Adorno Score of Parsifal Music & Letters 76.3

ON THE SCORE OF 'PARSIFAL'

BY THEODOR W. ADORNO

Translated, with commentary, by Anthony Barone

O F ALL WAGNER'S MUSIC, that of Parsifal has entered least into the public's con-sciousness, and little that is penetrating has been said about its peculiar qualities,except perhaps the formal analyses of Alfred Lorenz. The lex Parsifal, which wouldhave extended the performance rights beyond the usual thirty years, did notmaterialize. In lieu of this, a protective layer surrounds the Biihnenweihfestspiel, towhich the veneration of the cultic aspect and the fear of boredom probably contri-bute equally. The fear of boredom, in any case, is groundless. Exactly in that pon-derousness that frightens the innocent opera-goer is concealed the ever-astonishingnew. Long-windedness was always characteristic of Wagner; it is associated withboth his evocative use of gesture and an inclination to talk the listener to death. Got-terddmmerung, with its expansive musical effluence, sometimes calls to mind theswimmer in Uhland's poem ['Die Rache'], whose own armour dragged him under.The armature of leitmotivs in the tetralogy as a whole—which the last piece dragsalong—paralyses development. In Parsifal, this is intensified and becomes turnedover: the master of the art of transition ends up composing a static score. The requi-site art of hearing that must be learnt by whoever wants to understand the work is—as already the case in certain parts of Gotterddmmerung—one of acquisitive listening[Nachhb'ren], of eavesdropping. He understands Parsifal who understands its excessesand extravagance, its peculiarity and mannerism, as already at the beginning of theprelude where in hovering woodwind chords, devoid of melody, the first strophe ofthe 'Last Supper' theme reverberates through the four bars that follow its actualtermination. It is as though the style of Parsifal sought not merely to representmusical ideas, but to compose their aura as well, as this constructs itself not at themoment of execution, but rather during the music's subsequent decay. Thisintention can be understood only by whoever surrenders more to the echo of themusic than to the music itself.

The static quality of Parsifal, which arises from the idea of an immutable, replic-able ritual in the first and third acts, has a compositional correlative in the renuncia-tion of flowing progress and compelling dynamics for long stretches of the score,with the prominent exception of the second-act Kundry scene. The number ofmotifs in Parsifal is less than in the other works of Wagner's maturity. Most of themare incantations, signs of the 'Nie sollst du mich befragen' type in Lohengrin, back towhich—in many respects and on account of the subject matter—the musical pro-cesses in Parsifal refer. As a consequence of their allegorical content, these motifs areas though consumed from within, ascetic, emaciated, desensualized; like the Parsifalidiom in general, they are all somewhat fractured and inessential; the music wears ablack visor. From out of the waning of his original inventive powers, Wagner's forceproduces the virtue of a late style [Altersstil]; a style that, according to Goethe's

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dictum, withdraws from appearance. A comparison of the gloomy, so to speak,muted fanfare motif of Parsifal with the Siegfried motif reveals the character of theformer: the Parsifal motif seems as though it were already a quotation from memory.At the same time, the fragmentary motifs are much more exposed than those in, forinstance, Tristan, much less interwoven, less implicated in the course of the com-position, as well as less varied. Often they are just arranged one after another likelittle pictures with a kind of deliberate insouciance. The clear turning-point of thewhole work—Kundry's call, 'Parsifal', emerges from the sound of the flower maidenensemble—two middle voices are sustained—and in its identity with the precedingit reveals itself as non-identical. In general, the music renounces that 'coming tomotion' quality that usually defines Wagner's forms.

A tendency towards simplification corresponds throughout the work to the merejuxtaposition of motifs, to the self-abnegating renunciation of recapitulation [%usam-menfassung] and free Abgesang. When towards the end of the second act the spearhovers over the head of the hero, this miracle is reflected in the music not by meansof brilliance and richness of construction, but rather by an extreme reduction ofmeans. The 'Faith' motif in the trumpets and tubas, a harp glissando, and an octavetremolo in the violins: that's all. Throughout Parsifal, the orchestral treatmentavoids the dividing up of melody, division into solos, and the ideal of infinitesimaldifferentiation [das Idealder kleinsten Differenz}. The orchestration here depends moreupon a choral treatment of instruments than in the preceding music dramas—onecould describe it as Bruckneresque. Orchestral tuttis alternate with recitative-likepassages that are given only an intimation of accompaniment. But the refinement ofthis simplicity is unexampled; the finesses are disposed sparingly, not forgotten. Thechoral treatment of the instruments is based on instrumental doubling, which allowshardly any instrument or even group of instruments to be recognized when heard. Ablended sonority like that at the beginning [bars 9ff. of the score] is unique, when the'Last Supper' motif returns accompanied, played by violins, oboes, and a trumpet;the last, playing 'very softly' [sehr zart], does not emerge as though it were playing asolo. The art of blending wind instruments, which in Lohengrin was restricted to thewoodwinds, is now applied to the brass as well: trumpets as well as tubas are readilydoubled by horns, these latter already employed to the utmost. This subdues thesharp clarity of the sound; it becomes at once fuller and darker, as consequently doesoverall the timbre of Parsifal; this dim orchestral sound of muted forti became veryimportant for new music, through late Mahler to Schoenberg.

