Re: Bata, Karajan, and Morality

["Robert C. Kunath" <kunath@hilltop.ic.edu>]

Dear F-Minors,

	I'd like to endorse Ken's (it is Ken, isn't it?) skepticism about Karajan
"bartering" for a film.  However you evaluate Karajan's artistic
achievement, he knew how to earn and manage money.  At his death, he left
an estate valued at over $100 million.

	Gould's admiration for Karajan is kind of interesting, isn't it?  The
references to Karajan that I have found in Gould's writings seem to
indicate that he saw Karajan as a fellow ecstatic, a person who, like him,
experienced art as a transcendental and transformative phenomenon.  But,
given Gould's explicit emphasis on the moral dimension of art, you would
think that Gould might have been bothered by Karajan's involvement with the
Nazis.  So too, Gould's admiration for Karajan is interesting from the
perspective of Gould's own professed distaste for the stereotype of the
virtuoso.  If any conductor was image conscious--and of course they all
are--it was Karajan.  This is admittedly hearsay, but I have been told by
someone whose father met Karajan that Karajan wore tinted contact lenses to
make his eyes especially blue.  In many ways, Karajan looks like an artist
who is the opposite of everything that Gould stood for.  Maybe all those
moral criteria really weren't so important for Gould after all!  I must
admit that though I am not in general an admirer of Karajan, I think he
made some wonderful recordings (and Gould was right to admire Karajan's
Sibelius).

	Have a good weekend, all.

Robert

----------
> From: K. Berry <kb@cs.umb.edu>
> To: walkingtune@bigfoot.com
> Cc: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
> Subject: RE: Karajan's Bata film contract?
> Date: Saturday, March 21, 1998 9:52 AM
> 
>     If it was, what about reading it as
>     "Karajan's *barter* film contract".
>     Does it make sense?
> 
> Not to me :-).  I doubt von K. would be making a film contract involving
> bartering instead of money.
> 
>