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Motive and Magic A Referential Dyad in Parsifal
Motive and Magic A Referential Dyad in Parsifal
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PATRICKMcCRELESS
The motive that will be the object of focus in the present study is, strictly
speaking, not a motive at all according to standard usage of the term. It
does not satisfy the venerable and commonly accepted definition given by
Riemann, and derived by him ultimately from eighteenth-century
compositional theorists such as Mattheson, according to which a motive is
'a melodic fragment which in itself constitutes the smallest unit of
expressive meaning." Nor is it in the Schenkerian sense a motivic
parallelism - a linear pattern that is replicated at various structural levels as
a verborgeneWiederholung.Nor is it a Wagnerian Leitmotivin the manner of
Wolzogen and Lorenz - a melodic pattern or harmonic progression
associated consistently with a single symbol in the drama. It is not even a
particular chord-type, such as the Tristan chord, the motivic role of which
Ernst Kurth demonstrated brilliantly in his RomantischeHarmonik, or the
Balsam-Akkordand the mystischeAkkord shown by Lorenz to play a similar
role in Parsifal.2 Indeed, the motive under consideration here involves
neither a melodic cell, nor a linear contour, nor a harmonic progression.
Rather, it is merely the unordered pitch-class dyad (E, F), which, while not
being definable as any of the more familiar types of motive, takes on
aspects of all of them: the possibilities of cross-reference and processive
development in the Riemannian motive and the so-called Leitmotiv; the
hidden, subliminal nature of the Schenkerian motive; and the harmonic
ambiguity, and thus the broad harmonic structural force, of the Tristan
chord and Lorenz's mystischeAkkord. It is thus Wagnerian in the most
powerful sense, for it can serve simultaneously as a dramatic symbol, a
musical cross-reference and a focus of harmonic and large-scale tonal
organization. As such, it constitutes a motive of the most far-reaching
dramatic and musical significance in Parsifal: it occurs, often with
considerable rhetorical emphasis, in climactic moments throughout the
drama, and through it the opera works out its principal philosophical
theme - that of sin, suffering and redemption.
Kundry's words and her kiss - her artful merging of herself and Parsifal's
mother, and her suggestive interweaving of guilt and eroticism - trigger in
Parsifal a sudden and shocking vision of Amfortas's wound, a shudder of
revulsion and thus his first feeling of pity. His inner recognition of his own
sin and his pity upon Amfortas articulate the turning point of the drama:
through his Mitleid he has become wissend, and now he instinctively fixes
his eye on the Grail ('Es starrt der Blick dumpf auf das Heilsgefaiss', Act II,
bs 1050-2). He suddenly realizes that it was Kundry's seduction of
Amfortas that led to his wound and loss of the Spear, and that it is only
through his (Parsifal's) own renunciation of those advances that he can
achieve salvation for himself, for Kundry and for Amfortas and the
brothers of the Grail (see text of Act II, bs 1100-26 and 1276-1395). His
newly found knowledge enables him in the remainder of Act II to resist
Kundry and to regain the Spear from Klingsor, and in Act III to be
recognized by Gurnemanz as the long-awaited reine Tor, to be baptized, to
baptize Kundry and thus remove her from Klingsor's spell, to return the
Spear to the Temple of the Grail and heal Amfortas's wound magically
with its touch, and to assume the Holy Office himself. He is thus the agent
who rights all the wrongs set up at the beginning of the drama, who causes
the power of Klingsor to vanish and who, as a representative of a younger
and purer generation, ascends to power in place of Amfortas, thus effecting
the shift from a world of sin and suffering to one of redemption. It is he
who delivers the brotherhood of the Grail from the level of everyday pains
and pleasures to a more divine plane - that condition of the brotherhood
aptly described by Charles Passage and Helen M. Mustard in the
introduction to their English translation of Wolfram's Parzival as '... a
dedicated society, serving the Grail and representing a sphere spiritually
exalted above the normal realm of life'.4
That the (E, F) dyad is a musical means whereby the dramatic structure is
worked out is nowhere more forcefully underscored than in the critical
turning point in Act II - Kundry's Kiss and Parsifal's anguished cry of
enlightenment, 'Amfortas!' (see Ex.1). Here the dyad becomes the musical
point of focus that embodies Parsifal's dramatic relationship both to
Kundry and to Amfortas. At the moment of Kundry's kiss (Act II, bs
983ff.), the succession E?-E controls the bass (I am assuming enharmonic
equivalence, of course): E?, in bs 983-5, moves, through a change of
register, to e2 in b.986; then, in bs 987-8 the succession E#-E occurs
literally in the bass, with an extension first to Dg and then to D as well.
After the three bars of the Sehr belebend (bs 991-3), Parsifal's cry of
recognition, 'Amfortas!', appropriates the (E, F) dyad as a melodic, rather
than as a bass, line. Simultaneously, the orchestral sonority accompanying
982 (Sie hat ihrffaupt r6llig iiber das seinige geneigt und he/'tel nun ihre
Lippen zu einem langen Kusse auf seinen HMund.)
r - ten Kuss!
