Home Page of William Osborne and Abbie Conant
By William Osborne
[Sent to various lists on
February 17, 2000.]
I think many people have
wondered why the two major music critics of
_The New York Times_, Bernard Holland and James Ostreich, have served as
apologists for the Vienna Philharmonic's all-white male ideology. Their
articles have presented arguments for both the protester's and Philharmonic's
views. Through this approach they moved
political debate back 30 years or more, as if mainstream journalism still
needed to ponder whether the exclusion of women and non-whites is justifiable
in a symphony orchestra.
See:
Bernard Holland,
"Feminist Protests and Vienna Musicians" _The New York Times_ (March
3, 1997) p. C11.
James Ostreich, "Even
Legends Adjust to Time and Trend, Even the Vienna" _The New York Times_
(February 28, 1998) p. B9.
and by contrast see:
Jan Herman, "For Violist, the Rules Never Seemed to Change"
_The Los Angeles Times_ (February 27, 1998).
Holland and Ostreich thus
presented subtle forms of propaganda that strengthened the Vienna
Philharmonic's resistance to change.
Unfortunately, recent events have shown that the orchestra's
"traditions" are actually part of an ugly form of bigotry that can even threaten European political
stability.
I hope some of you will be
able to see through the agendas in the article below by Donald G. McNeil Jr.
which was recently published by _The New York Times_ on the front page of its
arts section. Instead of relying on
factual presentation and reasoned arguments it emphasizes innuendo. In some cases I have added short editorial
comments since Joerg Haider's history is not well-known in the Americas. After the article I include a very brief
analysis of yet another article by McNeil that might help you locate the
origins of his perspectives and goals.
I would especially draw your
attention to the eighth paragraph, which notes that Gerard Mortier, the
Director of the Salzburg Festspiel, has called for a boycott of the Vienna
Philharmonic's New Year's Concert. He
is the first high official in Austria to make such a statement.
I am sorry for this long
post and the deluge of information of the last few days about Austria's
politico-cultural life, but the situation is truly unusual and I hope some of
you will find it interesting.
William Osborne
100260.243@compuserve.com
____________
The New York Times
Austria Under Siege by
Artists *(and Artifice)*
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
VIENNA, Feb. 14 -- Thanks to
Jörg Haider's Freedom Party, Vienna has two new schools of art: the small and
bitter Get-Out-Now movement and the larger, angrier Stay-and-Fight club.
The first wants a complete
art blockade of Austria to protest the inclusion of Mr. Haider's right-wing
anti-immigrant party in a coalition government. The latter plans to stay and
protest his ascendancy. [Ed: The party
is generally viewed as more than just "right-wing."]
For once artists are siding
with the power elite. Although he is a partner in a government with a typical
conservative platform, Mr. Haider earlier made statements, especially those
seen as sympathetic to the Third Reich, that so upset the European Union that
14 countries have downgraded diplomatic relations with Austria. [Ed: 14 out of 15 EU governments do not
represent a
"power elite" and Haider is not a typical conservative.]
However feared he is by
liberals, it's not clear that Mr. Haider poses any threat to the arts. Although
artists here are even more careless than politicians about tossing off blithe
references to Nazism, no one in the public debate yet suggests that Mr.
Haider's party would crack down on anyone he disliked -- or even cut the
generous government subsidies that Austria gives artists. And there has been
nearly as much snide slicing of rivals as there is bashing of Mr. Haider's
politics. [Ed: Haider's plaudits of
National Socialism were neither "careless" nor "blithe" and
his actions continue to show his sympathies-- as they have for the last 15 years. His attitudes toward
"avant-guarde" artists in particular is quite clear. See the article that I am also posting by
the distinguished Cornell U. musicologist, Michael Steinberg.]
Take the case of Gérard
Mortier, the artistic director of the celebrated Salzburg Festival. Last week
while traveling in the United States, he made headlines by announcing that he
would resign early to protest the presence of Mr. Haider's party in the
government.
