Motive and Magic a Referential Dyad in 'Parsifal'

Motive and Magic: A Referential Dyad in 'Parsifal'Author(s): Patrick McCrelessSource: Music Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Oct., 1990), pp. 227-265Published by: Blackwell PublishingStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853979Accessed: 27/07/2010 15:06

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PATRICK McCRELESS

MOTIVE AND MAGIC: A REFERENTIAL DYAD IN PARSIFAL

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 verborgene Wiederholung. Nor is it a Wagnerian Leitmotiv in 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 Romantische Harmonik, or the Balsam-Akkord and the mystische Akkord 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 mystische Akkord. 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.

MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:3, 1990 227

PATRICK McCRELESS

I THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF PARSIFAL

The dramatic process whereby the three central characters - Amfortas, Kundry and Parsifal - move from a world of sin and suffering to one of redemption is, ironically, 'comic' in structure, although not in content, and although its literary roots lie in the medieval epic and miracle play. For the essence of a comic dramatic structure is the progression from a situation in which things are not as they should be - where relationships are confused and where the 'wrong' characters wield power - to one in which 'right' relationships are achieved and the 'right' characters gain ascendancy to power. Usually this shift over the course of the drama involves, on the one hand, a moment or moments of recognition on the part of the central character of what the situation has been and what it should be, and, on the other, a comic twist towards the end of the drama which articulates the turn from the wrong state of affairs to the right one. Furthermore, the change of power effected at the end generally involves the replacement of an older generation by a younger one.3

How the above model is explanatory for Parsifal should be self-evident. The unwholesome situation at the beginning of the drama involves a wrong state of affairs for each of the principal characters. Amfortas has, through his allowing himself to be seduced by Kundry, lost the Holy Spear to Klingsor; he himself is now cursed with the unending pain of his wound, and the brotherhood of the Grail has become cold and lifeless. Kundry is entrapped by her own sin and is a slave to the demands of Klingsor; and she imagines, in Act II, that she can be delivered from her bonds by seducing Parsifal. Parsifal himself represents a wrong state of affairs because he is capable of inflicting great suffering without knowing that he is doing so, and because he is capable of seeing suffering without feeling pity for the sufferer. The wrongness of his situation is embodied in his being der reine Tor, incapable of feeling Mitleid and thus not yet wissend or able to restore life to the torpid community in which he finds himself. And, of course, the 'wrong' figures wield power early in the drama: Amfortas's sin has rendered him the holder of power in the brotherhood of the Grail in name only, and the real possessor of power - over Amfortas, over Kundry and in a sense over the Grail Knights as well - is Klingsor.

Acts II and III, through a succession of moments of recognition and of magic, set the convoluted set of dramatic relationships straight and restore health to the brotherhood of the Grail. In Act II Parsifal learns from Kundry of the suffering that he caused his own mother, and this realization leads quickly to his central revelation in the entire opera. Kundry's seductive words cleverly bring together his newly awakened sense of guilt regarding his mother's grief and his first experience of sexual passion:

... sie beut dir heut' als Muttersegen's letzten Gruss der Liebe ersten Kuss.

228 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:3, 1990

A REFERENTIAL DYAD IN PARSIFAL

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

II THE (E, F) DYAD 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


PATRICK McCRELESS

Ex. 1 Parsifal, Act II, bs 982-97

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!

Selrr langsam.

(hier fihrl Parsifal

. 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.

-ci: , P= tjii --,

- --

7J

PARSIFAL.

i etwas drngend Am-for - tas! A A Schnell.

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 230 MUSIC ANALYSIS 9:3, 1990


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 singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to 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 generally compelled to take the other; their bodies are two, but they are joined by a single head.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 Aufhebung from 'normal life' to the 'uplifted', dedicated society of the Grail at the conclusion.

Before tracing further instances of the dyad and its dramatic implications, 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 progressions involving the pitches a semitone removed in either direction: for example, F-E-Do in the bass of bs 987-8, and

cx2-do2--ee2- 2f2 in the upper

voices of the same bars. The tendency of the 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.

Ex. 2 Chromatic Voice Exchanges in Parsifal and Tristan

L L TT 44

a

Reduction of Parsifal, Act II, bs 987-90 (cf. Ex. 1)

Tristan Prelude, opening bars


PATRICK McCRELESS

(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 belebend at 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 aufstrebende Seufzer)7 leading into the Sehr belebend (e#2-f#2 in 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 juxtaposition 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-Db on the one hand, C#-

D-E-E#-F. on the other.) Similarly, in b.992, the Heilandsklage is set at a

transposition 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



language of Parsifal as a whole, particularly with respect to its extraordinary interweaving of chromatic and diatonic procedures. The entire passage quoted in the preceding examples revolves around the two pitch classes E and F. These two pitch classes do not in any way establish a tonal centre, but instead function as referential poles which serve both as a motivic focus of musical orientation and as points of departure for local progressions in a chromatic context. Yet, in other passages in the opera, as we shall see in abundance, the same two referential and focal pitches can occur within a purely diatonic, rather than chromatic, situation, with equal referential force. Thus, the two pitch classes themselves, utterly independent of melodic or rhythmic features, assume the status of a large-scale cross- referential motive and are able to serve as a link between the chromatic passages in the opera and the more diatonic ones.

One diatonic passage in which the dramatic and musical cross- referential meaning of the (E, F) motive is relatively transparent is the music in D minor that is introduced at the entry of Amfortas and his train early in Act I (Ex. 4). Ex. 4 Parsifal, Act I, bs 262-70

262

Rast. Nach rest! My

I

M- ff I

wil -

der Schmer zens- nacht _

nun

night of pain has fled,_ my

dolcissimo

. o , wil der SIhm

r zen

-" na. I

nun


PATRICK McCRELESS

The bass melody here is used throughout the opera to symbolize Amfortas's suffering; and although we can realize the significance of the F and E in the melody (and in the middle voice of the accompanying chords as well) only in retrospect, after we understand how they function motivically in the rest of the opera, there is even here a slight rhetorical emphasis on F and E that marks them for our attention. The passage itself is introduced in a way that heightens our awareness and helps to impress it upon our memory: it is, of course, a new tune and a new orchestration, and it comes after almost two bars of silence in a slow tempo; and the taut, harmonically ambiguous initial chord, the augmented triad A-Cs-F, subverts the harmonic tendency of the V7 of F in b.261 and turns the music momentarily to D minor. The F plays a crucial role here, because it is the pitch which, as an appoggiatura to E, imparts to the initial triad its strained, augmented quality. In addition, F and E comprise a single, crucial voice in the voice-leading structure (Ex. 5).