• langsam.
Selrr
. cresc.
pliitzlich mit einer Gebi'rde des h&chsten Schreckens auf seine Hallung drilckl eine furch tbare Veriinderung
aus;er stemmt seine Hfnde gewaltsam gegen das Berz, wie um einen zerreissenden Schmerz zu iiberwaltigen.)
Sehr belebend.
•--, , P= tjii 7J
-ci: - --
PARSIFAL.
his outburst verticalizes that same dyad within the context of a diminished-
seventh chord on E, with the F acting as an appoggiatura. Thus precisely
the same motivic pitch-pair articulates both the peak of Kundry's advances
and Parsifal's sudden rejection of them through his vision of Amfortas's
pain. The (E, F) dyad becomes a musical symbol of Kundry's intertwining
for Parsifal the agony of guilt and the pleasure of sensuality in a single
experience. The dyad accordingly embodies a central ethical argument of
the opera: that sensual pleasure and both physical and psychological pain
are inextricably intertwined - that one necessarily entails the other, such
that redemption from the pain requires the renunciation of the pleasure.
Or, in the haunting words of Plato, speaking through Socrates in the
dialogue Phaedo, centuries earlier:
How singularis the thing called pleasure,and how curiouslyrelatedto
pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they are
never present to a man at the same instant; and yet he who pursues
either is generallycompelled to take the other; their bodies are two,
but they are joinedby a singlehead.5
Musically, the 'single head' that joins pleasure and pain in Parsifal is the
(E, F) dyad; and, in the musical language of the opera, it is this dyad that
ultimately must be resolved out of the structure in order to articulate the
Aufhebungfrom 'normal life' to the 'uplifted', dedicated society of the Grail
at the conclusion.
Before tracing further instances of the dyad and its dramatic impli-
cations, let us pause to consider two salient musical details in the passage
discussed above. First, as we have seen, in the orchestral music
accompanying the kiss the note-pair (E, F) is worked into linear pro-
gressions involving the pitches a semitone removed in either direction: for
example, F-E-Do in the bass of bs 987-8, and 2f2 in the upper
voices of the same bars. The tendency of the cx2-do2--ee2-
nodal (E, F) to progress
chromatically in either direction is characteristic of the chromatic voice
leading of the entire opera; more often than not, the motive occurs with a
continuation of chromatic stepwise motion to either D# (E6) or F (CG7).
Furthermore, when the motive, thus extended, occurs simultaneously in a
melodic voice and the bass, it may generate a chromatic voice exchange
reminiscent of Tristan,as shown in Ex.2.
(The chord in bs 993-5 and 997 is, of course, the Tristan chord, at the
correct transposition level for the earlier opera.)6 Continuation of this
chromatic voice exchange in opposite directions motivates the final bars of
the passage accompanying the kiss and the beginning of the Sehr belebendat
b.991, as shown in Ex. 3.
Ex. 3 Reduction of Parsifal, Act II, bs 987-91 (cf. Ex. 1)
, 9- -... .
-me
nXF
The motivic dyad, then, serves here not only as a powerfully articulated
referential motive, but also as a source of musical development and
continuity.
Second, the music of this passage combines its wrenching musical
themes of pain and suffering at pitch levels that bring out the (E, F) dyad
in more subtle ways. The two-note melodic gesture (designated by Lorenz
as der aufstrebendeSeufzer)7leading into the Sehr belebend(e#2-f#2in b.988,
fqf2 in b.989 and P-g6' in b.990) is surely a quotation from Tristan -
especially given the initial harmony of b.989! It brings (in bs 988-9) the
melodic e#2/f into relief against the E of the bass. Furthermore, it initially
occurs in the right register and (at least in b.988) with the right chromatic
spelling to suggest a further chromatic ascent, as in the earlier opera.
However, at bs 990-1 the continuation of this two-note gesture tells us that
we are in Parsifal, not Tristan, by transferring it to a lower register (the
register in which Parsifal will sing 'Amfortas!' five bars later), respelling it
to move down rather than up, and, at the Sehr belebend,bringing in the
Schmerzensfigur (f-b?-c'-db') in such a way as to emphasize the juxta-
position of f on the downbeat of b.991 and e' on the downbeat of b.992
(see english horn and trumpets). The bass here progresses first from G
down to C#, introducing F and E on the first two syncopated semiquavers
(third beat of b.991), then inverts itself to traverse the same path, this time
through E and E# to reach the F# of b.993. (Notice how this bass line
recomposes the bass of bs 981-90: (G6)-E#-E-Ek-D-Dbon the one hand, C#-
on the other.) Similarly, in b.992, the Heilandsklage is set at a
transposition
D-E-E#-F. level such that its 'alto' line (english horn, Horn 2) passes
through f and e' in the middle of the bar and its 'soprano' line (oboes,
Horn 1, violins) arrives on the melodic f at the same time that the bass
descends to E on the downbeat of b.994, and such that its final f-e'
descent in fact becomes Parsifal's cry 'Amfortas!'