But as was known to everyone
in Vienna who has followed Mr. Mortier's angry clashes with Austria's
conservative president, Thomas Klestil, over the festival's avant-garde spin,
he announced last March that he would depart in 2001, and his replacement was
named two months ago. [Ed: For the real
facts behind the Festspiel and Haider see the Steingberg
article.]
On Sunday, speaking at a
public forum called "Go or Stay: Is Artistic Freedom Endangered?,"
the actor Klaus Maria Brandauer dismissed Mr. Mortier's beau geste: "I
spoke to a French woman who said, 'Everybody should take the stand Mortier
did.' She didn't know he was leaving anyway." [Ed: In reality his contract is not being renewed due to his long
and consistent stance against Haider's cultural politics.]
After today's forum, word
reached Austria that Mr. Mortier had gone even further. In an interview with a
Dutch magazine, he said he feared Mr. Haider would turn the Salzburg Festival
into a mix of "Strauss waltzes and a yodeling contest." [Ed: Again, see the Steinberg article for a
more factual portrayal of the long-standing conflict.] He also called for a
boycott of the annual New Year's concert by the Vienna Philharmonic. Since it
is televised worldwide, that would "cost Austria millions," he said.
But, the magazine reported, he also made a threat inimical to artistic freedom:
if Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who has been invited to direct the New Year's concert,
accepts, he will drop him from this year's Salzburg program. [Ed: No mention of the "artistic
freedom" of the women and Austrian-educated non-whites barred from the
Vienna Philharmonic.]
Rainhard Fendrich, author of
the pop video hit "I Am From Austria," which celebrates the
beer-and-Alpine-scenery culture, is now so ashamed of being Austrian, the
magazine Profil said this week, that "he is in Majorca and prefers to
speak English."
More respectfully discussed
at the forum, which packed the Burg Theater today, was the decision by Elfriede
Jelinek, one of Austria's best-known playwrights, to refuse to let her works be
performed in Austria while Mr. Haider is in the government. Ms. Jelinek was to
speak, but sent word that she was sick, although she is also known to be very
shy. An actor read her statement, which included the explanation: "My
words will have an effect in that they won't be heard anymore."
In an earlier interview Ms.
Jelinek said she would leave Austria if she didn't have to care for her aged
mother. Her words have a certain influence because she is one of the few
artists to have been directly attacked by Mr. Haider's party. Two years ago a
Freedom Party poster in the campaign for the Vienna government read: "Do
You Want Jelinek, Turrini and Peymann, or Do You Want Art?"
[Ed: Haider knew that in Austria these posters would
correctly be associated with the polemic and methods the National Socialists
used in the 1930s against "degenerate moderns." The Freedom Party also sent letters to many
oppositional artists letting them know they were being watched and that their
addresses were known. This was
especially intimidating since there was a rightwing extremist package bomb
campaign going on in Austria at the time.
The recipients included an assortment of artists, feminists and
leftists. One blew off several fingers
of the Mayor of Vienna.]
The three are modern writers
and directors of works that upset Austrian nationalists. Ms. Jelinek's long,
cerebral plays attack the materialistic, health-obsessed "body
culture" that some see as an allusion to the tanned, narcissistic Mr.
Haider and his yuppie followers. Mr. Peymann staged a production of Thomas
Bernhard's "Heldenplatz," much of which was a monologue by an elderly
Jew describing Austria's acceptance of Hitler and included the line "all
Austrians are Nazis."
But the director Andrea
Breth, who was in Ms. Jelinek's absence the only woman on stage at today's
forum, said she thought Ms. Jelinek's decision was "exactly the wrong way
to go about things."
Thinking one could fight a
government with silence was "a bit vain," she concluded. She said she
supported Luc Bondy, the well-known Swiss-German director sitting next to her,
in his position: "Come to Austria and speak out, speak out, speak
out!"
Reaction from outside
Austria is still muted and individualistic, partially because Vienna is no
longer the world cultural capital it once was. Some French painters have said
they will not show here. On Sunday Lou Reed canceled the Vienna leg of his
European tour, telling Austrian radio, "People have the right to elect
someone like him, but that doesn't mean everyone has to get close to him."
Zubin Mehta, director of the
Israel Philharmonic, has effectively ignored the Israeli government, which has
recalled its ambassador to Vienna in protest. He said he would gauge the new
government's acts before refusing to work here.