The tendency towards simplification became archaization in the compositionalmaterial: the liturgical modes are evoked. With his most advanced compositionalpraxis, Wagner seeks to mitigate the long-standing dichotomy in his work—fanfare-like diatonicism versus yearning chromaticism—by banishing chromaticism to hell:the Tristan chord, in the low registers of the woodwinds, now symbolizes Klingsor'srealm, and diatonicism is meanwhile alienated and darkened by means of modalchord combinations and striking secondary scale-degrees in the minor. These bringabout the often noted resemblance between the style of Parsifal and that of Brahms'smusic. But this resemblance is only one among the harmonic resources employed,and does not bear upon the fundamental structure of the composition. This struc-ture scarcely uses polyphonic textures, except for a few motivic combinations, or thedistribution of thematic material among different voices [durchgebrochene Arbeit).Instead, the harmonic language deploys an extraordinarily advanced element, evenby comparison with Gotterddmmerung: the unresolved dissonance. The prelude ends

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on a dominant-seventh chord in the key of A flat major. In accord with traditionalharmonic theory, one would incline to interpret the F flat in the trombones' part,with which the first act begins, as a deceptive resolution of the preceding harmony.But because of the caesura created during the rise of the stage curtain, that seventhchord is rendered utterly absolute, questioning infinity.—Furthermore, thediminished-seventh chord with the minor ninth above its root (already used in theRing) that resounds in the second act upon Parsifal's great outburst, 'Amfortas! DieWunde!', has no harmonic consequence at all. Instead, the Kundry motif thataccompanies the chord plummets downwards from it as a single, unaccompaniedmelodic line. The phenomenal decomposition of the musical language, which—analogous to the expressionistic stammer of Kundry—breaks up into unconnectedelements of expression, threatens the traditional harmonic system. Parsifal marksthat historical moment when, for the first time, a multi-layered, dissociated sound isemancipated and self-determinant.

The immediate impact of Parsifal upon composers was certainly far less than thatof Tristan, Meistersinger, and the Ring. It suited least of all the New German school;elan vital and affirmative gestures are so utterly lacking that one believes as little inthe final deliverance as in a fairy tale. Especially in the third act a peremptory tone ispredominant; in comparison, Parsifal's deed of redemption seems to be mereillusion and impotent; in the end, Wagner is more faithful to his Schopenhauer thanthose who reduce him to a mere spokesman for renewal would wish. Precisely onthis account was the subliminal effect of Parsifal so much more enduring. Whateverhas renounced false splendour was always first built upon it: the sacral opera is aharbinger of matter-of-factness [Sachlichkeit]. There is already an overt reminiscenceof the funeral music of Titurel in the mournful bell choir passage in Mahler's ThirdSymphony, and Mahler's Ninth is inconceivable without the third act of Parsifal,especially the pale luminosity of the 'Good Friday Spell'. But the strongest influencewas that upon Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. The French anti-Wagnerite's opera islike a dreamy musical shadow of the music drama. The sparse outline, the staticjuxtaposition of sounds, the veiled timbres, the suffusion of archaic and modern—the Middle Ages as pre-history—all this comes from Parsifal, and the rhythm of Pars-ifal's motif haunts Debussy's work, which stands at the threshold of new Westernmusic and already at that of neo-Classicism. Through Parsifal, Wagner's power pro-foundly influenced the generation that forswore him. With Parsifal, his school tran-scended them.

What Parsifal and Pelleas have in common are their Jugendstil characteristics,which Wagner inaugurated in Germany long before the movement received itsname. The aura of the pure fool corresponds to that of the word 'youth' around1900, the 'casually dropped' flower maidens to the first Jugendstil ornaments; inMelisande such an ornament became a heroine. As in Jugendstil, the idea of the Biih-nenweihfestspiel is indeed one of Kunstreligion ('art-religion'). (The word long predatesWagner and is found in Hegel's writings). By means of the particular consequence ofits style, the aesthetic creation is supposed to conjure a metaphysical meaning, thesubstance of which is lacking in the disenchanted world. Parsifal is charged with theproduction of this sort of'consecration', to which the aura of the characters as well asthe resounding music are dedicated. In Parsifal, the power of redemption isentrusted chimerically to the artistic expression of blind will (which according toSchopenhauerian dogma is the essence of the world), to the glorification of appease-ment, and to the denial of the will through pity. Out of the futility of this hope,

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though, out of the falsehood of Parsifal, emerges its truth: the impossibility of conjur-ing lost meaning from spirit [Geist] alone. The redeemer of (and through) art[Kunsterloser] needs redemption himself, like a secret Klingsor. What endures inParsifal is the expression of the frailty of conjuration itself.

COMMENTARY

Der Knecht hat erstochen den edeln Herrn,Der Knecht war' selber ein Ritter gern.Er hat ihn erstochen im dunkeln HainUnd den Leib versenket im tiefen Rhein;Hat angeleget die Riistung blank,Auf des Herren R08 sich geschwungen frank.Und als er sprengen will iiber die Briick',Da stutzet das R06 und baumt sich zuriick,Und als er die giildnen Sporen ihm gab,Da schleudert's ihn wild in den Strom hinab.Mit Arm, mit FuB er rudert und ringt:Der schwere Panzer ihn niederzwingt.

Ludwig Uhland, 'Die Rache' ('Revenge')1

The servant stabbed the noble lord, / The servant would himself gladly be a knight. / He stabbed him in the darkgrove / and sank the body in the deep Rhine; / He put on the shining armour / and boldly mounted the lord's horse./ And just as he determined to bound across the bridge, / the steed suddenly stopped and reared, / and as the ser-vant prodded him with gilded spurs, / the horse flung him into the river below. / With arm and foot the tervantthrashed and struggled: / but the heavy armour pulled him down.