The use of the (E, F) dyad as a node around which the dramatic
turning point of the opera revolves can shed light on the refractory musical
262
Rast. Nach
rest! My
M- ff I
dolcissimo
/AFP " t2 1I
Now simply to extract the two pitch classes F and E from the example and
claim some special meaning for them may seem prescriptive indeed, and
may in fact seem to fly in the face of all accepted canons of music analysis.
Yet it is precisely such a meaning that I am attributing to the dyad. The
reason for doing so is, to be sure, not based solely on the function of the
two notes in the present context; if only the bars of Ex. 4 are under
consideration, there is no more basis for choosing F and E as particularly
significant than for choosing, say, A and B, which also comprise a single
strand of the voice leading. Rather, the argument rests upon the dyad's
cumulative cross-referential force, which is achieved gradually by its
association with critical points throughout the drama, and which is in but a
germinal state here. I point out the present instance because the dyad
occurs in conjunction with the first appearance of Amfortas and with his
first mention of his pain, and because certain simple harmonic relations
occurring in Ex. 4 - in particular the A-Cp-F augmented triad, with the
implied resolution by semitone voice leading, F-E, to a major triad (a
resolution not literally achieved here) - resonates throughout the drama so
as to establish a clear network of links between the motivic dyad, Amfortas,
his wound, his seduction by Kundry, his loss of the Spear, his healing
through Parsifal's return of the Spear and, on an even deeper level, the
bs 983-90, with the exception that in Act I the harmonic context more
strongly suggests A minor (echoes of Tristan again!), through the ii id
b.520 and the extended dominant of bs 522-4. The passage clearly
establishes an associative resonance between Amfortas's seduction, the key
of A (now minor rather than major) and the (E, F) dyad (see bass of bs
521-7). In the bars that follow (528-38), the dyad is deeply embedded in
the bizarre, virtually atonal music accompanying the description of
Amfortas's loss of the Spear (see harmonic reduction in Ex. 6).
1Ex.6 Harmonic Reduction of Parsifal, Act I, bs 528-38
528 529 530-1 532 533 534 535 536 537 538
In fact, as shown in the example, F and E seem jointly to form a lone point
of reference, an anchor around which the motivically dense but tonally
unfocused music revolves. Late in the same passage, A becomes the
dominant of D, a key which is suggested in bs 536-8 at the end of
Gurnemanz's description of Klingsor's taking of the Spear, and which will
gain closer association with the Spear as the opera progresses.'0
Furthermore, a few bars later, when Gurnemanz concludes this section of
the narrative by describing Amfortas's wound for the first time (bs 540-2),
the dyad (E, F) in the inner voices articulates the crucial words 'eine
Wunde'. As in Act I, bs 264ff., it is rhetorical emphasis - the music
accompanying the words 'eine Wunde' is marked sforzando, at the climax
of a crescendo, and the words are emphasized with the indication
'zurtickhaltend' - as well as our knowledge of the significance of the wound
in the story, that brings these particular words and music into relief.
On a deeper symbolic level, the (E, F) motive becomes, above and
beyond its association with Amfortas, a musical fulcrum connecting
Amfortas's suffering to that of Christ. The relationship is highlighted in
that part of Gurnemanz's narrative which describes the preservation of the
Grail and the Spear and their being entrusted to Titurel (Act I, bs 592ff.).
Here the confluence of textual and musical symbols reverberates with
cross-referential meaning. At b.591, on the word 'Schale' (vessel), the
Grail motive begins in E and progresses, as we would expect from its
previous appearances, to an A major triad on the downbeat of b.592. On
the third beat of the latter bar, however, the motive is altered, precisely at
the arrival of the word 'Kreuz' in the text. The expected F# of the Grail
motive is changed to an F?, thus bringing the (E, F) motive clearly into our
attention in the most prominent orchestral voices in bs 592 and 593, the
Ex. 8
a) Parsifal, Act I, bs 1404-12
1 Alt.
Il Altos. PP
- ......4 I '
ir,' "Der Mit - leid - voll rei . - ne Thor:
1rTenor "Through pit - y wise, ho - ly fool.
1StTenors. PP
PP.
"Der Mit - leid - voll rei - ne Thor:
"Through pit - y wise, ho - ly fool._
In
A...
har- resein!"
Wait for him."
IIPP -
har re sein!"
Wait for him."
?'-"
precisely the same pitches in the sinuous line (Clarinet 3) that accompanies
the same words, 'Die Zeit ist da' in bs 1067-8 of Act I, there sung by
Kundry as she falls asleep immediately before the Verwandlungsmusik.
