Puri - The Ecstasy and the Agony

The Ecstasy and the Agony: Exploring the Nexus of Music and Message in the Act III Preludeto Die Meistersinger von NürnbergAuthor(s): Michael PuriSource: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 25, No. 2-3 (Fall/Spring 2001-02), pp. 212-236Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncm.2001.25.2-3.212 .

Accessed: 14/04/2014 12:52

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to 19th-Century Music.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 129.67.174.109 on Mon, 14 Apr 2014 12:52:25 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncm.2001.25.2-3.212?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


212

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

19th-Century Music, XXV/2–3, pp. 212–36. ISSN: 0148-2076. © 2002 by The Regents of the University ofCalifornia. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University

of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

This article stems from work in a graduate seminar atYale University on Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, led byPatrick McCreless. I am grateful to him and to JamesHepokoski, Warren Darcy, and Kristina Muxfeldt for read-ing earlier versions of this article and providing helpfulsuggestions.

1“Es ist mir nun klar geworden, dass diese Arbeit meinvollendetstes Meisterwerk wird und—dass ich sie vollendenwerde” (Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonck,Tagebuchblätter und Briefe, 1853–71 [Berlin: A. Dunker,1910], p. 303). See also the letter to Wendelin Weissheimer

MICHAEL PURI

On 22 May 1862 Richard Wagner drafted threeletters to close friends. In all three, he tells ofan epiphany that he had just experienced dur-ing his work on Die Meistersinger vonNürnberg. In the letter addressed to MathildeWesendonck, the most elaborate of the three,he proclaims that “it has now become clear tome that this work will be my most perfect(vollendetest) masterpiece and—that I will com-plete (vollenden) it.”1 Sparked by a concept for

the act III Prelude, his epiphany seemed to illu-minate a pathway to the end of the work. Theelement of the Prelude that Wagner singles outfor detailed description is itself a moment ofenlightenment; after a “quiet, soft, deeply mel-ancholic passage,” the “Wach’ auf” chorale willemerge in a brilliant and “sublime outburst”(erhabenen Ausbruch) of enthusiasm. Despitethe absence of both singers and text in thePrelude, Wagner describes to Mathilde how thechorale breaks into the instrumental texture“wie ein Evangelium”—“like a gospel.”

The Ecstasy and the Agony:Exploring the Nexus of Musicand Message in the Act III Preludeto Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

in Weissheimer, Erlebnisse mit Richard Wagner, FranzLiszt und vielen anderen Zeitgenossen nebst deren Briefen(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1898), p. 111; andthe letter to the Countess Pourtales in Richard Wagner,Richard Wagner über Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, ed.Erich Kloss (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1910), p. 56. Allthree letters are cited in Ray Komow, The Genesis andTone of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” (Ph.D. diss.,Brandeis University, 1991), pp. 154–55.



213

MICHAELPURIPrelude to DieMeistersinger

At one level of interpretation, the associa-tion between the chorale and evangelical lan-guage seems warranted and reasonable. Thechorale’s polyphonic texture brings to mindJ. S. Bach’s Lutheran Choralgesänge, which of-ten set texts about New Testament events.2

Furthermore, the chorale genre encourages amode of hearing that coordinates the melodywith a speci� c text; a listener may well under-lay the instrumental chorale with its eventualtext, Sachs’s “die Wittemberg’sche Nachtigall.”3

By recalling the poem’s opening eight lines thatappear in Die Meistersinger, one may interpretthe song of the nightingale and the sunrise asmetaphors not only for Luther and his Refor-mation but more generally for salvation andresurrection, two primary elements of the Gos-pel.4

At a deeper level of interpretation, however,Wagner’s simile “wie ein Evangelium” can beunderstood to involve his personal ambitionsfor the opera. The religious association mayeven have played a fundamental role in prompt-

ing Wagner to proclaim his work a “master-piece.” Lacking a text, the chorale obviouslycannot promulgate Christianity, a fact re� ectedin the language of Wagner’s simile. By writingthat the chorale emerges like “a Gospel” andnot “the Gospel,” Wagner is alluding to thesymbolic power of the Gospel without endors-ing it. Critics of Wagner’s ideology have oftencited the composer’s own “Religion and Art”(1880) to lay bare the rationale that governsreligious allusion in his works: “One could saythat where religion is becoming arti� cial . . . itis for art to salvage the nucleus of religion byappropriating the mythic symbols, which [reli-gion] wished to propagate as true, for their sym-bolic worth, so as to reveal the truth burieddeep within them by means of ideal presenta-tion of the same.”5 The inherent abstraction ofmusic quali� es it to be “the most redeemingart,”6 which can best strip away religion’s “dog-matic conceptual � ction” to salvage underly-ing universal ideals.7 Thus at the “sublime out-burst” of the act III Prelude the listener wit-nesses Redemption being redeemed throughmusic.

Not all scholars have agreed that discussionsof religion, or even of an aesthetically trans-formed religion, are germane to Die Meister-singer, a nineteenth-century comedy in whichchurch chorales and Reformation � gures mayseem to provide only historical “color.” AsArthur Groos illustrates in an analysis of “cho-rale reminiscences” in act III, the fundamentaltypologies—realizations and representations of

