All Music Has Touch of Satanism

By Benjamin De Casseres
Detroit Evening Times (Detroit, MI), July 29, 1941

One of the pastimes of the human mind when nations go to war is to “find the goat” — the “evil genius” behind the people or the government that you hate.

A writer in a New York newspaper who evidently must pin something on Germany, and enough can be pinned on her, heaven knows! — lets fly with this extraordinary bit on Richard Wagner, who probably has more radio devotees than any other composer:

“Wagner’s genius was stupendous, universal, the genius of the devil, whose able apostle he was. His music mocks all the laws of life except those of the jungle. He has turned an entire nation into veritable limbs of Satan.

He was himself, perhaps, the most powerful limb of Satan that ever encumbered the earth. One admires his intellect as one admires a magnificent snake.”

This will surprise those who have listened to the “Good Friday” music of Wagner’s Parsifal or the quite un-satanic music of Siegfried’s “Rhine Journey,” with the warble of birds and the purling of brooks.

But there is a grain or two of truth in the writer’s accusations, for what is said about Wagner’s “Satanism” is, in a measure, true of all great music.

James Huneker, famous critic of the arts, said that music was “the weapon of Satan,” and Tolstoy has a man commit murder because of the influence of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata on him.

And don’t forget that Nero “fiddled while Rome burned,” and Hitler plays the violin, and Paganini, the greatest of all violinists, was called “the spawn of the devil.”

This is the age of that most fascinating, that most hated, that most useful, that most execrable of human beings known as the spy.

The best book on spies today is Joseph Gollomb’s Armies of Spies (Macmillan).

Here is the story of “The Hooded Ones,” the Gestapo at home and abroad, the great spymasters and the little spymasters — and, above all, the Communist spies who fill the United States at the present time.

Macmillan has issued a new edition of this book with supplementary material right down to 1941.

Says Mr. Gollomb about these subverters here:

“To say that they have made no secret of their program to overthrow capitalism in this country is to put it mildly. They have preached revolution for over 20 years. That, then, is what the Communists mean in this country.”

The Hearst papers have been saying that for years.

Citation (Chicago style):
Benjamin De Casseres, “All Music Has Touch of Satanism,” Detroit Evening Times (Detroit, MI), July 29, 1941.