDAP rally, with young men marching in unison, versus a riot of drunken louts smashing windows and scrawling graffiti on buildings. Both as nominally expressions of male impulse, but the former is the building block of a great civilization, united by blood, even as each individual is fulfilled being part of something greater than themselves, while the latter is merely the subhuman degeneracy of a primitive society that is tearing itself apart.
OK, dude. Sorry my post wasn’t fringey and Victorian enough for you. Keep stewing in hatred and ressentiment (in the Nietzschean sense) while all of your white brothers and sisters listen to rock’n’roll and appreciate each other’s company as the world keeps getting smaller and smaller and the abyss looms closer and closer on the horizon.
While you’re rejecting rock music, you also might want to reject all other Western art that contradicts your insanely presumptuous and naive point about “the western art tradition” and its “ennobling of the masculine to reach the sublime.” Make sure you ignore all lyric verse from the 17th century, because some if it might make you cry and wonder with sputtering agony about how Western man was pre-Judaified. After all, how could such and Anglo-Saxon name like John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester write poems with such Judaized Jewish Judaism!
Be sure to ignore all of the more upsetting parts of the Old Norse and Icelandic tradition, because as I’ve mentioned, it’s just a little bit too much like rap when they get into boasting contests. Definitely don’t pay attention to any of Mozart’s operas, because Cosi Fan Tutti doesn’t seem so easy to reconcile with your delusions. Ignore Juvenal or any of the Roman satirists. Definitely doesn’t fit with your imaginary version of Western art. And please, please — whatever you do — stay the fuck away from the Occitan French Troubadour Fabliau. Don’t even fuck with that. I seriously think you’ll be at risk for an aneurysm. Ignore everything about the history of your people that doesn’t fit neatly into your fantastical worldview. Best never to go straight to the sources directly and to just stay safe, watching BBC sex fantasies with Roger Scruton.
Oh and by the way, about half the stuff I’ve just mentioned was written specifically for musical performance.
I’d go on. I could think of a hundred more examples of “negrified” music, before the Negro or Jew was ever a problem. But I’ve given you enough.
Keep stewing in hatred and ressentiment (in the Nietzschean sense
I see a person responding to your points not stewing in a hatred or resentment. You sure seem to like Jewish debate tropes.
You’re the one claiming credible parallels between negro rappers and the Norse. This is based, apparently, on comically superficial similarities in broad themes like violence. Next, Issac, I suppose you’ll be telling us The Cosby Show fits in the stream of the Western dramatic tradition as much as King Lear and Oedipus Rex. After all, they all use Western devices like plot, characterization and mimesis.
What is your position on the Jews? Do you believe Jews should be excluded without exception from Western lands or not?
You use Jewish tropes, mock nationalists, make bandwagon appeals (hey rap is white males are drawn to!), and admire Jewish aesthetics. A fair question I believe.
My goodness there is more to “new age” than Enya
How about Loreena McKennitt, Kerstin Blodig and Ian Melrose,(Celtic-Scandinavian) Fire and Ice, Runescape, Wizard Women of the North, Medieval Babes, Sequentia (especially Edda), Winglord, Arkona, Leibach, Burzum, etc, etc.
Yes indeed. A lot of New Age music, like a lot of rock, has continuities or echoes of European folk music and European Early music. So yes, I like Enya and Loreena McKennitt . . . and I like Sequentia. Edda is wonderful, as are their Hildegard von Bingen CDs.
One of my favorite “winter” albums is by an Early Music ensemble called Rondellus: Sabbatum: Medieval Tribute to Black Sabbath
— because yes, Black Sabbath is, harmonically speaking, quite “medieval.”
One of my Desert Island discs is Hildegard von Bingen performed by Joscelyn Montgomery and David Lynch (yes, that David Lynch): Lux Vivens (Living Light): The Music Of Hildegard Von Bingen
What medieval sacred music and New Age music often have in common is a feeling of timelessness.
No matter what the source or pedigree of the underlying materials, white genius can make worthy aesthetic objects. And ultimately, for me, the aesthetic quality of an art work is the only consideration. Ideological and historical and philosophical and theoretical quibbles about origins, metaphysics, politcal correctness, etc. are irrelevant and boring to me if an art work is beautiful, although they often go a long way to explaining why some things are ugly. Wagner and Beethoven produce supremely beautiful music, and if Evola could not see that, then his tastes were defective or blocked by bad ideas.
