Well, my favorite racist/anti-semitic composer remains good ol’ Richard W. This is absolute rationalization: it’s like a beautiful shell one picks up on the beach: that disgusting, slimy thing inside is gone–and all that remains is the beautiful shell. Fortunately, his mortalself has long departed, and what remains is Tristan and Parsifal.
Uh, yeah, scuse us for speaking in plain english!
I think that’s exactly the point many of us are making
Guys, it’s called Presentism, and it’s looking at the past with the values of today, and condemning those who lived then, and it’s a lousy basis for building up a coherent artistic philosophy. You have to accept that people were flawed human beings, that we’re flawed, too, and to take the past on its own terms.
Just was listening to Men, Portals, Men and Mountains, Organum, Evocations and Sun-Treader in my car between my commute yesterday and today. Amazing stuff, especially for someone who was antisemitic. I’d say the same for Varese. The reason why I don’t get too freaked out about Ruggles is that it was more stupidity than anything else. He had many Jewish friends (as did Wagner, by the way), and like many folks in that time, either didn’t realize someone was Jewish, or maintained that they were somehow different from “the others.”
I think in many cases there is a disconnect between someone’s personal life and their art. I’m told that Morton Feldman was loud, obnoxious and even nasty at times. Yet he wrote the most quiet, gentle and beautiful music. Ruggles was an ornery jerk in many ways. Yet he also wrote the most incredible stuff. Very angry music at times, but also profoundly sad and beautiful.
that’s Sun T-r-e-a-d-e-r
Judgement is a difficult issue. I was just reading how Khrennikov helped Prokofiev’s widow. I well know from my own experience, how people I met when visiting my grandparents, small town folks born in the 19th century, used anti-semitic slurs. And yet they were otherwise what you’d call good people. And they would say things like “oh, Mrs. Sinclair, now she’s Jewish but she’s one of the good ones.” It occurs to me many years later that they may not have known other Jewish people, and if they had, they probably would have realized how many “good ones.” there were. Which is to say yes, it’s ignorance. The children and grandchildren of those same people seem to have grown past such ignorance.
I have no idea what drove Ruggles, or Khrennikov for that matter, and I wasn’t there at the time. I feel all we can do is report their words and deeds and let it all out into the open. I hate what they did and I’ll stand and speak against it, but I can’t judge them.
Hey, and maybe the next time I listen to Sun Trader I’ll know it was written by a man, not a God.
I’m sitting here reading the book Carl Ruggles: Composer, Painter, and Storyteller By Marilyn J. Ziffrin via Google Book Search, and right on page 253 it makes it very clear that Ruggles was a classic antisemite and racist, and his prejudice was more the ignorant type than the “let’s burn a cross on your lawn” type. In other words, nasty cruel words born of ignorance and hate, but no action, which was regrettably too common in that era.
Right up there with Ruggles, apparently, is another of my faves: Varese. What I never knew was how much there was a conflict between some composers (like Varese, Thomson and Ruggles) and the up-and-coming composers like Copland, many of whom were clearly not the gentile type.
This chord resonates a bit, don’t it? Talk about giving something “the test of time.”
yeah, if he had just said “Juilliard filth” i’d have no problem with it. 🙂
OK, that confirms what I had been told for years, and never really doubted but, in all honesty, never really thought much about it either. The guy had issues. But I have to say that anyone who could have written Lilacs or Portals wasn’t totally a waste of space. But yeah, that’s pretty offensive. I mean, everyone knows it was really the Jews at Manhattan or Mannes who were less than desirable. 😎
(just kidding. honest)
I suspect this was also from a time when there were quotas in a big way. Now, I wonder what it was that Thomson said, since I came across his name complaining about the League of Composers along with Ruggles, but couldn’t find the actual quote.
A quick Google check found a scholarly paper about anti-semitism in 20th century American music which has Ruggles objecting to the admittance of “filty Juilliard Jews” into the League of American Composers.
Damn, maybe he’s not so far from Khrennikov after all. A miilion times better as a composer, but…
Perhaps I should have said “Ruggles may have said some pretty rough things.” For me it’s all hearsay for which I’ve never seen the source, although I do vaguely recall him in his old age saying something about being kept alive by dirty jokes. I was only referring to the moral equivalency argument.
Hmmm, Ruggles said some pretty rough things…
and those things were?…
All I’ve managed to find in the literature were statements like “Ruggles was antisemitic,” a description also applied to Virgil Thomson, without evidence backing any of this up. Again, I’m not trying to hold on to some belief that one of my favorite composers was really a very tolerant, namaste type of guy. I’ve been told since I was a kid that Ruggles was antisemitic, so I have no false belief in that regard to hold onto. But I can’t help but think that someone who might not like a very crotchety, ornery opinionated guy like Ruggles couldn’t have spread some sort of calumny about him, much like Nancarrow and his friends from the Lincoln Brigades were unfairly accused of being part of a communist plot against the US to the point where their visas were in question and Nancarrow figured he was better off in Mexico City.
Hmmm, Ruggles said some pretty rough things, but Khrennikov ruined people and was a willing, active toady to a totalitarian regime. Is there a difference? Of course there is. And Khrennikov was a schlecht composer. Being rubbish was his only accomplishment.
Chris wrote: You reap what you sow.
Except of course with prejudice, where you can be reaped for nothing you’ve sown.
Gosh darn Chris you are just a veritable fountain of wisdom! 😉 Thanks for your ongoing meta-commentary on my posts!
Jeff – I wouldn’t insult your father-in-law nor your wife by assigning them the status of being victims – careers ruined – as a result of rich people, bad painters and careerist gallery owners. It sounds like they are both strong people who can take ownership of their own actions. That’s called being an adult.
You reap what you sow.
Chris
Wow – I love Jeff’s story about the evidently extremely wise Elsie. It’s brilliant! I’m going to put in my will that if my caregivers ever have to consider pulling the plug, they should ask me some musical questions just to make sure!
Yeah, David the doctors told us that. After his brain surgery in the 80’s he was a lot better actually. Must be a lot of artist brain tumors out there undiagnosed! 😉
Sorry to hear about your father-in-law, Jeff. To be honest, it is very possible that the location of the tumor along with pressure effects produced a disinhibition of the usual filters he had regarding acceptable thoughts and speech. Happens in Tourette’s syndrome, for example, and it isn’t the person’s fault at all.
Incidentally, my introduction to racism is described here in a blog post about Newark, NJ. To cut to the chase, the first time I ever heard the N-word was from my grandmother, who herself was certainly no stranger to being the victim of prejudice. In other words, we all are guilty of this, and recognition is halfway to the solution. But I can also say that a lot of the filters come off in some older people for many reasons beyond their control. Doesn’t excuse Ruggles (who wasn’t old at the time), however.