Last week there was talk of
the Oscar committee's canceling the eligibility of an Austrian entry,
"Nordrand" ("North Skirts") for best foreign film. That
saddened some who knew the film, directed by Barbara Albert, because its
message is antixenophobic. It follows a young woman from a troubled,
hate-filled lower-class Austrian family who is befriended and redeemed by a
young Bosnian refugee woman living here -- exactly the kind of people Mr.
Haider attacks. In the end, the committee decided to leave the film in the
running.
Artists oppose the Freedom
Party largely because of its stance on immigrants and race. Fairly
characterizing its attitude toward art is difficult. [Ed: Actually, the stance
is clear and that is why so many artists are protesting. Again, see the Steinberg article.]
Peter Marboe, Vienna's
cultural affairs counselor, said he had a "really horrendous"
experience with Haider followers over a retrospective of the art of the
Wienergruppe (Vienna Group), which was popular 50 years ago. In the show, he
said, was a pioneering piece that he said attacked silence about child abuse
and included pictures of naked children and erect penises. When he refused to
remove it, he said, the Freedom Party group accused him of backing child
pornography. [Ed: McNeil's portrayal
of the Wienergruppe work is very colored.]
The party "is
erratic" about styles, he said, and picks fights it thinks will win it
votes. On the other hand, it simply ignored a Vienna musical that nastily
satirized Mr. Haider, "1000 Suns, or Dr. Jockel in Power," even
though it was staged with city money during the recent election campaigns. [Ed: In reality, such political satire is a
regular part of Viennese cultural life and generally covers the whole political
spectrum.]
The party doesn't denounce huge
state subsidies for opera as elitist, as populist parties elsewhere might. It
favors classical and folk art but backed the Austrian Cultural Institute in New
York, a sliver of a building whose architect likened it to a guillotine. It
voted against a Vienna Holocaust memorial and against raising a museum to house
the papers of Arnold Schoenberg but did not give an anti-Semitic reason, though
their opponents suggested that was the case.
On Sunday at the forum, the
novelist Robert Menasse denounced the Freedom Party the way nearly everyone
else did -- but he said its appearance had been a blessing.
For decades, he said,
Austrians have been too complacent about the cozy power-sharing between the two
big parties that dominated their politics. "Not long ago," he said,
"it would have been unthinkable to have a full house in this theater on a
Sunday morning for a political discussion."
End of article.
++++++++++++++++++
A Brief Commentary
Last week the Times
published -three- articles by Donald G. McNeil Jr. which directly or indirectly
call for tolerance of Austria's rightwing extremist "Freedom
Party." I will briefly discuss one
of these Times articles, "Why Austria Is Facing European Anger,"
(Feb. 5, 2000) and show its relationship to the patronage of the Vienna
Philharmonic in the United States.
McNeil asserts that the EU's
sanctions against Austria are hypocritical "diplomatic whipping" and
"blackballing." He begins
with a questionable comparison between the current situation in Austria and one
in Italy in 1994:
"The two weeks of diplomatic
whipping that Austria has absorbed over the inclusion of Jörg Haider's
anti-immigrant Freedom Party in its new government has been quite
extraordinary. Today, that coalition government took office at a tense
ceremony, as protesters clashed with riot policemen outside, and the diplomatic
breach widened. Washington quickly recalled its ambassador 'for consultations,'
and European governments began downgrading their relations with Austria.
"Yet Italy had a
neo-Fascist party in its government in 1994, and Europe did not threaten to
blackball its diplomats, nor did the Belgian foreign minister say it would be
immoral to ski in the Italian Alps."
[End of quote.]
Most political analysts
would not find the situation in Italy in 1994 comparable to the current
rightwing extremism in Austria. The
Freedom Party is the largest member of the ruling Austrian coalition. Haider
could have thus taken the Chancellorship if he had wanted it. Instead, he anticipated the protests and
sanctions and is waiting until a more opportune moment. The Fascist party in Italy, on the other
hand, was small and had no chance of actually leading the government. It was also correctly assumed that the
Italian coalition would be short lived.
