Introduction
It’s difficult to believe, given the size of the work, that Wagner’s last opera is all built on very little material, relatively speaking. The very first phrase that we hear holds in itself the germs of dramatically important leitmotifs recurring throughout the whole opera.
The first one is the Fellowship or Redemption motif, spanning 2 bars; overlapping it, is the Wound or Guilt motif starting halfway through the second bar; the third, is the motif of the spear, covering the last 3 bars.
“He plays me the Prelude, from the orchestral sketch! My emotion lasts long – then he speaks to me about this feature, in the mystery of the Grail, of blood turning into wine, which permits us to turn our gaze refreshed back to earth, whereas the conversion of wine into blood draws us away from the earth.”
In this way, Richard Wagner’s wife Cosima describes in her diary, on September 26, 1877, her first encounter with her husband’s last opera. And Richard himself noted that
“the prelude contains all that’s needed and it all unfolds like a flower from its bud”
Richard Wagner by Franz Hanfstaengl, 1871
The story of Parsifal, in Wagner’s complex libretto, evolves around the Spear used to stab Christ on the cross and the Grail from which he drank during the Last Supper. The honorable Knights of the Grail are there to guard these two relics against evil.
It’s the ultimate synthesis of Wagner’s beliefs in creating a new form of art, one that could incorporate not just all arts but the micro and macro cosmos of humanity, from philosophy to religion.
At the same time, it was the consecration of his own temple, Bayreuth: he insisted that the opera could only be performed there until the end of its copyright.
R.Wagner – Parsifal, Prelude to Act 1
Should you need a score you can find one here.
Part 1
The Prelude is an introduction to the opera: not just to its various motifs but also to the inner nobility that the listener should derive and be invested in by the end of the performance.
The structure is essentially built on 3 sections, similar to the traditional Italian overture of the 18th century.
The music reveals itself very slowly, giving the audience all the chances to absorb it.
Notice the orchestration, warm, elegant: violins and cellos with mutes, 1 bassoon, and 1 clarinet. It’s interesting to also notice the tonal ambiguity, shifting between Ab major and C minor.
This is, by the way, the same melody to which the chorus sings “Erlösung dem Erlöser” (Redemption to the Redeemer) at the end of the work.
Quite a few motives that develop throughout the opera derive from this motif or from parts of it, the motif of the Grail Nights, for example, or the one of the Communion.
Pulsing triplets of the flutes and clarinets, along with the swarming arpeggios of the violas accompany warm chords of trombones, horns, and bassoons: everyone is starting in their lowest register building up a wall of sound.
It’s a cocoon, out of which the main motif emerges in a solo trumpet doubled by the oboes and half of the violins, first and second. The other half of the violins join the violas in the arpeggio figures contributing to the build-up of this cathedral of sound.
The phrase dies out in Ab major, the same key in which it started. There’s a clear break. Silence. And the entire episode is repeated, in C minor this time, with some minor changes in the orchestration.
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Part 2
Another pause and Wagner offers us the Grail motif, played by a trumpet.
This motif has a much longer story: it’s, in fact, known as the Dresden Amen and was written by Johann Gottlieb Naumann for the royal chapel in Dresden.
Wagner became familiar with this music during his Dresden years, between 1842 and 1849, though it’s likely that he heard it as a boy attending church in the same city.
But he was not the only one: this motif was used by Mendelssohn in his Reformation symphony; Bruckner used it in several motets. And Wagner himself had already used it Das Liebesverbot and Tannhäuser.
The Faith motif follows, announced by the first horn and two trumpets.
The Grail motif returns, in the strings, followed by the Faith motif: the initial grandeur makes room for a more meditative take on it. Wagner moves the orchestration to the woodwinds first, and then to the strings
Horns and bassoon answer right away, in forte and then in fortissimo with the aid of the rest of the orchestra minus the woodwinds. Notice how Wagner is using blocks of orchestration, already very much present in his earlier works, to give a different tone to the same motif every time.
Part 3
The woodwinds meditate on the motif once more, in piano, as we approach the third section of this Prelude. A roll of the timpani on a low Ab, the tremolo of the strings, and we hear the very first motif again, played by the English horn, the second clarinet, and the first bassoon.
The motif is somewhat developed, both rhythmically and thematically, and we can clearly see the motif of the Spear taking over: this motif will become very important in the prelude to the third act, where Parsifal bears the sacred spear.
This mini-development is kept quite short. The first violins retake it once more and hand the phrase to the woodwinds who pick up the rising syncopated figures of the opening bars.
The first violins rise up themselves with an Eb arpeggio (notice the absence of the rest of the strings) and the prelude fades in an ethereal pianissimo suspended on a Eb7 chord.
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