Whoops forgot the story I was going to tell! So Elsie’s at Alfred’s bedside yesterday, pretty much the whole afternoon. At one point, a doctor comes in (he’s in the ICU, dying of esophogal cancer) and says, ‘Mr. Russell, I’m going to ask you a few questions to see how your mind is’. Alfred lost the ability to speak about a month ago from the cancer; he’s 87.
The doctor sayd, ‘Mr. Russell, who’s the president of the United States? Is it Ronald Reagan?’
Alfred just rolls his eyes and looks at Elsie. The doctor asks him another political question about US government. Finally, Elsie says, ‘He doesn’t care about that stuff. You won’t get a response.’ Elsie turns to him and says, ‘Which of the following composers were Hungarian.’
Elsie says, ‘Liszt.’ Alfred nods his head enthusiastically.
‘Bartok’. Again he nods his head.
‘Chopin’. He vigorously shakes his head.
Elsie turns to the doctor and says, ‘See he cares about music.’
The doctor goes, ‘OK I see he’s fine mentally,’ and stomps out.
😉
Haha… Chris I see no juvenile humor in the whole thread! What I see is just the usual politics and breast-beating about personality. My call to return to the days of the Gulag was absurdly adultist diatribe.
I’d love to see a thread someday about Ruggles’ music. I just don’t get it. Always seemed ponderous and over-blown without reason or a feeling of inevitability. Anyways…
My father-in-law, the great painter Alfred Russell, (http://parnasse.com/arlist.htm) and one of the pre-eminent asshole artists in the world is dying. He probably has another month. He was huge, before the art market went ballistic and became famous in the 50’s for decrying the move towards easy abstraction as a $$$-making gambit (aiming these diatribes often at the pre-minimalists and the guys selling out, mainly the descendants of Rothko and Reinhardt, his close friends). Simultaneously, while developing a brain tumor, he began insulting everybody in the art world in any way he could. His enemies used this to turn him into an ‘anti-semite’ even though his insults were generally pointed at whatever he could point them at. He was black-listed and never received another show in a prominent gallery. He was denied tenure at Brooklyn College. MOMA and the Whitney hid his paintings and in some cases seemed to actually censor some collaborative works he did with Ad Reinhardt. His friends and students supported him as much as he could. Meyer Shapiro never abandoned him and the art critic Jed Perl, one of his students, has repeatedly cited him as one of the most important artists of the late 20th century.
My wife’s art career was ruined, thanks to him and his inability to not spew racist epithets whenever he got into an argument. People use these qualities against artists often for other reasons. His article in October magazine which was probably the first attack in the post-war years against decorative abstraction and sellout abstraction was the main reason he was black-listed. He embarrassed rich people. Enemies use these stories, exaggerate them, and people obsessed with artist personalities carry forward these same stories. It hurts understanding of the true achievements of the artist. It hurts the arts. It’s necessary I guess, but I think it also shows how political things are now. I probably hate talking about this shit because my whole life I’ve been talking about this shit. Heh…
And I’ve always been fascinated by Khrennikov. You guys should check out his music. It generally starts well and ends boring. Kind of like his life! Haha…
Thank you, Mell, for that note of sanity.
David – Isn’t it up to the individual looking for a car to drive? Or a piece of music to listen to?
I haven’t taken anyone to task for listening to Ruggles. Instead, what I said early on that I disagreed with your statement: “…there’s a difference between being prejudiced (as many genteel people in that society were) and burning a cross on someone’s front lawn.” I understand what you’re saying – and respect your viewpoint. But I disagree with it.
Then a conversation began (sort of) about the paradox between art and the politics and character of creators – and this I think took us away from the original topic. And I think this is what Jeff is trying to point out in his last comment. But I’m not sure – the juvenile humor and smiley faces are distracting and create (for me) some confusion.
This is the nature of the blogosphere, though! It is sort of the wild west.
Graham, you’re quite correct. Love that movement—it was one of Stravinsky’s first serial pieces (not 12-tone, but serial), and is amazing. The rest of the Cantata I’ve never warmed up to, unfortunately. I actually had to study that same movement two years in a row when I was taking music classes during high school—you’d think the teacher would have found something else to have us study, like Agon? But Stravinsky apparently didn’t really understand the connotation of the section about the Jews :
“The Jews on me they made great suit,/And with me made great variance,/Because they lov’d the darkness rather than light….”
Interestingly, it was alleged that Robert Craft chose the texts, which Craft denied. A good read is here.
BTW, Chris, this has actually been a good discussion. True, it would be nice for others to weigh in, but whatever.
Just because I have to ask, would you at least agree that it wouldn’t make sense for people to refuse to drive Fords because Henry Ford was a blatant antisemite? (unlike old Carl here, Henry actually wrote an infamous antisemitic screed that I’ve read). Just swap out Ford and Henry Ford with Music and Carl Ruggles and you’ll appreciate my point.
Chris, there was no intention to shut down this thread but it’s not what Khrennikov was about. He was a criminal FOR ART. He had people suffer, he ruined lives FOR ART.
Not for racist reasons. Seems like some of you guys are more interested in politics and the demonization of artists than how the system works. (Whoops! I’m shutting the thread down again! Hahaha…).
😉
I appreciate your comment David. Even if I don’t totally agree I respect what you’re saying and think it’s valid.
It’d be nice to have more people weigh in on this topic(s). It seems that when race or gender comes up on this site as a topic the conversation gets shut down with comments like Jeff’s (who wants to be called “PC” in a public forum?) or as a result of one or two people (and I’m guilty of this) monopolizing the thread. If anyone is out there actually reading this that hasn’t weighed in (and if you don’t want to that makes sense – maybe this is a dead thread…) I’d like to hear what you have to say.
Later.
“Stravinsky unknowingly (or ignorantly?) included some blatantly antisemitic text in the only movement of his Serenade I like, and I have been listening to it since 1978.”
You mean the “Dancing Day” verse in the Cantata?
Thanks, z—just wish I had access to them (login required). But I don’t doubt you and appreciate the confirmation.
I’ve known of the reputed antisemitism since I was a kid, and BFD. I’ve heard of some things Berg said that were questionable. Stravinsky unknowingly (or ignorantly?) included some blatantly antisemitic text in the only movement of his Serenade I like, and I have been listening to it since 1978. Furtwangler and Paderewski both were tarnished by allegations of antisemitism (in Paderewski’s case it was probably very overstated, and Furtwangler wasn’t so much an antisemite as someone who didn’t leave Nazi Germany, all the while having close relationships with many Jewish musicians, some of whom I believe he protected). Yet I would never suggest that either musician’s work shouldn’t be enjoyed. And again, it’s also easy to tarnish someone unfairly with a “racist” label. I don’t know that that’s the case with Ruggles, but does it matter in regard to his music? Do we know that Bach wasn’t racist? And if he were, should it change our perception of the music of his we love? My personal opinion is that it should not.
I’m still waiting for a link to something Ruggles did or said that was clearly antisemitic. (David T.)
