Not a nice man
Sir: Readers of the four volume life of Richard Wagner by Earnest Newman, his devoted admirer, know that this musical genius Was not nice. This nasty truth is not dispelled by something Cosima says a timpanist said to Wagner on a bridge in Munich in 1869; still less by Mr Hans Keller's quotation of some self-deprecatory ruminations about the composer's creative processes. One-has only to read the memoirs of Hector Berlioz in order to distinguish the fire and wit of a Gallic romantic from the dowdy domestic paranoia of Villa Wahnfried.
A few years ago Sir Norman del Mar exhorted us in The Times to forget Wagner's anti-semitism and other blemishes and enjoy his music: sound advice to those who like the music. Those who don't are, however, surely entitled to consider whether there is not a link between it and, for instance, Wagner's prose writings. Another authority has said: 'Outside his art Wagner was German to the point of madness, emitting clouds of opaque theoretical gas on every subject under the sun'. Indeed Wagner's remarks about the Prussians have to be seen to be believed.
Finally, a request to Mr Keller. As he is now a distinguished and valued member of our cosy London intelligentsia, would he kindly not try to dictate to us his 'ethical attitude to the non-problem' of Wagner; and, above all, refrain from swanking about his being a conscious Jew? This last pretension seems to me most disagreeable, and very reminiscent of the race-consciousness of certain Volksbritisch in the frightful Twenties and Thirties.
Charles Janson 39 Edwardes Square, London W8
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