Throughout the remainder of the act, E and F recur as a dramatic and
musical axis around which Klingsor's threat to Parsifal unfolds. Most
frequently they occur as the bass line of the Zaubermotiv.This is, of course,
the progression underlying the music of the Kiss, and we can also hear it as
an accompaniment to Klingsor's first description of Kundry early in the act
(bs 81-2). Yet there are numerous other cross-referential occurrences of
the (E, F) dyad as the act develops. As in the Amfortasklageat the end of
Act I, I shall introduce only the most significant instances of the motive,
and with a minimum of commentary, since all of them touch upon the
prevailing themes of sin and suffering:
* At bs 132-41, Kundry, still apparently asleep, rises to Klingsor's call.
The motion f2-f~ is worked first into the second highest voice of the
Heilandsklage,then into the highest voice.
* At bs 152-5, just after Kundry has uttered her second cry of misery,
Violin 1 and Clarinet 3 play the line f~l-fl-el-d?', recalling bs 592-3 of Act
I, but now with the explicit progression F?-E in the bass (bs 153-4), and f
and E superimposed harmonically in b. 154.
* At bs 166-7, Kundry's first sung notes of the act, on a hoarse moan, are
e' and fP.
* At bs 214-35, in the dialogue leading up to Klingsor's description of his
self-mutilation, the ordered pitch classes G, F?, F and E trace a relatively
stable line through a series of harmonies that comes close to breaking the
bonds of tonal logic. At b.224, the orchestral chord on the word 'keusch' is
the same as that which accompanies Parsifal's cry, 'Amfortas!'
* At bs 297-305, the bass line G-GC-F-E articulates Kundry's refusal to
seduce Parsifal as well as Klingsor's sighting of him in the distance. In Act
II, as in Act I, the key of B%major, in association with the (E, F) dyad,
accompanies Parsifal's approach.
* At bs 739-51, the inner strings trace the line gt'-P-e'-(d')-eb' underneath
Kundry's initial seductive cry to Parsifal. The same line, with shifts of
register, is interwoven into Kundry's vocal line. Both the pleasure and the
pain of the Kiss are thus submerged in the first words that Kundry utters
to Parsifal.
* At bs 916-19, a voice exchange (d'-e?'-e'-f' in the upper strings and
winds, F-E-D in the bass) brings in the (E, F) motive in connection with
Parsifal's realization that he himself must bear the blame for his mother's
death, and prepares for the similar voice exchange at the Kiss.
* Parsifal's first anguished cries after his moment of recognition (bs 994-6)
are permeated with the (E, F) motive, as is the accompanying orchestral
music. A similar saturation occurs on the words 'Qual der Liebe...' and
the music that follows in bs 1037-46. Note especially the flgflfl
embedded in the vocal line, and the Gt-F-E in the bass of bs 1041-6. The
succession g2_-fPe2 is also embedded in the beginning of the progression
that accompanies the words 'Es starrt der Blick dumpf auf das
Heilsgefdiss...'; again, sin and redemption are 'joined by a single head'.
* Another long passage in which the pitch classes F#, F, E and D# provide
an element of stability in the context of the most startling harmonic
progressions, as in bs 214-35, is bs 1159-91, in the passage that climaxes
with Kundry's demonic laugh at Christ. Again, I shall refrain from detailed
analysis but simply call attention to the vocal line of bs 1168-74 and to the
orchestra at bs 1186-90.
Act III brings redemption and baptism to Kundry and Parsifal, healing
to Amfortas, deliverance and a renewed life in the Communion service to
the knights of the Grail. In the complex web of tonal relations through
which the music participates in the resolution of dramatic conflicts, the (E,
F) motive again plays a central role, both as a surface cross-reference and
as a focus of deeper structural relationships. Its role is explicit at the very
beginning of the Act III Prelude, where the first four notes of the melody
articulate the motion f -e' in the context of Bb minor. To be sure, an
equally important relationship here is that of B6 and E, which, in typical
Wagnerian fashion, foreshadow the B-E polarity of the Act III Verwand-
lungsmusik, where these two keys are directly juxtaposed (bs 811-12,
826-7). The F and E in the initial bars of the Prelude therefore perform at
least three functions: first, they establish a local voice-leading connection
within the tonal context of B6 minor, rather as they do for Parsifal's
entrances in Acts I and II in Bbmajor; second, they form large-scale cross-
referential relationships with the many other (E, F) pairs in the opera; and
third, they are essential to the prefiguring of an important element of the
tonal structure of the act as a whole.
As the act progresses, gradually developing its theme of redemption, it
naturally takes advantage of the well-established motivic resonance of F
and E at its central dramatic moments. The most compelling instances
include Gurnemanz's waking of Kundry (bass of bs 57-8, 86-104 and 106-
7); Parsifal's entry in black armour (bs 175-85) - this entrance being in Bb
minor, rather than major, with the music combining his heroic horn call
and the opening melody of the Act III Prelude, and with overt emphasis on
the (E, F) dyad; Gurnemanz's recognition of the Spear (bs 334-7; see note
12 below); Gurnemanz's telling Parsifal of Titurel's death (bs 413-27);
Kundry's washing of Parsifal's feet (bs 548-60), with an explicit reference
to bs 592-3 of Act I; Gurnemanz's announcing that it is Good Friday (bs
663-8); and the beginning of Titurel's funeral procession (melody of bs
863ff.).