Examples of Ruggles’s anti-Semitism appear throughout his personal papers, housed at Yale University, the Beinecke Library, …
Sofia Gubaidulina’s Two Paths (Dedicated to Mary and Martha) for Two Violas and Orchestra (1999).
*
And before there was Michael Tilson Thomas and Carl Ruggles, there was, of course, Hermann Levi and Richard Wagner (and Parsifal).
*
Jewish classical music composition has been somewhat well established, at least since the Venetian Renaissance and European Enlightenment; with female and African diaspora classical music composition less so.
Mell, a majority of the people in this country think Bush is a failure. It is very well established that we have had our civil liberties violated multiple times by this administration. That said, I’ve chosen to stay and dissent rather than move to Canada or France, which I often fantasize about. But if the argument is that this govt. isn’t as bad as Stalin or Hitler, then no, of course it isn’t. But in some ways, isn’t it a sad state that this is the analogy we’re making, and that you’re mitigating the abuses of the Bush administration by comparing it to totalitarian regimes?
I find this PC stuff hilarious because anybody with any knowledge of history knows that we’re ALL committing totally heinous crimes that our ancestors will decry. Whether it’s carbon footprint crap or telling jokes, or dismissing uptown music – we’re all FUTURE ASSHOLES. 😉
I don’t agree with Jordu’s comments either. But I’m not suggesting that you guys are saying prejudice is excusable. However, I do disagree with some of what you’re saying. That’s okay, right?
I am interested in looking at the subject of how we as creative people deal with art and the sometimes reprehensible qualities of the artists who created the work. I wanted to suggest in my previous post that there is some creative dialogue out there that goes much deeper than saying “The music is what matters. Everything else is interesting but has no real meaning.”
For instance, Caine’s Wagner project sort of breaks down the music in a way that somehow separates it from the despicable politics of Wagner. But how is that possible? Is it just the result of the mindset of Caine or the listener like Jordu suggests? Or is there a technique here – maybe something very contemporary that we’re only just starting to see especially in the work of Jewish, Black and female composers?
I got the wonderful opportunity to hear Gubaidulina at a pre-concert lecture in the Rose room before the premiere of her 2 viola concerto (forgot the name). She talked soooo fondly of the Soviet days!! She reminisced about a premiere of hers which was sold out, at a big conservatory. She said the students were so upset, and so determined they TORE DOWN A WALL to get to her premiere. They used chairs and their bare hands and they tore down a brick wall to hear music. She lamented the current perverse idiocracy of mass media culture.
Dictatorships, fascist states, kingdoms, are all so much better for the arts than the idiocracy of the market place, and that’s most likely due to what Taleb (Black Swan dude) calls the power of the first to win to continue to win. It’s what makes Windows a monopoly and so many of our current first tier composers a monopoly too. Not quality, the first to win, keeps winning. The luck of the draw…
A good Stalinist asshole could really straighten things out! And a few of us would have to go die in the Gulag. But I think it just might be worth it. 😉 I love music too much to let it rot like this!
The problem is you can choose your friends and you can choose your enemies but you can’t choose your asshole.
“We’d probably have better music with an ass* in charge!” (Jeff H.)
I’ve often thought about this too, Jeff. Khrennikov (and Stalin and Zhdanov) sure created an intense environment in which Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Khachaturian; and later Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Denisov, Artyomov, Knaifel, Smirnov, Suslin, and Firsova all created some very imaginative and powerful music.
Mozart had Hieronymus Graf von Colloredo when he was young. He too is often remembered as an ass*; but his tense relations with Mozart got the adolescent composer to create at a high level, no?
*
I love the sentence in Allan Kozinn’s piece about Khrennikov hoping to stop “all manifestations of formalism and popular decadence.”
So David, if the present administration is so damn oppressive and awful, where is your Fifth Symphony or why haven’t you tried to jump over the fence a la Panufnik? Having just finished reading Panufnik’s “Composing Myself,” I don’t think any of us here have it nearly so bad, regardless of what you might think. No place is perfect, nor is any time. (or as my dad likes to say, “ah the good old days… when a simple infection could kill you.”)
Chris, not to prolong the madness, but again, no one is saying that prejudice is excusable. It isn’t. But I’d also suggest, as jodru stated more elegantly than I could, that one also has to be cognoscente of the times. Back then, not only was antisemitism there under the surface, but we had “separate but equal.” And “separate but equal” was the old version, I think, of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” It’s all inhuman. And I’d love to think that someday this will all change. Perhaps it will.
I also think that we need to look hard at ourselves and recognize that all of us are prejudiced in some way, shape or form. None of us can cast a stone here, can we? How many “fat” jokes do we laugh at, or racist jokes, or nationality jokes,or homosexual jokes, blond jokes, JAP jokes, etc. And even the occasional rants against uptown music, and some other folks’ rants against downtown music, might be an indication of some degree of prejudice one way or another.
I’m still waiting for a link to something Ruggles did or said that was clearly antisemitic. Again, whether he was or wasn’t isn’t going to change my affection for his music.
No difference between an antisemite or a crotchety old man? I think if we don’t look at prejudice and call it out for what it is – and recognize that it lurks within all of us – we run the risk of helping to perpetuate a level of ignorance that leads to hateful violent acts.
I was reminded of Uri Caine’s unusual CD project where he arranged the music of Richard Wagner. How Uri came to grips with the legacy of Wagner – both musical and political – is worth a whole forum in itself. Another project that came to mind while reading through all of this is DJ Spooky’s video “remix” of Birth of a Nation (Guillermo Brown did a similar smaller project that utilized images from The Wiz) where he tried to turn on its head the film makers racist imagery in a sort of aural and visual cermonial exorcism.
Maybe Ruggles’ legacy could be addressed similarly? Pair his work with the work of a neglected African American composer who was his contemporary (there are plenty)?
I actually had a few Khrennikov records (that I bought from a Russian record store on Broadway back in the 90’s for 25c a piece – I just walked in and said, how many for the whole bunch ;)) and he was really a pretty good composer. I was going to start a joke thread about how now that our head Stalinist propagandist, Karl Rove has been deposed, is a good time to take stock on our own Stalinist networks and systems. Work intervened luckily!
When you see how he promoted Schnittke and then dismissed him, and how he went after Gubaidulina and Denisov and yet they both succeeded wonderfully, I find myself asking, is it really so much worse than our current silent careerist network of dismissal and promotion.
The Soviet Union had assholes in charge making decisions about who gets played. Today we have careerists in charge through a network (citing Tom Myron’s Black Swan reference in his blog today) of lucky winners and rich people and Yalies. Why people who are so mediocre get pushed up and up the ranks is mysterious and silent.
I found myself wishing that my career failures could be explained by blaming some asshole and not a network of lucky or rich mediocres. We’d probably have better music with an asshole in charge!
Hail Khrennikov! Master of Quality and the Gulag. Down with Networks of Silent Dismissive Mediocres!!
