No Western music for Iranians

[dirac]

The president of Iran bans Western music from the airwaves. Lee Harris comments.

Hearing Beethoven in Teheran

Ahmadinejad isn’t just banning Eminem, Fifty Cent, and Arnold Schönberg’s Moses und Aron, which might be reasonable; nor banning the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Weber, which would be positively commendable. No, Ahmadinejad is banning Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (obviously); Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde; the wonderful songs of Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Jerome Kern. Also forbidden are Handel’s endlessly diverting Concerti Grossi, Opus 6, Gabriel Fauré’s chamber music, Eric Clapton’s guitar, and Anton Bruckner’s vast cathedrals of sound.

And

In the final movement of his last symphony, Beethoven did something he had never done before: he concluded the work with a vast choral setting of a poem. The poem was by the German author, Friedrich Schiller, and it is entitled “Ode To Joy,” and it describes the “intoxicating” effect that joy has upon all living creatures, from lowly worms to the highest of seraphim. But its main focus is on the effect that joy has on human beings. Joy brings together those who are separated by all the various barriers that divide man from man. “All men will become brothers,” the poem assures us, “whenever joy spreads her wings.”

Just for the record, it’s 50 Cent, Lee. Comments on the larger issues?