Uhland's obscure poem obliquely reflects Adorno's suspicious gaze. The armour ofthe drowning swimmer is surely not only a metaphor for the cumbersome leitmotivsof Wagner's mature works; the swimmer himself resembles all too closely the com-poser as he sometimes appeared to Adorno: a usurper, a novice pretending tomastery, a fraudulent revolutionary who in truth merely envied his oppressors. It ischaracteristic that the resonances of Adorno's allusion should emerge only with areading of the poem. 'On the Score of Parsifal' has the gnomic, allusive and crypticqualities of many of Adorno's essays on music, and a clear understanding of itdemands a careful exegesis of its content and context. To understand the individualideas in the essay, it is often also necessary to be acquainted with their appearanceselsewhere in Adorno's writings. In many instances, especially for the reader lessarmed than Adorno from the arsenals of literature and philosophy, it is nearlyimpossible to draw any meaning at all from certain of his remarks before onediscovers and reflects upon these additional sources.

'On the Score of Parsifal' was first published in 1956 as a programme note.2 It is

I am deeply indebted to Professor Susanne Vill of the Theaterwissenschaftliche Fakultat der Universitat Bayreuth,Germany: her profound understanding of Adorno's language was of invaluable assistance during the preparation ofthe present translation. I am also grateful to Professors Edward Said, Daniel Purdy, Walter Frisch and Edward Lipp-man of Columbia University, New York, for their advice and comments.

1 Vhlands Wcrke, ed. Ludwig Frankel, i (Leipzig, 1893), 221.2 Theaterieitschrift der Deutschen Oper am Rhein, i/3 (1956—7). The essay can be found in Musikalische Schriften, iv:

Moments musicaux, Impromptus ('Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften', xvii), Frankfurt, 1982, pp. 47—52; andRichard Wagner: 'Parsifal'. Texte, Materialen, Kommentare, ed. Attila Csampai & Dietmar Holland, Reinbek, nr.Hamburg, 1984, pp. 191-5.

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one of numerous writings Adorno produced between 1933 and 1967 that form anevolving assessment of Wagner and his works. Of these writings, the most substan-tial and ambitious were gathered as a book, Versuch iiber Wagner, written during1937-8.3 During those years, Adorno's critique of the virulent elements of Wag-nerian ideology was especially urgent, given the triumphant ascent of NationalSocialism in Germany and the contemporary appropriation of Wagner as a Titurel-like ideologue of Fascism. In the post-war years, Adorno's Wagner studies acquireda more meditative, conciliatory tone that was perhaps more in harmony with thetask of cultural and political reconstruction. The essay maintains several of the cate-gories that Adorno had used earlier to construct the Versuch. In fact, a good deal ofthe material in the essay is a restatement of the aesthetic and political positions andof music-analytic insights that Adorno offered in the Versuch, substantiating thedefensive assertion he made during the 1960s that his fundamental attitude towardsWagner had never changed. This assertion, however, would be pointedly qualifiedby Adorno with regard to the Parsifal essay.

Even where Adorno has borrowed ideas whole or in part from the Versuch, theemphases of that study have been shifted; its sometimes condemnatory tone hasbeen to some degree modulated in order to dwell soberly on specific compositionalaspects of the Parsifal score and to illuminate and emphasize a latent emancipatorymoment in it as well. This emancipatory moment had already been discovered inthe Versuch; Adorno found it nascent in the third act of Tristan und Isolde, wherein'music, the most magic of all the arts, learns how to break the spell it casts over thecharacters'.4

Adorno plainly pursued the aesthetic reclamation and rehabilitation of Wagner inhis 1963 lecture 'Wagners Aktualitat'.5 The publication of this lecture in Die %eit in1964 occasioned an extended reaction to Adorno's remarks, which some found stilltoo damning, others too revisionist and placatory. In a 'Nachschrift' to this debate,6

Adorno took considerable pains to clarify his position vis-a-vis Wagner. His finalrejoinder was a cautious one. He made clear that the stern critical apercu that was thepre-eminent hallmark of the Versuch remained—some 30 years later—essentiallyunchanged. In particular, Adorno rejected as hermeneutically sterile any attempt tocontemplate Wagner's works in isolation from the often deplorable reality of his per-sona, and vice versa: 'There is no "Wagner without music"'. Offering proof that hehad in no way recanted any of his earlier positions or utterances on Wagner, hereminded readers that only one year earlier he had authorized the unaltered repub-lication of the chapter on orchestration ('Farbe') from the Versuch. But he carefullyreserved to himself 'the right to further pursue what was at that time observed andconceived, to refine, to take cognizance of changes that arise in the inherent histor-ical development of Wagner's works; it would be a poor dialectic that brought itsown terms to a standstill. The essay on Parsifal . . . and the lecture on Wagner'srelevance are stages of such a reflection.'7

3 Die musikalischen Monographien ('Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften', xiii), Frankfurt, 1977, pp. 7-148.Throughout the present commentary, references to 'Zur Partitur des ParsifaC are made to 'the Parsifal essay' orsimply 'the essay', and references to the Versuch iiber Wagner are made to 'the Versuch' rather than to the less abridge-able title of the published English translation. But for the convenience of the reader, passages from the Versuch arecited from that translation, In Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London, 1984).

4 In Search of Wagner, p. 156.5 Musikalische Schriften, iii ('Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften', xvi), Frankfurt, 1978, pp. 543-64.6 Ibid., pp. 665-70.7 Ibid., pp. 666—7. Furthermore, according to Susanne Vill, Adorno acknowledged publicly in 1968 that the

Versuch would need to be revised.

