On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, Martin wrote: > > > > > Simon Price and Kitty Empire) repeating the > > > tired old cliche that - to quote Empire by way of example - 'Kraftwerk's > > > austere music has brought them misguided accusations of being fascists'. > > > > And neither am I, nor are you ... but Stockhausen has said that he > > dislikes all music with a steady beat because it reminds him of the > > martial drumbeats of fascism. > > Then he must hate most music, as there's nearly alway's "something" holding > time and the beat.
Arguably, Stockhausen's music often sounds like music composed by someone who hates music. > The problem is people seem to tar everyone German with > the same brush. Now here's a off-topic tangent, but here goes: Much has been made of the collective guilt of Germans for the Nazi period, but in my opinion Hitler only exploited and amplified the worst tendencies of the people under his rule. Hitler's rhetoric -- and the rhetoric of the fascists everywhere, sound disturbingly similar to the rhetoric of the United State's conservatives. I've always wondered how big a shove it would take to push America's right wingers (or for that matter, left wingers) into forming El Salvador-style death squads. I suspect not very big. Germans are just people; to the extent that they're different from any other homogenous population, it's the little things that make them different, like toilets with a little shelf in the bowl for your poop to sit on. People are just fooling themselves if they think there's anything peculiarly German about what happened between 1933 and 1945. And since I immediately brought up Nazis, this thread should be over ;-)
