Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Top of the pops.

Are you a Wagner fan? It seems that in general people are either wholly for him or wholly against him - a bit like Marmite, you either love it or hate it. I can take him in small doses, but that's about it. One of the most ridiculous reasons for being against him however, is that he is always quoted as Hitler's favourite composer. Why ridiculous? Well Wagner died in 1883, six years before Hitler was born, so how can you denigrate him for something over which he had, and could not have had, any control? Anyway, it now appears that if this is to be a reason for denigrating composers, we now have to include a whole lot more of them - perhaps Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms are not that surprising, but Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rachmaninov? The recent discovery of Hitler's record collection reveals that his tastes were much wider than might have been thought, and extended well beyond the Austrian/German school. Does this discovery make their music any the less worthy? Don't let's be silly!

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