2On 10 December 1861, Wagner wrote a letter to BettySchott, the wife of his publisher, requesting two collec-tions of folk songs and a volume of reformation chorales.In Richard Wagners Briefwechsel mit B. Schott’s Söhne,ed. Wilhelm Altmann (Mainz: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1911),pp. 31–32; cited in Komow, Genesis and Tone of “DieMeistersinger,” p. 132. The � rst extant sketch for thischorale was dated by Wagner “Taverne Anglaises. Jan: 62”and stored loosely in the back cover pocket of the GreenNotebook, Bayreuth NA ms. BIIa6 (Komow, Genesis andTone of “Die Meistersinger,” p. 22). However closelyWagner studied the reformation chorale, Carl Dahlhausargues that the “modern” technique of delaying dissonanceresolution (sevenths in chords setting “gen” und “Tag,”for example) distances Wagner’s chorale from its historicalmodel. See Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas,trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1979), p. 73. Arthur Groos also points out traces ofmodernity in the chorale’s “dynamic variety and shifts ofmeter from 44 to 32, wide leaps, lack of fermatas, and seam-less melody” (Groos, “Constructing Nuremberg: Typologi-cal and Proleptic Communities in Die Meistersinger,” thisjournal 16 [1992], 18–34 [31]).3Indeed, in the letter to Wesendonck Wagner promotesprecisely this sort of hearing by incorporating the � rst twolines of Sachs’s poem into his description of the instru-mental chorale: “da tritt, von Hörnern und sonorenBlasinstrumenten die feierlich freudig-helle Melodie des,‘Wacht auf! Es rufet gen den Tag: ich hör’ singen im grünenHag ein’ wonnigliche Nachtigall’ wie ein Evangeliumhinzu’.”4The chorale text is reproduced and translated in RichardWagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, trans. JohnGutman (New York: G. Schirmer, 1963), pp. 41–42.

5This quotation � gures prominently in discussions ofWagner’s “religion of art” in Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner’sMusic Dramas, pp. 143–44; Robert Raphael, RichardWagner (New York: Twayne, 1969), pp. 77 and 128, whichpredates Dahlhaus’s original German edition by two years;and Morse Peckham, Beyond the Tragic Vision: The Questfor Identity in the Nineteenth Century (New York: GeorgeBraziller, 1962), to which Raphael’s ideological analysis isexplicitly indebted.6“Die Musik kann nie und in keiner Verbindung, die sieeingeht, aufhören, die höchste, die erlösendste Kunst zusein” (“Über Franz Liszt’s symphonische Dichtungen,”Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen [hereafter, GSD],vol. 5, ed. E. W. Fritzsch [Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch, 1887–88],p. 191).7Taking Palestrina’s music as an example, Wagner � nds itto reveal “das innerste Wesen der Religion, frei von jederdogmatischen Begriffs� ktion” (“Beethoven,” in RichardWagners Gesammelte Schriften [hereafter RWGS], ed.Julius Kapp [Leipzig: Hesse and Becker, 1914], VIII, 163).



214

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

Biblical events and � gures by post-Biblicalevents and � gures—in this opera could not func-tion without the strategic positioning of churchmusic and quasi-religious ritual.8 Nevertheless,the bourgeois representation of sixteenth-cen-tury Nuremberg and the somewhat parodisticpresentation of religious rituals (for example,in the opening scene in St. Catherine’s and inthe Baptism scene of act III) invest the operawith a fundamental ambivalence toward reli-gion. This ambivalence is epitomized inSchopenhauer’s philosophy, whose presence inDie Meistersinger extends beyond the mere ci-tation of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung inthe “Wahn”-monologue. Lucy Beckett’s assess-ment of Schopenhauer’s philosophy as “bothexplicitly atheist and explicitly sympathetic notjust to the sense of aspiration common to allreligious expression but to the Christian de-scription of the world as fallen in man andredeemed in Christ” helps illuminate aspectsof Wagner’s opera as well.9 If the redemptiveentry of the evangelical “Wach’ auf” chorale inthe Prelude evinces a Christian sympathy, themixed identity of the redeemer (a combinationof Sachs, Walther, Wagner, Luther, and theirtypological partners Christ and John the Bap-tist) dilutes the purely religious aspect of theallusion. Wagner’s typologies and deliberateappropriation of religious symbols, both musi-cal and otherwise, only helped further erase theline dividing the sacred from the secular, al-ready “a blurred affair” by the mid-nineteenthcentury.10

Even if one accepts the coexistence of reli-gious and nonreligious elements in DieMeistersinger, the concept of redemption mayseem irrelevant. Indeed, the typical Wagnerianself-sacri� ce of a redemptrix for a man is sup-pressed in this opera.11 Redemption in Wagner’sthought, however, is not solely con� ned to this

manifestation. Wagner’s Zurich writings, as in-spired by Feuerbach’s “The Essence of Chris-tianity,” assert the “true kernel” of Christian-ity to lie in the abolition of egoism for the sakeof communal welfare. As Jean-Jacques Nattiezhas argued, the ascendancy of the collectiveover the individual is intimately connected tothe Wagnerian project of redemption.12 The sup-pression of the individual impulse for the sakeof the community is arguably the leading dra-matic idea in Die Meistersinger and, as a philo-sophical topic, couples nicely with the Scho-penhauerian renunciation of the Will, whichwins respite for the individual from the suffer-ings of desire.

Incorporating both programs of redemptionand renunciation, the act III Prelude to DieMeistersinger is a skeleton key to the opera.Within the opera, it is a psychological portraitof the protagonist, Hans Sachs. The standard-bearer for the Protestant Reformation, Sachsmust surrender his personal claims on Eva inorder to shepherd his � ock, the strati� ed citi-zenry of Nuremberg, into a state of peacefulequilibrium. At the beginning of act III, how-ever, Sachs has not assumed his destiny. ThePrelude � nds Sachs deeply con� icted, caughtat the crux of several dichotomies: the Idealand the Real, Redemption and Renunciation,the New and the Old.

