Cohn (2007) Hexatonic Poles and the Uncanny in Parsifal

Hexatonic Poles and the Uncanny in Parsifal

{richard cohn}

Example 1, reproduced from a 1930 harmony treatise of Sigfrid Karg-Elert, depictsa hexatonic pole, a progression (in either direction) between a major and a minortriad that features semitonal motion in each of the three upper voices.1 In a pre-vious article, I demonstrated that hexatonic poles are frequently called upon bycomposers to depict uncanny phenomena, and suggested that this associationfollows from a homology between features of the progression and of the uncannyas it was understood by early twentieth-century psychology.2 The examples usedin that article were brief, and drawn from a broad array of music, includingseveral from Parsifal. As Karg-Elerts annotation of Example 1 suggests, thoseexamples were merely the toe protruding from the sheets of the music drama.This paper demonstrates that Parsifals abundant hexatonic poles are woven into asemantic network that is deeply enmeshed in the uncanny aspects of Wagnersfinal music drama.

I begin by reviewing the central argument of my earlier paper in a way that isoriented to the concerns I will be developing with respect to Parsifal. My point ofentry is Alfred Lorenzs analysis of the music of Example 2, which accompaniesthe re-covering of the Grail in act 1. At mm. 148384, a D major triad moves to Aminor and back; the progression is identical to the one that accompanies the deathof Kundry at the end of the opera. Lorenz asserts that the minor triad is actually adissonance. . . . The A stands in for B as a neighbor tone to A , while the E/Cthird is understood as lower leading tones to F/D . Thus what is notated as amajor sixth Lorenz hears as a diminished seventh. The chord is therefore inten-sely dissonant and its enharmonic kinship to a triad is incidental.3

To understand the A minor triad as Lorenz does, it will help to reconstructseveral assumptions that remain tacit in his own account. Lorenz assumes that,

Example 1 From Sigfrid Karg-Elerts Harmonologik.

The Opera Quarterly Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 230248; doi:10.1093/oq/kbl008 Advance Access publication on July 20, 2007# The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:[email protected]

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when we hear the D major triad at the downbeat of m. 1483, we are conditionedto respond by imagining it embedded into a scale in which that triad serves astonic. (This assumption is entirely reasonable, given the D major cadenceinitiated at m. 1481.) In any major or minor scale, semitonal voice-leading in con-trary motion always connects a consonant interval with a dissonant one.Accordingly, when D moves down by semitone at the same time that A movesup by semitone, Lorenz supposes that we are conditioned to hear the ensuingpitches as engaged in a dissonance, even though the same two pitch classeswould constitute a consonance in some other enharmonic context; he assumes,moreover, that this is so even though the third voice, E, would also be consonantwith those two pitches if they were perceived to be consonant with each other.

Lorenzs analysis does not end here, though. Under the appropriate circum-stances, he observes, the putative A minor triad has the potential to act in the waythat its notation suggests. If the minor triad is held for awhile, it becomescovered over by the appearance of a consonant triad. The psychological effect ofthis procedure is magical, for while lingering on the notes that are initially under-stood as dissonant, the chord cleanses itself, without any motion, into the mostradiant beauty.4 In some cases, the self-cleansing process is enhanced by compo-serly intervention. Consider the progression from G major to E minor at measure1481 (also Ex. 2). The second chord is initially heard in terms of an E /F disso-nance. But in the following measure, an F passing tone splits the E /F dyad,suggesting its components are related by leap rather than step, and hence consti-tute an E /G minor third, a suggestion confirmed by the subsequent D majorcadence. Lorenz writes that from G major follows the dissonance fF , A , E g,sounding as E minor, which then . . . leads to D major as a ii chord.5

Example 2 Act 1, mm. 14801485.

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The process works in the other direction as well. With self-purification comesthe possibility for self-defilement. The reverse also may arise: through pro-gression toward an unfamiliar chord, an originally pure triad can be transformedinto a structure whose consonance is merely apparent, hence dissonant.6 Lorenzdoes not provide an example, but we have one close at hand. Once we understandthe E minor chord at 1482 as diatonic to D major, we no longer have a secureunderstanding of the G major chord that preceded it. From the standpoint of theD cadence, the G major chord is now retroaudited as fA , C , Dg, an aggrega-tion of the E minor chords chromatic neighbors.

