Wagner on Conducting: The Aesthetics of Anti-Semitism in Performance

Abstract: Starting in high school, I became obsessed with such classical performers as Jacqueline du Pré and Glenn Gould, whose recordings I desperately collected. But whenever I tried to discuss these musicians in class or with professors, my passion for their interpretations was dismissed or even mocked as a superficial fetish. To them, only composers, their intentions, and the notes in the score mattered. Later, in graduate school, I studied with Philip Bohlman, whose groundbreaking article “Musicology as a Political Act” argued that to choose to ignore the social and political nature of music and focus only on “the music itself” was, itself, a political act.1 To deny the social nature of music only served to reinforce existing values that have long marginalized populations. Bohlman’s argument resonated with me, as it shed light on how and why musical disciplines and criticism have historically ignored performers and focused, instead, only on composers. In my research and teaching, I have sought to push back at the aesthetic values and descriptive/analytic language that we often use to describe music. Page 162 →This language has served to dismiss performers and their bodies as merely re-creative conduits between the composer and listener, rather than to celebrate them as the creative and embodied representations of music that they are.

And yet, so determined was I to promote historical recognition of performers that I initially remained closed off to how the political language described by Bohlman pertained to the critical language describing performers. I bought Wagner’s “On Conducting” early in my career, excited by the insight he could provide on performers in the 19th century and also delighted to learn different ways musicians of note talked about interpretation, the subject I was most interested in. I spent most of my time focused on the early parts of the book, the discussion of interpretation and the history of conductors. I may have noticed the anti-Semitism at the end and knew of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, but was more interested in the ways the author analyzed performance. Moreover, many discussions online, at conferences, and within certain professional organizations, allowed me to sweep the bigotry under the rug and focus on “just the music itself” or, rather, just the performances themselves.

This essay is a result of what happened when I took a step back and was pushed to reflect on how easy it was for musical obsessions and passions to obscure the implicit politics and bigotry that pervade the criticism and discussion of performers. I became increasingly aware of how my own analyses of individual performers uncritically drew upon the problematic language of nationalism or identity. This essay is an attempt to grapple with this issue, to offer some historical context, and to challenge us all to think more critically about how our descriptive language, even when celebratory, carries deeply rooted associations.

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