Parsifal: What's it about Really?
It is Easter. The Full moon was on Good Friday this year. Parsifal gets performed a lot at this time, but what on earth is it about, really?
You’ll recall the main events of the “plot”:
Act I: Outside a monastery in Spain. The top monk is in pain, but can’t die. A woman with low-self-esteem keeps falling down and screaming. A young man shoots a swan, which makes Mr. G. (the singer who explains everything to the audience) really cross. The young man didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to, and doesn’t know who he is. He’s an idiot. He is Parsifal. Mr. G takes Parsifal into the monastery. Parsifal doesn’t understand that either, which makes Mr. G cross again, so he throws him out.
Act II: Women try to seduce Parsifal in a beautiful garden. But they aren’t very sexy. The woman with low self-esteem is more determined about getting into his pants, but lays a guilt-trip on him about his mother. He nearly falls for it, but can’t commit. Surprise! - a spear comes flying through the air, which he catches. All the flowers in the garden wither, and the castle, which belongs to a bad guy, collapses too.
Act III: The top monk is not dead yet. The low-self-esteem woman is talking to Mr. G. Parsifal shows up, wearing armor. Mr. G realizes that Parsifal, the idiot, is the solution to their problems. They anoint him. It is Good Friday and flowers bloom. Back in the Monastery, Parsifal tells them everything is OK. The top monk’s pain stops, he resigns, and Parsifal becomes top monk. The End.
I make light of it. But it takes so long to explain seriously, and it still comes out as silly.
What is it about? Well it isn’t about Christianity. The people in the drama are Christians in a Christian institution, (or fighting against it) and so their ideas and pre-occupations are apparently Christian. But the opera is no more about Christianity than The Flying Dutchman is about sailing, or Die Meistersinger is about Nuremburg, Tristan und Isolde about drug-induced irresponsibility or The Ring about Castle Architecture. It was a bit naughty of Wagner though. He knew it would get a rise out of everybody. It sure messed up his friendship with Nietszche.
Wagner gives us two strong hints about what he thought it was about. (Composers and writers are not reliable authorities as to what their creations are “about.”) In one letter he says it is about the philosophy of Schopenhauer, which was tremendously important to him. If this is the case, then the point is that Parsifal, by renouncing cleverness and sexual passion, is able to achieve the simplicity and innocence that brings release from pain. (Amfortas, the top monk who was in pain, suffered as a result of sexual indulgence.)
But in another letter he says that he composes purely instinctively, and that the music is the clue to the inner meaning. If that is the case, then things are rather different. Looking at the Schopenhauer solution from a musical point of view, it seems very unsatisfactory. Some of the best music is the choral singing in the monastery at the end of Act I, which is supposed to represent the problem. The music of sexual seduction in Act II (remember that sex was the source of Amfortas’s downfall) is disappointingly weak, and certainly no match at all for the intensity of the music in Tristan. The crucial dramatic moment would be when Parsifal rejects Kundry’s kiss, but the music just isn’t very memorable. Act II is pretty much a clunker. Act III is a bit of a disappointment too. Even though it contains the moment when Parsifal frees Amfortas and the monks of Monsalvat from their narcissistic doom, it doesn’t come across as dramatically interesting. Everything is over by that time. (I always feel that Parsifal, contrary to common opinion, is too short. There is nothing in Act III to balance the magnificence of the ending of Act I.)
But if we just listen to the music, a different pattern, a more disarming and less intellectual meaning, emerges. There are two great musical pillars in this greatest of all Music Dramas. The first is the Transformation Music in Act I, where the scene changes from the exterior by the brook to the interior of the monastery, where all is dominated by Amfortas’s weakness and guilt-induced self-loathing. This agonized music, which Robin Holloway describes as “setting your bowels in heat” is one of the most extraordinary musical tours de force by Wagner, involving, technically, a long stream of chromatic notes pleading for resolution upwards, all of which are agonizingly pulled downwards in pain and despair.
The only passage of music that even remotely balances this is the Good Friday Music in Act III. By the Schopenhauer interpretation, this is merely an interlude, - an entr’acte in which the characters onstage enjoy the springtime before getting on with serious business indoors.
But musically, this is the equal, the converse, the solution to the painful transformation music of Act I. It is a cousin to the ending of Das Lied von der Erde, and the opening of Mahler’s 9th. Music that hovers above a firmly grounded tonic, but never needs to settle back down onto it. It floats. It levitates. It is the music of love. Not love given. (Meistersinger) Not love desired. (Tristan) It is the music of love unexpectedly received. Love as an undeserved gift. This is what Parsifal offers the knights - the unsought gift of love - a release they were not even looking for, and never supposed they deserved.