So the dissonant can turn out to be consonant and vice versa. The music-theoretictradition in which Lorenz participates encourages us to adopt a metaphysicalinterpretation. For early-century German theorists, consonance is affiliated with truth,reality, and life; dissonance with falsehood, appearance, and death. In this context, wecan say that the minor triad is initially perceived as false and imaginary; once itbegins to function as a supertonic, it behaves as if it were true and real. Reciprocally,the major triad is initially perceived as alive, but we come to understand it as dead.The progression effaces the border between reality and appearance, between deathand life. And it is exactly such effacements that are the mark of the uncanny, as it wastheorized in contemporaneous psychoanalytic writings.7

Parsifal is an unheimlich tale. With the exception of Parsifal and the urheimlichGurnemanz, every named character in the drama straddles or manipulates theboundary between life and death. Amfortas teeters on the brink of death; only hisoffice keeps him alive. Ancient Titurel inhabits a tomb; he lives only to watchAmfortas perform his office. Kundry is older yet; only a curse keeps her fromdeath. Wagner imagines her death as the de-souling (Entseelung) of a zombie(gazing up at Parsifal, Kundry sinks slowly to the ground, her soul removed).And Klingsor conjures botanical abundance from a desert wasteland: from deathsprings life.

The story of Parsifal is as much about objects and symbols as it is about chara-cters singing on the stage, and these symbols too have unheimlich histories andpowers. The Grail contains the holy blood of the savior. After a thousand years,the blood maintains its capacity to nourish the Monsalvat brethren. This capacityis activated by the Communion service, when the opening of the Grail transformsits ancient contents into the fiery blood of life. As the blood performs its nourish-ing work, Amfortass agony is intensified beyond his ability to bear it. This is thecentral problem for which the opera provides a solution.

From this uncanny gnarl, four distinct components can be extracted: the holyblood of the savior; its repository, the grail; the Communion service, in which theanimating and agonizing potentials of the blood are released; and the pain ofAmfortas, who suffers the bloods agonizing power at the moment ofCommunion. Hexatonic poles play a vital role in the setting of each of these

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components. To my knowledge, no one has inventoried the hexatonic poles inParsifal, much less explored the syntactic contexts or semantic networks in whichthey participate.8 The situation is peculiar, since Parsifal is crawling with hexa-tonic poles.9 They occur as early as the third phrase of the prelude, and as late asthe final curtain. In music of the nineteenth century, it is axiomatic that chro-matically marked events at the boundary of a composition are clues to the con-tents of its interior; when those boundary markings match, it is a near certainty.

Hexatonic Deformations of the Grail

The Grail theme is brief, tightly knit, and metrically stable. It appears manytimes in the opera, usually snapped into the same metric grid, so that whendeformations are introduced one can easily trace them to their source. The initialdiatonic presentation, provided in Example 3, begins with three harmonic pro-gressions by descending third. Following David Lewins adaptation of Riemannssymbols, we label diatonic progressions that feature root-motion by minor thirdas R (for relative), and by major third as L (for Leittonwechsel [leading-toneexchange]). Thus the succession consists of an initial R, an L, and a final R thattriggers the concluding Dresden Amen.

The instrument that deforms the Grail is an operation that we will call H, whichtakes a triad to its hexatonic pole. At various points in the opera, Wagner substitutesH for one or more of the diatonic operationsinitial R, L, and final R. We canunderstand mm. 148384 from Example 2 as the product of two H-substitutions:first for the initial R, taking D major to A minor rather than B minor; then for L,taking A minor to D major rather than to F major. Accordingly, the transforma-tional sequence of the diatonic Grail, R, L, R, is converted to a new transforma-tional sequence: H, H, R. This same music recurs when Kundry dies, and assuch it contains the final chromatic event of the entire music drama.

The deformation that we have been discussing is one node in a system ofGrail deformations which, in the aggregate, come close to exhausting the combi-natorial potential of H-substitutions for the three operations of the diatonic Grail.Given three occurent operations, R, L, R, there are seven possible transformations



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by substitution: H can substitute singly for each operation, doubly for each pairof operations, and comprehensively for all three operations at once. Wagner usesfive of these seven possibilities, avoiding only two that substitute H for L withoutalso substituting H for initial R. A catalogue of the remaining substitutionsfollows:

(H, L, R) At the moment when Parsifal recognizes Gurnemanz in act 3, aversion of the Grail theme substitutes a hexatonic pole for the initial R. Seeact 3: mm. 27577. The same music occurs, transposed up a semitone, whenParsifal heals Amfortass wound, a particularly climactic moment in theaction of the opera. Act 3: mm. 102931.

(R, L, H) When Gurnemanz admonishes Parsifal for wearing military garb, aversion of the Grail theme substitutes a hexatonic pole for the final R. Act 3:mm. 2079.

(H, L, H) In the act 3 orchestral music that accompanies the uncovering andshimmering of the Grail, a version of the Grail theme substitutes a hexatonicpole both for the initial R and for the final R.10 Act 3: mm. 10981100.

(H, H, H) When Parsifal envisions the Grail in act 2, a version of the Grailtheme substitutes a hexatonic pole for each of the three diatonic thirds thatprecedes the Dresden amen. Act 2: mm. 105052.

The network of grail substitutions is collated in Figure 1. Versions of the Grailtheme are adjacent on the graph if they are identical except for a single hexatonic-polar substitution.

