Nick Baty wrote:can we forgive composers for using music to promote such nauseating philosophies.
Well, you'll probably have to stop listening to quite a lot of music if you go down that road. Richard Strauss is the first name that springs to mind.
This is a very interesting question, and one that would probably not have arisen in earlier times when composers and artists were content to sign themselves (as it were) 'anonymous'. For the past four hundred years or so it has become difficult to separate the artist from the art. Eric Gill is an especially challenging case, not least because his life is writ so large in his work. His biographer, Fiona MacCarthy (2006), discusses the question here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... 22/art.art
Er, back to the subject (I think ), I have this mental image of the Pope being carried into St Peter's on the sedia gestatoria, accompanied by "The Ride of the Valkyries""!