Re: GG: Music and Morality

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

Dear Richard and other F-Minors,

	I have read and reviewed Daniel Goldhagen's book (my day job is professor
of German history) but I don't personally find it a very satisfactory
explanation for the Holocaust, and I'm reluctant to try the patience of
those who'd like to stay more focused on Gould.  If anybody would like to
talk off the list about some of these issues of the moral responsibility of
the artist in the Nazi period, I would be very pleased to do that.

	Michael's point about the well-known inconsistency of Gould's judgments is
telling, and it's certainly a phenomenon we have talked about in the past. 
At the risk of beating more dead horses, though, I wonder what we make of
that inconsistency.  Does it invalidate Gould's views or undermine his
stature?  Does finding out the nasty stuff recounted about Gould in
Friedrich and Kazdin make us hear him differently?  For me, I must admit,
it did make some difference.  I had rather lionized Gould, and I was
saddened to find out about his darker side.  But quite apart from whether
Gould was an all-around good person or not (and I strongly believe he had
many good qualities), I find myself convinced that Gould's moral pose was
not just an act, however much he may have transgressed what seemed to be
his own moral standards.  I also don't think that he could have made music
the way he did without his sense of the relationship between art and
morality--even if that sense involved self-deception.

	I'm confused about what Gould really thought that relationship was,
though.  On the one hand, I think he did believe that art could have a
moral function (at least if you think that his line about art helping to
construct a long-term state of wonder and serenity refers to a "moral
purpose" for art).  I'm also intrigued, though, by Gould's statements that
art is amoral, and even possibly immoral.  Do you recall the line in the GG
Interviews GG about GG where he says that art should phase itself out?  I
get a sense (and my memory is a little faded) that he's arguing that the
artistic enterprise automatically compromises the artist's morality. 
Certainly our conversation about Karajan showed that many of us think that
Karajan's alleged moral flaws are irrelevant to his achievement as an
artist, and Gould seems to have agreed.  One of the troubling issues here
is that it is by no means clear that art really helps make us good people,
and I'm hard pressed to say whether Gould's intense devotion to music made
him a better or a worse person.

	Let me conclude with a quotation that I hope is germane to these issues. 
The literary critic George Steiner wrote an essay "To Civilize Our
Gentlemen" calling into question the idea that studying literature makes
people more moral:

	"The simple yet appalling fact is that we have very little solid evidence
that literary studies do very much to enrich or stabilize moral perception,
that they *humanize*.  We have very little proof that a tradition of
literary studies in fact makes a man more humane.  What is worse--a certain
body of evidence points the other way.  When barbarism [i.e. the Nazis]
came to 20th-century Europe, the arts faculties of more than one university
offered very little moral resistance, and this is not a trivial or local
accident.  In a disturbing number of cases the literary imagination gave
servile or ecstatic welcome to political bestiality."   [George Steiner, *A
Reader*.  NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984, p. 30]

Robert

----------
> From: Richard Vallis <rvpiano@spec.net>
> To: John P. Hill <jphill@frank.mtsu.edu>
> Cc: f_minor-og@email.rutgers.edu
> Subject: Re: GG: Music and Morality
> Date: Monday, March 23, 1998 6:03 PM
> 
> Has anyone here read Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" (Vintage
Books,
> soft cover) ?  Might shed some light on  Nazism  (and von Karajan). This
book's
> premise, according to the author, has been accepted in Germany by many.
> 
> John P. Hill wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Michael D. Benedetti wrote:
> >
> > > GG's judgements often did not seem very deep; often they seemed to be
the
> > > results of someone who was nuts. GG was a hypocrite about so many
things
> > > that it seems ridiculous to expect consistency from him.
> >
> > I think "nuts" might be taking it a bit far.  If one looks at GG's
habits
> > that were viewed as "eccentric", many of them had a basis in very
> > rational thought.  The hand-soaking and wearing of cut-out mittens, for
> > example, make complete sense for a pianist with circulation/blood
pressure
> > problems whose hands were his livelihood.  We now know that a lower
> > seating position at the keyboard and the soaking of hands can help to
> > prevent tendonitis and other hand/joint/blood flow-related problems
that
> > have plagued many pianists.
> >
> > On the other hand (and we've hit on this before), Gould's public
> > pronouncements and "sermonizing" were not infrequently at odds with
> > his actual day-to-day behavior.  For example, he professed ideological
> > agreement with various aspects of socialism, but demonstrated
considerable
> > skill at playing the stock market and was anything but a socialist in
> > his own handling of money and other issues related to his career.
> >
> > On "puritanical" matters, there are other notable "disconnects".
> > According to Kazdin, GG made a *big* deal over Kazdin's wife having a
> > Cosmopitan magazine in their home (during the nude Burt Reynolds
period?)
> > and really wanted them to know how much he disapproved of that.  Yet,
this
> > disapproval of soft-core porn (and someone *else's* at that) didn't
> > apparently stop him from having a very close personal (sexual?)
> > relationship with the wife of a well-known conductor/composer.  What's
up
> > with that?  Doesn't sound too "puritanical" to me.
> >
> > > I find your argument that "we would not have stood up to the Nazis,
therefore
> > > we cannot judge Karajan" to be fatuitous.  Karajan did not flee the
Reich;
> > > this says something about him. We are all responsible for our
actions, even
> > > though we don't always want to be.
> >
> > I agree.  Lots of famous composers and musicians *did* leave
(Hindemith,
> > et. al.).  And while some Germans undoubtedly were misled or were
ignorant
> > of the horrors of what went on, undoubtedly many were not.  Hatred
> > and bigotry on that scale does not exist in a vacuum and folks who
witness
> > it taking place without taking a stand against it *do* bear a measure
of
> > responsibility, in my mind.  That doesn't mean that their later
> > accomplishments are without worth, but it does make the question
> > originally posed about GG's thoughts/feelings on HvK quite relevent and
> > interesting;  all the more so by virtue of the possible derivation of
> > GOULD from the Jewish "GOLD" that has been speculated upon here and
> > elsewhere.
> >
> > jh
> 
> 
> 
> 
>