The Hexatonic Transformation of the Liebesmahl

The final chromatic event of the act 3 postlude, a hexatonic deformation ofthe Grail theme, abstractly balances the first deeply chromatic event of theact 1 prelude, a hexatonic transformation of the theme associated with Holy

Figure 1 Grail Deformation Space.

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Communion, or Liebesmahl. Parsifal begins with an unaccompanied presentationof this theme (Example 4a), which is immediately repeated with full harmoniza-tion. Both presentations are entirely in A major but for a single chromatic event,the D that composes out the C minor triad at the center of the theme, which isassociated with the pain of Amfortas and is referred to as the Schmerzensfigur.

A more chromatic version of the same theme immediately follows, again pre-senting an unharmonized version (Example 4b) followed by its full harmonization.This version is also diatonic up to the point of the Schmerzensfigur, at whichmoment the introduction of chromatic pitches suggests an E minor triad. It is stan-dard to hear this triad as intruding into a diatonic environment centered on Cminor, which is heard to both begin and end this version of the theme.11 Thishearing is certainly appropriate for the second, harmonized presentation that beginsat m. 28, which rides the crest of a perfectly cadenced and lavishly prolonged Cminor tonic. But the first presentation, at m. 20, follows an A major triad that isjust as extravagantly extended. As there is nothing in the fermata-held rest at theend of m. 19 that would motivate a listener to relinquish that tonic, there is nomotivation to hear the C that intrudes on the silence as anything but a third scaledegree of A . This interpretation is confirmed by the subsequent rise to a reper-cussed A , where the strings terminate a phrasing slur that originates with theC. The incipit of the unharmonized chromatic presentation, then, is heard in Amajor, not C minor, and it is against this background that E minor is first heard asits hexatonic pole.

Some may feel that this hearing attends insufficiently to the parallelismbetween the two versions of the Liebesmahl. If we hear the opening phrase asbeginning on a tonic, and we hear the phrase at m. 20 as parallel to that openingphrase in terms of both gesture and interval, does that not suggest that we havemotivation to hear the C at m. 20 as a tonic? We can respond to this objection bynoting that parallel phrases frequently pair a tonic-generated antecedent with amediant-generated consequent. Two examples are the opening of the Allegro ofBeethovens Leonore Overture, and the opening of the Brahms Piano Trio inB Major. Had Wagner composed the second Liebesmahl phrase as he did, butremoved all of the accidentals, there would be no question of its tonal affiliation



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to A major. As we aurally follow the incipit, from C up to A , we have no indi-cation that we are not going to hear my hypothetical A major version, and henceno reason to hear its incipit in C minor.12

Although the interpretation that I am suggesting is immediately overturned assoon as the harmonized version of the theme begins at m. 28, it is explicitly con-firmed in the act 1 Communion service when the two Liebesmahl themes are pre-sented intact, as a complete pair, for the only time in the opera proper (mm.145960). Here the A timpani roll that accompanies the cadence of the antece-dent phrase is sustained through the opening of the consequent at the singing ofNehmet hin mein Blut, against which the E minor setting of Nehmet hinmeinen Leib is a hexatonic pole. It is with these two settings of the Liebesmahlthat Wagner began to compose the opera. In the initial sketch, reproduced asExample 5 in William Kindermans diplomatic transcription, the diatonic andchromatic statements, accompanied by a bass line, are elided without pause.13

Cosima related in her diary that Richard considered this sketch to represent theseed of the whole. The phrase pair is in A until the E minor of the secondSchmerzensfigur. C minor is not summoned as a potential tonal center until thecadence of the consequent phrase. Even here that center remains unrealizedthrough a deceptive cadence that plausibly (if weakly) marks a return to theopening tonic. The A major!E minor hexatonic pole in the second, chromati-cally deformed version of the Liebesmahl, then, is generative from the standpointof the composer as well as the listener.

The hexatonic deformation of the Communion theme does not participate inthe same sort of extended transformational network as the analogous defor-mation of the Grail theme. Unlike its compact, metrically square counterpart, theLiebesmahl is long-winded, loosely knit, and metrically floating. Consequently, itis rarely brought back as an entire unit. Wagner mostly treats it as a library ofmodular components that can be individually extracted for use. The network inwhich the chromatically deformed Communion theme participates is onlyabstractly musical, operating at the level of harmonic progression rather than thesurface gesture of the Grail deformations. A more salient network consists of thesemantic or hermeneutic referents with which the hexatonic deformation of theLiebesmahl is associated: the pain of Amfortas, referenced at the moment ofchromatic deformation (the Schmerzensfigur), and the holy blood of the savior,referenced by the textual incipit of the chromatic version of the Liebesmahl whenit is sung in the act 1 Communion service: Nehmet hin mein Blut. These aretreated separately in the two sections that follow.

