Performance mixes Harry Potter, music

On the night of Oct. 3, one of Georgia College’s professors, Greg Pepetone, performed. He mixed both lecture and music in a presentation called, “If Mendelssohn were a Mud Blood, was Wagner a Death-Eater and why this question still matters?”

The title was enough to draw some people’s attention. Cane Lewis, a junior music composition major, says he was certainly intrigued by the title of the performance.

“I saw the title and thought, ‘where’s he going with this?’”

The works of Felix Mendelssohn and Richard Wagner are not too different from each other in that they are both members of the Romantic era of music. It is not the music but the character of these men Pepetone compares and contrasts to each other and to the world created by J.K. Rowling.

According to Pepetone, Wagner was one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite composers. His ideas about racial superiority preceded the Führer’s and laid ground for these concepts to continue. Mendelssohn, a Jew-turned-Christian, was judged because of this “Jewishness” and general inferiority to other Romantic era composers.

In Pepetone’s words, all this was “a clear example of comparing artistic apples and oranges.” He argued that artists should not be compared to another, but be respected in their own right.

The Mudbloods are those wizards with muggle’s (humans with no magical powers) in their family tree—that is, they have the blood of an ordinary human and a wizard.

The followers of Voldemort (referred to as death eaters) believe that Mudbloods are inferior, something unworthy of respect and even life.

Wagner would dismiss Jewish artists for the same reason that Voldemort, the villain of the Harry Potter series, would dismiss the Mudbloods. They were polluted, unclean, unworthy of status because of their impurity; this feeling extended to Mendelssohn and any Jewish artist of the time. He was not a death eater, but he came close because of “his toxic blend of race, politics, and religion,” Pepetone said.

Pepetone said that the motivation for his performance was purely for sharing his thoughts, inner life and interests. But he also has a strong reaction to many of these things as well, which leads him to dig deeper.

“I have a sense that things in life aren’t as separate as they appear to be,” Pepetone said.
As a teacher of not just music but interdisciplinary studies, he often looks for connections where there seem to be none.

“I had taught a Harry Potter class during the summer and was working on Mendelssohn and Wagner; I realized that both of these things had something to do with racism,” Pepetone said.
The connection to today, Pepetone says  is based on nationality versus loyalty to the whole community of nations.

Self-preservation at any cost has become more important than morals and ethics and caring for everyone, not just those who look like us.

“I still believe people are basically good,” Pepetone said. “But they don’t have man opportunities to show it. It’s good for people to speak out on what the truth is and hopefully remind them of what it means to be human.”

Despite the fact that Harry Potter, Mendelssohn and Wagner were centuries apart, Pepetone tied the past, present and future together in one conclusion that Lewis called “grand.”

Troy Hencely, a freshman theater major, says he found it awe-inspiring.

“There was more than just music—there was meat in there too.”

Hillary Hencely, a senior history major, felt the same way.

“It was nice that there was history in there,” Hencely said, “but it also relates to today.”