I’ve always found these discussions to be awfully specious and more an indication of the dearth of truly extra-musical discussion fodder there is in our field than anything else.
David’s got his finger on it when he points to how institutionalized anti-semitism was. Fast forward 100 years from now, and we’ll all be considered homophobes. After all, our government sponsors discriminating policies against homosexuals, and while polling numbers show a basic level of tolerance for homosexuals, they also show a prevailing disapproval of them. Hell, we’re still arguing about whether it’s a choice or not.
Future Sequenzers will sit around and view this framework as we view the institutionalized racism of earlier centuries. And why wouldn’t they? Inevitably, someone will dig up some email you wrote in college where you used a gay slur and ‘hey presto’ there’s a term paper on your regrettable homophobia.
I say, cut the guys some slack, whether they were Nazis, Stalinists, homophobes, germophobes or whatever. The music is what matters. Everything else is interesting but has no real meaning.
‘The history of music evolution is not the history of nice guys…Stockhausen and Cage have exhibited, in my opinion, profound racist tendencies, but as I get older, I find myself very much aware that I know a lot of racists, but I know of very few racists who have been able to contribute the kind of information to humanity that Cage and Stockhausen have”
-Anthony Braxton-
Chris, I fully expected someone to weigh in and make a similar point. And I’m not sure this isn’t the forum for this sort of issue.
I thought I made it clear that in no way was I excusing Ruggles’ antisemitism. It’s wrong, period. While I have yet to see anything he said or wrote that is clearly antisemitic. I’ve heard from a variety of good sources that he siad things that were antisemitic, and it’s not particularly shocking to me given how many people in the US were indeed antisemitic back then.
Most people weren’t given to burning synagogues, but harbored a under-the-surface antisemitism. It was fine if they were your doctor or banker. But only a small number of them should go to an Ivy League school. That sort of thing. It’s what kept Richard Feynman out of Columbia, for example, and he just made it into Princeton because some physicist could assure others on the admissions committee that despite his being Jewish (and he was nonpracticing, mind you), he wasn’t “like the others.”
Sure, Ruggles could have been an antisemite of that mold. But so were many people back then—have you ever seen Gentleman’s Agreement or School Ties? Just look at Ezra Pound for that matter. That’s not to excuse it. But there was a difference between people like Ruggles and, say, Father Coughlin or Goebbels.
I do try to separate someone’s personality and personal views from their art. If I didn’t, there might be many fewer works of music and art I enjoy. Ralph Shapey was an asshole, yet I like a lot of his music and wouldn’t have it any other way. A lot of people like Wagner, and that’s great, yet he was certainly antisemitic to a degree that made Ruggles look like a member of the ACLU. No degree of prejudice is acceptable, and I’m not trying to rationalize or argue that Ruggles was only a “little eety bit prejudice” while Ezra Pound was a full-blown antisemite. But again, I’ve not seen any definitive actions by Ruggles indicating antisemitism nor have I personally read or heard anything said by him that would suggest that. That doesn’t mean what many of us have been told is incorrect, but I’d like to see some evidence before condemning him for this. As you may know, Ives was incorrectly, and inappropriately, tarnished with this label, and the reality is that he was neither antisemitic nor homophobic, etc.
Yes, I am passionate about Ruggles’ music, and in the end, nothing about his background is going to change that. But there is a difference, at least to me, between being ignorant (and many prejudices are just that—ignorance), which is potentially correctable through education, and being deeply antisemitic or racist, which is extremely hard to reverse. I just don’t see any evidence that Ruggles was antisemitic to his core. Ignorant about my landsmen, perhaps. But ask Michael Tilson-Thomas if Ruggles was antisemitic or just a crotchety old man with a lack of a filter between his mouth and his brain. Or are you saying there’s no difference at all? I think that’s pretty harsh, personally, if that’s the case.
“But while I’d have loved for Carl Ruggles to be devoid of racist tendencies, and certainly don’t excuse him in any way, there’s a difference between being prejudiced (as many genteel people in that society were) and burning a cross on someone’s front lawn…”
I personally don’t agree with David’s comment, but I also realize this isn’t the forum to begin a debate about the relative values of prejudice, cross burning and not being a “nice guy.” The comment just seems sort of reactive and emotional due to his obvious passion for Ruggles’ music. However, it also reads like a rationalization.
It is frustrating to come across art you find inspiring and then discover something terrible about the character and actions of its creator. And everyone has their own levels of tolerance. Many people simply divorce music or a painting from the creator’s personal and political views. Simon Schama’s recent series “The Power Of Art” did (I think) a good job confronting this paradox.
In my book, Ruggles is god. And I’m an atheist!
yes, he had some racist and antisemitic tendencies. Many people in Connecticut of that generation did; Ives was a bit of an exception in that regard. But while I’d have loved for Carl Ruggles to be devoid of racist tendencies, and certainly don’t excuse him in any way, there’s a difference between being prejudiced (as many genteel people in that society were) and burning a cross on someone’s front lawn. What I’ve read of Ruggles indicates that he was a very ornery person whose bark, perhaps, was worse than his bite. Far worse. And younger members of his family found him very delightful, as did Ives and many others. His music was championed by Michael Tilson-Thomas (nee Tomashefsky), and were Ruggles a virulent antisemite, I doubt he would have allowed MTT to even be in the same room as he was, let alone provide a lot of personal reminiscences and insight into his music.
Sure, Ruggles might not have been a “nice guy.” But he was someone I would have loved to have had tea or dinner with. As far as his compositions, he wrote very few and allowed even fewer to survive. I’ve seen different versions of Men and Mountains, since he constantly revised his few remaining works. But what he let survive is some of the best stuff ever written. By anyone. He was after quality, not quantity. Feldman is one of the few who was able to pull off both. Glass, who is also very prolific, nailed the quantity part, but the quality…
Sorry to be so taken by this, but I’ve always felt that Ruggles’ music remains terribly neglected, something people talk about more than they get to hear. There are more recordings of Feldman’s Triadic Memories than any of Ruggles’ pieces. He’s neglected perhaps just a bit less than Dallapicolla. Both of them deserve more hearings (and Feldman as well).
The people who live past 85, artist assholes, good guys, or just folk on the street, make an awfully small sliver of the pie. Besides, we’ve still got Carter, and I think Henry Brant is hitting 94 this year.
I believe that Carl Ruggles — at 95 — also beat out Mr Khrennikov. Whether he was a “good guy” as well as a great American visionary composer and painter — given his racism and anti-Semitism — is open to discussion. [His compositions, I believe, last, in sum, about 80 minutes.]
Leo Ornstein was a good guy also. He lived to 110, 109 or 107 depending on which source you go by. (109 was the most widelyaccepted age though.)
Well, I think that composer and conductor Mikola Kolessa was a “good guy” and he lived to be 102; before passing last summer.