Several considerations complicate this last point. In the incipit of the antece-dent phrase, the chorus sings of taking the body; at the Schmerzensfigur it singsof the blood. In the consequent phrase, these assignments are exactly reversed.One consequence is that the hexatonic version is (appropriately) associated with

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the blood to the extent that the incipit metonymically represents the entirephrase. But another consequence is that the hexatonic Schmerzensfigur makesreference (inappropriately) to the body rather than the blood. In this connection,it is of considerable interest that in Wagners initial sketch (Ex. 5) all of thesetextual assignments are reversed. Here, it is the diatonic incipit that cites theblood and the chromatic one that (inappropriately) cites the body with the resultthat the blood is (appropriately) mentioned at the hexatonic Schmerzensfigur.Wagners commitment to a chiastic text, it seems, was incompatible with the

Example 5 Initial Sketch of the Communion Themes, transcribed by WilliamKinderman.


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desideratum of making the textual references bloodier as the music drove moredeeply into the hexatonic thicket.

Hexatonic Poles and the Pain of Amfortas

Example 6 presents the setting of the first textual reference to the pain ofAmfortas, just after the recently roused knights await his initial entrance. At theinception of the text (The pain soon returned, but more intensely), a V2

4 in Dminor over a tonic pedal is displaced by a ii7 in C minor. Although both chordsare dissonant, each embeds a unique consonant triad as a subset. The two triadsare hexatonic poles, A major to F minor, whose three semitonal displacementsare emphasized by the voice leading and the triads registral placement in theoctave above middle C. Such embeddings are characteristic of hexatonic poleswhen they are used to portray either the pain of Amfortas, the holy blood, orseveral other phenomena that I shall discuss at the end of this essay. In all suchcases, the consonant triad is uniquely embedded into the dissonant chord, so thatone is never in conflict about which triad is being represented.14 The particularprogression, from the V7 of a minor tonic to the ii7 of a minor tonic a wholestep below, is developed in the music of the Heilandsklage, which depictsAmfortas at the height of his suffering.15

The next textual reference to Amfortass pain occurs at mm. 24950, justbefore his initial entrance, when Gurnemanz laments seines Siechtums Knecht[his enslavement to his disease]. The E minor triad that sets Siechtums is thehexatonic pole of the A major triad sounded at the downbeat of the previousmeasure, forming an untransposed version of the initial Liebesmahl transform-ation. The same progression recurs at the same transposition when Gurnemanztells of Amfortass wounding (eine Wunde brannt ihm in der Seite, m. 541),and then again a semitone lower when Kundry elliptically notes Parsifalsempathy for the pain of Amfortas (andrer Schmerzen, act 2: m. 1131).

The suffering of Amfortas dominates the act 1 Communion, and throughmuch of this scene, hexatonic poles run amok. Amfortas is carted out on an Aminor triad after five and a half very slow measures of C major bell music (begin-ning at m. 1203). After the knights sing the hexatonically saturated music of the


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Heilandsklage (to be discussed below), there follows some Faith music in Amajor, setting Der Glaube lebt at m. 1231ff., in tonal anticipation of the A majorCommunion service two hundred measures later. These two soundings of theglobal tonic flank the psychological climax of the first act, the Amfortasklage,which begins in the key of the global hexatonic pole, E minor. The juxtapositionof the same two keys is also internal to Amfortass aria, whose introductoryphrase moves from E minor to a dominant seventh on G (mm. 1297301) thatimmediately discharges back to E minor as Amfortas begins to sing. The sametonal motion is replicated in Amfortass opening phrase, and also in the relation-ship between the opening of the arias first two strophes (both Lorenzian bars),the second of which begins at m. 1326 with an A 7 chord.

Concealed hexatonic poles receive their apotheosis in the Heilandsklage musicthat serves as the Abgesang of the first verse of the Amfortasklage, and as the twoStollen of the climactic fifth verse. This music, sometimes referred to asSundenqual [the torment of sin], is adumbrated at mm. 99100 of the prelude,blossoms during the orchestral interlude that accompanies the transformation(beginning at m. 1123), and receives its first explicit verbal association just afterAmfortass entrance to choral singing of Den sundigen Welten, mit tausendSchmerzen, wie einst sein Blut geflossen [As once the blood of the redeeminghero flowed, for the sinful world of a thousand pains] (m. 1205). Each of thesesettings conceals its hexatonic poles behind a persistent descending-fifth motionin the bass that persistently feigns at a red-herring tonality. Example 7 presentsthe beginning of the fifth strophe of Amfortass aria as a particularly concentratedsample of the Heilandsklage music (mm. 136975). The bass line runs throughfourteen stations of the cycle of descending fifths. Just as characteristic a featureof this music is the chromatic descent of parallel major thirds in the upper regis-ter, which Wolzogen labeled the sound of woe [Wehelaute].