By closely analyzing how musical detail andformal layout interact in the Prelude to repre-sent these dichotomies, I hope in this articlenot merely to reveal the general presence ofreligious symbolism in Die Meistersinger butrather to elucidate its speci� c application inthe opera. The act III Prelude occupies a centralposition within this dramatic design, function-ing at three hermeneutic levels. An appeal tothe collective cultural imagination of the audi-ence, the Prelude is replete with textures andcontrasts that evoke religious narrative. It in-corporates within its formal structure a “narra-tive of frustration” that links Sachs to the ar-chetypal � gure of the disillusioned, saintlyartist in Wagner’s writings. And the Preludeparticipates as an intermediate station within alarge-scale narrative of frustration spanning acts

8Groos, “Constructing Nuremberg,” p. 24.9Lucy Beckett, “Sachs and Schopenhauer,” in RichardWagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, ed. John Warrack(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 80.10Ibid., p. 82.11Senta, Elisabeth, Elsa, Brünnhilde, and Isolde are the pri-mary � gures of reference. Jean-Jacques Nattiez brie� y dis-cusses these and other typical plot elements in WagnerAndrogyne: A Study in Interpretation, trans. Stewart Spen-cer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 141. 12Nattiez, Wagner Androgyne, p. 30.



215


II and III. A new interpretation of the Prelude’sform provides an alternative to the prevailinginterpretation of an arch form and gives impe-tus to a host of hermeneutic forays into thethicket of Wagnerian sound and drama. I shallconclude with a perusal of religious metaphorin contemporary documents and examples ofprogram music to show how the act III Preludecaptures a moment not only on the stage of DieMeistersinger but also on the stage of nine-teenth-century Western classical music.

IMy discussion begins with an overview of

the form and content of the act III Prelude (ex.1). Analysts have generally represented the Pre-lude as an arch form, ABCBA, which coincideswith Lorenz’s “vollkommener Bogen.”13 Ex-ample 2 displays the melodic incipits for thesections labeled A, B, and C. Each section hasits own program, which Wagner laid out in a“programmatic explanation” (programmatischeErläuterung) for a concert of orchestral excerptson 2 December 1863. Section A begins with themelody traditionally referred to as the“Wahnmotiv” (motive of folly), since it � guresso prominently in Hans Sachs’s ensuing dra-matic “Wahn”-monologue in act III. In theErläuterung, however, Wagner discusses thismotive in a different dramatic context. It hasalready appeared in counterpoint to the laststrophe of the Cobbling Song, where it “ex-pressed the bitter complaint of the resignedman” beneath his “energetic and cheerful coun-tenance.”14 For several reasons, I prefer the term“Klageruf”—cry of complaint, a recurrent termin Wagner’s writings—to the analyst’s tradi-tional designation, Wahnmotiv, when referring

to the melody in this speci� c location. Wagner’sErläuterung makes clear that the melody, inso-far as it expresses a character’s internal psycho-logical state, is to be understood here as anintersubjective communication, not as an ab-stract signi� er for “folly.”15 Wagner’s interestin the communicative immediacy of sound,which only deepened after his encounter withSchopenhauer’s writings in 1854, explicitly sup-ports this hypothesis. In the essay “Beethoven”(1870), admittedly the most Schopenhauerianof all his writings, he asserts that we as listen-ers understand “what the perceived cry for help,complaint, or shout for joy says to us withoutany conceptual mediation.”16 By isolating theunmediated cry and letting the act of declama-tion resonate in its own time and space, themonophonic instrumentation indirectly high-lights the agent behind the act.17 Wagner mayhave found inspiration for this setting in theoboe cadenza in the � rst movement ofBeethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which he singlesout in “On Conducting” as a pivotal momentin the movement’s design. According to Tho-mas Grey, Wagner understood this cadenza toproject “an intentional human subject in themusic, such as [he] considered indispensable todrama, musical or otherwise.”18

The chorale at “Sehr feierlich” in m. 16,excerpted in ex. 2, begins the B section, and thefragmentary quotation of the Cobbling Song at“Etwas zögernd” in m. 26 begins the C section.In the Erläuterung, Wagner proposes that thedelicate string writing in the C section paintsan image of Sachs, who lifts his gaze away fromhis handiwork toward the heavens and loses

13Warren Darcy, “In Search of C Major: Tonal Structureand Formal Design in Act III of Die Meistersinger,” un-published paper, delivered at the Seattle Opera Sympo-sium, 11 August 1989; William Kinderman, “Hans Sachs’s‘Cobbler’s Song,’ Tristan, and the ‘Bitter cry of the re-signed man’,” Journal of Musicological Research 13/3–4(1993), 161–84; Alfred Lorenz, Das Geheimnis der Formbei Richard Wagner, vol. III, Die Meistersinger vonNürnberg (Berlin: Max Hesses, 1924–33), pp. 111–12. I amgrateful to Professor Darcy for sharing his typescript withme.14“Drückt es die bittere Klage des resignierten Mannesaus, welcher der Welt ein heiteres und energisches Antlitzzeigt” (RWGS, IX, 64).

15Compare Morse Peckham’s nuanced de� nition of theLeitmotiv: “The leitmotiv, then, is not a melodic conven-tionalization for some fragment of that objective world,nor the equivalent of a verbal or visual symbol. It is asymbolization of the psychic orientation of the self towardthe self’s dealings with the objective world” (Peckham,Beyond the Tragic Vision, p. 268).16“Wir verstehen ohne jede Begriffsvermittlung, was unsder vernommene Hilfe-, Klage- oder Freudenruf sagt”(“Beethoven,” RWGS, VIII, 154).17That Klagerufe also begin the � nal acts of Tristan andParsifal (Kundry’s scream) demonstrates the importanceof this gesture in Wagner’s work at a speci�c dramaticlocation.18Thomas S. Grey, Wagner’s Musical Prose: Texts and Con-texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.100.



