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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
Theodor Adorno thought Parsifal unique, in many respects incongruous when compared with Wagner's earlier operas and music dramas. In a 1956 essay, ‘Zur Partitur des Parsifal’ (‘Concerning the Score of Parsifal’), he noted the ‘continually strange newness’ of Wagner's last work, concluding: ‘From out of the waning of his original inventive powers, Wagner's force produces the virtue of a late style; a style that, according to Goethe's dictum, withdraws from appearance’. More recently, Werner Breig paused appreciatively over Adorno's remark about the ‘continually strange newness’, but pursued a different argument. Breig claims that Parsifal was recapitulatory, stylistically homogeneous with the earlier works, and he is supported by Wagner's assertion to Cosima that he had written ‘nothing new’ since Tristan (CWD II, 26 March 1879), a conviction redolent of one the composer had earlier expressed (albeit in entirely different circumstances) in a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck of 2 May 1860: ‘I can now only repeat myself … I have no other significant characteristics to offer’. Breig summarises his position in the Wagner Handbook: ‘The musical structure of Parsifal contains no fundamentally new elements, but rather follows directly upon the achievements of the Ring and Tristan’, thus nodding to the Wagner who cheerfully confessed having ‘take[n] up the old paint pot’ of the Tristan style for Act II of Parsifal (CWD II, 5 April 1878).
1 ‘Age is indeed an ague much augmented/by the capricious frost of impotence./One who has passed the thirtieth year/already is as good as dead — /it would be best to kill you off by then.’ Faust I and II, ed. and trans. Atkins, Stuart (Princeton, 1984), 174.Google Scholar
2 Cosima Wagner's Diaries, ed. Gregor-Dellin, Martin and Mack, Dietrich, trans. Skelton, Geoffrey, 2 vols. (New York, 1980); hereafter, citations will be indicated in the text as CWD I or II followed by the date of diary entry.Google Scholar
3 In Musikalische Schrijten 4: Moments musicaux, Impromptus, vol. 17 of Adorno, Theodor W., Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), 47–52;Google Scholar reprinted in Richard Wagner: ‘Parsifal’. Texte, Materialien, Kommentare, ed. Csampai, Attila and Holland, Dietmar (Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1984), 191–5. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the author.Google Scholar
4 ‘On the Musical Style of “Parsifal”‘, Programm des Osterfestspiels Salzburg. 11. bis 20. 04 1981 (English translation by Adrienne Jones), 71–5.Google Scholar
5 Breig, , ‘The Musical Works’, Wagner Handbook, ed. Miiller, Ulrich and Wapnewski, Peter, trans. Deathridge, John (Cambridge, 1992), 474.Google Scholar
6 Liner Notes to Decca Gesamtausgabe Parsifal (n.p.), reprinted as ‘Parsifal— Eine Einfuhrung’, in Wagner, Richard, ‘Parsifal’ (Munich, 1990), 10–19.Google Scholar
7 A fuller discussion of many of the issues and the materials to be discussed here will be found in my dissertation, ‘Richard Wagner's Parsifal and the Hermeneutics of Late Style’ (Columbia University), currently in progress, and in my article, ‘Adorno's “Zur Partitur des Parsifal”, a Translation and Commentary’, Music & letters (forthcoming 1995).Google Scholar
8 For a discussion of Spätzeitlichkeit as a world-historical phenomenon, see Kohlschmidt's, Werner introductory essay, ‘Die Problematik der Spatzeitlichkeit’, Spätzeiten und Spätzeitlichkeit. Vorträge gehalten auf dem II. Intemationalen Germanistenkongress 1960 in Kopenhagen, ed. Kohlschmidt, Werner (Bern, 1962), 16–26.Google Scholar The first appearance in print of the term Altersstil is ascribed by Trunz, Erich to Friedrich Vischer's and Paul Krauth's monograph Goethes Sprache und Stil im Alter (Leipzig, 1898);Google Scholar see ‘Altersstil’, Goethe Handbuch. Goethe: Seine Welt und Zeit in Werk und Wirkung, 2nd edn, ed. Zastran, Alfred (Stuttgart, 1955), 178–9; a slighdy altered version appears as ‘Goethes Altersstil’, Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker.Google ScholarDokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Goethes in Deutschland. Teil IV. 1918–1982, ed. Mandelkow, Karl Robert (Munich, 1984), 395–400.Google ScholarThe emergence of the term in art criticism is illustrated by Brinkmann's, A. E. frequently cited Spätwerke grosser Meister (1925); see, for example, Julius S. Held's introductory ‘Commentary’ to an issue of Art Journal (1987) devoted to the problem of late style in the visual arts.Google Scholar
