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Article

French

ID: <

10670/1.gqqz40

>

Where these data come from
Richard Wagner and the scope of his antisemitism (critical note)

Abstract

In the vast library of works on Richard Wagner, research focusing on the composer’s Judeophobia or anti-Semitism has evolved in several stages since the late 1960s. Efforts to define Wagner’s ideology, to trace its connections with his music, and to draw lessons from the nationalist and anti-Semitic exploitation of the composer’s cult by the Nazi regime have sparked—and continue to spark—controversy. In his book Wagner antisémite, the musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez presents a wide-ranging overview that fills an important gap in French-language scolarship on Wagner. This article begins by revisiting the emergence of the historiographical and musicological treatment of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, inventoried by Nattiez. It goes on to examine four central questions raised by a reading of this volume: the contextualization of Wagnerian ideology in nineteenth-century Germany and Europe; the contribution of Wagner’s anti-Semitic and nationalistic engagement to his creative hubris; the role of his descendants, custodians of his artistic and institutional heritage, in the promotion of anti-Semitism before and during the Nazi era, and after 1945 in the progressive and now radical reversal of these positions; and finally, the interpenetration of Wagner’s anti-Semitic writings and the musical substance of his works, which prompts us to revisit the question of the autonomy of art.

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