If I were one of Chopin's heirs, I would sue you for libel. A "jerk?" Provide evidence. Wagner, a man who "hated Jews?" Are you aware Wagner hired the greatest Jewish conductors of his time to conduct and produce his music dramas? He had the greatest respect for Jewish musicians. Wagner's objection to Judaism was related to his mission to develop nationalistic traits in music. It was the 19th Century, and the rise of nationalism, and the passion for the illusion of nationalistic identities for peoples of shared races, genotypes and geographical origins. Wagner's argument against Judaism could be summed up in his appraisal of Mendelssohn, a cosmopolitan genius by any standard who's musical style was NOT nationalistic, but international. It went against the current trend in Europe at that time. And Wagner criticized Jews for their very assimilation into European society, their very ability to sound multi-national, not particular. He did not hate Jews.
Truly, you exemplify Alexander Pope's assertion that a little learning is a dangerous thing.
Oh, the irony of your quoting Alexander Pope. It's obvious you've never read even a single one of the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of vicious, monstrous things that Wagner wrote and said about the Jews throughout his entire life. You obviously haven't even read his most famous anti-semitic diatribe, Jewishness in Music; if you had read it, and are possessed of an IQ greater than zero, you would have noticed that it's not about music, but about Jews. (Wagner explains that Jews are not capable of being musicians, and his objection to Jewish music is not that it's "internationalistic", but rather that it's just a mass of barnyard cacophony and no further attention need be paid to it). Jewishness in Music (among thousands of Wagner's other writings and comments) is about how Jews are not really human beings like the rest of us, that normal people feel a natural sense of revulsion in the presence of Jews because, first of all, they're physically ugly, and they speak in a kind of disgusting gibberish that normal people rightfully find offensive etc., etc., etc.. Jews, he explained over and over and over and over and over again, lack human feelings and therefore cannot be musicians, or artists of any kind, because they have no way of creating or even recognizing those inner feelings and experiences that normal people have in response to Art. (This is why, Wagner explains, that only in the rarest cases, will you ever see a Jew on the stage; they can't express what they are incapable of feeling, and no audience would be fooled for a minute. Wagner had a bit of a chuckle over this assertion years later when he republished Jewishness in Music under his own name. He explained to his friends and family that since the Jews had now managed to infiltrate human society so completely, that you could actually now see Jews on stages even throughout Germany, something he said he could literally never have imagined when he was young). Basically, what worried Wanger was not "internationalist" Jewish music, which he didn't believe even existed, but that the Jews were secretly taking over the world, and that Jewish "taste" in music and art, i.e, their alien, subhuman attitudes were being imposed on the decent people of Europe.
Well, what about Mendelssohn. Wagner despised Mendelssohn personally and while he admitted he did write a few, I repeat, a few nice pieces, he thought the rest of his work was worthless trivial garbage. Again, this had nothing to do with nationalism vs internationalism. Wagner especially liked the Hebrides Overture, which he described as a perfect landscape in music. But, what was perfect about it, Wagner explained, was that it was so completely devoid of any human content, and of course this is because, as Wagner tells us, Mendelssohn, being a Jew, lacked all human feelings and couldn’t have put any human content into his work even if he'd wanted to. In fact, the case of Mendelssohn simply proved his oft-stated point about how clever Jews can be when it comes to copying their superiors.
As for these "greatest Jewish conductors", there was one, just one, no plural here, one Jewish conductor, Hermann Levi, who Wagner respected because, as he often explained, Levi didn't change his last name the way so many other Jews did when they wanted to infiltrate human society. Levi is an interesting case, and books can be written about his relation to Wagner; basically he recognized Wagner's musical genius and felt privileged to be on the ground floor as it were, but he did so at the cost of having to put up with an unceasing amount of unspeakble abuse.
As for the other Jews who played in the orchestra at Bayreuth, it is true that Wagner did not care about their religion
as long as they could play. One of his bitterest memories was his attempt to stage Tristan in Vienna when he had to abort the thing after 70 rehearsals because the musicians simply couldn't handle it. Wagner traveled throughout Europe extensively, taking in every musical performance of any type that he could, keeping a lookout for talented musicians who he thought would actually be capable of realizing his vision of Bayreuth. If some of them were Jews, well, you had to take what you could get. You want to claim that Wagner's benevolence toward his Jewish employees meant he didn't hate Jews, then you'd expect to find the same attitude towards his Jewish audiences, the multitudes of Jews then and now who loved Wagner's music and were some of his greatest fans. "Those Jews", Wagner said, "are like flies. The more you push them away, the more they keep coming back." And while Wagner was exhorting and praising those Jewish musicians in the pit during rehearsals for Parsifal, he was simultaneously writing vicious letters to King Ludwig II, raging about what a horrible thing it was that there would almost certainly be Jews in the audiences, polluting the atmosphere of his pure and noble work.
Anyway, let's let Wagner have the last word (which he always loved to have). In 1851, Liszt wrote Wagner a letter, and after several paragraphs of business matters, he asks, " Can you tell me, under the seal of the most absolute secrecy, whether the famous article on the Jews in music ("Das Judenthum in der Musik") in Brendel's paper is by you?"
Wagner replies, "You ask me about the 'Judenthum'. You must know that the article is by me. Why do you ask? Not from fear, but only to avoid that the Jews should drag this question into bare personality, I appear in a pseudonymous capacity. I felt a long-repressed hatred for this Jewry, and this hatred is as necessary to my nature as gall is to the blood. An opportunity arose when their damnable scribbling annoyed me most, and so I broke forth at last. It seems to have made a tremendous impression, and that pleases me, for I really wanted only to frighten them in this manner; that they will remain the masters is as certain as that not our princes, but the bankers and the Philistines, are nowadays our masters." Etc., etc., etc., etc.
Topic: Why would we listen to you play when we can listen to Feinberg?