9 ‘Natural history’ in August Wilhelm Schlegel's sense: ‘a singling out and recording of the essential stages of a development’. See Barasch, Moshe, Modem Theories of Art, vol. 1, From Winckelmann to Baudelaire (New York, 1990), 173.Google Scholar
10 Vischer, , Aesthetik oder Wissenschaft des Schöntn. Dritter Tbeil. Die Kunstlehre (Stuttgart, 1853).Google ScholarWeiße, , ‘Über Stil und Manier’ (1863/64), Kleine Schriften zur Ästhetik und ästhetischen Kritik, compiled by Seydel, Rudolf (Hildesheim, 1966).Google Scholar
11 According to the editors of CWD I, ‘Wagner appears to have possessed Winckelmann's Collected Works (published in twelve volumes between 1825 and 1829), and the biography to which Cosima refers is probably that by Joseph Eiselein printed in the first volume.’Google Scholar
12 My emphasis. The History of Ancient Art, trans. Lodge, G. Henry, 4 vols. (vols 1 and 3, Boston, 1872; vol. 4, 1873; vol. 2, 1849), III, 177.Google Scholar Adumbrations of late-style theory have been identified in pre-eighteenth-century sources. See, for further discussion, McPherson, Heather, ‘The Fortune Teller of 1824 or the Elegant Dilemma of David's Late Style’, Gazette des Beaux-arts, ser. 6, vol. 118 (07–08 1991), 35nl; she notes Pliny as a source of the concept. Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), French philologist, was from 1593 to his death professor at the University of Leiden; Publius Annius Florus, African-Roman historian and teacher of rhetoric, was active in the late first and second centuries A.D.Google Scholar
13 History of Ancient Art, I, 1.Google Scholar
14 History of Ancient Art (Book 3, chap. 3, 1, ‘Different Stages and Epochs in Style’), I, 362, my emphasis.Google Scholar
15 See Goethe, , ‘Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manier, Stil’, in Stilepoche, Theorie und Diskussion. Eine interdisziplinäre Anthologie von Winckelmann bis heute, ed. Por, Peter and Radnóti, Sándor (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 48–9. Goethe's hierarchy of attributes places style (Stil) at the peak of the ascent from ‘simple imitation of nature’ through ‘manner’: ‘then it is style that becomes the level of achievement, that level where the highest of human strivings may be measured against one another … style [draws near] the deepest foundations of human understanding, the essence of being, in so far as it is permitted us to recognise this in visible and apprehensible forms’. Goethe's remarks were first published in 1789.Google Scholar
16 Geschichte der Kunst (1812), II, 516n822. Lodge's English translation (see n.12) unhelpfully omits Winckelmann's extensive notes.Google Scholar
17 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, The Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J. (New York, 1956), 223–4.Google Scholar
18 Most analyses in the early decades of the nineteenth century arrived at negative evaluations of the late phase of Goethe's work, affirming Winckelmann's neoclassical postulate of terminal decline and degeneration. Ludwig Tieck, for example, divided Goethe's career into three phases, of which the first, Goethe's youth, was marked by artistic wholeness and perfection; the second, ‘classical’ phase, was regarded as having much in it of high quality; the third and last, however, was viewed as a regrettable phase of frigidity and decline.Google Scholar
19 Conversation with Fahlmer, Johanna, beginning of May 1774, in Gedenkausgabe der Werke. Briefe und Gespräche, vol. 22, Goethes Gesprache. Erster Teil (Zurich, 1949), 44.Google Scholar
20 Maximen und Reflexionen, in Goethes Werke, 5th edn. (Hamburg, 1963), XII, 542 (no. 1328).Google Scholar
21 West-Östlicher Divan, ‘Noten und Abhandlungen zu besserem Verständnis des West-Östlichen Divans’, ‘Einleitung’ (Leipzig, 1923), 132.Google Scholar
22 ‘Zu brüderlichem Andenken Wielands’, Gedenkausgabe, vol. 12, Schriften zur Uteratur, 694.Google Scholar
23 Letter to Zelter, , 7 November 1816, Goethes Briefe, XXVII (Weimar, 1903), 219 (no. 7539).Google Scholar
24 Letter to Conta, C. F. v., 11 09 1820, Goethes Briefe, XXXIII (Weimar, 1905), 215 (no. 154).Google Scholar
25 Maximen und Reflexionen, Goethes Werke, XII, 470 (nos. 745–8); my emphasis.Google Scholar
26 Maximen und Reflexionen, Goethes Werke, XII, 540 (no. 1315).Google Scholar
27 Simmel, , ‘Das Abendmahl Leonardo Da Vincis’, Zur Philosophie der Kunst. Philosophische und Kunstphilosophische Aufsätze (Potsdam, 1922), 55.Google Scholar
28 ‘Michelangelo’ (1910–11), Philosophische Rultur. Gesammelte Essais von Georg Simmel, 3rd edn (Potsdam, 1923), 169–70.Google Scholar