Well, my favorite racist/anti-semitic composer remains good ol’ Richard W. This is absolute rationalization: it’s like a beautiful shell one picks up on the beach: that disgusting, slimy thing inside is gone–and all that remains is the beautiful shell. Fortunately, his mortalself has long departed, and what remains is Tristan and Parsifal.
Uh, yeah, scuse us for speaking in plain english!
I think that’s exactly the point many of us are making
Guys, it’s called Presentism, and it’s looking at the past with the values of today, and condemning those who lived then, and it’s a lousy basis for building up a coherent artistic philosophy. You have to accept that people were flawed human beings, that we’re flawed, too, and to take the past on its own terms.
Just was listening to Men, Portals, Men and Mountains, Organum, Evocations and Sun-Treader in my car between my commute yesterday and today. Amazing stuff, especially for someone who was antisemitic. I’d say the same for Varese. The reason why I don’t get too freaked out about Ruggles is that it was more stupidity than anything else. He had many Jewish friends (as did Wagner, by the way), and like many folks in that time, either didn’t realize someone was Jewish, or maintained that they were somehow different from “the others.”
I think in many cases there is a disconnect between someone’s personal life and their art. I’m told that Morton Feldman was loud, obnoxious and even nasty at times. Yet he wrote the most quiet, gentle and beautiful music. Ruggles was an ornery jerk in many ways. Yet he also wrote the most incredible stuff. Very angry music at times, but also profoundly sad and beautiful.
that’s Sun T-r-e-a-d-e-r
Judgement is a difficult issue. I was just reading how Khrennikov helped Prokofiev’s widow. I well know from my own experience, how people I met when visiting my grandparents, small town folks born in the 19th century, used anti-semitic slurs. And yet they were otherwise what you’d call good people. And they would say things like “oh, Mrs. Sinclair, now she’s Jewish but she’s one of the good ones.” It occurs to me many years later that they may not have known other Jewish people, and if they had, they probably would have realized how many “good ones.” there were. Which is to say yes, it’s ignorance. The children and grandchildren of those same people seem to have grown past such ignorance.
I have no idea what drove Ruggles, or Khrennikov for that matter, and I wasn’t there at the time. I feel all we can do is report their words and deeds and let it all out into the open. I hate what they did and I’ll stand and speak against it, but I can’t judge them.
Hey, and maybe the next time I listen to Sun Trader I’ll know it was written by a man, not a God.
I’m sitting here reading the book Carl Ruggles: Composer, Painter, and Storyteller By Marilyn J. Ziffrin via Google Book Search, and right on page 253 it makes it very clear that Ruggles was a classic antisemite and racist, and his prejudice was more the ignorant type than the “let’s burn a cross on your lawn” type. In other words, nasty cruel words born of ignorance and hate, but no action, which was regrettably too common in that era.
Right up there with Ruggles, apparently, is another of my faves: Varese. What I never knew was how much there was a conflict between some composers (like Varese, Thomson and Ruggles) and the up-and-coming composers like Copland, many of whom were clearly not the gentile type.
This chord resonates a bit, don’t it? Talk about giving something “the test of time.”
yeah, if he had just said “Juilliard filth” i’d have no problem with it. 🙂
OK, that confirms what I had been told for years, and never really doubted but, in all honesty, never really thought much about it either. The guy had issues. But I have to say that anyone who could have written Lilacs or Portals wasn’t totally a waste of space. But yeah, that’s pretty offensive. I mean, everyone knows it was really the Jews at Manhattan or Mannes who were less than desirable. 😎
(just kidding. honest)
I suspect this was also from a time when there were quotas in a big way. Now, I wonder what it was that Thomson said, since I came across his name complaining about the League of Composers along with Ruggles, but couldn’t find the actual quote.
A quick Google check found a scholarly paper about anti-semitism in 20th century American music which has Ruggles objecting to the admittance of “filty Juilliard Jews” into the League of American Composers.
Damn, maybe he’s not so far from Khrennikov after all. A miilion times better as a composer, but…
Perhaps I should have said “Ruggles may have said some pretty rough things.” For me it’s all hearsay for which I’ve never seen the source, although I do vaguely recall him in his old age saying something about being kept alive by dirty jokes. I was only referring to the moral equivalency argument.
Hmmm, Ruggles said some pretty rough things…
and those things were?…
All I’ve managed to find in the literature were statements like “Ruggles was antisemitic,” a description also applied to Virgil Thomson, without evidence backing any of this up. Again, I’m not trying to hold on to some belief that one of my favorite composers was really a very tolerant, namaste type of guy. I’ve been told since I was a kid that Ruggles was antisemitic, so I have no false belief in that regard to hold onto. But I can’t help but think that someone who might not like a very crotchety, ornery opinionated guy like Ruggles couldn’t have spread some sort of calumny about him, much like Nancarrow and his friends from the Lincoln Brigades were unfairly accused of being part of a communist plot against the US to the point where their visas were in question and Nancarrow figured he was better off in Mexico City.
Hmmm, Ruggles said some pretty rough things, but Khrennikov ruined people and was a willing, active toady to a totalitarian regime. Is there a difference? Of course there is. And Khrennikov was a schlecht composer. Being rubbish was his only accomplishment.
Chris wrote: You reap what you sow.
Except of course with prejudice, where you can be reaped for nothing you’ve sown.
Gosh darn Chris you are just a veritable fountain of wisdom! 😉 Thanks for your ongoing meta-commentary on my posts!
Jeff – I wouldn’t insult your father-in-law nor your wife by assigning them the status of being victims – careers ruined – as a result of rich people, bad painters and careerist gallery owners. It sounds like they are both strong people who can take ownership of their own actions. That’s called being an adult.
You reap what you sow.
Chris
Wow – I love Jeff’s story about the evidently extremely wise Elsie. It’s brilliant! I’m going to put in my will that if my caregivers ever have to consider pulling the plug, they should ask me some musical questions just to make sure!
Yeah, David the doctors told us that. After his brain surgery in the 80’s he was a lot better actually. Must be a lot of artist brain tumors out there undiagnosed! 😉
Sorry to hear about your father-in-law, Jeff. To be honest, it is very possible that the location of the tumor along with pressure effects produced a disinhibition of the usual filters he had regarding acceptable thoughts and speech. Happens in Tourette’s syndrome, for example, and it isn’t the person’s fault at all.
Incidentally, my introduction to racism is described here in a blog post about Newark, NJ. To cut to the chase, the first time I ever heard the N-word was from my grandmother, who herself was certainly no stranger to being the victim of prejudice. In other words, we all are guilty of this, and recognition is halfway to the solution. But I can also say that a lot of the filters come off in some older people for many reasons beyond their control. Doesn’t excuse Ruggles (who wasn’t old at the time), however.
Whoops forgot the story I was going to tell! So Elsie’s at Alfred’s bedside yesterday, pretty much the whole afternoon. At one point, a doctor comes in (he’s in the ICU, dying of esophogal cancer) and says, ‘Mr. Russell, I’m going to ask you a few questions to see how your mind is’. Alfred lost the ability to speak about a month ago from the cancer; he’s 87.
