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R I C H A R D WAG N E R

PARSIFAL

CONTENTS

SYNOPSIS P.

TO KNOWINGLY LET HAPPEN PHILIPPE JORDAN P.

THE IDEA OF FREEDOM KIRILL SEREBRENNIKOV P.

PARSIFAL – AN INTRODUCTION MELANIE WALD-FUHRMANN

THE POSSIBILITY OF LAMENTATION IN JOY EGON VOSS P.

THE DRAMA OF THE SUFFERING CHRIST ULRIKE KIENZLE P.

IMPRINT

R I C H A R D WAG N E R

PARSIFAL BÜHNENWEIHFESTSPIEL in three acts

ORCHESTRA

3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo) 3 oboes / cor anglais 3 clarinets / bass clarinet 3 bassoons / contrabassoon 4 horns / 3 trumpets 3 trombones / bass trombone timpani / bells / 2 harps violin I / violin II viola / cello / double bass 6 trumpets 6 trombones / drum

STAGE ORCHESTRA

AUTOGRAPH

Richard-Wagner-National-Archiv Bayreuth WORLD PREMIÈRE 26 JULY 1882 Festspielhaus Bayreuth PREMIÈRE AT THE HOUSE ON THE RING 14 JAN 1914 Vienna Court Opera DURATION

INCL. 2 INTERMISSIONS

PHILIPPE JORDAN

TO KNOWINGLY LET HAPPEN A SCORE OF RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT If we think of Tristan und Isolde as the Big Bang, Parsifal represents a sublimation, a form of perfection of this revolutionary innovation. Not least because Wagner created in his last piece of music theatre the essence of all his achievements and sources of inspiration. It is impressive how much of the mythology and characters of his previous creations for the stage is reflected in the characters in Parsifal, the compressed form the themes and aspects Wagner regularly ran through are brought together again here – mother fixation, redemption by the woman, erotic-sinful world versus pure-religious world, unattainable holy divine domain etc. But even in formal respects, many things had already been anticipated years earlier. The third act of Tannhäuser for example acts in its dramaturgical and musical structure like an anticipation of a miniature edition of Parsifal’s act 3, and many sequences in the Pilgrim’s Chorus and

the choruses of the Knights of the Grail are virtually identical. The central works in which Wagner found his innermost self, Tristan und Isolde and Meistersinger von Nürnberg, seem to have merged in a synthesis in Parsifal. The Tristan chromaticism as an expression of sensuality, the perfumes and alluring poisons are present in the Klingsor and Kundry atmosphere as well as in Amfortas’s world of suffering, we meet the Meistersinger diatonic inspired by the Baroque (and particularly Johann Sebastian Bach) again openly in the chorales of the Grail knights. Even so, Parsifal is more than the sum of these individual parts. It is more a summing-up, a retrospective on life typical for a late work of a great master, in which everything appears in much more refined and distilled form, blazing a so much more effective trail into the future, for composers such as Debussy, Humperdinck, Strauss, Mahler and even Schönberg.

TO KNOWINGLY LET HAPPEN

As for Bach, I’m firmly convinced that Wagner started looking intensively at his compositions very early on. Possibly the very theatrical Passions belong to Wagner’s first dramatic impressions, which never left him thereafter. Phrases like “Good rest I found here and sweet repose” in Die Walküre sound like the title of a cantata written by Picander, and the double choruses in Parsifal and passages reminiscent of turba choruses like “Uncover the Grail! Perform your office!” as well as the clear relationship between Gurnemanz’s recitative passages and the Evangelists reveal the deep fascination which a St Matthew Passion must have had for Wagner. Bach’s direct transition from the Gloria in 3/8 to the much calmer 4/4 of the “Et in terra pax” in the B-minor Mass was undoubtedly the godfather for the transition from the march to the entry into the Grail temple. Bach’s liking for deriving a new idea from a melody and making it autonomous (something which became standard later in jazz improvisation) is repeatedly reflected in Wagner. Incidentally, just as Wagner must have got to know the works of Bach while very young, he must also have known the “ Dresden Amen”, originally created by Johann Gottlieb Naumann for the liturgy of the mass, and soon very popular, which was known to have been adopted by numerous composers of the Romantic period. Wagner already quoted the melody in his Das Liebesverbot, ultimately forging it into an essential motif in Parsifal and incorporating it in the score so skilfully that most members of the audience came to believe in a paradoxical and anachronistic way that they recognised Wagner’s Grail motif in Naumann’s original.

Currently, many would possibly talk of plagiarism in such cases, but one aspect of Wagner’s genius – and that of many other prominent composers – was to make something unmistakably their very own. (This naturally also applies to influences from grand opéra.) But what is there in Parsifal that blazes a trail for the future? First, overcoming the music drama. Wagner has further advanced the invisible inner drama, he was interested in capturing in sound the emotional life of the characters. A great deal will deliberately only be described in the orchestra and expressed by the orchestra, there is an overall decrease in the length of the libretto, a few choice words will have the greatest possible impact, the mono logue principle dominates, redundancies are avoided, voices are treated more instrumentally and rhythmically divided by pauses and syncopation, sometimes extended towards sprechgesang. In addition, Wagner explores the limits of the tonal system to the utmost, both in Parsifal’s wanderings in the prelude to act 3 and even earlier in Kundry’s central kiss in act 2. In my view there are two decisive chords in Wagner’s oeuvre. Until Siegfried he used the diminished sixth chord regularly as the expression of maximum dissonance, later he extended this to the Tristan chord and created a new world of sound which he explored even more intensively in Parsifal than in Tristan und Isolde. Harmony became pure psychological expression. Ultimately, Wagner is heading in Parsifal towards absolute music, the performance is intended as a festival to dedicate the house, as religion as art at a higher level, designed