216

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

1

9

16

23

30

36

Etwas gedehnt

dim.

ausdrucksvoll

dim.

poco rall.

cresc.

dim.

Sehr feierlich

cresc. dim. dolce cresc. dim.

più

Etwas zögernd

cresc. dim.

più

sehr zart und

ausdrucksvoll

piùsehr gleichmässig zart

dolce

Example 1: Piano reduction of the act III Prelude to Die Meistersinger.



217


41

46

52

60

e piùcresc.

dim. ausdrucksvoll

Sehr breit

dim.dolce

Der Vorhang geht auf.

zögernd

più più(etc.)

molto ritard.

Example 1 (continued)

19“Wie wenn der Mann den Blick von der Handwerksarbeitab nach oben wendete und sich in zart anmutigeTräumereien verlöre” (RWGS, IX, 64).

himself in reverie.19 Although at � rst glance itmight seem that Wagner means to evoke ageneral image of the poet and cobbler, the mu-sic informs us that the reference is more spe-ci� c. Despite some modulatory activity andrhapsodic gestures by the cello, ex. 3 demon-strates that mm. 26–35 in the Prelude (ex. 3b)correspond to material found in the third and� nal strophe of the Cobbling Song (ex. 3a).

Where Sachs drifts into escapist fantasies inthe Cobbling Song (twice, at “und rief mich oftin’s Paradies” and “Doch wenn mich der imHimmel hält”), Wagner restrains the tempo;although the Song accelerates to faster tempiboth times, the Prelude’s C section choosesinstead to linger in extended contemplation.

Further inquiry into the relationship betweenthe third strophe of the Cobbling Song and thePrelude suggests that the former was a struc-tural model for the latter. As Wagner himselfpointed out in the Erläuterung, the Klagerufwas � rst heard at the onset of the � nal strophe.Just as it returns with added instrumental force



218

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

26

32

dolce

più

Vc.

Hn. I

Vln. I

(ausdrucksvoll)

dim.

cresc.cresc. dim.

dolce

Sehr feierlich

und rief mich oft in’s Pa - ra - dies, wie ich da Schoh’ und Stie - fel liess! Doch

wenn mich der im Him - mel hält, dann liegt zu Füs - sen mir die Welt.

Sachs:

Langsam Schnellrall.

Langsam Allmählich schneller

Example 2: Melodic incipits for sections A, B, and C.

a. Cobbling Song, third strophe.

b. Prelude, mm. 26–35.

Example 3: The Cobbling Song Reverie and its quotation in the act III Prelude.

at the conclusion of this strophe (which alsoconcludes the entire Song), so too does it returnfortissimo at the end of the Prelude (mm. 51ff.).In both cases, the bookending statements ofthe Klageruf enclose material from the Cob-bling Song. Although the Prelude additionallyinterpolates the “Wach’ auf” chorale into theCobbling Song form ACA, the resemblance be-tween the two passages is nonetheless unmis-takable and striking. Table 1 compiles and col-lates these observations.

The symmetrical design displayed in Table1 is the exact feature Lorenz found most salientin his analysis of the act III Prelude as an archform. As is well known, Lorenz defendedWagner’s music against charges of formless-ness by often analyzing it as either bar (AAB) orarch (ABA) forms or some combination of thetwo. The arch form plays a central role in thisdefense. An emblem of classical architectureand its symmetry, the arch projects an image ofnaturalness and grace. Moreover, the palin-



219


dromic ordering of internal elements in thearch form lends to it a sense of autonomy andclosure. But to accept the arch-form interpreta-tion as the sole analytical possibility wouldoverlook some crucial aspects of the music thatre� ect an underlying program. Wagnerians havelearned to be critical but not wholly dismissiveof Lorenz’s legacy, and I shall explore the arch-form interpretation to re� ect on its advantagesand disadvantages.

The closed program of the Erläuterung corre-sponds neatly to the design of the arch form.Whereas the opening A section’s Klagerufsounds the complaint of the “resigned man”and “dies away in resignation,” the same mo-tive in the � nal A section (mm. 51ff.) achieves a“cheerfulness of a mild and blessed resigna-tion.”20 Thus Wagner suggests that not merelythe motive but its associated concept—“resig-nation”—returns in the � nal section of the Pre-lude. Two observations diminish the persuasive-ness of the closed-form interpretation, however.The second A section drastically transforms thepresentation of the Klageruf, surrounding it withdense instrumentation and embedding it withindissonant harmonies. Whereas the � rst A sec-tion presented the “bitter complaint of the re-signed man,” the second A section burdens this

Table 1

Schematic Comparison of Form and Contentin the Cobbling Song and the Act III Prelude

Cobbling Song, Third Strophe Act III Prelude

A (Klageruf) A (Klageruf; fugal extension)>B (“Wach’ auf” chorale)

C (body of Song) C (Cobbling Song quotation; contrapuntal fantasy)>B (“Wach’ auf” chorale)

A (return of Klageruf) A (return of Klageruf; fugal extension; coda with Cob-bling Song flourish)

motive with the “powerful expression of theemotion of a deeply affected soul.”21 The formis therefore better described as ABCBA’. Also,the Erläuterung was produced speci� cally for aperformance in which the Prelude was to ap-pear as a self-suf� cient concert piece; withinthe context of the opera, however, where thePrelude introduces but does not solve a musi-cal-dramatic con� ict, it is disadvantageous tointerpret it as a closed narrative.