The doctor sayd, ‘Mr. Russell, who’s the president of the United States? Is it Ronald Reagan?’
Alfred just rolls his eyes and looks at Elsie. The doctor asks him another political question about US government. Finally, Elsie says, ‘He doesn’t care about that stuff. You won’t get a response.’ Elsie turns to him and says, ‘Which of the following composers were Hungarian.’
Elsie says, ‘Liszt.’ Alfred nods his head enthusiastically.
‘Bartok’. Again he nods his head.
‘Chopin’. He vigorously shakes his head.
Elsie turns to the doctor and says, ‘See he cares about music.’
The doctor goes, ‘OK I see he’s fine mentally,’ and stomps out.
😉
Haha… Chris I see no juvenile humor in the whole thread! What I see is just the usual politics and breast-beating about personality. My call to return to the days of the Gulag was absurdly adultist diatribe.
I’d love to see a thread someday about Ruggles’ music. I just don’t get it. Always seemed ponderous and over-blown without reason or a feeling of inevitability. Anyways…
My father-in-law, the great painter Alfred Russell, (http://parnasse.com/arlist.htm) and one of the pre-eminent asshole artists in the world is dying. He probably has another month. He was huge, before the art market went ballistic and became famous in the 50’s for decrying the move towards easy abstraction as a $$$-making gambit (aiming these diatribes often at the pre-minimalists and the guys selling out, mainly the descendants of Rothko and Reinhardt, his close friends). Simultaneously, while developing a brain tumor, he began insulting everybody in the art world in any way he could. His enemies used this to turn him into an ‘anti-semite’ even though his insults were generally pointed at whatever he could point them at. He was black-listed and never received another show in a prominent gallery. He was denied tenure at Brooklyn College. MOMA and the Whitney hid his paintings and in some cases seemed to actually censor some collaborative works he did with Ad Reinhardt. His friends and students supported him as much as he could. Meyer Shapiro never abandoned him and the art critic Jed Perl, one of his students, has repeatedly cited him as one of the most important artists of the late 20th century.
My wife’s art career was ruined, thanks to him and his inability to not spew racist epithets whenever he got into an argument. People use these qualities against artists often for other reasons. His article in October magazine which was probably the first attack in the post-war years against decorative abstraction and sellout abstraction was the main reason he was black-listed. He embarrassed rich people. Enemies use these stories, exaggerate them, and people obsessed with artist personalities carry forward these same stories. It hurts understanding of the true achievements of the artist. It hurts the arts. It’s necessary I guess, but I think it also shows how political things are now. I probably hate talking about this shit because my whole life I’ve been talking about this shit. Heh…
And I’ve always been fascinated by Khrennikov. You guys should check out his music. It generally starts well and ends boring. Kind of like his life! Haha…
Thank you, Mell, for that note of sanity.
David – Isn’t it up to the individual looking for a car to drive? Or a piece of music to listen to?
I haven’t taken anyone to task for listening to Ruggles. Instead, what I said early on that I disagreed with your statement: “…there’s a difference between being prejudiced (as many genteel people in that society were) and burning a cross on someone’s front lawn.” I understand what you’re saying – and respect your viewpoint. But I disagree with it.
Then a conversation began (sort of) about the paradox between art and the politics and character of creators – and this I think took us away from the original topic. And I think this is what Jeff is trying to point out in his last comment. But I’m not sure – the juvenile humor and smiley faces are distracting and create (for me) some confusion.
This is the nature of the blogosphere, though! It is sort of the wild west.
Graham, you’re quite correct. Love that movement—it was one of Stravinsky’s first serial pieces (not 12-tone, but serial), and is amazing. The rest of the Cantata I’ve never warmed up to, unfortunately. I actually had to study that same movement two years in a row when I was taking music classes during high school—you’d think the teacher would have found something else to have us study, like Agon? But Stravinsky apparently didn’t really understand the connotation of the section about the Jews :
“The Jews on me they made great suit,/And with me made great variance,/Because they lov’d the darkness rather than light….”
Interestingly, it was alleged that Robert Craft chose the texts, which Craft denied. A good read is here.
BTW, Chris, this has actually been a good discussion. True, it would be nice for others to weigh in, but whatever.
Just because I have to ask, would you at least agree that it wouldn’t make sense for people to refuse to drive Fords because Henry Ford was a blatant antisemite? (unlike old Carl here, Henry actually wrote an infamous antisemitic screed that I’ve read). Just swap out Ford and Henry Ford with Music and Carl Ruggles and you’ll appreciate my point.
Chris, there was no intention to shut down this thread but it’s not what Khrennikov was about. He was a criminal FOR ART. He had people suffer, he ruined lives FOR ART.
Not for racist reasons. Seems like some of you guys are more interested in politics and the demonization of artists than how the system works. (Whoops! I’m shutting the thread down again! Hahaha…).
😉
I appreciate your comment David. Even if I don’t totally agree I respect what you’re saying and think it’s valid.
It’d be nice to have more people weigh in on this topic(s). It seems that when race or gender comes up on this site as a topic the conversation gets shut down with comments like Jeff’s (who wants to be called “PC” in a public forum?) or as a result of one or two people (and I’m guilty of this) monopolizing the thread. If anyone is out there actually reading this that hasn’t weighed in (and if you don’t want to that makes sense – maybe this is a dead thread…) I’d like to hear what you have to say.
Later.
“Stravinsky unknowingly (or ignorantly?) included some blatantly antisemitic text in the only movement of his Serenade I like, and I have been listening to it since 1978.”
You mean the “Dancing Day” verse in the Cantata?
Thanks, z—just wish I had access to them (login required). But I don’t doubt you and appreciate the confirmation.
I’ve known of the reputed antisemitism since I was a kid, and BFD. I’ve heard of some things Berg said that were questionable. Stravinsky unknowingly (or ignorantly?) included some blatantly antisemitic text in the only movement of his Serenade I like, and I have been listening to it since 1978. Furtwangler and Paderewski both were tarnished by allegations of antisemitism (in Paderewski’s case it was probably very overstated, and Furtwangler wasn’t so much an antisemite as someone who didn’t leave Nazi Germany, all the while having close relationships with many Jewish musicians, some of whom I believe he protected). Yet I would never suggest that either musician’s work shouldn’t be enjoyed. And again, it’s also easy to tarnish someone unfairly with a “racist” label. I don’t know that that’s the case with Ruggles, but does it matter in regard to his music? Do we know that Bach wasn’t racist? And if he were, should it change our perception of the music of his we love? My personal opinion is that it should not.
I’m still waiting for a link to something Ruggles did or said that was clearly antisemitic. (David T.)
Examples of Ruggles’s anti-Semitism appear throughout his personal papers, housed at Yale University, the Beinecke Library, …
muse.jhu.edu/journals/modernism-modernity/v004/4.1oja.html
Sofia Gubaidulina’s Two Paths (Dedicated to Mary and Martha) for Two Violas and Orchestra (1999).
