Without a doubt, Richard Wagner was one of the most influential composers to grace the Earth with his presence. His music continues to inspire and evoke nearly 150 years after his death, and as it is still performed by symphony productions, opera companies and chamber orchestras, that will likely never change. However, many listeners view his music in the context of what is seen as the very dark side of a man described through his writings as small, weak, cowardly, bigoted and mean. The fact that he was adored by the tyrant Adolf Hitler doesn't help his image, nor does a particularly disgusting article which we'll talk about later. “Judaism in music,” more accurately translated as “Jewishness in music” (this connotation only serves to obscure), is the quintessence of anti-Semitic idealism. It is an argument that seeks and ultimately fails to find a tangible reason to hate the Jewish people and to justify that hatred. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The article is structured such that it begins with the lowest and broadest arguments, working its way through the justifications and eventually reaching the art, finally music, and ending with a pair of passages concerning literature and poetry. The meaning of the opening statements is summed up in this quote: “We must explain to ourselves the involuntary revulsion which the nature and personality of the Jews inspire in us. » In essence, Wagner is saying in these passages that anti-Semitism is literally natural to ordinary people and that these feelings are too deeply ingrained in people and culture to even try to get rid of them. Instead, he says, we should try to emancipate ourselves from “Jewishness.” He does not mention a method, but it is not difficult to imagine who could have taken hold of it and used it. He continues his argument with an absurd explanation of why Jews are so repulsive. There is nothing to be lost in the argument of the following paragraph if it is simply condensed into a three-word sentence: "Jews look ugly." The quote: “The Jew… in ordinary life strikes us above all by his external appearance which, whatever the European nationality to which we belong, has something unpleasantly foreign to this nationality. » He never directly mentions the word "ugly" or any other similar word, but he implies it by writing that their appearance is "unpleasantly foreign". How, then, can we go lower than that? His next premise: “The effect that the Jew produces on us by his speech is much more important, indeed quite decisive for our investigation. ” Or, in simple terms, “Jews look ugly.” Again, although he never uses the descriptive word in this premise, it is implicit in his speech, and this premise seems particularly important to him due to the fact that, apparently, one must be able to sing if the we want to create music, the subject of the article as Judaism relates to it. The rest is just a blur of bad arguments that arise from the idea of ​​anti-Semitism intrinsic to the culture. He goes on to reflect on why Jews were able to enter the artistic world, the plasticity of their craft through their stereotypical money-grabbing methods, and he also mentions Felix Mendelsohn, a famous Jewish composer, under a negative day. As noted previously, he ends his argument by highlighting literary and poetic Jews, castigating.