In support of the arch-form interpretation,the Erläuterung describes a distinction betweenthe two B sections and the C section. After thestrings in the C section have � nished theirquotation of melodies from the Cobbling Song(m. 43), the “horns, with an increased volumeof sound, continue the hymn of the Meister.”22

Although the transition away from the choraleinto the Cobbling Song material is marked by a“very gentle” and “hesitant movement,” thereturn to the chorale is marked by an augmen-tation of sound and texture. In contrast to thefragility of the C section, the B sections bask insonic plenitude. This return to plenitude is alsoremarkable as the � rst moment in which theaudience, listening in real time, may becomeaware of the arch form as a nested structure.The music no longer ventures forth into newthematic regions (“A, B, C, . . . “) but begins to

20“Beruhigt und beschwichtigt erreicht [der Klageruf] dieäusserste Heiterkeit einer milden und seligen Resignation”(ibid.). The “cheerfulness” most likely sets in around m.62’s “zögernd,” where the Cobbling Song’s playful cadential� ourish returns in slow motion.

21“Nun tritt das erste Motiv der Saiteninstrumente mitdem mächtigen Ausdrucke der Erschütterung einer tiefergriffenen Seele wieder ein” (ibid.).22“Da setzen die Hörner in gesteigerter Klangfülle denHymnus des Meisters fort” (ibid.).



220

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

double back (“A, B, C, B!”), as if the composer’sexploratory impulse were curtailed by the callof the hymn and all that it symbolizes.

The return of the chorale and the “bracket-ing” of the Cobbling Song by the chorale arerepresented in the analytical scheme “BCB.”Yet as the Erläuterung tells us, B is not simplyrepeated but completed; in fact, the second Brounds off and complements the � rst B. More-over, the two parts form halves of a periodicphrase structure with dominant interruption.The � rst part moves toward a perfect authenticcadence in the dominant, D major (m. 24), andthe second part begins in the tonic and movestoward a perfect authentic cadence in the tonic.The C section is thus interpolated between thetwo halves of the chorale, halting the Prelude’sreal-time � ow perhaps to introduce a temporal-ity that Carl Dahlhaus called “unreal dura-tion.”23 Wagner’s Erläuterung suggests that weare to imagine Sachs losing himself in reverieduring the interpolated C section. As a mo-ment of “lived time,” the C section is an em-blem of the private individual. The C sectionthus contrasts with the chorale, which repre-sents the public sphere in two important ways.Within the opera, the “Nightingale” chorale isthe artwork by which Sachs has won publicacclaim (as its spontaneous repetition by thefolk in act III, sc. 5, will demonstrate). In addi-tion, Wagner’s nineteenth-century audiencewould immediately recognize its status as ahistorical artifact, since it is modeled on theLutheran chorale. In comparison, the interpo-lated C section is an unstable, perhaps even“psychological” form, structured like a fantasyand progressing “somewhat hesitantly,” as ifits “unreal duration” were actually the presenttime—unreal within the � ctive world of theopera but real and engrossing for the audiencewho believed they were witnessing Wagner inthe act of improvisation.

Having completed a preliminary analyticoverview of the Prelude, I want to pause andreview our understanding of the relation be-

tween form and content in the piece. To ac-knowledge the differential and hierarchical re-lations hitherto established between formal sec-tions, one can revise the scheme ABCBA asAB1[C]B2A’. This act of emendation, howeverinelegant the result, provokes a critical insightof increasing signi� cance in the continuing ex-amination of the Prelude: the arch-form inter-pretation, based on the assertion of formal sym-metry, cannot account for details that disruptthis symmetry. Nevertheless, this interpreta-tion, founded on valid perceptions about thestructure of the Prelude, need not be discarded.The subsequent analysis will rescue and buildon aspects of the arch-form interpretation, whiledeveloping an alternative understanding of theinteraction between music and program in thePrelude.

The interpretation of the Prelude as an archform stakes its � rst formal claim on the dis-tinction between the A and B sections. This issensible, since the � rst momentous event inthe Prelude occurs in the transition betweenthe sections marked “Etwas gedehnt” and “Sehrfeierlich.” One can measure this shift by vari-ous indices: a shift in mode from G minor to itsparallel major, a change in instrumentation fromstrings to horns and brass, an overall elevationof tessitura, and a moderate change in poly-phonic procedure. The change is accomplishedby shifting from an instrumental to a vocalstyle (note how the wide successive leaps ofthe fugal subject contrast with the linearity ofthe chorale part writing), and thus from onereferential historical model to another. TheErläuterung implicitly distinguishes betweenthese stylistic gestures and genres, acknowl-edging A’s motivic presentation and develop-ment by the strings and B’s consequent sound-ing of a “ceremonial song” by the horns.24 Thetwo sections are distinguished as well by theirreferences to moments within the opera: theKlageruf � rst occurs in act II during the Cob-bling Song; the Chorale appears later in theculminating Festwiese scene of act III. Thus, atthe moment of the overlap between the

23Carl Dahlhaus, “Über das ‘kontemplative Ensemble’,” inOpernstudien: Anna Amalie Abert zum 65. Geburtstag,ed. Klaus Hortschansky (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1975),pp. 189–95.

24“Jetzt (im Vorspiel des dritten Aktes) wird dieses Motivallein gespielt und entwickelt, um in die Resignation zuersterben: aber zugleich und wie aus der Ferne lassen dieHörner den feierlichen Gesang ertönen” (RWGS, IX, 64).



221


cadential tonic of the A section and the initialtonic of the B section (m. 16), the Prelude turns,Janus-like, from the past to future time withinthe opera; as Wagner suggests with the descrip-tion of the chorale emerging as “wie ein Evan-gelium,” the chorale unfolds as if heralding anew world order. The evangelical outburst ofthe chorale is rivaled in its sheer sensuous im-pact only by the onset of the second A sectionin m. 51, which follows thickly on the heels ofthe second chorale phrase. The expressive forceof these two moments establishes a fundamen-tal tension between the A and B sections.