Ex. 5 Reduction of Parsifal, Act I, bs 262-70

/ A FP

" 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



suffering of Christ on the cross. Indeed, although we cannot know it now, the passage quoted in Ex. 4 sets up the pitches E and F, in the context of A major and A augmented triads, as the tonal vehicle for the healing of Amfortas near the end of Act III.

A crucial connection here is that between Amfortas's wound, his seduction by Kundry and the relation of both of the above to Parsifal. From Wagner's letters to Mathilde Wesendonk in 1858-60, when he wrote the first prose sketch of Parsifal, and from the extant drafts of the text we know that his central problems in forging an opera libretto from Wolfram von Eschenbach's rambling epic were, on the one hand, how to deal with the epic's focus on Parsifal's simply asking the right question when he first enters the Temple of the Grail and sees the suffering Amfortas (a motivation that seemed dramatically weak to Wagner) and, on the other, how to tighten up numerous incongruities in the plot that were bothersome to a dramatist whose values, like those of most artists of his century, were conditioned by ideas of organic coherence.8 Although a discussion of these interesting dramatic problems would lead us far afield, it is nevertheless relevant to our discussion here to know 1) that Wagner dealt with the first of the two problems by making Parsifal's reclaiming and returning of the Spear, rather than his merely asking a question, the central motivation of the drama; 2) that he achieved an astonishing coherence in the work by making the Spear that appears in the drama simultaneously the Spear that wounded Christ on the cross, the Spear that wounded Amfortas at the hands of Klingsor and the Spear that Parsifal reclaims and returns to the brotherhood of the Grail; and 3) that he eliminated many loose ends in the plot by creating out of a number of women in his sources a new woman, Kundry, whom he fashioned as the single woman who seduces Amfortas and tempts Parsifal, thereby effecting a literal correspondence between Amfortas's and Parsifal's experiences in Klingsor's realms, and establishing in one character a mediatress between the two primary male figures in the opera - between Amfortas's sin and suffering, and Parsifal's learning to experience pity and thus being able to resist his temptress and regain the Spear.

A central thesis of the present essay - a thesis that is, so far as I know, unprovable from existing documentary evidence, but that is strongly supported by music analysis - is that the (E, F) dyad is a musical rami- fication of the dramatic 'tightening up' summarized above, for it is worked into all the focal scenes involving Amfortas's wound, the temptation of Parsifal, and the loss and return of the Spear. To see how the musical manifestations of these dramatic issues work, let us look first at the passage in Act I where we learn of Amfortas's seduction and his loss of the Spear: bs 520ff. in Gurnemanz's Narrative.9 The passage in which Gurnemanz describes Amfortas's seduction is in fact a variant - or, if we prefer, a foreshadowing - of the Kiss, already discussed, in Act II. The harmonic progression and melodic material are almost exactly the same as in Act II,


PATRICK McCRELESS

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

1,P 7777 77 7t- :1 Wil K- d

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



latter of which is, musically speaking, an emphatic repetition of the former. The harmony of these bars juxtaposes an A major triad with the chord G- B-C#-F; and together with the repetitive melodic figure on E and F, the bars comprise the Good Friday motive that will be so crucial to Act III." Also significant here is the fact that what we really have in both bs 592 and 593 is parallel motion in the upper voices (see especially the violins) between an A major triad and a B% minor triad, with the third of the latter spelled as C? rather than D? (Ex. 7).12 Ex. 7 Parallel fifths in Act I, bs 592-3

A - - li LL n f==:T? NL, V-) In bs 594 and 596 the relation of Christ's passion to Amfortas's agony is made musically explicit by the sforzando entrance of the A-C?-F augmented triad, which establishes the parallel between Christ's wound and the Spear that caused it ('dazu den Lanzenspeer', bs 595-6), on the one hand, and Amfortas's wound and the same Spear, on the other. Now the wrenching (E, F), which throbbed melodically throughout bs 592-4, becomes a pierc- ing harmonic dissonance; we hear the A-C -F augmented triad and its necessary resolution to an A major triad simultaneously.

Two further aspects of this narrative passage are relevant here. First, the bass line progresses in a linear descent from a in b.592 to g and f (bs 594- 7) and f b (b.597), before reaching A, an octave lower than the a of b.592, in b.599. However, in b.598 there is a sudden leap from the f b of b.597 to At, the global key of the entire opera, so that the long-range bass motion is not a-g-f-fb(e)-A, but rather a-g-f-f ,-A-A. The strange turn of the bass and of the harmony in b.598 is an example of what David Lewin has called 'substitution', the 'magical' displacement of a harmony by a semitone- related harmony, in Parsifal.'3 Although I have not yet amassed sufficient analytical evidence to show how Lewin's ideas are relevant to the argument of the present essay, I note in passing that the brief reference to the key of the whole opera lends weight to the contention that we are dealing here with a focal passage both textually and musically, and that the relationship of our semitonal dyad to Lewin's semitonal harmonic displacements will bear more investigation later.