Well, New Age also includes Yanni. I hate Yanni.
But if Medieval ethnomusicology is considered “New Age,” then I have no issues with that.
I listen to Sequentia (they’re not that good overall IMO, but their Hildegard stuff is nice), Millenarium, Modo Antiquo, La Reverdie, Estampie (they’re pretty darn anachronistic), and La Nef (they do original compositions). I don’t consider any of that New Age, but if it is, then that would alter my opinion of New Age for sure.
And yes, without a doubt. I disagree with Evola about much of what he said regarding art. But we have to recognize that in addition to doing some of the most harmonious symphonies of all time, Beethoven also composed the Grosse Fugue. And that’s an important part of our tradition that we can’t throw away like a bunch of neo-Puritans, whether we might personally enjoy it for ourselves or not.
BTW, pardon my anger toward this M.W. guy. I don’t respect people who start assuming that I’m some evil Jew because of my first name. That is the ultimate in intellectual laziness.
Sure there is a lot of utterly insipid New Age music, just as there is a lot of terrible pop. But why dwell on it?
Mostly because saying “New Age music ought to be the expression of the soul of the Aryan man for our new movement” is tantamount to saying “Pop music ought to be the expression of the soul of the Aryan man for our new movement.” This sort of reductionism denies us of who we really are. You can’t just put Western culture in a tight, neat-fitting package and say, “Ah! There we go!” and it’s even more demeaning and insulting to say that when Western man chooses to be influenced by something like black music, he’s being taken over or beaten down by it, as if all these young whites in America are nothing more than passive sponge-like receptacles. Maybe what the white man sees in rock music reflects something that he’s always had in his tradition, whether he knows this historically or not.
What matters is that we can’t just say, “Ah, no! Forget all of that hedonistic nonsense! Just throw it all away and listen to New Age music! It’s completely harmless and weak! It’ll make you want to dance around a maypole while dressed up like a Wiccan, or something! That’s cute!” There’s a reason that I feel so strongly that New Age music is a big ball of corporate schlock. If it’s really “white,” then it sounds like the last dying gasps of white history. There’s a reason people typically associate New Age music with old and decrepit aging boomers.
I think it would be far more useful to harness the sort of energy that whites extrapolate and inwardly refine from music styles like rap and rock, and turn it into something that helps to inform their knowledge of themselves and who they are — and not in a prescriptive or didactic manner. Black metal is a start. It could go further.
BTW, pardon my anger toward this M.W. guy. I don’t respect people who start assuming that I’m some evil Jew because of my first name. That is the ultimate in intellectual laziness.
Except the assumption wasn’t only because of your name, but, as MW made perfectly clear, the substance of your comments, your attempt to undermine O’Meara while defending Judaic degeneracy with glib parallels. Nice try though.
Much of Evola’s thinking I find quite appealing. If his views lead to the dismissal of European Classical Music, Opera and Ballet however, there must be some grave errors in his thinking. The greatness of a Beethoven or Wagner simply dwarfs all Traditionalist theorizing. The compatibility of Traditionalism and European Nationalism remains an issue.
Music is obviously one field of culture where there has been real progress since the time of the Greeks. That alone discomfits people who wish to see decline in all things.
The compatibility of Traditionalism and European Nationalism remains an issue.
But is there a compatibility problem, or is the real problem that many contemporary Traditionalists basically reject nationalism? I see evidence nationalists are willing to draw lessons, inspiration and insights from traditionalists. I’m not sure it goes the other way. Maybe I’m mistaken. The strict Traditionalists always seem to be the ones complaining about the incompatibilities.
Now here is an interesting article.
https://counter-currents.com/2011/11/tomorrow-belongs-to-me/
What a great new age song!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co
It appears that not all the links work in the article.
I think National Socialist Germany was wrong when it banned the works of Emil Nolde. I do agree that Arno Breker and Joseph Thorak were better, but Nolde’s art was also valid: it was based on German folk art, and didn’t look awful at all. I also don’t think Webern would have done any harm if he was allowed to have some performances for people willing to listen to a concert of horror film music. It would also have been a propaganda coup – probably already in the 1930s or 40s, but more importantly posthumously, because it just makes it all the more difficult to defend them now, and we all know how important that is. And even aside from Webern (whose talent and musical virtues might be debated), there was Hindemith: nobody can explain to me what advantage there was in making Egk leader of the Reichsmusikkammer’s composers’ section while banning Hindemith… And that was lasting damage, because Hindemith’s creativity suffered as a result. Not to mention the Aryan conductors forced to leave, especially Fritz Busch.