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The essay on Parsifal, then, is a peculiarly revealing portal on to Adorno's Wagnercritique, and must not be overlooked simply because it is so brief and is derived inpart from earlier writings. Indeed, the undertones of Adorno's fanfares for modern-ism are felt throughout the essay, and he gazes more resolutely on that horizon thathe earlier glimpsed at the close of the Versuch, a horizon where a cultural 'salvation ofWagner' ('eine Rettung Wagners'8) might be had.

The non-linear, fractured and abbreviated qualities of Adorno's prose are fully inevidence in the present case. Adorno does not offer a comprehensive, coherentvaluation of Parsifal, an overarching verdict on the whole work. He instead producesa force field of dialectically charged polarities, among which his thoughts reboundrather than progress in good order. Just as he repeatedly rejected 'wholeness' as anepistemological fraud (as were Wagner's various evocations of it), so he makes noattempt here to bind his thoughts with an illusory coherence or concord. For him,Parsifal manifests both regressive ideology and a content of epiphanic truth. His her-meneutic method was, with uncharacteristic clarity, explained in the 1952 'Selbstan-zeige des Essaybuches Versuch iiber Wagner', where he comments on the'micrological' method of the Versuch:

There is [in the Versuch} no fundamental principle, no comprehensive analysis of theworks, no summarizing or conclusions, but the book rather proceeds immediately to theobservation of individual elements and is committed to the close interpretation of detailsand minute characteristics, which is directed towards an understanding of the whole. Ingeneral, the part stands for the whole . . . I hoped to push from the innermost elements ofthe aesthetic structure outwards towards broad philosophical and social connections,which otherwise would remain cultural chatter without substance.9

The procedure lends Adorno's prose the character of a mosaic, reconstructed inpart from the keen fragments of earlier mosaics; the reconfigured pieces yield newimages. Adorno had at his disposal many models for the incompleteness and jagged-ness of the Parsifal essay—Wagner himself not least among them. Wagner's music,according to 'Wagners Aktualitat', is 'given into our hands unfinished, like some-thing yet to be pursued, something unwhole'.10 Adorno's essay is composed of partsthat decline to form a whole; it is an assemblage of the membra disjecta to which hewas so heedful.

Unlike the Ring, whose vast trajectory—leading from the dire consequences ofAlberich's forswearing of love through the submergence of reality in the lyrical clair-voyance of Briinnhilde's sacrifice—presents a comprehensive, if not always coherentideology, Parsifal—beginning in medias res with a puzzling sibylline prophecy thatleads finally to an equally puzzling, gnomic apotheosis—seems to suspend its ownclaims to truth: 'redemption to the Redeemer' ('Erlosung dem Erloser') mocks inter-pretation. The suspension of clear intentions has consequences for the work'sexegesis. The ambivalent Christianity, the aggressive derogation of the senses, theshocking exploitation of the feminine, the dubious social configuration of the GrailOrder, and more: all these elements contribute to problematizing Parsifal as anideologically fradulent work. And it has been criticized as such in many quarters,often with gusto. Robert Gutman's well-known critique of Parsifal and its composerreaches dire conclusions, which have been amplified by Hartmut Zelinsky. In

6 'Selbstanzeige des Essaybuches Versuch iiber Wagner', Die musikalischen Monographien, p. 506.9 Ibid., p. 505.

10 Musikalische Schrijten, iii. 564.

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response to this, others, such as Lucy Beckett and Michael Tanner, have soughtmoderating positions vis-a-vis the ideological content of the work.11

'On the Score of Parsifal' is the most extended set of reflections that Adornooffered on Wagner's last completed work. He certainly saw the ideological taint ofhis subject, pointing out in the Versuch several relevant aspects of the work; mentionof them is conspicuously absent in the later essay. Such is his earlier analogybetween the Grail knights of Parsifal and the elite paramilitary formations ofNational Socialism: in the Versuch he identified the 'glorified blood-brotherhood' ofthe Grail as the 'prototype of the sworn confraternities of the secret societies andFiihrer-orders' of the Third Reich. (The connection between Wagnerian ideology asexpressed in the composer's writings and operas, and political and social praxis 50years after his death remains to this day a thorny historiographical problem.Adorno's treatment of it was never, I find, satisfactory or complete.) The subject isexcluded from the Parsifal essay. In the Versuch, Adorno criticized the immutabilityand arbitrariness of ethical and moral judgements in Parsifal, particularly regardingsexual behaviour—he wrote of Wagner's equation of pleasure with sickness. He evencast a suspicious gaze on Wagner's motives for composing Parsifal, recalling thecomposer's baser pecuniary instincts as well as his relentless self-absorption. He issilent on these points as well in the later essay. In both the Versuch and the Parsifalessay, however, he decried Wagner's verbosity and ponderousness as well as thecultic, fetishistic character that Wagner conferred upon the Buhnenweihfestspiel, thefestival drama for the dedication of a theatre.

The 'salvation of Wagner' finds its impetus in Adorno's hypothesis of a music-historical dialectic, through which, as he put it in the 'Selbstanzeige', 'the whole ofmodern music developed in resistance to Wagner's supremacy, and yet all itselements are already present in his work'.12 Subsidiary antithetical and paradoxicalrelationships connected with the musical materials and procedures of Wagner'sworks stand as postulates to this basic hypothesis. In the Parsifal essay, these rela-tionships play an important role in the critique, and a decisive one for Adorno'srescue of the work. It is finally the musical language of the work that defeats itsmaster. As expressed in the 'Selbstanzeige', 'the claims of health, soundness, com-municativeness, and agreeableness' are rejected, and the musical language iswielded 'against the very power that it serves'.13

Those progressive elements of technique in Parsifal by which Adorno orientateshis thoughts include the dearth of musical motifs in the opera (compared with theRing), its fragmentary quality, and the rigorous economy of material means—instrumental means in particular; but also related to this notion are the unmediatedjuxtaposition of motifs and the renunciation of musical progress in favour of stasis.Other aspects of the work that have a dialectical function in Adorno's critique are themagic, ritualistic content, the preponderance of archaic musical materials andprocedures, and the ornamental characteristics.