In the 55 years since the war, Italy has had almost as many governments,
but in German-speaking Europe ruling coalitions are generally long
lasting. In Germany, Helmut Kohl's
recent government ruled for 16 continuous years. If Haider is successful, it is likely he will become Chancellor
and remain so for a long time. His
beliefs and power are far more extreme and destablizing than what Italy faced.
Using questionable logic,
McNeil says it is hypocritical to censure Haider's praise for Hitler since
European governments contain people who excused Stalin, and who have sympathies
for Cuba, Libya, and Iraq:
"And many European
countries -- to say nothing of the Eastern European ones lining up to join [the
EU] -- have had Communists in government who have made excuses for Stalin or
other dictators. Plenty have cozy diplomatic relations with dictators from Cuba
to Libya to Iraq."
In reality there are no
significant political parties in the EU or the former East Block that
"excuse" Stalin--not even among the communists. It should also be noted that Cuba, Libya,
and Iraq are not European countries. It
is thus misleading to compare them with the totalitarianism that swept over
Germany and Austria causing war and the deaths of 50 million people. The rightwing extremism that has profoundly
shaped the history of the EU's members is an entirely different matter than
dictators in little countries on other continents who are in conflict with
American interests.
McNeil is speaking from an
-overly narrowed- perspective of the American right which limits his analysis
of European politics and history.
To a certain degree, the
same biases influence the music section of _The New York Times_ when it writes
about the Vienna Philharmonic. New
York's cultural climate is controlled to a considerable degree by the wealthy
patrons who bankroll it. The atmosphere
in the city's classical music world is thus often one of wealth and capital,
relatively antithetic to Europe's "socialist" support for the arts. The Vienna Philharmonic, which insists it is
a "private" orchestra and nominally rejects government funding,
preserves the highly conservative, sexist and racist ideology of a romantically
old and traditional Europe. It thus has
a special appeal to the wealthy, conservative patrons of New York's cultural
life who donate lavishly for its yearly appearances in Carnegie.
The President of Columbia
Artists, Ronald Wilford, founded a funding organization of New York patrons
named "The Friends of the Vienna Philharmonic" which makes the yearly
concerts in Carnegie Hall possible. By
contrast, most other European orchestras are entirely state funded and have
little or no need of New York's financial elite.
The views and biases of the wealthy are not
unknown to Haider who is one of the richest men in Austria. He inherited a huge land estate from his
father who obtained it for a token price from a dispossessed Jewish family
during the Third Reich. The Vienna
Philharmonic's conservatism endears it not only to wealthy New Yorkers, but
also to Haider's supporters in Austria.
The two groups are not comparable, but due to their conservatism,
neither has rejected the orchestra's sexist and racist ideologies.
A more direct connection
exists between Haider and the American far right. Pat Buchanan (a popular American rightwing extremist) views the
protests against Haider as nothing more than an attack on the right, in spite
of the Austrian's extreme xenophobia and plaudits for Nazis. During a speech in Richmond, Virginia,
Buchanan told supporters, "I do not see any threat to Europe or the world
or anywhere from Mr. Haider or that coalition government sitting in
Vienna. It is an indication, I think,
that any candidate of the right can expect universal hostilities."
Buchanan has been
unapologetic about statements in his book, _A Republic, Not an Empire_, in
which he argued that Hitler's Third Reich was no threat to the United States
after 1940.
In Richmond Buchanan also
accused members of the European Union of hypocrisy and arrogance for freezing
diplomatic relations with Haider's party.
Using exactly the same specious and misleading arguments that McNeil
used in _The New York Times_, Buchanan said the EU had "willingly climbed into
bed with genuine fascists and people who are Stalinists and Communists.''
Regardless of what attitudes
Europeans might have about "communists," it is disturbing to see
Haider, Buchanan and the music section of _The New York Times_ being so "cozy" with each
other. And given Austria's move to the
extreme right, it is now more disturbing than ever that New York's wealthy
patrons are bringing a sexist and racist orchestra to the city for yearly
concerts in Amercia's most prestigious concert hall.
William Osborne
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