I personally prefer Romantic or post-Romantic music, but I still can see no value in banning any kind of music, except if it’s clearly destructive (which is more about the lyrics and the message conveyed in music videos etc. than anything else). After all, Nazi Germany in the end produced a huge quantity of light entertainment music (which was not very valuable), and they simply used trashy music for good ends – to entertain people and to keep them going during the war.
In Hungary there is a genre called “nemzeti rock” (national rock), which musically is a kind of rock (or metal) music mixed with some folkish elements, and the lyrics are usually highly nationalistic. (It grew out of the skinhead/Oi scene, but its audience is now way way bigger than the skinhead scene ever was.) Over the past five years or so they have been among the best selling Hungarian artists: this was clearly useful music. But as to the quality… they are not my cup of tea. Well, you can check for yourself, just search for Kárpátia, Hungarica, Ismerős Arcok, Romantikus Erőszak. Now there is in Hungary a hip-hop artist called Fankadeli with nationalistic lyrics, and he often performs alongside the “national rock” bands.
So I think we needn’t prescribe any “official” music for the future White Republic. It can be anything sufficiently popular. It can even be hip-hop. (Before he became famous, Eminem had a hip-hop song venting his anger about Niggers beating him up and f*ing white girls etc. If young whites find it entertaining, why deny them the pleasure of having stupid hip-hop songs? I’m sure whites can make better hip-hop than blacks, and if blacks can write anti-white lyrics, than whites can certainly write anti-black or pro-white lyrics. Once they have an aggressive White Hip-Hop, Nigger Hip-Hop will probably lose a lot of its appeal, especially if it won’t be played on radio or TV.) Even NS Germany used jazz in the end as light entertainment.
Or think about atonal music, or ambient ‘music’, etc. In martial industrial such music is used to produce WNist, or NS, or similar effects. The artists usually deny that they are “Nazi”, and this might even be true – but the fact remains, that while most people here would describe the music as Entartete Musik, it still employs a kind of “Nazi chic”, and many of its listeners (not many people) will inevitably become attracted to WNism, or National Socialism, or Traditionalism, or whatever anti-System ideology. The same thing could be said of NSBM, which might be artistically worthless (I personally find some black metal worthy, but I no longer listen to that type of music regularly), but it nevertheless is useful, and I can see no reason to ban this type of music in a future White Republic.
The way I imagine it is that there would be a core of supported art-music (Wagner, Beethoven, Bruckner, etc.) containing the best classics from the common practice period (and some after it, like Richard Strauss or even maybe Carl Orff, Britten, possibly Shostakovich and Prokofiev), some art-music with minimal support (e.g. Webern – high quality horror film music has its place, but it needn’t be too prominent), and a huge supported pro-White light entertainment music, where support would be given in proportion to popular appeal with some minimal requirements of pro-Whiteness. (NS Germany had a lot of light entertainment songs about the usual topic of a guy meeting a woman, etc. I can see no reason why a future White Republic couldn’t have anything like that.) I don’t think it’s technically feasible to ban any music outright: the internet will stay with us, and if something is illegal, well, people will simply download them from a foreign server using proxies etc.
Sorry for the overly long comment.
It is easy to second-guess the NSDAP’s cultural policy RE Hindemith and others. “Cultural policy” was, of course, the norm in Europe, not just among “totalitarian” societies, and under Weimar, German culture, high and low, had been massively and rapidly debased, so it was natural that the NSDAP, once in power, would enter the realm of cultural policy with a sense of urgency. Hitler, of course, added a great deal to that urgency because of his own artistic talents and interests. But a lot of their policies made no sense. Why, for example, Schrecker was considered decadent and Richard Strauss was not is beyond me.
Still, Hitler’s aesthetic and cultural instincts were generally sound. Surprisingly, a lot of what was painted, sculpted, built, and composed in the Third Reich was broadly “modern” in style, but it was an an aesthetically attractive and intelligible modernism.
I don’t really believe in heavy-handed censorship. What is most important is for the state to establish the highest cultural standards and educate people to appreciate them, all of which can be done behind closed doors by instituting changes at the highest levels, e.g., the administrations of conservatories, art schools, museums, opera and symphony companies, etc. The key, as always, is to install our people in a position to exercise cultural hegemony. If that is taken care of, everything else can find its own level.
