Wagner and Stravinsky

Stravinsky's musical antipathy to Wagner is well known, despite Stravinsky's teachers such as Rimsky-Korsakov being ardent Wagnerians. Stravinsky's music is, in many ways, a kind of violent counter reaction against Wagner. If, for Wagner, music was "the language of passion and emotion" (Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation) then, for Stravinsky, music was "incapable of expressing emotion" — and if it did, it was "only an illusion" (Stravinsky, The Poetics of Music).

One of the strangest things about posterity is that it is so reliant on myth making. The most classic example of this is the myth about Salieri being so jealous of Mozart's gifts as a composer that Salieri murdered him by poisoning him. The other now classic myth is that Wagner the Prophet of Genocidal anti-Semitism hated Jews so much he wanted them all to die in an apocalyptic Untergang, and, which Hitler, the true disciple of his Prophet, faithfully realised.

We have already seen again and again that the passage that allegedly convicts Wagner is one where he actually calls for the Utopian collapse (Untergang) of the old order, whereby the profound ethnic divisions between Christian and Jew would go up in flames in an apocalyptic change to society: "thus will we be united and without difference!" ("so sind wir einig und ununterschieden") — he triumphantly exclaims. These sort of painful ethnic or religious divisions of which Wagner speaks can still be felt most immediately today in all nations of the world.

What then of Stravinsky? I quote from the New York Review of Books:

Stravinsky protested his inclusion in the 1938 Düsseldorf exhibition of “Entartete Musik.” He made formal complaint to the German Bureau of Foreign Affairs: “My adversaries even go so far as to make fallacious insinuations…implying that I am a Jew, [ignoring] that my ancestors were members of the Polish nobility.” His campaign to rehabilitate himself with the Nazis was successful. In January 1939 Herr Strecker wrote, “I can happily inform you that your standing in Germany is apparently entirely restored.” Earlier, Stravinsky had been very quick to comply with Strecker’s request that he assist in countering “rumors, particularly that of your being a Jewish Bolshevik.” Stravinsky’s declaration, dated “Holy Saturday, 1933,” volunteered, besides the requisite genealogical data establishing his Aryan and aristocratic status back to his grandparents’ generation, the additional information that “I loathe all communism, Marxism, the execrable Soviet monster, and also all liberalism, democratism, atheism, etc.”

He also venerated Mussolini:

I don't believe that anyone venerates Mussolini more than I... I know many exalted personages, and my artist's mind does not shrink from political and social issues. Well, after having seen so many events and so many more or less representative men, I have an overpowering urge to render homage to your Duce. He is the saviour of Italy and – let us hope – Europe. 

Unless my ears deceive me, the voice of Rome is the voice of Il Duce. I told him that I felt like a fascist myself... 

In spite of being extremely busy, Mussolini did me the great honour of conversing with me for three-quarters of an hour. We talked about music, art and politics.

And, how is he treated in Israel today? Well, this says it all:

Here is a typical description of Kastchei:

Kastchei, the green-taloned ogre, is the embodiment of evil. His soul does not dwell in his misshapen body, but is carefully preserved beyond reach of harm in a precious casket. So long as it remains intact Kastchei is immortal and retains his power for mischief, holding maidens captive and turning their male defenders to stone. Their redemption can be effected only by gaining access to the casket and destroying the ogre's soul.

Yet do we read endless conspiracy theories about whether Kastchei is Jewish and if the message of the Firebird is about the incitation to genocide? No.

Moreover, did Stravinsky ever write, speaking of the relationship between Russian and Jewish people that they overcome their deep ethnic divide and tensions in the apocalyptic collapse of the old world order, so "that we will be united and without difference!" (so sind wir einig und ununterschieden!)? No — but Wagner did.

The trouble is that Wagner did play with fire in daring to force Germans to confront or even confess to a subconscious deep feeling of ethnic unease with Jews. It is an unease felt in ethnic tensions in any country in the world. However, Wagner also dared to say that however deep and historically ingrained these seemingly insurmountable ethnic divisions might be, that there is a Utopian hope that in an apocalypse of the old order, like that of Götterdämmerung, these divisions may also go up in flames: "so sind wir einig und ununterschieden!" Indeed, so that all humanity may be united and without difference — exclamation mark.