The act reaches its point of greatest intensity as the funeral procession
ends, and we are confronted with the possibility that this will be Amfortas's
final time - das letzte Mal - to serve Holy Communion. Here once more, at
the peak of Amfortas's torment, the music turns to the motivic (E, F)
dyad. Its symbolic association is most fully realized in the music accom-
panying the grim final words of the funeral procession, 'Zum letzten Mal!'
and the immediately succeeding words of Amfortas's final prayer (Ex. 9).
We have seen in previous examples the tendency of F and E to progress
chromatically in either direction - to F# above or E6 below. In the present
example both are used, and with remarkable effect. The f-e'-d~' of the
threatening words 'Zum letzten Mal' - note how reminiscent this passage
is of Klingsor's 'Die Zeit ist da' - initiate a descending chromatic motion
that passes into the upper strings at bs 918ff. and arrives at d' at b.922. At
this point, as Amfortas begins to speak, an ascendingchromatic line begins
in the bass, E-F-G,-G-At,. At the intersection of the two in b.924, the
melody from the beginning of the Act III Prelude enters, thus asserting yet
again the B-E polarity of the Verwandlungsmusik,and simultaneously
creating, as a support for Amfortas's tortured cry, 'Wehe! Wehe!', precisely
the same sonority that accompanied Parsifal's cry 'Amfortas!' just after the
Kiss in Act II.
Amfortas's words, 'Ja, Wehe! Wehe!', begin his prayer to Titurel - his final
solo scene, and in the formal structure of the opera, an outburst that
parallels the Amfortasklage of Act I.20 Here, in the distorted and twisted
harmonies of the king's final anguish, it is for us, in our quest to
understand Parsifal, a serendipitous coincidence that only for this scene, to
the best of my knowledge, does there exist an analysis which takes note of
the (E, F) figure as a dyad of structural significance in the opera. That
analysis is David Lewin's masterly 'Amfortas's Prayer to Titurel and the
Role of D in Parsifal: The Tonal Spaces of the Drama and the Enharmonic
CV/B',mentioned briefly above. Lewin's article, to be sure, does not take
the (E, F) dyad as its principal analytical issue. His primary focus is on the
related ideas of enharmonicism and substitution, first in the context of the
Prayer itself and then in the context of the entire work.
Lewin's analysis abounds with original insights into Parsifal and into the
magical musical language in which the drama unfolds. His understanding
of the unique way in which the tonal system works in the opera is, in my
view, extraordinary; and it has exerted considerable influence on my own
analysis. The present study, conceived and even publicly presented a few
years ago21 purely in terms of the (E, F) dyad, has benefited immeasurably
from its encounter with Lewin's analysis, which provides a global tonal
theory that the (E, F) motivic hypothesis complements and supports.
Indeed it is precisely in Amfortas's Prayer, the penultimate scene that
AIM qi AV
iib ic So a
(•ich
AMFORTAS ma tein enig aufricklend.)
92
924
919 922
-he!
Ja We We
-he
ptu P pp
19 9 2
.. ... .IS
grills sI
prepares for the final resolution of the dramatic and tonal issues of the
opera, that Lewin's observations and mine intersect; and his ideas will
provide an extra surge of energy for my own as we approach the multiple
tonal resolutions that unfold at the conclusion of the work.
Lewin's analytical focus on substitution and enharmonicism begins with
a discussion of the Prayer itself. He notes that the entire formulaic Barform
of the section can be construed in terms of a simple, 'Gluckian Aussensatz'
in D minor, with the puzzling exceptions that a passage in Do minor
substitutes for D minor in the first Stollen (in Lewin's analysis, bs 933-56),
and that passages in D? major substitute for D minor in the second Stollen
(bs 957-75) and for D major in the Abgesang (bs 976-93).22 The 'cadence-
seeking' F-E occurs numerous times in the upper voice of Lewin's
Aussensatz. It occurs initially in the unaccompanied first violins at a
dramatic moment (bs 936-7) early in the Prayer, where time virtually
stands still as Amfortas lifts himself up and turns to address Titurel's body
for the first time. Lewin also points it out in bs 965-6 of the second Stollen
(where, I might add, it accompanies the words 'erflehe von ihm, daB sein
heiliges Blut', in association with the very same chord that we heard with
the dyad on the words 'darein am Kreuz sein g6ttlich Blut auch floss' in
Act I) and bs 983-4 of the Abgesang.
Now Lewin does not extrapolate from the local F-E gesture of the
Prayer to find significance for it in the opera as a whole, since it is only a
secondary feature of his argument. He does, in a footnote, relate the dyad
to two of its other important appearances in Act III:
la. Stollen 1.