*
And before there was Michael Tilson Thomas and Carl Ruggles, there was, of course, Hermann Levi and Richard Wagner (and Parsifal).
*
Jewish classical music composition has been somewhat well established, at least since the Venetian Renaissance and European Enlightenment; with female and African diaspora classical music composition less so.
Mell, a majority of the people in this country think Bush is a failure. It is very well established that we have had our civil liberties violated multiple times by this administration. That said, I’ve chosen to stay and dissent rather than move to Canada or France, which I often fantasize about. But if the argument is that this govt. isn’t as bad as Stalin or Hitler, then no, of course it isn’t. But in some ways, isn’t it a sad state that this is the analogy we’re making, and that you’re mitigating the abuses of the Bush administration by comparing it to totalitarian regimes?
I find this PC stuff hilarious because anybody with any knowledge of history knows that we’re ALL committing totally heinous crimes that our ancestors will decry. Whether it’s carbon footprint crap or telling jokes, or dismissing uptown music – we’re all FUTURE ASSHOLES. 😉
I don’t agree with Jordu’s comments either. But I’m not suggesting that you guys are saying prejudice is excusable. However, I do disagree with some of what you’re saying. That’s okay, right?
I am interested in looking at the subject of how we as creative people deal with art and the sometimes reprehensible qualities of the artists who created the work. I wanted to suggest in my previous post that there is some creative dialogue out there that goes much deeper than saying “The music is what matters. Everything else is interesting but has no real meaning.”
For instance, Caine’s Wagner project sort of breaks down the music in a way that somehow separates it from the despicable politics of Wagner. But how is that possible? Is it just the result of the mindset of Caine or the listener like Jordu suggests? Or is there a technique here – maybe something very contemporary that we’re only just starting to see especially in the work of Jewish, Black and female composers?
I got the wonderful opportunity to hear Gubaidulina at a pre-concert lecture in the Rose room before the premiere of her 2 viola concerto (forgot the name). She talked soooo fondly of the Soviet days!! She reminisced about a premiere of hers which was sold out, at a big conservatory. She said the students were so upset, and so determined they TORE DOWN A WALL to get to her premiere. They used chairs and their bare hands and they tore down a brick wall to hear music. She lamented the current perverse idiocracy of mass media culture.
Dictatorships, fascist states, kingdoms, are all so much better for the arts than the idiocracy of the market place, and that’s most likely due to what Taleb (Black Swan dude) calls the power of the first to win to continue to win. It’s what makes Windows a monopoly and so many of our current first tier composers a monopoly too. Not quality, the first to win, keeps winning. The luck of the draw…
A good Stalinist asshole could really straighten things out! And a few of us would have to go die in the Gulag. But I think it just might be worth it. 😉 I love music too much to let it rot like this!
The problem is you can choose your friends and you can choose your enemies but you can’t choose your asshole.
“We’d probably have better music with an ass* in charge!” (Jeff H.)
I’ve often thought about this too, Jeff. Khrennikov (and Stalin and Zhdanov) sure created an intense environment in which Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Khachaturian; and later Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Denisov, Artyomov, Knaifel, Smirnov, Suslin, and Firsova all created some very imaginative and powerful music.
Mozart had Hieronymus Graf von Colloredo when he was young. He too is often remembered as an ass*; but his tense relations with Mozart got the adolescent composer to create at a high level, no?
*
I love the sentence in Allan Kozinn’s piece about Khrennikov hoping to stop “all manifestations of formalism and popular decadence.”
So David, if the present administration is so damn oppressive and awful, where is your Fifth Symphony or why haven’t you tried to jump over the fence a la Panufnik? Having just finished reading Panufnik’s “Composing Myself,” I don’t think any of us here have it nearly so bad, regardless of what you might think. No place is perfect, nor is any time. (or as my dad likes to say, “ah the good old days… when a simple infection could kill you.”)
Chris, not to prolong the madness, but again, no one is saying that prejudice is excusable. It isn’t. But I’d also suggest, as jodru stated more elegantly than I could, that one also has to be cognoscente of the times. Back then, not only was antisemitism there under the surface, but we had “separate but equal.” And “separate but equal” was the old version, I think, of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” It’s all inhuman. And I’d love to think that someday this will all change. Perhaps it will.
I also think that we need to look hard at ourselves and recognize that all of us are prejudiced in some way, shape or form. None of us can cast a stone here, can we? How many “fat” jokes do we laugh at, or racist jokes, or nationality jokes,or homosexual jokes, blond jokes, JAP jokes, etc. And even the occasional rants against uptown music, and some other folks’ rants against downtown music, might be an indication of some degree of prejudice one way or another.
I’m still waiting for a link to something Ruggles did or said that was clearly antisemitic. Again, whether he was or wasn’t isn’t going to change my affection for his music.
Yes, I’ve seen Gentlemen’s Agreement. Have you read Lester Bangs’ “White Noise Supremacists”?
No difference between an antisemite or a crotchety old man? I think if we don’t look at prejudice and call it out for what it is – and recognize that it lurks within all of us – we run the risk of helping to perpetuate a level of ignorance that leads to hateful violent acts.
I was reminded of Uri Caine’s unusual CD project where he arranged the music of Richard Wagner. How Uri came to grips with the legacy of Wagner – both musical and political – is worth a whole forum in itself. Another project that came to mind while reading through all of this is DJ Spooky’s video “remix” of Birth of a Nation (Guillermo Brown did a similar smaller project that utilized images from The Wiz) where he tried to turn on its head the film makers racist imagery in a sort of aural and visual cermonial exorcism.
Maybe Ruggles’ legacy could be addressed similarly? Pair his work with the work of a neglected African American composer who was his contemporary (there are plenty)?
I actually had a few Khrennikov records (that I bought from a Russian record store on Broadway back in the 90’s for 25c a piece – I just walked in and said, how many for the whole bunch ;)) and he was really a pretty good composer. I was going to start a joke thread about how now that our head Stalinist propagandist, Karl Rove has been deposed, is a good time to take stock on our own Stalinist networks and systems. Work intervened luckily!
When you see how he promoted Schnittke and then dismissed him, and how he went after Gubaidulina and Denisov and yet they both succeeded wonderfully, I find myself asking, is it really so much worse than our current silent careerist network of dismissal and promotion.
The Soviet Union had assholes in charge making decisions about who gets played. Today we have careerists in charge through a network (citing Tom Myron’s Black Swan reference in his blog today) of lucky winners and rich people and Yalies. Why people who are so mediocre get pushed up and up the ranks is mysterious and silent.
I found myself wishing that my career failures could be explained by blaming some asshole and not a network of lucky or rich mediocres. We’d probably have better music with an asshole in charge!
Hail Khrennikov! Master of Quality and the Gulag. Down with Networks of Silent Dismissive Mediocres!!