Second, the bars that follow the brief turn to A,, on the words 'der Zeugengiiter hrchstes Wundergut' (bs 599-603), bring a return of what Lorenz, following Wolzogen, calls the Engelmotiv,'4 which first appears in bs 575ff., as Gurnemanz describes the descent of heavenly angels to aid the Grail brotherhood by entrusting to them the saving cup and the Spear. At bs 599ff., only the second occurrence of the progression in the opera, Wagner makes a critical harmonic adjustment - one that involves both the (E, F) dyad and Lewin's idea of substitution, but now in a context relevant


PATRICK McCRELESS

to our present discussion. At b.599 the Engelmotiv progression begins with the A major triad, which has scarcely been absent from a single bar since b.591. Had Wagner transposed the progression from bs 575ff. literally in bs 599ff., we would arrive at another A major triad at b.602. However, on the third beat of b.601, the melodic note that would have, under exact transposition, been an e2 is changed to f2, and the harmony adjusted accordingly, so that at b.602 we reach not the end of the progression on an A major triad, but an elided beginning of a repetition of the same progression on a B% major triad. What this transformation brings forth is, on the musical side, not only the direct juxtaposition of e2 and fP as the respective fifths of the major triads on A and B%, but also a recall of the juxtaposition of the A major and B% minor triads in the Good Friday progression of bs 592-4; and on the dramatic side, the inescapable connection between sin and suffering on the one hand, and love and redemption on the other. Here the representative of love and redemption is, of course, Christ; later it will be Parsifal, through Christ. That the Good Friday progression juxtaposes A major and B% minor triads; that 'der Zeugengtiter h6chstes Wundergut' juxtaposes A major and B% major triads; that such juxtapositions inevitably bring together in a single voice the (E, F) dyad; that the A major triad, especially in conjunction with the inotivic dyad, has been closely associated with Amfortas's suffering; and - to crown the whole musical complex - that the B% major triad articulates the key in which Parsifal soon will enter (b.742) and with which he will be associated strongly in Acts I and III: all these relations point to the dyad as a single node around which the dramatic issues of sin and suffering, love and redemption, revolve. It is almost as though Wagner has taken Socrates a step further: that not simply physical pain and pleasure, but also, at the deepest ethical core of his drama, sin and redemption are themselves 'joined by a single head'.

The assertion that the passage at Act I, bs 591-608 is a focal point in the dramatic and musical structure is reinforced by a varied return of this music to articulate the end of Gurnemanz's narrative at Act I, bs 710-27. The dramatic issue here is the condition in which Amfortas was left after his exploits, and in which he obviously remains now:

Vor dem verwais'ten Heiligthum in briinst'gem Beten lag Amfortas, ein Rettungszeichen bang erflehend: ein heilig Traumgesicht nun deutlich zu ihm spricht durch hell erschauter Wortezeichen Male: 'Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Thor, harre sein', den ich erkor.'

Gurnemanz's closing words in the narrative, which has aptly summarized the events leading up to the present dramatic situation, thus dovetail



smoothly into the first complete statement of the Thorenspruch, the oracular refrain that here prepares the imminent appearance of Parsifal and that throughout Act I serves as a demarcator of the largest structural divisions."

The passage at b.710 begins with the Grail progression, now starting on an F# minor triad. However, the first bar of the Grail is sequenced a major third (spelled as a diminished fourth) higher, so that by b.714 the progression can feed into the same music discussed above - for bs 714-17 clearly constitute an untransposed variant of bs 593(second half)-7, with the same motivic and tonal resources (D minor, the motivic dyad and the parallel B% minor and A major triads). Yet the differences between the two passages are telling. In the latter, through a slight adjustment of the harmony, the F? in the bass of b.717, unlike the f of b.597, is allowed to move down to a real bass E?, which serves as a dominant of A, and thus brings the description of the Grail in A,, rather than in the A that resulted from bs 597-9. In b.721 the Grail motive turns to D?, recalling the end of the earlier passage (see bs 605-7), and precisely on the word Wortezeichen (perhaps paralleling Rettungszeichen in b.714) the D? major triad progresses, through a chromatic third motion, to an A major triad (with F- e2 as an inner voice), exactly as in bs 607-8; and it is this triad that becomes the dominant of D minor, the key of the Thorenspruch. Thus, in bs 714-28 we have ventured from D minor through A, major and back, thereby prefiguring the A6-D relationship made explicit by the relationship of the Thorenspruch to the opera as a whole.

The refrain itself also has a role to play in the complex of musical and dramatic ideas surrounding Amfortas and his wound, the Spear and Christ. It is in fact the means through which Parsifal will enter this swirling array of symbols and ultimately bring dramatic and tonal order. As in our first essentially diatonic example from Act I (the entrance of Amfortas and his train), the Thorenspruch is in D minor and appropriates the motive (E, F) for a significant voice-leading function. Example 8a, which shows the Thorenspruch, highlights the surface inner line which moves f-e'-eb'; and Ex. 8b, which shows the underlying voice leading, shows the embedded ascending line e-f-f# in the melody.

The refrain thus embeds both the descending semitone motion through F and E to E6 and the ascending semitone motion through E and F to F# that we saw in the music of the Kiss in Act II, and it plants the idea that both will be crucial to the eventual musical 'resolution' of the (E, F) figure. Closer to the surface in the music are the descending melodic fifths as a relatively transparent symbol of the innocence of the 'pure fool', and the feeling of expectation that the text leads us to associate with the key of D - a feeling that will be amply rewarded later.

In the immediate sense, the expectation generated by the first complete statement of the Thorenspruch is fulfilled by the furore over the swan (bs 742ff.) and, soon thereafter, the entrance of Parsifal (b.773). We have noted above the significance of Bb as the key of Parsifal's initial appearance.


PATRICK McCRELESS

Ex. 8

a) Parsifal, Act I, bs 1404-12 1 Alt. I l Altos. PP

"Durch Mit - leid wis - send, der rei - ne Thor: 2 Alt. "Made wise through pit - y, the hol - ly fool. 2 dAltos. PP

ir,' - ......4 I

.

' "Der Mit - leid - voll rei - ne Thor:

1r Tenor "Through pit - y wise, ho - ly fool. 1 StTenors. PP

"Der Mit - leid - voll rei - ne Thor: 2, Tenor "Through pit - y wise, ho - ly fool.__ 2 d Tenors.

PP. "Der Mit - leid - voll rei - ne Thor:

"Through pit - y wise, ho - ly fool._

b) Linear Reduction of the above

A... I n

har - re sein, den ich er - kor!" Wait for him, the one I chose."

har - re sein, den ich er - kor!" Wait for him, the one I chose."

harre sein!" Wait for him."

IIPP har - re sein!" Wait for him."