( clthegrul;
Ib. Stollen 2. 3
-9 F F: M
I c. Abgesang.
i_+ M
MAt-Leid
E_----
.A6*Aei
07
J 6
Later, summarizing the Prayer's tonal implications for the remainder of the
drama, he concludes:
Armed with the above analysis,we are now preparedto move beyond the
Prayeritself and to understandLewin's interpretationof the conclusion of
the opera.Lewin continues, answeringhis own question:
Of course we know the solution to this problem. It is Parsifal, the reine
Thor of the prophecy, who is to take upon himself the indicated
subdominant weight of D-or-DL, just as he takes Amfortas's office
upon himself; in that capacity he will perform the plagal cadence and
uncover the Grail.27
Lewin's view here, of course, not only accords well with the musical
(orchestration, dynamic level, triumphant recall of Parsifal's motive) and
textual (Parsifal's having just identified himself as the long-awaited Thor)
emphasis on b.1057, but also with the explicit text (quoted above) from
the Amfortasklage of Act I: 'What is the spearwound and its torment
compared to the pain, the hellish hurt of being condemned to serve the
Grail?' Later, this same D-as-subdominant and D as fulfilling the
Thorensprucharticulates, for Lewin, the D-to-AX progression that is 'the
obligatory structural gesture of the opera' at bs 1084-8: 'Parsifal, firmly in
command of the office, discharges his foreordained duty by directing the
unveiling of the Grail.'29 Only at the very end of the opera, at the
conclusion of a prodigious sequence of plagal cadences leading around the
circle of fifths from D all the way to A6 (bs 1109-27), is the real sub-
dominant of Db prolonged and emphasized.30
Working hand in hand with the substitutional relations outlined by
Lewin is another aspect of the role of D in the drama: its arising through
an enharmonic, rather than a diatonic, relation to the Ur-tonic of A6. After
his discussion of the significance of b.1057, he further argues for the
centrality of D in the opera as a whole by pointing to the Thorenspruch
stretto at bs 1050-6 (where Parsifal identifies himself as the reine Thor) and
noting:
We have heard this stretto before. A more extended version led to
Parsifal'scoronationearlierin the act; there the strettoled to a similar
triumphantdisplay of the Parsifaltheme, then in B major as Parsifal
reached an importantpreliminarygoal in fulfillingthe prophecy.The
way to D often leads through B in this drama.The D majorof mm.
1057ff. reminds us, too, that Parsifalfirst seized control of the spear,
towardthe end of the second act, in D major. [Andthat D came out of
the B ambiencein Klingsor's realm.]31
Lewin locates the specific moment of the enharmonic shift at the Kiss (Act
II, b.983). As he notes, at the instant that Kundry cadences, on the word
'Kuss', on C?, Wagner begins notating the orchestra in B.35
We thus have come full circle, back to the Kiss, with which our
discussion of the (E, F) motive began, firmly in possession of two
analytical points of view, rather than just one. But are the two compatible,
and, if so, what do they have to do with one another? The answer, it seems
to me, is hinted at towards the end of Lewin's article. An early
manifestation of the A JCVIB-Dprogression in the opera occurs in the
sequential Glaubensthemain the Prelude to Act I (bs 44ff.). Lewin shows
this progression schematically as follows (Ex. 11). He then notes
immediately that his abstraction is in fact the Zaubermotiv,at the very pitch
level at which it occurs at the moment of the Kiss.36 Reflecting on the
a) b) c)
3322
2
?7313 j2
Here we may at last carry on where Lewin has left off, incorporating with
gratitude all the 'magic' that we have learned from him, and connect his
views of tonal structure to the (E, F) motive. Although one possible
interpretation of the Zaubermotiv is to hear its initial notes as simply
arpeggiating the A-Ck-ELbbdiminished triad, and then passing through Ebto
the neighbouring sixth scale degree, 1F (as in Ex. 12a), we can also hear the
motive as arpeggiating an AX minor triad, such that D is a lower
appoggiatura and F,, again, the upper neighbour (as in Ex.12b). It is
through this latter interpretation that the Zaubermotivbears such a striking
resemblance to the Liebesmahl, since both arpeggiate the A6,triad (minor
and major, respectively), then move up to the sixth degree, and then move
His words here are strictly consistent with the point of view elaborated
throughout the text of the drama, and correctly observed by Lewin: that is,
important as the wound and its healing are, they are secondary to the
return of the Spear, the 'obligatory structural gesture' of the drama. Thus
the Spear, not the wound, is the subject of Parsifal's final text. Although he
acknowledges in his opening words that the Spear has healed the wound
(he 'throws it away'), the text here really focuses on his macabre, but
symbolically essential, vision: he sees the Spear flowing with blood,39which
seeks to join the fountain that is its source, the Grail. Or, to render these
symbols as ideas, Parsifal, having healed the actual physical wound of
Amfortas with the Spear, can now move on to heal the more important
spiritual rift - the systemic disease of which the wound itself is but a
physical manifestation - that has given rise to the entire drama. The ritual
uniting of the blood of the Spear and that of the Grail returns the magic
that was lost (symbolically, the Spear) to its source - a source that is, by
the way, identified here as explicitly divine, and to which Parsifal himself is
subservient40 - and it is this reclamation of what was wrong, what was
incomplete, that permits him to order the uncovering of the Grail, the
opening of the shrine, and, as it were, to complete the dramatic structure.
