I am more than ready to forget about it until Grew digs something up for us to listen to. But I do not think that was his intention to begin with.

You're probably right.

In any case, I have now received information which appears to leave little doubt about Trunk's Nazi credentials. It contains little about his musical style but a fair amount about the texts he set. I don't intend to post it on this thread as it is not my research, but I'm happy to forward it by PM to anyone who's interested.

I hardly think that finger-wagging like this is at all helpful. Turfan Fragment does not post here as a university Music academic. If you feel that you would like to give him some advice on his conduct as such, I would suggest that a PM is more helpful than this public grandstanding. I suppose that this is a point that it would be nice for all to bear in mind.

I think that there are some questions concerning whether or not, as listeners, we have a moral responsibility to think about the extent to which composers like Trunk were involved with the Nazi party before, during and after listening to their music. In which case, it may be very hard to keep from retching.

I am very cautious about any idea that music is some kind of 'pure' art that has nothing to do with world events. Most ethnomusicological studies, for example, show that developments in musical style are generally intimately tied to developments in the social sphere, and I have found that studying Western music in parallel to the history (and, yes, political thought) of the period has illuminated my understanding in ways that I do not think would be possible restricting myself to listening to recordings and studying scores.

Lots of people said similar of Mozart. Much as I love him, I know he could be obnoxious to the extent that he was forcibly ejected from one place on the end of somebody's foot!

Let's face it, everybody's human and depending on the time/place/political situation/race/circumstances under which they are born, very many of them are going to hold views with which many people would not agree.  That doesn't mean they are not consummate musicians who can't write universally-loved music to be enjoyed by all.  I think we have to bypass the man/woman and take the music as we personally find it.  Few people have held such innocuous views during their lifespan that they didn't offend somebody.

Sticks head over parapet

Any YouTube links?

Retreats

Interestingly, IIRC the reason why Mozart was literally kicked out of the Archbishop of Salzburg's service was not because he was obnoxious per se, but because he got ideas above his station as a liveried servant - which is what composers were in that time and place.  I wonder whether Mozart's music would have attained the heights that it did had he been content to remain within the system, rather than breaking through those social structures and going freelance.

The only "huge chip" on my shoulder TF is a mixture of rationality and logic. That must surely be compared with your statement that...


But it is only in the objective qualities that music can really be adjudged subjectively. You seem to be denying - even though you have confessed total ignorance of it - that any objective quality that may exist in the music is of any use.

But that now seems to be contary to what you say here...


...where you are (rightly) accepting that no further comments should be made without hearing the music, and qualifying your unlikely hearing of it  as being not (as you suggested above) because you will vomit as a result of his political propensities, but rather because you do not have enough time in the day.

Baz