?'-"



Given the paradoxical association of the (E, F) motive in Gurnemanz's narrative with both sin and redemption, it is surprising neither that the dyad is embedded clearly in the music that introduces us to Parsifal, nor that it works both ways: that is, since we have just been told to await someone who supposedly will deliver Amfortas from his misery, it is difficult not to interpret Parsifal as a redeemer of sorts; while at the same time the cruel act through which he makes his appearance shows him to be himself a 'sinner', incapable of Mitleid. Thus, the music in Bb at bs 742ff. - music that simultaneously seems to fulfil our hopes for a deliverer and to disappoint those hopes because of the violent act that they accompany - embeds in its diatonicism the chromatic motion e12-f2 (Oboe 2, Violin 2, bs 745-8). Even more striking is the use of the (E, F) dyad a few moments later, when Parsifal, in a brief moment of revelation that anticipates his more dramatic awakening in Act II, begins to grasp the implications of his deed and of the pain that he has inflicted. The dramatic import of the passage is clear both from the stage directions - 'Parsifal has listened to Gurnemanz with growing interest and emotion; now he breaks his bow and hurls his arrows away' - and from Gurnemanz's question, 'Are you now conscious of your misdeed?"'6 In bs 876-7 the relation of the (E, F) dyad to Parsifal's state of sin is made even more explicit than it was at the beginning of the scene, since it now leads directly into the melody identified by Lorenz as the Mitleidmotiv in bs 877-80 (english horn, Horn 3).17 The relationship is solidified in b.877, which contains the (E, F) motive (double bass), and precisely the same diminished-seventh chord as that which accompanies Parsifal's F-E cry of recognition, 'Amfortas!', in Act II. Furthermore, bs 878-80 feature an out-of-phase chromatic voice exchange that suggests Act II, bs 987-90; and the orchestration, string tremolo, harmony and P-e' fragment of b.879, and juxtaposition of A major (with seventh) and B% minor-major triads in bs 879-80 bring Parsifal into the musical and spiritual realm of bs 591-608 of Gurnemanz's narrative.

From the above examples we can venture to suggest that the (E, F) motive seems to radiate from the central turning point in Act II into the critical dramatic and musical moments in Act I; and we shall later see that it permeates Act III even more explicitly. Thus what is overt at Kundry's kiss and Parsifal's revelation is submerged in inner voices, or in fragments of longer melodies, in Act I, and brought into clear relief in Acts II and III. Wagner himself, in a comment made to Cosima in 1878, as he was composing the Amfortasklage towards the end of Act I (bs 1259-1404), gives a hint of this process:

R[ichard] speaks of the perplexity with which Parsifal listens to Amfortas's complaints; his mysterious, unconscious gestures of fellow suffering, which comes out into the open with Kundry's kiss and only then becomes clear to him.'"


PATRICK McCRELESS

Wagner's comments refer specifically to Parsifal's silent, gestural reaction to the Amfortasklage. Although there is no evidence that he was referring to the (E, F) dyad as a musical symbol, still analysis has shown us that not only has Parsifal's 'fellow suffering' been associated with that dyad since his first entrance, but also that the whole dramatic-musical complex involving suffering and redemption has turned on the dyad at least since Amfortas's own entrance early in Act I. While the Amfortasklage itself - perhaps the most chromatic, least tonally focused music in all of Act I - must remain beyond the scope of our efforts here, the brief citation of a few examples and their associated texts will show how the dyad (E, F) continues to exert an influence. The Heilandsklage (that is, the music accompanying Amfortas in bs 1259-60), a central motive here, juxtaposes f and e2, either in the highest or in the next to highest voice, every time it appears in bs 1259-1404. Particularly telling in this regard are the two occurrences of the motive in association with text concerning Christ as Redeemer (bs 1369-71, 1372-4). A long, ascending line, e'-f-'f~, spans the orchestral accompaniment as Amfortas, in bs 1280-9, refuses Titurel's demand to uncover the Grail. A similar descending line, g-f#-ft-e, orients Amfortas's melodic line on the crucial words, 'Was ist die Wunde, ihrer Schmerzen Wuth gegen die Noth, die H611enpein, zu diesem Amt verdammt zu sein?' (What is the spearwound and its torment compared to the pain, the hellish hurt of being condemned to serve the Grail?). Other dramatic occurrences of the dyad - and here it should be sufficient simply to note bars in the score, since the musical and dramatic point is becoming self-evident - include bs 1308-14; 1316-22, especially on the word 'Gnadenreichen';19 1356-61, with the Violin 1 line g'-g?'(f~')-f, transferring to the bass E in b.1361; all of bs 1382-92, but especially the line eb'-e'-P-f~' in the Violin 2, bs 1382-4, and the line f4'-f-f-e' (various instruments, but easy enough to follow in the vocal score) in bs 1384-92; and, at the climax and conclusion, the line f#-e,-f, (viola, bs 1394-6), connecting to fl'-e-e d?'-d' (Violin 2, bs 1397-8), the E-F bass line of bs 1398-9 and, of course, Amfortas's final word, 'gesunde', with the final two notes, f and e.

Thus does Parsifal, the guileless fool, begin to learn the meaning of suffering. That his growth towards wisdom and compassion is the crux of the drama, and that the motivic dyad (E, F) articulates that growth, become even more evident in Act II. This complex, chromatic act is, in essence, about Klingsor's threat to Parsifal, as embodied in the Zauberschloss, the Blumenmddchen and Kundry. It poses the question of whether the pure fool can become wiser: through Mitleid can he become wissend? Can he renounce temptation rather than succumb to it, like Amfortas in the same situation?

The danger of Klingsor's threat is implicit in his opening words, 'Die Zeit ist da' (Act II, bs 69-70). The pitches to which these words are sung, ff-f-e, comprise a retrograde of the e-f-fy motion that was embedded in the Thorenspruch in Act I - and also, it might be added, a retrograde of



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 Amfortasklage at 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


PATRICK McCRELESS

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 Bb major; 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 accompanying 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 ascending chromatic 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.

