Splamiona chwała Mesjasza? Filozoficzne aspekty sporu muzykologów o mniemany antysemityzm oratorium Händla

"Messiah’s Tainted Glory? Philosophical Aspects of a Musicological Quarrel on Alleged Anti-Semitism in Handel’s Oratorio". In this paper I reconstruct M. Marissen’s claim that G.F. Handel’s Messiah (HWV 56) con- veys a palpable anti-Judaist message, in order to critically examine P. Kivy’s negative re- sponse to it. What Marissen describes as ‘anti-Judaism’ are clear cases of anti-Semitism, according to Kivy’s definitions. Kivy claims that in order to discover how a musical artifact can possess a meaning (an anti-Semitic one) it should be made clear how a human artifact in general can possess it. In the critical part of the paper, I argue that the Gricean model ad- vanced by Kivy does not fulfill this condition; namely, it fails to provide a correct analysis of the meaning of an artwork (which in this case is a Baroque oratorio). I point out, however, that aſter some reformulation of Kivy’s arguments it is possible to salvage their core. The in- tentionalist conditions originally placed on meaning should now be regarded as conditions of guilt. Aſter this reformulation, even though the librettist and the composer can safely be found not guilty of anti-Semitism, the theological, musicological and moral inquiry on the Oratorio’s meaning must still be considered in a broader interpretive horizon.