Modern discourse

by Scoop Shachtman, 12 December 2007

Comment is Free continues to act as the internet dinner party, or perhaps sewer:

I have no opinions about Stochausen [sic] but I have opinions about Oliver Kamm

I caant [sic] help thinking that there is a connectioon [sic] between Kamm’[sic] Jewish heritage and his anti German opinions. I imagine if Stockhausen was Israeli we would be reading a [sic] eulogy

Maybe its [sic] time Kamm changed the record as his extremist agenda and constant calls for wars against Iran etc are grating

Sick.

Comments

  1. Jura Watchmaker

    Wednesday 12 December 2007 at 18:03

    From the comments…

    “Stockhausen’s most notable intervention in the public sphere was instead a peculiarly fatuous description of the 9/11 bombings as “the greatest work of art ever”

    If he did say that he was right.

    It was indeed a “production”

    And another, from “GuardianCensorship”…

    “Deleted by Moderator”

  2. Noga

    Wednesday 12 December 2007 at 20:41

    This is what one commenter said:

    “This rubbish for a start: “The dominance of western music reflects its ability to combine melody and harmony, and thereby produce a discourse.” - Dominance where? In the west, of course. Great reasoning!”

    It rang a bell about a dispute concerning Arab responsiveness to Western music, between Edward said and Bernard Lewis. Here is what Said says, in an attempt to dispel Lewis’s (attributed) contention that Western music does not appeal to Arab and Muslim ears:

    “.. no less an intellectual luminary than Yale’s Paul Kennedy…was particularly impressed with Lewis’s assertion… that alone of all the cultures of the world Islam has taken no interest in Western music. Quite without any justification at all, Kennedy then lurched on to lament the fact that Middle Easterners had deprived themselves even of Mozart! For that indeed is what Lewis suggests (though he doesn’t mention Mozart). Except for Turkey and Israel, “Western art music,” he categorically states, “falls on deaf ears” in the Islamic world.

    Now, as it happens, this is something I know quite a bit about, but it would take some direct experience or a moment or two of actual life in the Muslim world to realize that what Lewis says is a total falsehood, betraying the fact that he hasn’t set foot in or spent any significant time in Arab countries. Several major Arab capitals have very good conservatories of Western music: Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Tunis, Rabat, Amman—even Ramallah on the West Bank. These have produced literally thousands of excellent Western-style musicians who have staffed the numerous symphony orchestras and opera companies that play to sold-out auditoriums all over the Arab world. There are numerous festivals of Western music there, too, and in the case of Cairo (where I spent a great deal of my early life more than fifty years ago) they are excellent places to learn about, listen to, and see Western instrumental and vocal music performed at quite high levels of skill. The Cairo Opera House has pioneered the performance of opera in Arabic, and in fact I own a commercial CD of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro sung most competently in Arabic.”

    http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/crisis/said.htm

    Would the commenter still revile Kamm’s premises if he had an idea that Edward Said shared it?

    Also, some other commenter castigated Kamm for his “neo-con” approach to classical music. This sounds eerily close to Wagner’s ideas about a Jewish approach to music, that must be expunged from the German Musical canon.

  3. Will

    Thursday 13 December 2007 at 1:41

    Quite a good article by Kammo that.

    Liked the Adorno reference I did.

  4. Ben

    Thursday 13 December 2007 at 5:50

    ‘Deleted by Moderator’ is standard on CiF if you mention that a protagonist has German heritage and suggest that this might adversely colour their views.

    Of course, there is no such protective concern for the honour of Jewish participants.