All these elements had already been treated by Adorno in some way in theVersuch, and a comparison of their appearances in the Parsifal essay with their

" Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: the Man, his Mind and his Music, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1968, Chap.16, 'Moral Collapse: "Heldentum" and Parsi/al', 421-40; Hartmut Zelinsky, 'Rettung ins Ungenau. Zu MartinGregor-Dellins VV'agner-Biographie', Richard Wagner, 7W!/a/'('Musik-Konzepte',xxv),ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger&Rainer Riehn, Munich, 1982, pp. 74-115; Lucy Beckett, 'Wagner and his Critics', The Wagner Companion, ed. PeterBurbidge & Richard Sutton, London, 1979, pp. 371-2; Michael Tanner, 'The Total Work of Art', ibid., pp. 205-18.

12 'Selbstanzeige', p. 504. l3 Ibid., p. 507.

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appearances in the book is as instructive as it is indeed often necessary. In a descrip-tion of Wagner's characteristic sonority in the Versuch, for example, Adornodescribed as 'crass' the linear dissipation of dissonant harmonies without their reso-lution, such as that of the chord associated with Kundry and its dissolution in arpeg-giation rather than its normative resolution to a consonant harmony.14 But later inthe book, the same phenomenon is celebrated as a virtue; precisely these momentsin the music now have an emancipatory role: 'In Parsifal, which begins to subject allpurely ornamental elements of music to criticism, the dissonances sometimesemerge openly as the victors, they burst the conventions of resolution and are"resolved" instead into bare single lines'.15 It is the latter judgement that he sustainsin the Parsifal essay. There, Adorno locates with Parsifal 'that historical momentwhen, for the first time, a multi-layered, dissociated sound is emancipated and self-determinant'. This claim smacks of hyperbole and is surely debatable, but it assignsto Parsifal an importance in the history of compositional technique whose magni-tude was usually reserved for Wagner's Tristan und Isolde—a radical gesture that hashad wide repercussions in subsequent Wagner criticism.

In the essay, Adorno takes particular note of the orchestration of Parsifal, callingattention to its characteristic 'extreme reduction of means'. (I am not looking veryclosely here at the aptness of this description, which, on the whole, seems fair.) Thisstands in stark contrast to the orchestral extravagance that typically accompaniesmoments of heightened dramatic import in the earlier music dramas. Dramaticevents comparable to Klingsor's perdition and the recovery of the Spear (in Parsifal)such as Siegfried's overcoming of Wotan and the awakening of Briinnhilde (in Sieg-fried) make for instructive comparisons. In the Parsifal essay, the compression ofAdorno's views on Wagner's orchestration to a mere few sentences leads to opacity.A comparison of this treatment with the extended development of the same issues inthe Versuch illustrates both the importance of a supra-contextual understanding ofthe essay, as well as the difference in emphases between it and the Versuch.

Basic to Adorno's treatment of orchestration is a dichotomy between progressiveand regressive tendencies inherent in Wagner's development of orchestral tech-nique. According to the Versuch, 'the discovery of the productive imaginative powerof timbre is not without its negative effects on composition'16 because it leads to aconfusion of appearance with essence. Adorno reminds us in the essay of the 'manyrespects' in which Parsifal reaches back some 35 years to Lohengrin. In the Versuch,Adorno, too, looks back to Lohengrin for the exemplary instance of Wagner's orches-trational innovations.

The doubling of instruments is a central issue here. The Versuch criticizes'[Wagner's] idiosyncratic resistance to naked instrumental sound whose origins arereadily discernible . . . Wagner doubles the instruments—and doubling in unison isthe Ur-phenomenon of Wagner's blended timbres'.17 Adorno points out the result ofthis in Lohengrin: 'the specific sound of each instrument is lost; they can no longer beseparated out, and the final sound gives no clue as to how it was created'.18

In the Parsifal essay, Adorno similarly notes that 'the choral treatment of theinstruments is based on instrumental doubling, which allows hardly any instrumentor even group of instruments to be recognized when heard'. But his stricture againstWagner's 'resistance to naked instrumental sound' is not repeated there. Instead, it

14 In Search of Wagner, p. 64. l5 Ibid., p. 67.16 Ibid., p. 79. " Loc. cit. is Ibid., p. 74.

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is emphasized that the blending of instruments is a hallmark of the style of Parsifal; itis essential to the 'subdued' and 'darkened' timbre that predominates in the work.In the Versuch, Adorno might well have inclined to note (though he did not) that theParsifal essay's 'ideal of infinitesimal differentiation' ('Ideal der kleinsten Differenz')is a symptom of Wagner's inclination to disguise the material nature of his creationsand their production. Wagner's technique, according to the Versuch, is dedicated tothe production of a seamless orchestral sound that masquerades as a naturally givencontinuum of orchestral colours, unfettered by human and material limitations. Thetechnique is an element of the Wagnerian 'Kunst des Ubergangs'. It leads Wagnernaturally to the avoidance of even the intimation of an instrumental solo, andAdorno in the essay points to the Parsifal prelude by way of illustration. Wagner'stotalizing impulse finally dominates not only the dramatic structure of his works butalso the technical processes and materials of their production.

