Abbado's Misdeeds

 https://forbiddenmusic.org/2018/08/01/a-quarter-century-since-the-death-of-berthold-goldschmidt/?fbclid=IwAR0SkyM-Ml9moBcci4Bib3RfBy1HLJdayH6wlX7-xQl41MdhzGZTfzslZ0I

No way I'm putting a link to this on twitter....

This blogpost, buried in the internet's neither region, is absolutely essential reading, and not just for the reason it seems.

We're gonna talk abundantly about Berthold Goldschmidt here before long, one of the great figures of 20th century music, but more importantly, we have to talk about what this says about Claudio Abbado, buried long into the post's second half, and what it says of his treatment of women and gay people, which is both surprising and unsurprising.

It's left somewhat ambiguous, but clearly Abbado, like so many conductors, was a terrible womanizer. Whatever happened behind closed doors, it leaves in no uncertain terms that something about it was abusive. It goes without saying that he abused his position to get sexual favor, but in the world pre-2017, there generally had to be something more for people to take special note. Was part of it that they were ghosted without warning or gratitude? Quite likely given Abbado's penchant for passive aggression. Was it that he was physically abusive? I frankly can't see that happening. Obviously anything is possible, but Abbado had, by so many accounts, no real temper. Abbado's producer calls him 'misogynist', I think it likely that he means Abbado was sexually abusive. 'Misogynist' was the label often bandied about for President Kennedy, and what we soon found out was the implication that JFK forced them to endure deeply humiliating and painful acts with the barest hint of consent.

In addition, Abbado apparently did not want this writer as his recording producer because the producer was gay. Given Abbado's reputation as a real humanist, I obviously find this rather hypocritical. One expects such behavior from notorious jerks like Dutoit and Maazel, even Barenboim, but you don't expect it from Abbado.

There's another source in a comment section that links to this article which states that as Abbado aged and underwent terrible illness, he made some acts of repentance, I believe that too, though I have no idea what they were, nor do I know if they were sufficient to his actions.

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate. There's a term on the internet for people who excuse the behavior of the powerful called 'himpathy', which excoriates anybody who would try to explain away men who abuse their positions. That term is... no nice way to say it... it's stupid. It's counterproductive. It's turned everything it touches into disaster. Even when people stand to lose everything, pathologically abusive acts proliferate until the sources of the pathology are located. There is no misdeed in exposing abusive behavior, but to attempt the rewrite people's histories, both personal and political, as simple stories of abuse without examining the abuse's causes is the behavior of emerging totalitarian movements: Marxism, Jacobinism, Lutheranism, it happens in history once every hundred and change years, it is encoded in the world's DNA that revolutionaries demand too much of people, and in turn provoke the deadliest possible counterrevolutionaries, who then revolutionize soft social justice movements into movements of the most hardened murderers. The result is always so much more devastating than 'mere' abuse.

We are not going to stop the bad behavior of celebrities until there is no longer such a thing as a celebrity. It's encoded in the DNA of power, and the powerful will always find new ways to abuse people and keep their abuses secret. What is the advance of the Trump wing of the Republican party but traditional notions of celebrity fighting back? The most hated celebrity in America was elected President, and two years after he left the job, he still isn't even indicted for his highest or lowest crimes.

Abbado? I'm not going to explain it by saying he's Italian or of the 60's/70's generation. Just as with Bernstein, there was always something about his persona that seemed 'off' from what was presented. No authority figure is that meek and gentle. Power corrupts, and I do not trust any person whose life seems too well put together, let alone leaders. Abbado was the founder of something like half-a-dozen apprentice orchestras for recent graduates beginning their careers. 90% of celebrities do not give back on that level of generosity without indulging themselves some exploitative recompense for it, however good their intentions at the outset.

As for any homophobia, well... that strikes me as ugly but just a little bit more complicated than it seems. It strikes me as less a gut instinct than a double standard. The world of the arts is always a complicated place. In the period Abbado came up, Benjamin Britten broke off relations and torpedoed careers as a matter of course, the US was recovering from Virgil Thomson's and Howard Taubman's consistent vindictiveness in print that set back hundreds of musicians, Italy was just acclimating itself to how Franco Zefferelli and other directors expected sexual quid pro quos for favors in the opera world, and Herbert von Karajan - almost unquestionably bisexual and surrounded by gay sycophants - deliberately sabotaged the careers of performers who refused his offers and orders, to say nothing of the actions perpetrated by the other most powerful opera conductor of Abbado's generation.... But there is no question that their vituperation was partially brought on by the discrimination and humiliations these men endured, and it ignores how many powerful straight artists did exactly the same thing - probably many more.

Personally, when I watch any person whose life seems well put together try to chastise misdeeds too flagrantly, I just assume they're hiding something themselves. Whatever their agenda, there are inevitably reasons which draw people to invective like moths to flame - some of which are deeply selfish. I have met so many people who are deliberately unforgiving about issues of justice - people of the left and right, and inevitably, there are deep personal holes and hypocrisies in their behaviors. Some are merely hypocrites, some misdeeds are vastly more serious.

But as all these movements from intersectionality to even metoo and Black Lives Matter continue to run their course, these movements are looking increasingly ugly, and I grow increasingly impatient about holding my tongue just to keep my personal relations running smoothly.

In my own life, career and romantic prospects be damned, I refuse to pretend that beneath my invectivized facade of dysfunction is not more dysfunction and still more dysfunction even underneath that - it's dysfunction all the way down. What does it matter to say so out loud? Nobody but friends and acquaintances know who I am, and likely won't for a long time. Some may think differently, but I don't think my life story is worse than a person with deep problems doing what people with deep problems do. I believe that one day, all the writing and music people ignored from me at my time of doing it will get at least some exposure and understanding, and in the meantime, trying to posture in a way that has a 1% chance of advance any career prospects just gets in the way of creating meaningful things. I believe that however long and violent the results of internet panic, it will eventually have no choice but to subside, and the world will have to become somewhat be more forgiving. Anyone with a shred of decency tries to be worthy of people's love and trust, and anybody with a shred of humanity consistently fails.

Claudio Abbado was arguably the most powerful conductor in the entire history of the profession. He was, fundamentally, a decent guy somewhat spoiled by fame, and he did what people spoiled by power do. None of this should surprise anybody. The powerful will always find ways to 'inflict their power' without thought as to what they're doing. It's part of the human story, it will always be part of the human story, and the human story will always be told from new angles. There is not a single action in the world without consequences unintended. Those who try to control the narrative of 'what happened' - be they the establishment or people trying to overthrow the establishment, will inevitably fail, and their failures are, quite literally, human history.