III THE (E, F) DYAD AND THE TONAL STRUCTURE OF PARSIFAL: DAVID LEWIN'S ANALYSIS OF AMFORTAS'S PRAYER AND THE END OF THE OPERA

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


PATRICK McCRELESS

Ex. 9 Parsifal, Act III, bs 914-26

Mal sei des Amtes ge-mahnt! Zum letz - ten Mal!

Gral's,zum letz-ten Mal seidesAmtesgemahnt! Zumletz-ten Mall

" Sei des Amtes ge-mahnt zum letz - ten Mall

mahnt,zum letzten Mal sei desAmtesge-mahatl Zumletz-ten Mall

A IM q i AV a ii b ic So AMFORTAS (ich ma t ein enig aufricklend.) 92 919 922 924

Ja We - he! We -he

ptu P pp

F Weh'- ii -nber

mich .

So

19 .. ...

9 2 .IS

grills sI

,, . .. .

, , >( i I ..... ...



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:

The F-E gesture arises locally from mm. 936-7. The harmony of mm. 965.5-967.5 reminds us that the melodic gesture was embedded in the motives of the Ode [Act III, bs 1-2] and Waffenschmuck [the transformation of Parsifal's horn call, at Act III, bs 169-71, that directly precedes his third-act entrance].23

Nevertheless, his central concerns in introducing the motive are, on the local level, to show how the F-E gesture strongly suggests an imperfect cadence and also strongly 'seeks' a perfect cadence in D minor; and on a global level, to show how these ostensibly straightforward dominant-tonic relationships in the D minor of the Prayer become 'magically' entangled with the issues of substitution and enharmonicism in the opera as a whole.

Of particular interest with regard to the intersection of my 'F-E' line of thinking and Lewin's 'substitutional' line of thinking is another instance of the dyad noted by Lewin. In bs 969-73 of the Prayer, he notes, a passage in D major substitutes for one in D minor. In his D minor Aussensatz of this passage - that is, the hypothetical version of the music that would occur without the semitonal substitution - the (E, F) dyad occurs in bs 972-3, literally as f-el'; but in the real music, where a semitone substitution is taking place, it occurs as f~'-et' (see Ex. 10).


PATRICK McCRELESS

Ex. 10 David Lewin, Analytical Reduction (Aussensatz) of Parsifal, Act III, bs 933-93

la. Stollen 1. ( clthegrul;

2

Ib. Stollen 2. 3

4

I c. Abgesang.

M i_+

-9 F F: M

6

MAt-Leid

E_---- 0 7 .A6*Aei J



This example brings up the interesting question: 'When is (E, F) not (E, F)?' When, for example, might a real (E, F) be disguised as (E,, F1) or as (E?, F ) at the surface of the music? My own answer here is that such substitutions are indeed possible, and that they play a vital role in the musical language of Parsifal. Examples that might be adduced include not only bs 972-3 in Act III, but also bs 597-8 in Act I, in the discussion of which I briefly introduced Lewin's idea of substitution above. In the earlier instance, where, we noted, Al substitutes in b.598 for A, it is clear that Gurnemanz's melodic line, f -e6, in bs 597-8 temporarily substitutes for f- e. Furthermore, the idea of substitution accords well with the idea that the (E, F) dyad is extended frequently a semitone in either direction, a phenomenon of which we have seen innumerable examples already. In such cases it may be difficult to ascertain whether, say, the dyad (Et, FO) is substituting for (E, F) or extending it. A case in point is the passage at bs 526-8 of Act I (the Tristan quotation), where there is an (E, F) dyad - or, to be precise, an (E, E#) dyad - between highest and lowest voices; yet the e 02-fo of the upper voice behaves much as the dyad (E, F) behaves elsewhere in the opera. Unfortunately, although the issue under discussion here is of the greatest theoretical interest, and although there are many other interesting examples in Parsifal, our present energies are kept more than fully occupied by real Es and Fs, so we must be content to have touched upon (E, F) substitutes in passing and to save them for a future endeavour.24

We cannot, however, escape dealing with the idea of substitution if we wish to understand Lewin's view of the tonal structure of the opera, and if, more importantly, we want to relate that tonal structure to the (E, F) dyad that has governed our discussion thus far. To clarify these issues will require a substantial digression from our guided (E, F) journey through the opera. Yet the payoff for such a digression will be the understanding of how the global resolution that ensues in the final 111 bars of the opera (bs 1030-141) is a resolution from two different but complementary points of view.

Let us examine first Lewin's analysis of the large-scale implications of D as the tonic in the Prayer, and of its substitutions. Since Lewin's argument is so concentrated, I shall be obliged to quote him directly. With respect to the substitutions for D in the Prayer, he notes:

At this point, it will be useful to consider some broad and abstract structural implications of the tonal relations we have just been discussing. Wagner has informed us, via bracket 4 [in Lewin's Aussensatz of the second Stollen, reproduced as Ex.10 above], that the A, which substitutes for A-as-dominant is in fact the very Ab, which is the tonic key of the drama. When this Al appears in a dominant role, it suggests tonicizing a subdominant Db from which one might build a


PATRICK McCRELESS

final plagal cadence for the opera. But since A,-as-dominant is a substitute for A-as-dominant, since it inflects Db only as a substitute for D-as-local- tonic, the abstract possibility arises that D itself might serve as a functional (substitute) subdominant, so that the alternative plagal cadence might proceed from D-for-DL to AI-as-tonic. And in fact the idea that we are awaiting D as the structural key for an ultimate cadence is supported by the structure of the Thorenspruch. That motive begins over a sustained dominant of D and tells us to await something. We can presume the 'something' in question to involve a tonicized D.25

Later, summarizing the Prayer's tonal implications for the remainder of the drama, he concludes:

The abstract implication of these identifications is that AI-or-A-as- dominant will summon a tonicized DI-or-D, fulfilling the prophecy of the Thorenspruch; at that point the subdominant D-or-Db can cadence plagally into AI-as-tonic (Liebesmahl), and the opera can end with the communion service itself. Amfortas believes that the obligatory D?-or- D is his own death, for which he pleads eloquently during the Prayer and the subsequent Verzweiflung. But the knights know better, as the deceptive cadence of m. 993 tells us, denying Amfortas his D cadence with a gruesome shock. For if Amfortas dies, cadentially tonicizing D?- or-D, who will be left to uncover the Grail, i.e., to execute the obligatory plagal cadence from D,-or-D to AI-as-tonic?26