Example 8a schematically models the combination of the descending fifths inthe bass and Wehelaute thirds in the treble as they appear in the first threemeasures of Example 6. The fourth voice, in the tenor, models Amfortass vocalline. The harmonies alternate half-diminished and dominant sevenths. Groupingthese entities from strong beat to weak beat, as in Example 8b, we perceive a fru-strated diatonic logic: the motion from subdominant to dominant summons aminor tonic, which appears in the bass but supports a half-diminished seventhchord rather than a consonant triad.16 This diatonic logic, however, cuts againstthe grain of the anacrustic melodic rhythm, whose iambs suggest a chromaticlogic: the major triads embedded in the dominant seventh chord combine withthe minor triads embedded in the half-diminished seventh chords to produce ahexatonic polar relation, as shown in Example 8c (compare Example 6).

In the music based on this model, some of the dominant seventh chords actu-ally do discharge onto their signified minor tonics, as with the A minor triad


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that transiently sounds at the downbeat of m. 1370. Such discharges are signaledby the upward resolution of a leading tone, bringing relief from the relentlessdownward pressure of the Wehelaute thirds. With the exception of the E minorcadence at m. 1372, marking the halfway point of the passage, this relief is fleet-ing. The Wehelaute thirds immediately regenerate, undermining the normativetonic and reconstituting the progression of seventh chords, and with them, thepolar triadic pairings.


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Hexatonic Poles and Holy Blood

Example 9 presents the first explicit mention of holy blood in the opera, at themoment when Gurnemanz reveals the connection between the crucifixion and

Example 8 Three models of act I, mm. 136971.a. Schematic model.b. Diatonic interpretation.c. Hexatonic interpretation.



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the contents of the Grail (act 1: m. 593). On the cross his holy blood also flowedprolongs an A major triad that, at the discharge of the Schmerzensfigur at m. 594,is joined by a sub-posed bass F, anticipating the D7 chord that arises at theculmination of the figure at the downbeat of m. 595. A major to F minor isthe same hexatonic pole embedded at Example 5, the first reference to Amfortasspain.

The same music recurs twice in act 3: transposed up a minor third whenGurnemanz tells Parsifal to disarm because it is the day when the Lord shed hisblood (m. 223), and at the initial transposition when Amfortas pleads to drown inthe holy blood (m. 966). These constitute two of the three references to the holyblood in the final act. The final reference occurs after Amfortass wound hasbeen healed, when Parsifal sings of ihm seh ich heilges Blut entflieen inSehnsucht nach dem verwandten Quelle [holy blood flowing out of the spear,yearning for the kindred source]. This instance, appropriately, lacks aSchmerzensfigur. It also lacks the characteristic dissonances of the earlier refer-ences: it is presented as the triadic progression of B major to G minor (act 3:m. 1077). This music also bears the Wehelaute thirds that signal, for one finaltime, the Heilandsklage music associated with the pain of Amfortas. This time,however, the Wehelaute thirds gain some traction on their slippery slope, and arereconciled to the diatonic framework of D minor at the moment that the blood isrestored to the Grail.

Herzeleide and Kundry

It is not difficult to understand why Wagner would use a single musical symbolto knot the Communion, the Grail, the blood, and the pain of Amfortas togetherinto an abstract motivic network. The blood is contained (and its uncanny powerssustained) by the Grail, released by the Communion service, and collaterallyintensifies Amfortass pain. My analysis suggests why Wagner would choose thisparticular musical gesture as an icon for this complex of circumstances: hexatonicpoles efface the boundary between consonance (tonal life) and dissonance (tonaldeath), and thus inhabit the same liminal space that is straddled by the nourish-ing blood of the long-dead savior, by Klingsors garden-in-a-wasteland, by thenecroproximate Amfortas and Titurel and the grossly superannuated Kundry. Butsome hexatonic poles in Parsifal stand in a more problematic relation to thesemantic network that has been my focus so far.

Example 10 presents the Herzeleide 2 motive, which frequently soundsduring the hundred measures before the act 2 kiss. Its initial presentation of themotive features a half-diminished seventh chord whose embedded C minor triaddischarges onto the F major triad that is its hexatonic pole. Its immediate trans-position down by whole step summons a feature of the Heilandsklage music. The

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motive participates in a broader network of hexatonic-polar pairings that areassociated with Parsifals mother and her death. This network includes Parsifalspaired questions, Waren sie bos? Wer ist gut? where bos is set to a B7 chordembedding a D minor triad, and gut to the dominant seventh that embeds its Fmajor hexatonic pole. Gurnemanz responds to Parsifals second question by offer-ing his mother as a pillar of goodness (act 1: mm. 99294). Also related are thetwo parallel moments when Parsifal learns of his mothers death, both of whichfeature a dominant seventh chord on A that Kundry resolves vocally to a lone D4.In the first act, Kundrys brutal seine Mutter ist tod triggers an orchestralpounce onto a mirror-inverted minor ninth chord fB, D, F, A , Cg whose soletriadic subset is F minor (m. 1002). In the second act, her languorous and whis-pered Herzeleide starb precipitates an unaccompanied D4 tremor in the firstviolin (m. 915), which is soon joined by an F minor triad to form a D7.