Wagner's musical symbolism is also perfectly consistent. The (E, F)
motive, here as throughout the opera, symbolizes both the physical wound
and the spiritual distress that is at the root of the drama. The goal of the
music to which Parsifal's last words are set is to resolve the (E, F) out of
the tonal structure once and for all, within the broader context of resolving
the global tonal structure, which, of course, turns principally on the
'obligatory structural gesture' of returning the 'magical' D of the Spear to
the Abof the Grail.
The music of bs 1070-5 prefigures the structural D-A, motion of
bs 1084-7. Bars 1070-2 begin with the D minor/F major area in which we
perceived Amfortas's experience of pain (Act I, bs 264ff.); then they are
sequenced more or less literally up a minor third in bs 1073-5, which
unambiguously establish AX, and which create a melodic and harmonic
parallelism for the rhyme schliessen/entfliessen.There are a number of nice
tonal and motivic touches here. The string tremolos and the harmonic
ambience recall Act I, bs 592-3. At the same time, the word 'Wunde' is
realized melodically on a-ar, suggesting ever so fleetingly a resolution from
the A/D area associated with the wound to Db, the 'real' subdominant of
Ab. More obviously, the word 'schliessen' is set to the notes e-f; the wound
'closes' on (E, F) precisely as the harmony turns toward At.At bs 1069,
1072 and 1075, the ascending fourth motive (horns and clarinets)
associated with the Spear and usually in D or Db is sequenced through
statements beginning on f, abland b', such that 1) the successive first notes
of the three statements articulate a diminished triad that hints at the world
of Zauber that is here being reclaimed for the forces of good; 2) the
statement in Ab,is coordinated with the text describing the closing of the
wound; and 3) the first note of the three statements is f, the last e2 - a
relationship highlighted by Parsifal's ~ in b.1069 and his e2 in b.1075, with
no higher notes in the interim. The first violins, which reiterate the motive
e'-f throughout bs 1072-3, achieve g' at the downbeat of b. 1074, at which
point they reverse direction and move back through f and fb' as the text
begins to describe the flowing of the Spear's blood back to the Grail.
Finally, the melodic notes to the rhyme schliessen/entfliessenarticulate the
motion e'-f -g'-a1', thereby bringing the (E, F) dyad into the realm of Ab
rather than that of the A of the actual healing of the wound (cf. bs 1035-9).
At the instant at which the blood on the Spear begins to flow towards
the Grail (b.1075), all the musical forces in the passage coalesce to press
towards the conclusive V-I cadence in Ab at bs 1087-8. Before considering
the many wonderful details of the passage, we should review briefly two
conflicting points of view concerning this cadence. Lorenz attributes
enormous structural weight to the dominant cadence and uses it, in
retrospect, to argue for his global tonal interpretation of Act III as
involving a progression from B%minor at the beginning (using his Riemann
function symbols Sp in At) to D minor, the Leittonwechselklangof B%,and
thus ultimately a kind of V/V in At, in Amfortas's Prayer, to the E? triad of
b.1078, to the A6 of bs 1088ff., thus giving the large-scale progression (in
Riemannian terms) Sp-(D)-[D]-T.41 Lewin, on the other hand, suggests
that this reading
Going on to compare the relative merits of Lorenz's reading and his own
(that is, his identifying the movement in bs 1084-7 as the structural
D-A,
cadence, with plagal meaning), he notes:
l699 l
The final vocal juxtaposition of E and F in the opera is brought into relief
by Parsifal's e' and f of bs 1083 and 1086. Symbolically, the brotherhood
must never let the Grail be verschlossen(e'); they must uncover it (f). Or,
in musical terms, in the Ab of the Temple of the Grail, they must never
have a (chromatic) condition of E (M6above 5, or altered 5 passing to 6)
relating to F, but a (diatonic) condition of EE ('8ffnet den Schrein!')
relating to F.
Simultaneously with the (E, F) resolution in these bars, the following
resolutions take place as well. First, the idea of surrounding eb1with the
semitones above and below, introduced but not fully resolved in bs 1076-
81, is realized fully here in Parsifal's vocal line with the e' of b.1083, the d'
of b.1085 and the eblof bs 1087-8. The Spear motive of bs 1075-6, b2-c2•-
d2_-e2, is repatriated to the diatonic world of At through the lower
contrapuntal line embedded in Parsifal's melody in bs 1082-8: b'-c?'-d'-e1'.