Armed with the above analysis, we are now prepared to move beyond the Prayer itself and to understand Lewin's interpretation of the conclusion of the opera. Lewin continues, answering his 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

Thus, Lewin locates the long-awaited subdominant at the moment at which Parsifal takes over Amfortas's office: the magnificent D major downbeat of b. 1057. Here Parsifal has, in the immediately preceding bars, at last identified himself as the expected fool, now made wise through the pity that he has learned from Amfortas's suffering ('Gesegnet sei dein Leiden, das Mitleids hachste Kraft, und reinsten Wissens Macht dem zagen Thoren gab!'). He now, at b.1057, precisely coordinated with the onset of D major, can return the Spear, the loss of which through Amfortas's sin brought about the wound in the first place, and assume the office. As



Lewin points out, it is this moment, b.1057, not Parsifal's healing of Amfortas by touching his wound with the Spear (b.1035) that claims the structural weight. The entire passage surrounding the healing itself (bs 1030-56) is set in A major, the dominant of D, and thus, to adopt Lewin's terminology, the dominant of the D-as-D? as subdominant. And so, as he notes,

The curing of Amfortas's wound is 'thrown away' on the stage, during the A-major passage. Our analysis shows us the logic here: it is not the pain of the physical wound which Amfortas finds unbearable, and it is not the healing of the wound which the drama makes obligatory. Rather, it is Amfortas's inability to perform his office which he finds unbearable, and it is the relieving of Amfortas from that duty which is the obligatory event.28

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 Thorenspruch articulates, 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 subdominant 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's coronation earlier in the act; there the stretto led to a similar triumphant display of the Parsifal theme, then in B major as Parsifal reached an important preliminary goal in fulfilling the prophecy. The way to D often leads through B in this drama. The D major of mm. 1057ff. reminds us, too, that Parsifal first seized control of the spear, toward the end of the second act, in D major. [And that D came out of the B ambience in Klingsor's realm.]31


PATRICK McCRELESS

The pivotal relation of the D of the Thorenspruch, the prophecy that guides the dramatic structure and ultimately brings the D cadence of b. 1057, to the global tonic of Ab is thus governed in part by substitution, in part by enharmonicism, for the tonal motion of the opera at the broadest level takes us from the A6 of the opening, through the B of Act II, to the climactic D of Act III, bs 1057ff., and eventually through the awesome circle of descending fifths that returns us to A6 at the conclusion. (Could the C that ends Act I and the B6 that begins Act III be construed, from this point of view, to be substitutes on either side of B?) And in getting from A6 to B to D, it is crucial to note, with Lewin and against Lorenz,32 that the structural D towards the end of Act III is not E66 reached through the global progression AC-CV-Ebband thus a kind of dominant, but rather that it is really D, achieved through the broad progression AV-CB-D, where C? is actually changed to B enharmonically so that D is reached through two minor thirds and four scale steps rather than through two minor thirds and five scale steps. This enharmonic shift is, according to Lewin, the 'flaw', the 'splice', the 'hidden seam' that is 'a topographical or geographical feature of the spaces in which the music [of Parsifal] moves'.33

Indeed, Klingsor's magic C1/B castle is an embodiment of the geographical metaphor.... It is ... 'a flaw in the terrain through which we can move' from one space of the drama to another and back ... In the diatonic Stufen space of the Grail brotherhood in Act I, we do not go wrong if we measure topography by scale degrees. But the magic and miracle of things has been lost; we know it only in story (Gurnemanz) and as a residual trauma (Kundry, Amfortas). In this Stufen-world, things are exactly as they seem, for the miracles have been expropriated by the forces of evil. Only by voyaging to and through the magic C/B castle, the seam that permits an interface with the other world, can Parsifal ultimately repatriate the miraculous for the forces of good, returning with the Spear.34

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-D progression in the opera occurs in the sequential Glaubensthema in 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



Ex. 11 David Lewin, Reduction (two possible spellings) of Parsifal, Act I, bs 44-55

a) b) t IIL IP/ IL jlP II it

...9),, b ,, , . .

ramifications of this motive for the opera as a whole, he suggests:

Indeed, the dramatic action of the opera involves precisely 'bringing the magic back' to the communion service. Significantly, it is not clear just what the Stufen transformation is that 'brings Zauber back to the Liebesmahl.'37

He then poses the following possibilities (Ex. 12). Ex. 12 David Lewin, Possible Enharmonic Spellings of Zaubermotiv

a) b) c) 3322

?7313 2 j2

Now whichever of the possibilities we choose - and for our purposes it makes little difference - the crucial relationship brought out by the example is that, as Lewin observes, the Zaubermotiv is in fact a chromatic version of the Liebesmahl, the melody that opens the Act I Prelude, and to which we return at the end of the opera, after the 'magic' is returned to the communion service through the act of Parsifal.

IV DRAMATIC RESOLUTION AND THE RECUPERATION OF THE (E, F) DYAD 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 Eb to 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 Zaubermotiv bears 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


PATRICK McCRELESS

either back to Eb (the Zaubermotiv) or on to the octave (the Liebesmahl). The telling difference between the two, other than the mode of their respective triads, is, of course, the semitone between the b6 and ?6 scale degrees - that is, between FI(E) and F. Our central dyad thus involves more than a purely referential semitone in the opera: it in fact embodies the conflict that separates the diatonic world of the Grail (the Liebesmahl) and the magic world of Klingsor (the Zaubermotiv); in this 'Lewinesque' sense it is the 'flaw', the 'splice', the 'hidden seam' between the two worlds. On the other hand, in the compatible, but different, '(E, F)' sense of the present analysis - a sense firmly supported by the use of the dyad throughout the opera - it can also be construed to be 'the wound' that it is the mission of the opera to heal. And this wound is not only the physical wound of Amfortas, with which, as we have seen, it is often associated throughout; it is also, at a far more profound level, the 'wound' that underlies the broad 'comic' structure of the opera, the wound that represents the spiritually wrong state of affairs in which the drama opens. That spiritual wound is in fact a rift, a separation of a community from its own 'magic', a separation occasioned by sin.