So far, the sub-network of referents is internally coherent. What is murkier iswhy Herzeleide starb is set to the same music as Kundrys des Weges sollst dugeleitet sein [you will be shown the path] (act 2: m. 1439). Nor is it clear how theHerzeleide sub-network is related to the larger one developed in this paper.Unlike that of Kundry, who tries to simulate Herzeleide in Parsifals psyche, thereis no indication that Herzeleides death has uncanny elements. She simply wastesaway with grief. Perhaps more relevant is the parallel between Herzeleidespsychic suffering and Amfortass physical wound. As Patrick McCreless hasnoted, it is the knowledge of his mothers suffering and death that unlocks inParsifal the capacity for compassion that motivates his healing of Amfortas.17

A second sub-network of hexatonic poles is associated with Kundry. Many ofthese are indirect, in the sense that their triadic components are affiliated not bydirect juxtaposition but by gestural or textual parallels. In act 1, Gurnemanzsspeculation about Kundrys multiple lives (Kundry als verwunschte) is flankedby two soundings of the Communion incipit on D major (m. 436) and A minor(m. 443), respectively; these are the same two triads that are directly juxtaposed at



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Kundrys death. Kundrys encounter with Parsifal in act 2 begins when she twicecalls his name, arpeggiating C minor (act 2: m. 739), and then E major (m. 751).Hexatonic poles sound when Kundry sings of having awaited Parsifal for eternity(act 2: mm. 115153); throughout the scene when she recounts her mockery of thesavior on the cross (act 2: mm. 117797); when she refers to Parsifal as her savior(act 2: mm. 138385, D minor to G major); and at the moment of her seduc-tions last gasp (act 2: mm. 143439). Kundrys final coherent utterance in theopera occurs at the end of act 2, when she condemns Parsifal to eternal wander-ing: Irre, she first commands over a D minor triad, and then over G major,echoing her double iteration of Parsifals name at the start of their encounter (act2: mm. 147678). Ten measures later, Klingsor sings his own exit line. DenThoren stelle mir seines Meisters Speer [The fool falls to me by his mastersspear] prolongs B minor until the spear throw, which is punctuated by a magnifi-cently efflorescent D major (act 2: mm. 149093). Some of these stage events areuncanny on their own terms, but only in the weak sense of implicating magic,not in the stronger Freudian sense of effacing boundaries. Nor can they be easilyaffiliated with the network of phenonema that surrounds the Grail, the blood andso forth, without seriously diluting that networks tight focus.

Some Open Questions

I conclude this paper by marking out four areas for further study.18 First are ques-tions of the ordering of components. In a vast majority of cases, the major triadprecedes its minor pole. This statistical asymmetry is consistent with the reper-tory as a whole, if the instances cited in Uncanny Resemblances are representa-tive. Nonetheless, one would like to know what hermeneutic considerations drivethe minor-to-major orderings when they do arise, as they do in the opening ofthe Amfortasklage, Kundrys double naming of Parsifal, her double curse,Klingsors spear chuck, and the Herzeleide 2 motive.

Second are questions of clarity. Many hexatonic poles in Parsifal are occludedby superimpositions (added dissonances) or juxtapositions (interpolated harmo-nies or phrases). What considerations, either syntactic or semantic, motivate theseaccretions? At a first approximation, we can observe the progressions assumingpositions along a continuum. Clearest are the Grail deformations, consisting ofblock triads connected by explicit and direct semitonal voice leading. Slightly clou-dier is the hexatonic Communion theme, featuring composed-out triads whosesemitonal voice leading is more implicit. At a second order of remove are thosetriadic progressions with added dissonance, on the one hand, and with interp-olated events on the other. Added dissonances can embed one of the polar-relatedtriads, as in Herzeleide 2, or both, as in the Heilandsklage and the references tothe holy blood and the dead mother. Interpolated events can take the form of

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single chords, as at Kundrys doubly uttered curse, or entire phrases, as atKundry als Verwunschte or her double utterance of Parsifals name.

Third are questions of pitch-specificity. Given that there are twelve hexatonicpoles, what logic informs the choice of a particular transposition at a specificmoment of the drama or of the musical unfolding? Key-specific cross-references,a well-documented aspect of Wagners art,19 are apparent, for example, in the Amajor/E minor pairing of the Communion deformation, the act 1 references toAmfortass wound, and the opening of the Amfortasklage. But these will only getus so far, since each of the twelve hexatonic poles is used at some point in theopera. Evidently more promising is a grouping of the poles into harmonicregions on the basis of the natural affinities created by shared pitch classes.20

Each hexatonic pole is affiliated with its transposition up and down a major third.For example, the pitch-class pool upon which the A major/E minor pair drawsfA , B, C, E , E, Gg also serves as the source of the C major/A minor andE major/C minor poles. For the study of Parsifal, we can consider these threehexatonic poles to inhabit a tonic region. This leads easily to the assignment ofthree poles to the subdominant and dominant regions, respectively. The remain-ing triads, then, can be considered to be in the region of the double dominant(V of V) or double subdominant (IV of IV). This region is more remote, asthe union of its hexatonic poles forms a collection that is pitch-class complemen-tary to the region of the tonic.

