Whenever the music of Richard Wagner is performed, the composer’s famously antisemitic views come back into sharper focus. With a harrowing conflict in the Middle East and rising antisemitism elsewhere, the “Wagner question” is almost inevitable. So the timing of the Auckland Philharmonia’s sold-out performance this weekend of Wagner’s 165-year-old opera Tristan und Isolde raises very contemporary issues.
One argument is that we should value a musical (or any artistic) work on its own merits, independent of its historical context or maker’s views. Enjoy the art, not the artist, in other words. Ironically, Wagner (1813–83) would have rejected this view of “ artistic autonomy ”.
In fact, he advocated strongly for the social function of music in his 1849 essays “Art and Revolution” and “The Artwork of the Future”. Following their publication, Wagner’s antisemitism became clearly evident in his 1850 essay “Jewishness in Music”. First published under a pseudonym, seven years before he began composing Tristan und Isolde, it was expanded and republished in 1869 under his own name.
Expressing deeply prejudiced views against Jewish composers and musicians, Wagner claimed they were incapable of true artistic creativity and accused them of corrupting German music. To appreciate Wagner in 2024, then, means divorcing his musical brilliance from his terrible ideas. The enduring Wagner question Wagner’s other claim to infamy, of course, is that he was rever.