And how is the wound to be healed? It must be healed, to borrow a term from literary critics, by recuperation - that is, by working it through its state of wrongness or incompletion into an effective rightness and wholeness that can be the basis of an ongoing situation, and by such a transformation to render the story's continuation unnecessary.38 On the global level, that recuperation is achieved as described by Lewin; we expect a gigantic cadence in D, prepared by a dominant in A; and the cadence in D turns out to have a subdominant function in the ultimate tonic of A,, which is eventually restored through a real subdominant cadence, Db - Ab. Closer to the surface, the (E, F) motive articulates virtually every step along the way from Amfortas's healing at bs 1029ff. to Parsifal's return of the Spear and his ascending the steps to the altar at bs 1088ff. The 'letzte Mal' so feared by the knights immediately before Amfortas's Prayer turns out not to be so final after all, and instead it becomes the celebration of redemption and the return of life to the brotherhood of the Grail. The effective agent in this first step of the redemptive process is, of course, Parsifal himself, who, in preparation for taking over Amfortas's office in serving the communion, heals Amfortas's wound by touching it with the now reclaimed Spear. At b. 1029, at Amfortas's final word, 'Gral', the bass of the Grail motive, here in F, arpeggiates in descending motion the painful and familiar F-C#-A augmented triad, with the explicit motion f'-e' in the third trumpet. Parsifal's first words at b.1030 bring the A that is the dominant of D, which is itself the substitute subdominant of the ultimate tonic of At,. On his words, 'Nur eine Waffe taugt: die Wunde schliesst...' his vocal line moves up as far as ft'; and on 'der Speer nur', he sings the healing notes, e#' and e' - the very dyad that has, at various moments in the opera, articulated the seduction of Amfortas by Kundry, his wound, his



suffering, his hope of release through the suffering of Christ, Parsifal's entrance into the drama, his first feelings of pity, his near-seduction by Kundry, his renunciation of her through his vision of Amfortas's pain, his being himself 'recuperated', his own 'recuperating' of Kundry through baptism and, now, his 'recuperating' of Amfortas through the return of the Spear.

The powerful A major tonal centricity of bs 1035ff. masks the actual complexity and networking of cross-references that characterizes the cadence of bs 1034-5. The G# dominant in the second half of b. 1034 could be, enharmonically, V7 or the global subdominant, Db (C?). Or, it could also resolve, again enharmonically, up a whole tone to B%, the key which in bs 599-602 of Act I substituted briefly for A at the first mention of the hope of deliverance by means of the Spear and the Grail from Christ's Crucifixion, and the key in which Parsifal enters the drama.

Of course, the cadence that really occurs in b.1035 is not a cadence to Bb or Db, but one to A; and here Wagner follows solidly in the best tradition of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in the manner in which he begins to resolve the E-F conflict out of the work. Here, in the context of A major - which, we must remember, is only a preliminary resolution - he recuperates the disturbing chromatic element that is central to the tonal 'plot' of the piece by incorporating it into an essentially resolved diatonic situation (rather as Beethoven does with C? and F? in the coda of the final movement of the Seventh Symphony). Thus, at bs 1035ff., where A major reigns in unquestioned diatonic supremacy, we get the cello theme associated with Amfortas's pain (Act I, bs 264ff.), now clearly in A major, a third higher than in its original appearance, so that now the voice bearing the (E, F) dyad is not the bass but the third highest voice of the accompanying harmonies; it thus moves up rather than down, and indeed to a satisfying resolution to the tonic (see the second violin line, doubled in the winds, e'-e#'-f#'-g#'-a'). Furthermore, the initial chord accompanying the cello melody here is now a major triad rather than a dissonant one, for the F that initially made the sonority augmented is now 'resolved' to or replaced by E (cf. the original appearance of the melody at Act I, b.264).

However, it is clear that the resolution of the (E, F) dyad, at least insofar as it is really resolved in this section in A major, is dependent less upon linear direction than upon tonal and dramatic context - the incorporation of the motive into a relatively unambiguous diatonic structure and its continual coordination with 'resolving' words in the text. Thus, it is the broad context of what we understand from the text, of what we hear in the music (diatonicism, major triads, new orchestration and so forth) and of what we see on stage (the healing of Amfortas, his face shining 'with holy rapture'), along with what literally happens to the motive, that leads us to interpret it as having been resolved. We instinctively provide a similar interpretation for the remaining (E, F)


PATRICK McCRELESS

juxtapositions in the A major passage at bs 1030-56: for Parsifal's e'-f on 'Sei heil!' (bs 1038-9), for the F-E in the bass of bs 1040-1 on the word 'entstihnt', for the inner-voice e2-f-f#2 on the crucial words 'Denn ich verwalte nun dein Amt', for the same inner-voice progression, an octave lower, on 'Gesegnet sei dein Leiden' in bs 1046-7, and for the retrograde of the same progression, an octave lower yet, on 'dem zagen Thoren gab' in bs 1054-5.

After the climactic cadence on D at b.1057, the (E, F) motive is temporarily absent, as Parsifal's theme sounds out in a brilliantly diatonic D major. Parsifal's first words after this cadence announce his return of the Spear to the brotherhood of the Grail ('Den heil'gen Speer, ich bring ihn euch zurtick! Oh! Welchen Wunder's hOchstes Gltick!'). The music here resonates with referential chords, substitutions and (E, F) dyads in a virtual riot of Wagnerian symbolism. The G( major triad at the beginning of the Engelmotiv (b. 1064) recalls the G? in which Gurnemanz first told of the angel's entrusting the Grail and Spear to the knights (Act I, bs 575-91, 614-22; we have not dealt at all in this analysis with the GC). This transposition of the motive allows the juxtaposition of pure B% minor and A major triads on the downbeats of bs 1065 and 1066, with the triads separately or together bearing the accumulated weight of meaning associated with Parsifal (B%), Amfortas's wound (A major triad in association with f-e2 of upper voice) and Christ's passion (juxtaposition of B% minor and A major triads, again with juxtaposition of f and e2). The sequence (or substitution?) of the Engelmotiv a semitone higher in bs 1067- 9 delays the literal appearance of F-e2 until b.1069; however, one is tempted to speculate that the B minor and B% major triads of bs 1069 and 1070 in fact magically substitute for B% minor and A major triads, such that f#2-f is really a substitute for F-e2

- a not unlikely piece of wizardry, since the juxtaposition of G and B triads in bs 1067 and 1068 strongly recall the world of Klingsor, and the coordination of Klingsor's key of B minor with the word 'Wunder' on the downbeat of b.1068 is particularly intriguing (the 'bringing back of the magic'?).