Figure 2 summarizes these four regions, which inhabit a cyclic space basedon the pitch-class content of the underlying hexatonic collection. In passages thatare locally saturated with hexatonic poles, it is possible in principle to identifycoherent regional prolongations, cyclic regional modulations, and complementaryregional exchanges. Preliminary detailed work with the Amfortasklage, ParsifalsGrail vision, and Kundrys mockery of the savior has suggested particularly coher-ent regional paths.

Fourth, and finally, are questions of large-scale tonal planning. Not everyoneagrees that these questions are worth posing, much less pursuing. Hypothesesalong these lines are often opposed on a priori grounds of salience, long-termlimitations on tonal memory, and the difficulty of segmentation and hierarchiza-tion across the vast undivided spans characteristic of Wagners music dramas.But those willing to entertain the possibility will find suggestive evidence here.The first act begins in A major and returns to that key for the Communionservice near the end of the act. Its hexatonic pole, E minor, is clearly articulatedin Gurnemanzs tonally closed Lied (Lorenz: Kundry als Gralsbotin, mm. 396420), and again at the psychological climax of the act, the opening of theAmfortasklage. The second act is tonally closed in B minor; its pole, E major, isthe principal key of the flower maidens music (from m. 485).21 And both halvesof the final act individually depict a progression from disorientation and loss to a


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magically achieved order via modulation from a minor key to its major hexatonicpole: the B minor that opens act 3 proceeds to the D major of the Good Fridaymeadows (beginning at m. 676) that precedes the transformation, while the Eminor that opens the transformationand closes the knights chorus that followsitproceeds to the A major of Offnet den Schrein (m. 1088) and the finalorchestral music. The hexatonic pole that frames the pre-transformation music ispitch-class complementary to the one that frames the final scene. Together, thefour framing tonic triads of act 3 saturate the pitch-class aggregate, and retrogradethe local harmonic progression that accompanies the shining of the Grail (act 1:mm. 148183, c.f. Example 2), Parsifals Grail Vision (act 2: mm. 105052), thefailure of Kundrys seduction (act 2: mm. 143437), and Gurnemanzs GoodFriday admonition (act 3: mm. 208209).

To the extent that one believes such concepts appropriate, then, what issuggested is that hexatonic poles are at the core of the dramas music, just as theuncanny blood, its container, the ritual that delivers it, the agony that it inflicts,and the resolution of that agony are at the core of the music drama.

Figure 2 The Four Hexatonic Regions of Parsifal.

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notes

Two ideas developed in this article were firstexplored by Robert Cook in AlternativeTransformational Aspects of the Grail inWagners Parsifal, an unpublished paperpresented at the 1994 meeting of Music TheoryMidwest: the systematic nature of H-substitution,and the pairing of hexatonic poles with the bloodof Christ.

1. Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Polaristische Klang-undTonalitatslehere (Harmonologik) (Leipzig,Germany: F. E. C. Leuckart, 1930), p. 282.

2. Richard Cohn, Uncanny Resemblances:Musical Signification in the Freudian Age,Journal of the American Musicological Society 57,no. 2 (2004): pp. 285323.

3. Alfred Lorenz, Der Musikalische Aufbau vonRichard Wagners Parsifal (Tutzing, Germany:Hans Schneider, 1966 [1933]), p. 89.

4. Ibid., p. 89. Die psychologische Wirkungdieses Vorgangs ist zauberhaft; denn wahrenddes Verweilens auf den zuerst dissonantverstandenen, aber temperierten Tonen reinigtsich der Klang ohne jede Bewegung zustrahlender Schonheit. . . . Kaum sind dieNebentone aber erreicht, so legt sich uber denKlang der Schein einer Konsonanz, was wie einLichtstrahl wirkt.

5. Ibid., pp. 8990. Auf G-dur folgt dieDissonanz es/ais/fis . . . klingend wie es-Moll,welches dann scheinkonsonant festgehalten wirdund als II. Stufe nach Des-Dur fuhrt.

6. Ibid., p. 90. Auch der umgekehrte Wegkann vorkommen: Ein ursprunglich reinerDreiklang wird durch seinen Fortgang zu einemeigentlich fremden Akkord in ein blossscheinkonsonantes also dissonantes Gebildeumgewandelt.

7. See Brian Hyers article, Parsifalhysterique, in this volume of the OperaQuarterly; for Sigmund Freuds famousdiscussion of The Uncanny, see The StandardEdition of the Complete Psychological Works ofSigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey(London: Hogarth, 1953), 17: pp. 21952.