In the Parsifal essay, Adorno does not remind us that he attributed the reificationsuffered by the orchestra at Wagner's hands to the composer's suppression of theindividuality of its instruments. According to the Versuch, although this suppressionwas one of Wagner's most impressive technical accomplishments, it was an ideo-logically fatal one. It seems to me, however, that Adorno overstates his case in theVersuch by writing of Wagner's 'idiosyncratic resistance to naked instrumentalsound'. Wagner's 'resistance' was not 'idiosyncratic' but, rather, a trope of musicalRomanticism: the material nature of sounds and their origins—both temporal andspatial—were to be obscured or entirely concealed from the listener. The hiddenorchestra of the Festspielhaus is the entirely unsurprising result of compositionaltendencies already evident in the early nineteenth century. For Adorno in theVersuch, Wagner's dissimulation of the origins of sounds and instrumental identitywas explicitly a function of his reification of the orchestra in the service of his ownsubjectivity; it also contributed to the ornamental aspect of Parsifal: 'the very fact ofthis doubling introduces something superfluous, false and dressed-up into theorchestration'.19

According to the essay, 'the refinement of . . . simplicity [in Parsifal] is un-exampled'; Adorno gives the example of the recovery of the Spear at the end of ActII. Even in the Versuch, Adorno acknowledged the progressive moment of this sim-plicity:

the much lauded 'simplicity' of the orchestration in Parsifal is . . . not just reactionary ormarked by a false religiosity, as compared with Tristan, DieMeistersinger and the Ring. Thefact is rather that it carries out a legitimate critique of the ornamental components inWagner's characteristic style of orchestration. Thus it contains not just the religiose brasschoirs but also something of the bleak austerity of sound that was to become dominant inMahler's last works and subsequently in the Viennese School.20

(It should be noted that Wagner himself regarded his most expansive orchestral con-ceptions as 'critiques of the ornamental'; according to his remarks in a letter toTheodor Uhlig of 31 May 1852,2' the judicious disposal of orchestral sonority was asimportant an element of his compositional style beginning with the Ring as washarmony or any other parameter.) In the essay, Adorno confirms the continuity

19 Ibid., p. 79.211 Ibid., pp. 79-80.21 Richard Wagner's Brieje an Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, Ferdinand Heine, Leipzig, 1888: 'Wer in einem Urtheil

iiber meine Musik die Harmonie von der Instrumentation trennt, thut mir ein ebenso groBes Unrecht, wie der, dermeine Musik vormeiner Dichtung, meinen Gesang vom Worte trennt!'

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between Wagner's technique and modernism, focusing on the special importance ofthe 'dim orchestral sound of muted Jorti' for Mahler and Schoenberg.

Adorno was more expansive in his discussion of'simplicity' in the Versuch, wherehe associated it with asceticism. 'In art the ascetic ideal is dialectical', and the essay's'extreme reduction of means' must be so understood. How is asceticism dialectical?According to the Versuch, asceticism subverts 'aesthetic appearance. This helps tomake good the promise of art by eliminating the illusory fulfillment in aesthetic formand enabling its own negativity to express the contradiction between the real and thepossible.'22 This is but one more moment of the dialectic that Adorno proposes at theend of the Parsifal essay—the emergence of truth out of falsehood.

Among the most provocative ideas in the essay are those not found in the Versuch,two of which are especially noteworthy. First, Adorno proposes the need for a specialkind of listening for Parsifal—das Nachhoren, which is associated with the limits ofsonorous experience, das Verklingen (the fading-away of sounds or their reverberationas they die away). Das Nachhoren is Adorno's cognitive correlative for the 'auratic'quality of Parsifal; this is the Benjaminian 'aura', which was surely brought close toAdorno's thoughts during his labours on an edition of Benjamin's works in 1955,about a year before the Parsifal essay was published. Adorno expounded Benjamin'sconcept at length in his subsequent remarks on Krenek for the 1957-8 season of theDeutsche Oper am Rhein ('Zur Physiognomik Kreneks').23 His present applicationof the concept of aura is especially apt, as it explains the aesthetic mechanism thatproduces the 'cultic' aspect of Parsifal. Adorno's prescription of a peculiar, tempor-ally disphased hearing for Parsifal corresponds to Benjamin's formulation of aspatial metaphor of distance for the artwork s cultic quality. Adorno arrogates Ben-jamin's concept to music: according to 'Zur Physiognomik Kreneks', 'music [myemphasis] is the auratic art par excellence' ,24

A second such idea is Adorno's observation of the close relationship betweenParsifal and Debussy's Pelleas et Me'lisande, both of which show the blemish ofJugendstil aesthetics. Adorno frequently alluded to Jugendstil and always did so withderogatory intent. One such reference in the Versuch is especially pertinent: 'LikeNietzsche and subsequently Art Nouveau [i.e., Jugendstil}, which [Wagner] antici-pates in many respects, he would like single-handed to will, casting a magic spell, anaesthetic totality into being with defiant unconcern about the absence of social con-ditions necessary for its survival'.25 This reappears as a paraphrase in the Parsifalessay: 'By means of the particular consequences of its style, the aesthetic creation issupposed to conjure a metaphysical meaning, the substance of which is lacking inthe disenchanted world'. Adorno thus sustains his earlier verdict on Wagner's total-izing impulse. But this charge, levelled here against Wagner, can be found inAdorno's more wide-ranging disputations, as in 'Biirgerliche Oper' (1955), whereopera in general is identified as that specifically bourgeois form that 'strives paradox-ically to preserve the magical elements of art within and with recourse to the dis-enchanted world'.26

Parsifal not only demonstrates the ornamental quality that is the pre-eminenthallmark of Jugendstil aesthetics but also, through the gift of Adorno's modernist

22 In Search of Wagner, p . 8 0 .23 MusikalischeSchri/len, iv. 109-13.24 Ibid., p. 100.25 In Search of Wagner, p . 1 0 1 .26 'Biirgerliche Oper', Musikalische Schriflen, iii. 27.