Although A, B, and C are distinct from eachother, the variety of content within each sec-tion threatens to undermine their integrity asformal units. Since both sections A and C di-vide into subsections, they are not well repre-sented merely by the incipit melodies shownin ex. 2. The opening A section falls into twoparts: the monophonic Klageruf (mm. 1–4) andthe fugal exposition (mm. 5–16).25 The exposi-tion unfolds three stages: the presentation of afugal subject derived from the Klageruf (mm.5–8), the succession of entries based on thesubject (mm. 8–13), and the coincidence of thevoices at the cadence (mm. 14–16). All foursubsections are distinct yet interdependentstages that gradually reshape the borrowedmelody into a material unique to the Prelude.

Wagner’s careful control of register contrib-utes in large part to the interdependence ofthese stages. The Klageruf unfolds the octave

between the semitonal Seufzer b –a to B –A bystepwise descent. The fugal subject (mm. 5–8)then falls by step within the octave d–D, drag-ging the tessitura a � fth below the Klageruf.The fugal entries at two-measure intervalsslowly and deliberately reset the melody higherwhile expanding the overall texture—� rst upan octave to d1 (m. 8), then by a minor third tof1 (m. 10), and � nally up a whole tone to g1 (m.12). The decrease in interval between succes-sive entries suggests a certain resistance withinthe musical material, as if the speci� c gravityof the local affect were preventing the melodyfrom taking � ight. This resistance makes thebreakthrough moment of the chorale all themore dramatic. Through Wagner’s manipula-tion of register within a fugal exposition we aremade witness to the masterly handiwork of thecomposer—the Meisterwerk as Handwerk.

After passing through the thematically andtexturally homogeneous chorale phrase, the Pre-lude arrives at the C section, whose internalsegmentation is more elaborate than the A sec-tion. The C section divides into two parts: theCobbling Song material and the contrapuntalfantasy of mm. 35–43. The four successivephrases in the Song quotation take the chordal,melodic, and rhythmic structure of the Song’sthird strophe through a gentle modulatoryscheme, a circle of � fths with the tonal stationsE major (m. 27), A major (m. 30), and D major(m. 33). The transitional cello � gure in mm.24–26, also drawn from the original CobblingSong, counterbalances the immediately preced-ing bassoon line with a stepwise fall through adiminished octave, d to the applied leading-tone D , thereby mitigating the otherwise jar-ring shift from the chorale’s perfect authenticcadence in D major to the dominant of E ma-jor.26 The related cadenza-like elaborations bythe cello between the phrases of the CobblingSong recall, in their harmonic vagrancy, broadleaps and expressive appoggiaturas, the musicfor the lovers’ pantomime during the act I Cho-rale. In addition, these interpolations within alarge-scale formal interpolation, the C section

25Some readers may disagree with my decision to end theKlageruf at m. 4 instead of m. 8. Indeed, the two priorappearances of this motive in the Cobbling Song present itas an eight-measure unit, the companion of a discursivevocal line, as will be shown in ex. 7. Thus, the Klagerufmerely overlaps the beginning of the fugal exposition byone measure (m. 8). In my understanding, however, thecontext determines the analytical division. Regardless ofwhat transpired in the Cobbling Song, where the Klagerufdoes not have a contrapuntal appendix, in the act III Pre-lude a new section begins in m. 5 with the commence-ment of fugal pageantry. When the second violins enter inm. 10, one is aware that the pace of polyphony has accel-erated from the three-measure stagger of mm. 5–7 to thetwo-measure delay of mm. 8–9. The perception of thisacceleration, important for appreciating Wagner’s drama-turgical shaping of musical events, � ows from the dis-crimination, conscious or unconscious, of a new contra-puntal section at m. 5. Moreover, the design and implicittonality of the cello line change remarkably from m. 4 tom. 5.

26The harmonic motion up a step, from D to E major, byan intermediate applied dominant can be described as anexample of the ascending 5–6 contrapuntal technique.



222

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

itself, elevate the nesting gesture—a nod to theWagnerian concept of das Unendliche as “in-� nitesimal”—to a position of considerable im-portance. In one way, these gestures indicate anintrospective turn of mind consistent with theimage of the daydreaming Sachs from theErläuterung. In another, they belie the Song’soptimistic facade by suggesting restlessness andunrequited desire; Sachs’s gaze heavenward maybe an appeal to escape the con� nes of reality.Indeed, the registral arrangement of the tonalstations by ascending fourth seems to followSachs’s upturned gaze and permits further con-trast with the � rst half of the chorale, whosemelodic ambitus from g to g1 is presented—oreven ordained by an omnipotent being (the com-poser?)—in its � rst measure.

The cadenzas may be interpreted as a ges-tural counterpart to the harmonic dynamismof the Song quotation. Instead of moving to thesecond half of the chorale at the return to Dmajor in m. 33, as one might expect, the musicremains faithful to the Song’s poetic structureand continues with its fourth phrase. In mm.33–35, Wagner’s varied instrumentation coun-terbalances the harmonic stasis in D major byintroducing the high tessitura of the contra-puntal fantasy. The alteration of A to A in thesecond clarinet and cello in m. 35 warps theanticipated D-major triad into a tonally am-biguous entity, the augmented triad. This chord(D, F , A /B ), borrowed directly from the corre-sponding moment in the original Cobbling Song,has already appeared within the Prelude. Wagnerhad placed the same sonority at the juncturebetween the Prelude’s � rst two sections (m.15), with a B falling to an A (the same Seufzerthat begins the Klageruf) instead of an A as-cending to a B. In both places, the chord ap-pears at a formal crux, where its modulatorypotential may be effectively displayed. The useof this harmony in the contrapuntal fantasyexempli� es a more general technique inWagner’s “art of transition,” in which tonallymultivalent entities propel transitional sectionswhile simultaneously grounding the transitionin a speci� c affect.

