Good and bad and music

[ricardienne]

Yesterday, the voice teacher who is in charge of the opera came up to me in the hall and told me that he had just been talking with one of his students -- a fried of mine -- about me, and that it was very impressive that I had "managed to pick up Greek in no time at all" and that he was a classicist at University, although he's forgotten his Greek by now. Compliments are so much more rewarding when given with a British accent. He also assured me that I was definitely on for bass continuo in Dido and Aeneas. YAY!!!!!!!

We started the St. John Passion in Bach seminar today. I was surprisingly disturbed, hearing all of the "and then the high priest of the JEWS" &c. (No, I don't know German, but having been given a translation, I can pick out a few words as it goes by.) I mean, I know that it's there, and that it was a standard part of the story as it was understood in that time, and so forth. I know I've encountered lots of works containing "historical anti-Semitism." And it doesn't usually make me uncomfortable. I do think that the fact that it's a big authoritative German work -- and this makes it sound as though I have a very personal family connection to the Holocaust, which is not, thankfully the case -- makes the reaction different than if it were in just about any other medium.
I started to try to explain it to J. -- but I got into an argument with him last year when Handel's Messiah was in the news because someone had determined that large portions of the libretto came out of a strongly anti-Semitic tract. He was righteously indignant that anyone could complain about Great Works of Art and, today, too, he made one of those "well, I guess Bach isn't so politically correct these days" remarks that I find so annoying. Because I am conflicted on how to approach Great Works of Art whose ideologies are Not Okay -- and you can't excuse the problems, even if they do come from modern history, as "political incorrectness" as if oversensitivity to prejudice is the only issue. On the other hand, I don't support changing the text, or not performing them, because they are great musical works -- the opening chorus of the St. John Passion is one of the most wonderful concerted chorales I've heard. And, sometimes editors' notes/conductor's notes/program notes that try to explain or apologize for the bigoted content are embarrassing to read. But somehow you do have to face it, and I think there is a responsibility to make clear the limitations of a work in view of more enlightened (and I do, I hope, use that word advisedly) ideas and inescapable historical fact. /my thoughts on art and ideology

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Handel's Messiah was in the news because someone had determined that large portions of the libretto came out of a strongly anti-Semitic tract.

Wait, what?

[existentialgoat.livejournal.com]

Because I am conflicted on how to approach Great Works of Art whose ideologies are Not Okay -- and you can't excuse the problems, even if they do come from modern history, as "political incorrectness" as if oversensitivity to prejudice is the only issue. On the other hand, I don't support changing the text, or not performing them, because they are great musical works -- the opening chorus of the St. John Passion is one of the most wonderful concerted chorales I've heard.

It's a hard one to solve. I hate the "you're just too politically correct" argument, because stuff like this really is appalling and unacceptable if you're a halfway decent person (IMO). But then, as you said, the artistic aspects are beautiful. When the question is just about the author's personal feelings and/or actions, but none of the objectionable beliefs appear in the art work, I can separate the art from the artist. But when it's so ingrained, it is problematic and there's no good way to deal with it. Changing the text inherently changes the entire work, even if you're just engaging in some creative cutting, like they did in the Al Pacino Merchant of Venice.

Of course, the question of how to deal with Merchant of Venice is especially interesting to me because I'm in theatre, and spent a while studying it in a purely literary context freshman year. After watching the Pacino film again shortly after studying the play, I came to the conclusion that you can't just cut most of Shylock's most vicious speeches without compromising the whole play and sapping Shylock of a lot of his strength...but at the same time, they're so blatantly anti-Semitic that it's hard--if not impossible--to stage them and feel okay with that decision. (Well, unless you're Mel Gibson or something. But thankfully, most people are not Mel Gibson.)

On a(n almost) completely unrelated tangent, what else are studying in the Bach Seminar? Do you get to do any of his Masses?