Finally, in the harmonic realm, the descending bass line AL-GG-F-E?
(alternate bars beginning with b. 1081) spins off descending thirds from its
first three notes to bring 1) a harmonic statement of the semitones above
and below E,, in the E major and D major triads of bs 1082 and 1084; 2)
Lewin's structural plagal D in b.1084; and 3) Lorenz's structural dominant
in b. 1087.
Having been structurally purged from the score in Parsifal's final ritual
text, the (E, F) motive returns only once more, and then as a brief
reminiscence. It arises at bs 1133-5, just as the sopranos' final a2 dies
away. Here the subdominant harmony, Db, now finally prolonged, moves
for a single bar to A minor harmony (cf. Act I, bs 607-8), as Kundry - she
in whom the (E, F) world of sin was embodied - sinks lifeless to the
ground. The magic has returned to the communion service, and the (E, F)
dyad has been recuperated into the diatonic world of the Grail.
V HISTORICAL RAMIFICATIONS
In the course of our analysis some readers may have wondered how
Wagner's use of a single pitch-class dyad for both motivic-referential and
tonal-structural purposes fits into his oeuvre as a whole. The question is a
difficult one, and one that I am unable to answer fully; but it is
nevertheless relevant and intriguing, and worthy of a brief discussion here.
Surely the course of Wagner's career from Der fliegende Hollander to
Parsifal articulates, on the one hand, the composer's gaining progressively
tighter large-scale control over his pitch materials and, on the other, his
tendency to use a progressively more chromatic surface. From the point of
view of tonal organization, his great achievement in the early parts of The
Ring - up to and including the second act of Siegfried, after the
composition of which he abandoned the cycle to write first Tristan and
then Die Meistersinger- was to develop a global means of tonal structure
whereby the referential use of keys, with the help of a text, made possible
the coherent use of all twelve major-minor keys in a single monumental
work, such that the tonal 'background' was controlled not by the linear
unfolding of a single triad but by the choice, based on dramatic
considerations, of various of the twelve keys for certain symbolic purposes.
All this worked perfectly well - indeed, it works for the most part according
to the dictates of Opera and Drama - except that when, under the influence
of Liszt, he began to use a far more chromatic surface in Siegfried,he was
unable to justify surface chromaticism with background structure, and in
the first two acts of that opera the diatonicism of music such as the Forging
Songs and the Forest Music coexists awkwardly with the chromatic music
of Mime, Alberich and Fafner.
One reason why the chromaticism in Tristan makes such intuitively
better tonal sense is that Wagner, rather than using just keys as his primary
tonal and dramatic symbols, as he had in the past, also used a single,
tonally ambiguous chord as a crucial dramatic and tonal symbol. In doing
so he took the step of attributing large-scale tonal meaning and dramatic
weight to an essentially chromatic entity, rather than reserving that
meaning and weight for diatonic elements; and he thus thrust
chromaticism far deeper into the structural fabric of the opera as a whole.
An opera could still move from one strongly established key at the
beginning to another at the end, as in the earlier parts of The Ring, but the
whole structure works much better because the chromatic elements - and
one chromatic element in particular - plant the seeds of future tonal
growth early on, and then function at a deep level as a fulcrum on which to
turn an act from one key at the beginning to another at the end.44
The ultimate source of Wagner's use of the (E, F) dyad in Parsifal is
probably the Tristan chord, for the two share the essential features of
being 1) a usually untransposed set of pitch classes, 2) tonally ambiguous,
3) capable of resolution to structural diatonic keys in the opera, and
4) heavily weighted with symbolic meaning in the drama. A closer source is
perhaps the same chord in Gatterddmmerung,where, in the Norns' Scene
(Prologue to Act I), the F-Af-CV-E?chord that is so interwoven into the EF
minor music of the spinning of the rope of time is eventually transposed up
a semitone, to F?-A-C-E, as the rope breaks at the end of the scene, where
the music turns to B minor, so that it functions as a fulcrum in the
'double-tonic complex' EW/B.45With the chord in Gdtterddmmerung there is
added to the four features noted above for the Tristan chord the crucial
additional element of a structural semitone transposition, which even more
explicitly looks forward to Parsifal.
To be sure, both the Tristanchord and the referential chord of the same
type (and at the same pitch level!) in Gotterddmmerung seem in a way more
obvious and less hidden than the (E, F) dyad in Parsifal. Yet I would
maintain that there is a genetic relationship connecting the three, not only
because of how they function, but also because, ironically enough, they all
three involve the same chord, F-Af-CV-E6or its enharmonic equivalents. It
would be dangerous to attribute too much significance to the fact that the
Tristanchord, the chord of the Norns' spinning and the initial chord of the
Kiss in Parsifal are the same. But, coincidence or not, to trace the manifold
implications of this single chord in the three operas is to trace Wagner's
growing ability fully to integrate chromaticism into all structural levels of
the tonal language of the later nineteenth century.
NOTES