The sound of the augmented triad is onlyone of many aspects interrelating the A and Csections. Both feature the string instruments ina four-part texture, emphasize descending cello

lines at their beginnings, place thematic repeti-tion within a tonally dynamic context, andadopt counterpoint in their second half. Asnoted in Table 1, both sections borrow musicfrom the act II Cobbling Song. The contrapun-tal fantasy in C, however, is more elaboratethan the corresponding fugato of A.

Instead of � owing into the fantasy, as theKlageruf leads into the fugato, the Song op-poses the fantasy in several ways: the fantasyfeatures polyphonic exchange, while the Songharmonizes its melody with a simple chordaltexture; the fantasy exploits the upper range ofeach string instrument, while the Song remainsat a moderate tessitura, at least until the tran-sitional fourth phrase; as shown in ex. 4, thefantasy uses linear progressions—an ascending5–6 in mm. 35–38 (note, in particular, the un-usual 6

4 chords that result from the transfer ofthe soprano to the bass) followed by descending63 chords with 7–6 suspensions—while the Songrelies primarily on diatonic chord progressions(II–V–I in each of its phrases, with a subposedthird in the bass below each supertonic). Closerinspection, however, reveals an underlying simi-larity in the harmonic techniques of the twohalves of C. By means of the four phrases, theSong returns by basic diatonic motion (rootmotion by � fth) to its D-major point of depar-ture,27 the structural dominant of the Prelude.The fantasy’s initial D-major chord (m. 35) isprolonged by an ascending 5–6 sequence untilthe downbeat of m. 39; the sequence’s fouraugmented triads systematically express thechromatic aggregate. The pitches of the open-ing motive, D–C –B–A –B–C –D of the secondviolin’s mm. 35–36, in conjunction with thehem of the cello line, A –B–B –C –D of mm.35–39, make the prolongation audible by � llingin a component interval of the prolonged chord,D/A( ). In both halves of C, prolongational tech-niques bend the harmonic structure into closedcircuits, despite an apparent through-composi-tional procedure. Finally, an arching tessitura,cresting at m. 39, forms a sensible whole fromthe two harmonically closed halves.

27A tonal analyst would describe D major (V) prolongedthrough the song by its upper neighbor, E. The neighbor isintroduced by an ascending 5–6 and elaborated by a de-scending circle-of-� fths sequence.



223


Vn. I

Vn. II

Vn. II

Motive 2

Motive 1

Motive 3

35 42

7 6 77 67 67 663

6566 5

Example 4: Linear progressions in the contrapuntal fantasy of the C section.

Example 5: Motives in the contrapuntal fantasy.

28Ray Komow also makes this comparison in his disserta-tion, Genesis and Tone of “Die Meistersinger,” pp. 249–50.

Five transitional measures distort therounded symmetry of the contrapuntal fantasy.These measures divide into two sections. Mea-sures 39–41 lower the extreme tessitura, re-store surface diatonicism, and thin out the in-strumentation. Measures 42–43 stabilize thetessitura, modulate back to the overall tonic,and conclude the whole fantasy by referringback to the initial melodic exchange betweenthe violins. Moreover, each section of thefantasy’s three parts introduces a distinct mo-tive, whose subsequent repetition strengthensits individual pro� le within the unabated mu-sical � ow. Example 5 displays the three mo-tives in the order of their appearance.

Since the Erläuterung proposes merely avague dream state (Träumerei) for the entire Csection, we must draw on our own knowledgeof the opera to make sense of the succession ofmotives in the fantasy. Motive 1 of ex. 5 � lls ina diminished fourth, a gesture recalling the“Lenzes Gebot” motive of Walther’s SpringSong.28 By the time Motive 1 appears in the actIII Prelude, its progenitor, the Spring Song mo-

tive, has already been presented as a worthyobject of contemplation for Sachs. The SpringSong motive appears in isolation at the veryend of act I, a foreshadowing that helps preparethe extended rumination it will receive in the“Flieder-monologue.” Within the contexts ofthe Spring Song and the Flieder-monologue, thismotive, so closely associated with Walther,comes to connote youthful and possibly evenillicit desire (Sehnsucht). In the Prelude, theaugmented triads that underpin Motive 1 be-speak a cognitive dissonance in the unfoldingpsychodrama of the Prelude: libidinousthoughts, the unexpected destination of Sachs’sreverie, instigate a crisis within the daydreamof the protagonist. Following closely on Motive1, Motive 2, a close relation of Eva’s motive inact III, sc. 4, seems to indicate the object ofSachs’s desire. Wagner later reuses this mate-rial in the lead-in to the Quintet, precisely dur-ing stage action that features Eva, thus rein-forcing our assignment of Motive 2 to her char-acter. Motive 3 combines features of Motives 1and 2. A slightly more chromaticized versionof Motive 3 will � gure prominently late in actIII, sc. 4, at the moment when Eva expressesher feelings for Sachs and Walther.

The three-part mini-program of the Csection’s fantasy is designed similarly to both



224

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

A sections: a problematic concept is introduced,developed, and eventually dissolved within anattitude of “resignation.” Programmatic mean-ing arises not only from the dialectical succes-sion of the three motives but also from thetransition between formal sections. The neatdovetailing of Motive 3 into the chorale’s sec-ond half further suggests that the act of resig-nation involves both Sachs’s relationship toEva and his relationship to the Nuremberg com-munity. To assume an exemplary public role,he must set aside any private desires that mightcon� ict with the demands of this role.

