Classical Music for Aficionados
On a warm September afternoon, a startling sound could be heard in a rehearsal room here: a full-size orchestra, playing the second act of Wagner’s “Die Walküre.” “I’m not saying we planned this,” Donald Runnicles, who was conducting the rehearsal, said in an interview. “But if you knew you were going to have a six-month hiatus where you didn’t hear any live music, what would you wish to hear after that six months? In my top 10, it would be ‘Die Walküre.’” When Wagner began work on the text of the “Ring,” he was a young radical fleeing the failed revolutions of 1848. “We are all in a situation like Wagner,” Mr. Herheim said. “All somehow refugees, confronted with the concept of not having a harbor, not feeling safe, and at the same time having to face the destinies of so many people trying to get to us, and face the fact that many of us are not ready to feel empathy.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/arts/music/wagner-walkure-opera-berlin.html
Fearing the fate of Louis-Philippe, some monarchs in Germany accepted some of the demands of the revolutionaries, at least temporarily. In the south and west, large popular assemblies and mass demonstrations took place. They demanded freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, written constitutions, arming of the people, and a parliament.
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None of which stopped Wagner from being , in voice and pen , the greatest Semite in the German lands . Tonight begins The Jewish High- Holidays and this is normally the first music that usher them in . Played by the great Pierre Fournier. https://youtu.be/WuC_0W4O_MI?t=25 |
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to
know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality
between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself
on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was
asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying
something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have
been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political
equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have
been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING
THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in
addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white
and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living
together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as
they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the
position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in
favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 18, 1858 |
Four days before his death, speaking to Gen. Benjamin Butler, Lincoln
still pressed on with deportation as the only peaceable solution to
America’s race problem. “I can hardly believe that the South and North
can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes … I believe that
it would be better to export them all to some fertile country…” there is a lot more - and worse - here: https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/12/01/lincoln-to-slaves-go-somewhere-else/ |