I’ve always found these discussions to be awfully specious and more an indication of the dearth of truly extra-musical discussion fodder there is in our field than anything else.
David’s got his finger on it when he points to how institutionalized anti-semitism was. Fast forward 100 years from now, and we’ll all be considered homophobes. After all, our government sponsors discriminating policies against homosexuals, and while polling numbers show a basic level of tolerance for homosexuals, they also show a prevailing disapproval of them. Hell, we’re still arguing about whether it’s a choice or not.
Future Sequenzers will sit around and view this framework as we view the institutionalized racism of earlier centuries. And why wouldn’t they? Inevitably, someone will dig up some email you wrote in college where you used a gay slur and ‘hey presto’ there’s a term paper on your regrettable homophobia.
I say, cut the guys some slack, whether they were Nazis, Stalinists, homophobes, germophobes or whatever. The music is what matters. Everything else is interesting but has no real meaning.
‘The history of music evolution is not the history of nice guys…Stockhausen and Cage have exhibited, in my opinion, profound racist tendencies, but as I get older, I find myself very much aware that I know a lot of racists, but I know of very few racists who have been able to contribute the kind of information to humanity that Cage and Stockhausen have”
-Anthony Braxton-
Chris, I fully expected someone to weigh in and make a similar point. And I’m not sure this isn’t the forum for this sort of issue.
I thought I made it clear that in no way was I excusing Ruggles’ antisemitism. It’s wrong, period. While I have yet to see anything he said or wrote that is clearly antisemitic. I’ve heard from a variety of good sources that he siad things that were antisemitic, and it’s not particularly shocking to me given how many people in the US were indeed antisemitic back then.
Most people weren’t given to burning synagogues, but harbored a under-the-surface antisemitism. It was fine if they were your doctor or banker. But only a small number of them should go to an Ivy League school. That sort of thing. It’s what kept Richard Feynman out of Columbia, for example, and he just made it into Princeton because some physicist could assure others on the admissions committee that despite his being Jewish (and he was nonpracticing, mind you), he wasn’t “like the others.”
Sure, Ruggles could have been an antisemite of that mold. But so were many people back then—have you ever seen Gentleman’s Agreement or School Ties? Just look at Ezra Pound for that matter. That’s not to excuse it. But there was a difference between people like Ruggles and, say, Father Coughlin or Goebbels.
I do try to separate someone’s personality and personal views from their art. If I didn’t, there might be many fewer works of music and art I enjoy. Ralph Shapey was an asshole, yet I like a lot of his music and wouldn’t have it any other way. A lot of people like Wagner, and that’s great, yet he was certainly antisemitic to a degree that made Ruggles look like a member of the ACLU. No degree of prejudice is acceptable, and I’m not trying to rationalize or argue that Ruggles was only a “little eety bit prejudice” while Ezra Pound was a full-blown antisemite. But again, I’ve not seen any definitive actions by Ruggles indicating antisemitism nor have I personally read or heard anything said by him that would suggest that. That doesn’t mean what many of us have been told is incorrect, but I’d like to see some evidence before condemning him for this. As you may know, Ives was incorrectly, and inappropriately, tarnished with this label, and the reality is that he was neither antisemitic nor homophobic, etc.
Yes, I am passionate about Ruggles’ music, and in the end, nothing about his background is going to change that. But there is a difference, at least to me, between being ignorant (and many prejudices are just that—ignorance), which is potentially correctable through education, and being deeply antisemitic or racist, which is extremely hard to reverse. I just don’t see any evidence that Ruggles was antisemitic to his core. Ignorant about my landsmen, perhaps. But ask Michael Tilson-Thomas if Ruggles was antisemitic or just a crotchety old man with a lack of a filter between his mouth and his brain. Or are you saying there’s no difference at all? I think that’s pretty harsh, personally, if that’s the case.
“But while I’d have loved for Carl Ruggles to be devoid of racist tendencies, and certainly don’t excuse him in any way, there’s a difference between being prejudiced (as many genteel people in that society were) and burning a cross on someone’s front lawn…”
I personally don’t agree with David’s comment, but I also realize this isn’t the forum to begin a debate about the relative values of prejudice, cross burning and not being a “nice guy.” The comment just seems sort of reactive and emotional due to his obvious passion for Ruggles’ music. However, it also reads like a rationalization.
It is frustrating to come across art you find inspiring and then discover something terrible about the character and actions of its creator. And everyone has their own levels of tolerance. Many people simply divorce music or a painting from the creator’s personal and political views. Simon Schama’s recent series “The Power Of Art” did (I think) a good job confronting this paradox.
In my book, Ruggles is god. And I’m an atheist!
yes, he had some racist and antisemitic tendencies. Many people in Connecticut of that generation did; Ives was a bit of an exception in that regard. But while I’d have loved for Carl Ruggles to be devoid of racist tendencies, and certainly don’t excuse him in any way, there’s a difference between being prejudiced (as many genteel people in that society were) and burning a cross on someone’s front lawn. What I’ve read of Ruggles indicates that he was a very ornery person whose bark, perhaps, was worse than his bite. Far worse. And younger members of his family found him very delightful, as did Ives and many others. His music was championed by Michael Tilson-Thomas (nee Tomashefsky), and were Ruggles a virulent antisemite, I doubt he would have allowed MTT to even be in the same room as he was, let alone provide a lot of personal reminiscences and insight into his music.
Sure, Ruggles might not have been a “nice guy.” But he was someone I would have loved to have had tea or dinner with. As far as his compositions, he wrote very few and allowed even fewer to survive. I’ve seen different versions of Men and Mountains, since he constantly revised his few remaining works. But what he let survive is some of the best stuff ever written. By anyone. He was after quality, not quantity. Feldman is one of the few who was able to pull off both. Glass, who is also very prolific, nailed the quantity part, but the quality…
Sorry to be so taken by this, but I’ve always felt that Ruggles’ music remains terribly neglected, something people talk about more than they get to hear. There are more recordings of Feldman’s Triadic Memories than any of Ruggles’ pieces. He’s neglected perhaps just a bit less than Dallapicolla. Both of them deserve more hearings (and Feldman as well).
The people who live past 85, artist assholes, good guys, or just folk on the street, make an awfully small sliver of the pie. Besides, we’ve still got Carter, and I think Henry Brant is hitting 94 this year.
I believe that Carl Ruggles — at 95 — also beat out Mr Khrennikov. Whether he was a “good guy” as well as a great American visionary composer and painter — given his racism and anti-Semitism — is open to discussion. [His compositions, I believe, last, in sum, about 80 minutes.]
Leo Ornstein was a good guy also. He lived to 110, 109 or 107 depending on which source you go by. (109 was the most widelyaccepted age though.)
Well, I think that composer and conductor Mikola Kolessa was a “good guy” and he lived to be 102; before passing last summer.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/kolessa.htm
By this standard, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove’s gonna outlive us all.