Never mind the silly drama onstage. The music of Parsifal grants a benefaction that cannot be asked for.
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You’ll recall the main events of the “plot”:
Act I: Outside a monastery in Spain. The top monk is in pain, but can’t die. A woman with low-self-esteem keeps falling down and screaming. A young man shoots a swan, which makes Mr. G. (the singer who explains everything to the audience) really cross. The young man didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to, and doesn’t know who he is. He’s an idiot. He is Parsifal. Mr. G takes Parsifal into the monastery. Parsifal doesn’t understand that either, which makes Mr. G cross again, so he throws him out.
Act II: Women try to seduce Parsifal in a beautiful garden. But they aren’t very sexy. The woman with low self-esteem is more determined about getting into his pants, but lays a guilt-trip on him about his mother. He nearly falls for it, but can’t commit. Surprise! - a spear comes flying through the air, which he catches. All the flowers in the garden wither, and the castle, which belongs to a bad guy, collapses too.
Act III: The top monk is not dead yet. The low-self-esteem woman is talking to Mr. G. Parsifal shows up, wearing armor. Mr. G realizes that Parsifal, the idiot, is the solution to their problems. They anoint him. It is Good Friday and flowers bloom. Back in the Monastery, Parsifal tells them everything is OK. The top monk’s pain stops, he resigns, and Parsifal becomes top monk. The End.
I make light of it. But it takes so long to explain seriously, and it still comes out as silly.
What is it about? Well it isn’t about Christianity. The people in the drama are Christians in a Christian institution, (or fighting against it) and so their ideas and pre-occupations are apparently Christian. But the opera is no more about Christianity than The Flying Dutchman is about sailing, or Die Meistersinger is about Nuremburg, Tristan und Isolde about drug-induced irresponsibility or The Ring about Castle Architecture. It was a bit naughty of Wagner though. He knew it would get a rise out of everybody. It sure messed up his friendship with Nietszche.
Wagner gives us two strong hints about what he thought it was about. (Composers and writers are not reliable authorities as to what their creations are “about.”) In one letter he says it is about the philosophy of Schopenhauer, which was tremendously important to him. If this is the case, then the point is that Parsifal, by renouncing cleverness and sexual passion, is able to achieve the simplicity and innocence that brings release from pain. (Amfortas, the top monk who was in pain, suffered as a result of sexual indulgence.)
But in another letter he says that he composes purely instinctively, and that the music is the clue to the inner meaning. If that is the case, then things are rather different. Looking at the Schopenhauer solution from a musical point of view, it seems very unsatisfactory. Some of the best music is the choral singing in the monastery at the end of Act I, which is supposed to represent the problem. The music of sexual seduction in Act II (remember that sex was the source of Amfortas’s downfall) is disappointingly weak, and certainly no match at all for the intensity of the music in Tristan. The crucial dramatic moment would be when Parsifal rejects Kundry’s kiss, but the music just isn’t very memorable. Act II is pretty much a clunker. Act III is a bit of a disappointment too. Even though it contains the moment when Parsifal frees Amfortas and the monks of Monsalvat from their narcissistic doom, it doesn’t come across as dramatically interesting. Everything is over by that time. (I always feel that Parsifal, contrary to common opinion, is too short. There is nothing in Act III to balance the magnificence of the ending of Act I.)
But if we just listen to the music, a different pattern, a more disarming and less intellectual meaning, emerges. There are two great musical pillars in this greatest of all Music Dramas. The first is the Transformation Music in Act I, where the scene changes from the exterior by the brook to the interior of the monastery, where all is dominated by Amfortas’s weakness and guilt-induced self-loathing. This agonized music, which Robin Holloway describes as “setting your bowels in heat” is one of the most extraordinary musical tours de force by Wagner, involving, technically, a long stream of chromatic notes pleading for resolution upwards, all of which are agonizingly pulled downwards in pain and despair.
The only passage of music that even remotely balances this is the Good Friday Music in Act III. By the Schopenhauer interpretation, this is merely an interlude, - an entr’acte in which the characters onstage enjoy the springtime before getting on with serious business indoors.
But musically, this is the equal, the converse, the solution to the painful transformation music of Act I. It is a cousin to the ending of Das Lied von der Erde, and the opening of Mahler’s 9th. Music that hovers above a firmly grounded tonic, but never needs to settle back down onto it. It floats. It levitates. It is the music of love. Not love given. (Meistersinger) Not love desired. (Tristan) It is the music of love unexpectedly received. Love as an undeserved gift. This is what Parsifal offers the knights - the unsought gift of love - a release they were not even looking for, and never supposed they deserved.
Never mind the silly drama onstage. The music of Parsifal grants a benefaction that cannot be asked for.
posted by Andrew Massey | Sunday, March 27, 2005
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