As for certain avant garde musical forms: Schoenberg’s 12 tone music was, aesthetically, a rapidly a spent force. It was promoted for cultural, political, and ethnic motives. Left to its own devices, it would have been rapidly confined to horror movie soundtracks (an observation first made, I believe, by Colin Wilson). I am for a fairly laissez-faire attitude toward experimental music. It should not be allowed to eclipse the classics, but there should be festivals and specialty orchestras for it, much as there are for Baroque and Early Music. There are some genuinely great “modernist” composers: Messiaen, Lutoslawski, and Penderecki come immediately to mind. The world would be poorer if those works were not created.
For me, the only thing that matters about art is aesthetic quality. I am, therefore, uninterested in philosophical questions like “Is it art?,” or moral questions about whether a work of art is ethical, or political and racial questions like “Is it white?” — for if a work is of aesthetic value, that really trumps all other considerations.
This is why I am impatient with arguments that we should not like pop music or jazz because of real and exaggerated African elements, or Jewish elements, for the simple reason that white people can appreciate the art, literature, cuisine, architecture, mythology, etc. of other races without thereby losing a sense of who we are.
I agree with almost everything you wrote here. Of course hindsight is 20/20, it’s easy to give advice to Hitler (or to anybody) from three quarters of a century later. I myself find it easy to think about things I did when I was younger, and say “oh, i could have done so much better”. The difficult thing is to do the right thing at the time.
One remark: I don’t know the music of Schrecker, but was he not Jewish? Because then it would make sense that they simply banned and labelled “degenerate” all Jewish composers. A somewhat heavy-handed approach (and one that deprives us of some great music, like Mendelssohn and Mahler), but it’s something I can understand. (I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I can understand it.) What is more difficult to understand is their behaviour towards Aryan composers. But, as you write, at the end of the day even that could be understood.
Odd, I thought the Schrecker was a German but yes, he was half-Jewish. That would explain things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schrecker
He is a very fine composer nonetheless. Why not just say, “Schrecker, you’re a fine composer in the German tradition, but you are a half-Jew, so we Germans will have to admire you from afar.” The objection I have is confounding racial-political judgments with aesthetic ones.
Hindemith’s wife was Jewish, which did not help his case, but it would not have been an insuperable problem.
Hindemith’s wife was only half Jewish, which should have been almost fully OK.
Re German policy and heavy-handedness: I think that it’s difficult to convey such subtlety. It’s just easier to say they are all ‘degenerate’. BTW Hitler himself agreed that some Jews might be great artists, most notably he had a high opinion of Mahler as a conductor. (We don’t know what he thought of Mahler’s music, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually liked it.) But simply labelling all Jewish art (meaning all art produced by Jews) degenerate was the easy way, politically, legally, technically. He just didn’t want to leave backdoors open, and he would rather have thrown out some legitimate art if he could cleanse the rest. Especially since no Jew was among his favourite artists.
Hitler was thinking of the very long run, and of the very big picture, and as long as one does not build fundamental errors into one’s structure from the start, one can be a bit cavalier, e.g., preferring Egk over Hindemith, on the assumption that once Germans gain control over their cultural destiny, greater composers will come along — and any early errors and injustices will be forgotten. Hitler was quite realistic about the middling quality of the works chosen for his great art shows in Munich, but he believed that if the basic principle and framework for promoting authentically German art were in place that great German artists would come along eventually, and he was correct about that. One cannot force art, any more than one can force a tree to grow. But that said, one can do a great deal to cultivate artists, just as one can do a great deal to cultivate trees.
I pretty much agree 100% with everything you’ve said here.
Excellent post.
In addition, I’ll also point to one of my hidden biases, which is that I think what matters more about art is how it is A) criticized and received by professional commentators (since they tend to tell people about which lens through which they need to view something) and B) officially presented to the masses. Even highly degenerate art forms have their place, the same way that alcohol and cigarettes have their place. What matters is the process that they must go through before they finally reach the masses.
And I’m not, for the record, even against banning art. If the government forces art to go underground, then it will certainly have more force and power upon those brave enough to seek it out. So banning art often affirms it. But people at least need to realize that metapolitical dimension to the act of banning and book-burning, especially since we live in an age where, as you noted, information is so easily accessible.
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