29 Simmel, , Goethe (Leipzig, 1913), 228.Google Scholar
30 Ibid., 255.
31 Ibid., 250.
32 Ibid., 252–3; my emphasis.
33 The Decline of the West, 2 vols. (New York, 1926), I, 110–11.Google Scholar
34 Letter to Nietzsche, Friedrich, 23 10 1872, Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans, and ed. Spencer, Stewart and Millington, Barry (London, 1987), 813.Google Scholar
35 The World as Will and Representation, trans. Payne, E. F. J., 2 vols. (New York, 1958), II, 395–6.Google Scholar
36 Mann, , Pro and Contra Wagner, trans. Blunden, Allan (London, 1985), 113.Google Scholar
37 ‘Beethoven’, Richard Wagner: Gesammelte Schriften und Dkhtungen (Leipzig, 1873), IX, 101; my emphasis.Google Scholar
38 Ibid., 106–8.
39 The World as Will, I, 185.Google Scholar
40 My emphasis.Google Scholar
41 Wolzogen, Hans von, ‘Bayreuther Gedanken und Erinnerungen. II. Parsifal. Nach 1883’, Der Merker. Östemichische Zeitschrift fur Musik und Theater, 1.12 (25 03 1910), 493. Wolzogen alludes to Act I of Faust Part Two.Google Scholar
42 Faust I and II, ed. and trans. Atkins, Stuart (Princeton, 1984), vv. 6277, 6279, 6287–8 and 6301–2.Google Scholar
43 Wolzogen, , ‘Bayreuther Gedanken’, 493.Google Scholar
44 Lindner, Edwin, Richard Wagner über ‘Parsifal’. Aussprüche des Meisters über sein Werk (Leipzig, 1913), 197,Google Scholar
after Glasenapp, Carl Friedrich, Das Leben Richard Wagners, 6 vols. (Leipzig, 1905–1911), VI, 664.Google Scholar
45 Wagner, , of course, knew the lines well; he had paraphrased them in an impromptu speech delivered during the celebrations of the 1876 Festival: ‘Calls, dinners, a tremendous amount of coming and going, in the evening a banquet; R., quite without preparation, makes a wonderful speech, paraphrasing the final chorus from Faust— “All things transitory are set but as symbols.” The idea: “The eternally feminine leads us on”‘ (CWD 1, 18 08 1876).Google Scholar
46 In the scene preceding Faust's death and redemption, Goethe's stage directions indicate Faust's appearance and pose as well as the scene: ‘Palast/Weiter Ziergarten/Grosser, Gradgefuhrter Kanal/Faust, im höchsten Alter wandelnd, nachdenkend’. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Faust, Teil, Zweiter (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 331.Google Scholar
47 Beethoven et ses trois styles (rpt. New York, 1980), 235–6.Google Scholar
48 Ibid., 61.
49 Hanslick, , ‘Richard Wagners “Parsifal”, Erster Brief aus Bayreuth vom Juli 1882’, printed in Richard Wagner: ‘Parsifal’. Texte, Materialien, Kommentare, ed. Csampai, and Holland, , 158.Google Scholar
50 Chamberlain, Houston Stuart, ‘Notes sur Parsifal’, Revue wagnérienne, 6 (08, 1886), 220.Google Scholar
51 This is revealed early on to be the guiding premise of the monograph: ‘J'ai pris pour principal sujet d'étude le dernier en date des ouvrages de Wagner, d'abord parce que c'est celui dans lequel il a donné la plus parfait application de son système’ (‘Parsifal’ et l'opéra wagnérien [Paris, 1883], 27).Google Scholar
52 Crisenoy, Carl de, ‘Parsifal’ et la Critique. Extrait des ‘Entretiens Idealistes’ (Paris: Bibliothèque des ‘Entretiens Idealistes’, 1914). The premiere of Parsifal in France took place on 4 January 1914 at the Paris Opéra, conducted by André Messager.Google Scholar
53 Revue hebdomadaire, 31 01 1914.Google Scholar
54 Newman, Ernest, The Life of Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (London, 1947), IV, 604.Google Scholar
55 Bekker, Paul, Richard Wagner: His Life in His Work, trans. Bozman, M. M. (London, 1931), vi.Google Scholar
56 Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to His Music, trans. Whittall, Mary (Oxford, 1991), 220.Google Scholar