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hindsight, undertakes its critique. In Adorno's own mythology, it is Schoenberg whocritically engages the ornamentality of Jugendstil and who finally delivers musicfrom it.

His late work remains a process, though not one of development, but one rather of analternating polarity between two extremes, which tolerate no sure middle or spontaneousharmony. Between extremes in the most precise technical sense: here to monophony, tounison, to the significant flourish; there to suddenly arisen polyphony. It is subjectivitythat forces the extremes together in a moment, subjectivity that summons compressed,tension-laden polyphony, subjectivity that shatters it into unison—and so escapes, leavingbehind the denuded tone. The flourish is erected as a memorial to Being, into which thepetrified subject itself enters. The caesuras, though, the sudden fragmenting, which morethan everything else characterize late Beethoven, are those moments of escape; the work issilent as it is abandoned, and turns its emptiness outwards.27

Adorno, 'Spatstil Beethovens'

The concept of late style ('Spatstil' or 'Altersstil') is thematic in Adorno's work. Themetaphysic of this concept is most extensively developed in his work on Beethoven,especially in 'Spatstil Beethovens' (1937) and the essay on the Missa solemnis (1959).Several of the characteristics ascribed to Beethoven's late style are shared in a sub-stantial way by Parsifal. The above-quoted passage suggests the degree to whichAdorno's 'diagnosis' of late Beethoven (Rose Rosengard Subotnik's evocative termfor Adorno's Beethoven critique28) offers heuristic insight into the case of Parsifal.Polarization and extreme contrast underlie both the musical and dramatic contentof Parsifal: polarization of'fanfare-like diatonicism' and 'yearning chromaticism', ofthe ethical universes of the Grail and Klingsor. There are extremes in the mostprecise technical sense: the juxtaposition of archaic tonal materials and the projec-tion of the most advanced, dissonant musical language so far spoken; the crushing ofcomplex polyphonic rhetoric into monophonic stutter. As for the caesuras: Adornopoints to the Parsifal prelude, but no less important are those that periodically bringthe work to still silence, such as the diminuendo that accompanies Gurnemanz'simpotent sorrow at his recollection of the Spear (Act I) or the immeasurable fissurethat opens between Kundry's taunt at Klingsor's castration and the wizard'simpotent fury (Act II).

The terms of Adorno's analysis of Beethoven's late style are not to be transposedwhole to that of Parsifal; this simply doesn't work, and Adorno's final results for thetwo cases are not the same. Wagner differs from late Beethoven decisively and fatallyin his attempt finally to resolve or at least to conceal the dichotomies and paradoxesthat underlie his work. But the resonance of certain motifs of the discussion ofBeethoven's late style in that of Parsifal is one of several indications of the importanceof the concept of late style for Adorno's critique.

Adorno claims that the late-style quality of Parsifal compensates for thelimitations—'the waning of his original inventive powers' ('das Nachlassen primarerErfindungskraft')—imposed on creativity by Wagner's advancing years. As a gloss tothis claim, Adorno alludes to a 'dictum' of Goethe's which is in fact drawn from theso-called Maximen und Reflexionen, the often obscure aphorisms that Goethe

2: Musikalische Schriften, \v. 16.28 'Adorno's Diagnosis of Beethoven's Late Style: Early Symptom of a Fatal Condition', Journal of the American

Musicotogical Society, xxiv (1976), 242-75.

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collected late in his life. The significance of Goethe's dictum in the context ofAdorno's essay is difficult to fathom, in part because of its inherently cryptic quality.Although it appears in the Parsifal essay only as a glimmer of a thought, it is certainlybound in a complex way to Adorno's understanding of Goethe and his extendedmeditation on the Altersstil problem, as witnessed by his much earlier efforts to cometo terms with it in his studies of Beethoven. As in the Parsifal essay, Goethe dwells inAdorno's thoughts in 'Spatstil Beethovens', where Goethe's own late style is equatedwith the composer's on account of a shared intolerance of received conventions andtheir constant reinvention of conventions in response to the demands of expression.29

Adorno's position is greatly clarified by an understanding of Goethe's idea, whichrests amid a collection of fragmentary, yet related thoughts. The following are therelevant passages from the original sequence:

Die Manifestation der Idee als des Schonen ist ebenso fliichtig als die Manifestation desErhabenen, des Geistreichen, des Lustigen, des Lacherlichen. Dies ist die Ursache,warum so schwer dariiber zu reden ist.

Zum Schonen wird erfordert ein Gesetz, das in die Erscheinung tritt.Beispiel von der Rose.In den Bliiten tritt das vegetabilische Gesetz in seine hochste Erscheinung, und die Roseware nun wieder der Gipfel dieser Erscheinung.Perikarpien konnen noch schon sein.Die Frucht kann nie schon sein; denn da tritt das vegetabilische Gesetz in sich (ins blosseGesetz) zuriick.

Das Gesetz, das in die Erscheinung tritt, in der groBten Freiheit, nach seinen eigenstenBedingungen, bringt das objektiv Schone hervor, welches freilich wiirdige Subjektefinden mu6, von denen es aufgefaBt wird.

Schonheit der Jugend aus obigem abzuleiten.Alter: stufenweises Zuriicktreten aus der Erscheinung.Inwiefern das Alternde schon genannt werden kann.Ewige Jugend der griechischen Gotten30

The manifestation of the idea as beauty is just as transitory as the manifestation of the exalted, the spirited, themerry, the comical. This is the reason why it is so difficult to discuss.

