Wagner's Parsifal

Description

This study explores the evolution of the text and music of this inexhaustible yet highly controversial music drama across Wagner's entire career, and offers a reassessment of the ideological and political history of 'Parsifal' that illuminates the connection of Wagner's legacy to the rise of National Socialism in Germany. The compositional genesis is traced through many unfamiliar sketches and manuscript sources held at Bayreuth, revealing unsuspected models and veiled connections to Wagner's earlier works. Cover Contents Prelude: Parsifal as Art and Ideology Part 1: The Process of Composition 1. The Poem: Its Background and Evolution Carlo Gozzi’s La donna serpente The Paris and Dresden Periods Parzival as Wandering Pilgrim in Tristan und Isolde Kundry as a Mysterious Compound Being The Prose Draft of 1865 The Completion of the Text 2. The Genesis of the Music The “Dresden Amen” and “Excelsior!” Motives The Sketch Fragments and Their Reconstruction The Earliest Sketches The “Core of the Whole”: the Music of the Grail The Relation of Sketches and Drafts Act 1 Act 2 Act 3 Revisions after April 1879 The Transformation Music of Act I Part 2: Musical Form and Dramatic Meaning 3. Wagner’s Late Style 4. Grail and Anti-Grail 5. The Sense of an Ending Selected Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V W Z Acknowledgments