Parsifal's final words, at bs 1070-88, bring the central symbols of the drama - the wound, the Spear and the Grail - together for the last time:

Der deine Wunde durfte schliessen, ihm seh' ich heil'ges Blut entfliessen in Sehnsucht nach dem verwandten Quelle, der dort fliesst in des Grales Welle. Nicht soil der mehr verschlossen sein! Enthiillet den Gral, Offnet den Schrein!

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,39 which 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 Ab of 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, abl and 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


PATRICK McCRELESS

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/entfliessen articulate 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 Leittonwechselklang of 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

... does extreme violence to all the plagal features of the large-scale D;

it surely goes too far. Besides, his progression is abstractly bizarre: his (D) [D] tonicizes a large-scale E6 which never appears, unless Lorenz means the solitary El harmony of [b.1078] to carry the structural dominant weight for the entire second half of Act III.42

Going on to compare the relative merits of Lorenz's reading and his own (that is, his identifying the movement

D-A, in bs 1084-7 as the structural

cadence, with plagal meaning), he notes:

But, just as Lorenz's dominant reading for D minor goes too far as a large-scale phenomenon, so my plagal reading of III, 1084-86 goes too far as a local reading, insofar as it denies any force to the obvious local reading (D+ DD) [D]; T.43

My own view is that the 'local cadence' at bs 1084-8 is, as it is for Lorenz, a global V-I cadence; but that, following Lewin, the tonal situation of the opera also demands, and receives, a subdominant cadence, such that Amfortas's Prayer is subdominant in function, but the cadence here both dominant and global in effect.

Understanding how these cadences work requires a close look at the bass line, beginning with its change of direction, in association with the text, on the words 'Blut entfliessen' at bs 1074ff. Example 13 shows the bass line of bs1074-88. The meaning of this bass line I take to be as



Ex. 13 Bass Line of Parsifal, Act III, bs 1074-88

l699 l

follows. The ascending chromatic line from the E? of b.1074 attempts to recuperate into Ab the crucial chromatic element (E, F), here spelt F6E-E? (bs 1075-6). This attempt, however, is unsuccessful, because the line's ascent towards Ab is interrupted by the D of b.1078. This D has two important functions. First, it imparts a profound double meaning to the word 'Quelle': the blood is returning to its source, the Grail (in Ab), but the real-life source of that blood was Christ's (and by extension, Amfortas's) suffering (in D). This turn to D in b.1078 is foreshadowed by the A major triad and the pungent e2-E? dissonance in b. 1076, the spelling of bs 1076-7 and the V2 Of D in b. 1077; it also makes possible a last harmonic statement (in b.1078) of the (E, F) dyad in the context of D minor. Second, the turn to D here, along with the D minor spelling of bs 1076-8, makes it clear that the bass motion, although its long-range motion began on A,, involves for the time being not a stepwise ascent to A,, but an ascent to A (as substitute for Ab).

At b. 1080 the D is adjusted to E6, which functions as a dominant of the At, (b.1081), which in turn by its arrival completes the long-range motion from E6 to Ab in bs 1074-81. After b.1081 the bass motion towards the structural cadence is more straightforward, with alternate bars beginning at b. 1081 articulating the motion A-&F -F-EV-Ab.

The upper parts of bs 1075-81, like the bass, begin a surge towards the arrival of the Ab harmony in b. 1081, but they do not achieve resolution to Ab. The Spear motive, b'-cI2-d 2-e2, of bs 1075-6, reverses its direction when it reaches its highest note, just as the first violins did in bs 1072-4. At this e2 of b.1076, Parsifal's vocal line merges with the melody that began with the Spear motive in the preceding bar. The melody hovers around e12 and d2, the semitones on either side of eV2, then descends in what could easily become a Schenkerian structural descent in bs 1078-81, except that the semitones surrounding eV do not resolve to it, and the expected ab' of b.1081 is replaced by a melodic b'1 while a seventh is added to the resolving Ab harmony. Nevertheless, Parsifal's e2 and d2 resolve to the lower-octave eb in b. 1081, preparing for the resolution of the same notes in the correct register in bs 1087-8.

More to the point with respect to the analytical view of the present essay, bs 1075-88 finally purge the troublesome (E, F) dyad from the opera. This purging happens in two stages - first in the orchestra (bs 1078- 80) and then in the vocal line (bs 1083-8). First let us look at the orchestral resolution. We have seen that bs 1076 and 1078 reinvoke the


PATRICK McCRELESS

dyad in a musical context that suggests sin and suffering (Heilandsklage, A major triad, key of D minor) - indeed, all that has been wrong in the opera and that it is Parsifal's duty here to correct as he returns the Spear and unites it with the Grail. The ultimate purging of the (E, F) dyad occurs in Violin 2, bs 1078-80. In the second half of b.1078, the second violins introduce the pitch f' in the harmonic context of D minor. The f' is suspended to b.1079, where it is resolved to e' on the second beat in the temporary (substitutional) context of A minor. On the third beat of b.1079, the f returns, but this time its resolution is corrected to eb' at the downbeat of b.1080 - just as the harmony turns to Ab. The f'-e' of b.1079 marks the last orchestral occurrence in the opera (with one exception, bs 1133-35, which is clearly only a reminiscence) of the (E, F) dyad, either as a linear adjacency or as a simultaneity. The meaning of the textual and musical symbolism here I take to be that, at the moment when the blood from the

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Motive and Magic a Referential Dyad in 'Parsifal'

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