A principle must necessarily exist for beauty, which is manifest in the appearance of beauty.Take the example of a rose.The vegetative principle is manifest in its most elevated appearance in the bloom; the rose is as though the 'peak'of appearance.Even the rind of the fruit can be beautiful.The fruit can never be beautiful, because the vegetative principle resides within merely as principle.

The principle that emerges—in utmost freedom and in satisfaction of its own requirements—in appearancebrings forth objective beauty, which indeed must surely find worthy subjects who will apprehend it.

The beauty of youth is derived from the above.Old age: the gradual withdrawal from appearance.That extent to which the aging can be regarded as beautiful.Eternal youth of the Greek gods.

Goethe's concept of late style is discussed in a monograph by Hans JoachimSchrimpf, who connects the 'stufenweises Zuriicktreten aus der Erscheinung' withphenomena of two general types: the biological and psychological events of theartist's aging; and a fundamentally mystical Weltanschauung, a spiritualization, ameditativeness and a tendency towards abstraction manifest in his artistic

29 Musikalischr Schriften, iv. 14.30 Schriften zur Kunsl, Schriften zur Literatur, Maximen und RefUxionen ('Goethes Werk', xii), Hamburg, 1953, p. 470.

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products.31 The concept of Altersstil is rooted in Goethe's own philosophy of nature,according to which the concealed laws of ontology are manifest in the maturedorganism, just as a rose is the manifestation of the natural laws inherent in the seedfrom which it grows. Adorno, with new intentions, has enriched Goethe's conceptwith post-Hegelian dichotomies of subject and object, essence and appearance. Hisown articulation of the concept may have been especially influenced by a peculiarbook about Goethe by Georg Simmel.32 In the chapter of that book entitled'Entwicklung', Adorno may well have discovered Simmel's highly articulated meta-physic of late style in a discussion that moves from a specialized consideration ofGoethe's works to a transcendental concept of Spatstil. At the very climax of theargument, at the end of a catalogue of Spatstil icons, Simmel names Parsifal?21

The Altersstil concept has a broad application, and indeed touches upon thefractured and unconsolidated characteristics of Parsifal. In Aesthetic Theory, Adornoclaims that a 'critical stance towards the notion of internal consistency' is a mark of amature artist. Adorno there gives the example of late Beethoven as an artist who,having mastered the techniques of integration and cohesion, was 'able to mobilizedisintegration eventually'. 'At this point in the career of an artist', Adorno continues,'the truth content of art whose vehicle was integration turns against art.'34

The importance of the Goethe reference is made very plain by its appearance in avery different context: Adorno's 'Schoenberg and Progress' (1941).35 In Goethe'sconcept of Altersstil, Adorno's meditations on late Wagner and the music of Schoen-berg momentarily converge. In Adorno's teleology of music history, this con-vergence is pivotal; Parsifal faces the threshold of modernism.

Adorno associates fragmentation—the idiom of Parsifal is 'fractured and un-essential' while that of Schoenberg's expressionist period is similarly dissociated'into fragments'36—with the unmediated manifestation of the subject. Adorno isexplicit in the Schoenberg essay: 'That which Goethe commended in his old age—the step-by-step withdrawal from the phenomenon—can be understood in artisticconcepts as the process by which material becomes no more than a matter of indif-ference.'37 In the Parsifal essay, Adorno intends the same: 'a style [i.e., the manifesta-tion of subjectivity] that . . . withdraws from appearance'. In fact, this process isadequately described in neither the Parsifal essay nor 'Schoenberg and Progress' butinstead is expounded at length in 'Spatstil Beethovens', where Adorno lingers longon the subject of death. The late work lies about in fragments because of the indiffer-ence of the dying artist; the step-by-step withdrawal of the subject imagined byGoethe is, in Adorno's alternative imagery, an abrupt evacuation, an escape fromdisaster. The powerful, almost Miltonic allegory of the Beethoven essay was not for-gotten: later, in the Schoenberg essay, as though he now sensed the affinities of theimages, Adorno quoted in extenso from his own Beethoven essay as if to prefaceGoethe's dictum.

31 Goethe: Spa'Ueit, Alterstil, ^eitkntik, P f u l l i n g e n , 1966, p . 7.32 Goethe, Le ipz ig , 1913.33 The relationship of Simmel's to Adorno's metaphysics of Spatstil and the history of the concept are treated in

my dissertation 'Richard Wagner's Parsifal and the Hermeneutics of Late Style' (Columbia University; in progress)and in my article 'Richard Wagner's Parsifal and the Theory of Late Style', Cambridge Opera Journal, vii (1995),1-18.

34 Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt, ed. Gretel Adorno & Rolf Tiedemann, London, 1984, p. 67.35 In The Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell & Wesley V. Blomster, New York, 1985, pp. 29-134.36 Ibid., p. 118.37 Ibid., p. 120.

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Adorno's 'On the Score of Parsifal' is among the briefest of his Wagner critiques,but it is not less important to our reading of the Adorno canon than the much moreextended Versuch. Apart from its purely practical function as a performance note(one wonders what his audience of opera-goers could have thought of it), the essay isa gesture of reconciliation, not only towards Wagner's work but to Adorno's own aswell. The edifice of his earlier Wagner critique is revisited, and much of it lies in theessay as rubble. It is less assertive, more ambivalent than the Versuch. Many frag-ments of his earlier image of Wagner remain, but they lie scattered, some still sharpand glittering, others dulled.

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Documents

Adorno Score of Parsifal Music & Letters 76.3