8. Karg-Elerts parenthetical mention is inpassing. Other discussions of isolated instancesof this progression in Parsifal may be found inErno Lendvai, The Workshop of Bartok and Kodaly(Budapest, Hungary: Editio Musica, 1983),p. 377; Lendvai, Verdi and Wagner, trans. MonikaPalos and Judit Pokoly (Budapest, Hungary:International House, 1988), pp. 14043; DavidLewin, Amfortass Prayer to Titurel and the Roleof D in Parsifal: The Tonal Spaces of the Dramaand the Enharmonic C /B, 19th-Century Music 7,

no. 3 (1984): pp. 33649; Lewin, Some Noteson Analyzing Wagner: The Ring and Parsifal,19th-Century Music 16, no. 1 (1992): pp. 4958.

9. One can speculate that the progression hasbeen overlooked because, like the title characterof the opera, it has lived for decades withoutknowing its own name. Karg-Elert called itMediantleittonwechsel oder primarerKolletivwechsel, but these names were usheredoffstage as quickly as the dualistic theory inwhich they were embedded. For an account ofKarg-Elerts hyper-dualist theory of harmony, seeDaniel Harrison, Harmonic Function in ChromaticMusic (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,1994), pp. 31320. Naming and categorizing areoften considered low bureaucratic arts, but theunnamed are the homeless citizens ofconceptual society; one is inclined to gazestraight past them.

10. This passage is discussed in David Lewin,Amfortass Prayer. See also David Clampitt,Alternative Interpretations of Some Measuresfrom Parsifal, Journal of Music Theory 42, no. 2(1998): pp. 32132; and Fred Lerdahl, Tonal PitchSpace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),pp. 298301.

11. See, for example, Lendvai, Workshop, p. 377,and Lewin, Some Notes, p. 57.

12. William Kindermans claim that the firsttwo Communion incipits are based on the firsttwo segments of the prelude to Liszts cantata,The Bells of Strasbourg, supports my hearing, ifequivocally. In reference to that preludes Etonic, its second segment connects 3 to 1, thesame tonal hearing that I am claiming for thesecond incipit. A virgin listener, though, wouldlikely hear it as connecting 6 to 4 in B . SeeIntroduction: The Challenge of Parsifal, inWilliam Kinderman and Katherine R. Syer, ed.,A Companion to Wagners Parsifal (Rochester,NY: Camden House, 2005), pp. 2122. Thanksto Steven Rings for pointing this out to me.

13. William Kinderman, Die Enstehung derParsifal-Musik,Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft 52,no. 1 (1995): pp. 9697; Kinderman, TheGenesis of the Music, in Kinderman and Syer,Companion, p. 152.

14. Some readers will resist the notion thatD acts as the supplementary dissonance of thechord at m. 170, rather than its root. Members ofour musical culture have been indoctrinated, ifonly implicitly via the standard names for chords,to believe in root generation by stacked thirds.But there is another worthy tradition, stemmingfrom Rameau, which considers non-dominant


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tetrachords in terms of added sixths. Some willsense the whiff of Riemannian undertones atwork, where none is intended or necessary. Myproposal to focus on the largest consonantsubset of a chord simply privileges consonanceover root-generation. This proposal is consistentwith psychoacoustic evidence; the research ofErnst Terhardt suggests that F, not D, is thevirtual root of the harmony at m. 170. SeeRichard Parncutt, Harmony: A PsychoacousticalApproach (Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag,1989), p. 149.

15. The modulation down a whole-step, whichis thematic of Amfortass pain, problematizesFred Lerdahls assertion that modulations bydescending whole-step have no place in Parsifal,and, hence, the hermeneutic reading on whichthat assertion relies. Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space,p. 128.

16. Wagner does not invent this progression;he would have found sources for it in the MozartC-minor Fantasia, K. 475, mm. 1114; SchubertsMorgengru, mm. 1314; and Chopins F#minor Mazurka, Opus 6, no. 1, mm. 58. The

Schubert example is analyzed in David Lewin,Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes ofPerception, in Music Perception 3, no. 4 (1986):pp. 32792.

17. Patrick McCreless, Motive and Magic:A Referential Dyad in Parsifal, Music Analysis 9,no. 3 (1990): p. 229.

18. This final section owes a debt to StevenRings splendid formal response to theconference presentation of this paper, and tosubsequent private communications between us.

19. Robert Bailey, The Structure of the Ringand its Evolution, 19th-Century Music 1, no. 1(1977), pp. 4861.

20. The following exposition recapitulatesmaterial introduced in Richard Cohn,Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems,and the Analysis of Late-Romantic TriadicProgressions, Music Analysis, 15, no. 1 (1996):pp. 940.

21. See Warren Darcy, Die Zeit ist da:Rotational Form and Hexatonic Magic in Act 2,Scene 1 of Parsifal, in Kinderman and Syer,Companion.

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Cohn (2007) Hexatonic Poles and the Uncanny in Parsifal

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