As shown, the arch-form interpretation ofthe act III Prelude makes a valid distinctionamong the thematic areas that it labels A, B,and C. It fails, however, to capture crucial con-tinuities and discontinuities that become sa-lient and meaningful on viewing the music as adiscursive unfolding, rather than as a spatialand symmetrical form. Several phenomenologi-cal perspectives on the relationship betweenthe two sections that return, A and B, demon-strate the shortcomings of the arch-form inter-pretation. The reentry of the horns at the be-ginning of the second B section (m. 43) marksthe � rst time in this constantly transformingtexture that a large-scale section has been re-peated. Since the repetition of large-scale for-mal sections often indicates closure, the lis-tener might well imagine that the piece willend with the chorale and the optimistic mes-sage it bears. The return of A in m. 51 thus notonly denies the B section its cadential tonic,shattering its beati� c affect, but also negatesthe expectation of immediate closure. In addi-tion, the perception that the two massive har-monic arrivals in mm. 16 and 51, both locatedat the juncture of A and B sections, are bal-anced symmetrically about the BCB interior ispotentially misleading; whereas the � rst arrival(m. 16) thrusts into the chorale with a gestureof liberation (the “ecstasy”), the second arrival(m. 51) hurls us back into the painful zone ofthe Klageruf (the “agony”), thereby rejectingthe chorale and its message of redemption.

The second B section merely resumes anincomplete � rst part, but the second A sectionis a true and tragic return. Moreover, the sec-ond A section sparks the listener’s recognitionthat the � rst A section was not merely a G-

minor introduction to a G-major prelude butan integral part of the Prelude. Many details ofthe � rst A section, however, have been alteredin its return. The Klageruf is presented at ashriller pitch, beginning on g1 instead of b .Although Wagner’s direction for the violins toplay only on the G string may enrich the sonor-ity, it also heightens the expressive force of theKlageruf’s octave span by limiting the avail-able melodic ambitus—there is more tensioninvolved in spanning the g to the g1 on the Gstring than to the g1 on the D string.

Further analysis of the second A section willreveal it to be not merely an altered version ofthe � rst A section, but rather an amalgam ofthemes and textures from all three section-types A, B, and C. Consequently, I shall hence-forth refer to mm. 51–64 as the “reprise” sec-tion and the entire Prelude as a “reprise form,”an interpretation that is programmatically morepotent and musically more accurate than thearch-form interpretation. I am not, however,asserting that material from each of the threesections appears uniformly in these measures;behind the overt presentation of the Klagerufand Cobbling Song lies a trace of the chorale,which in fact marks the B section as palpablyabsent. From a careful investigation of the � nalmeasures of the Prelude a new interpretationwill emerge, one that acknowledges vital de-tails of the score and helps explain their contri-bution to the “message” of the act III Prelude.

In the reprise, the Klageruf is not only trans-posed but also fully harmonized in a choraletexture that maintains some continuity withthe preceding B section. The initial g1 partici-pates in a doubly deceptive cadence in thechorale’s G major. The transposition level ofthe melody (which begins on scale degree ^3) andthe harmonies of the cadential preparation inm. 54 indicate the local key to be E minor—viin the chorale’s G major. But a C in the bassfurther deceives the deceptive cadence. We havealready encountered the harmonic technique ofsubposition in the Cobbling Song quotation. Inmm. 26 and 29, the supertonic sonorities thatbegin the verse lines are supported by a subposedtone a minor third below the chordal root. Thesesonorities correspond exactly to the half-dimin-ished chords that begin each strophe and half-strophe of the Cobbling Song in act II.



225


21

più

48 51

The “subposed” C also forms an anguishedtritone between the outer voices, which recallsnot only the initial Cobbling Song chords butalso the Prelude’s � rst B section. This harmony,which I refer to as the “agony” chord, is thesame chord at the same pitch level as the chordfound on the third beat of m. 21, where thechorale shied away from the strong assertion ofa C-major triad. Moreover, the chord has al-ready reappeared strikingly in m. 48, during thesecond part of the chorale, where Wagner in-vests it with a new con� dence. At m. 48, themelody above the chord does not merely soundbut “achieves” the a1 above the chorale’sregistral upper limit of g1; the half-diminishedharmony is now fully diminished, the dynam-ics swell within its duration, and the full windand brass instrumentation is maintained. Whenthe chord reappears three measures later, en-dowed with such negative force, the fall fromthe redemptive zone of the chorale may be evenmore acutely perceived. Example 6 groups thesethree chords together for quick comparison.

Although based primarily on the � rst A sec-tion, the reprise is nevertheless extensively re-composed. Recalling the closed harmonic mo-tions of the C section’s two parts, the reprisedescribes a tonal arch, swinging decisively awayfrom G major at the deceptive C half-dimin-ished chord and then drawing closer to G majoragain tentatively and gradually. The harmoniessetting the Klageruf prepare the approach to Gmajor through its relative minor. After stridingpurposefully along the E-melodic-minor scaletoward the B of the dominant harmony in m.54, the bass line loses its nerve and falls to aG , thereby initiating a dominant-chain andrecalling the Cobbling Song quotation. Oncedestabilized, the bass line is vulnerable to smallchromaticisms that de� ect its motion to G

major. In contrast to the � rst A section, thereprise omits the monophonic presentation ofthe fugal subject and launches immediately intothe subsequent entries. Before attempting toexplicate this change, I shall � rst examine thematerial that concludes this musical passage.

The entries also depart from their initialmodel, occurring at different relative pitch lev-els than in the � rst A section. The intervalsbetween the successive entries generate a me-lodic ascent by thirds (g1, b1, d2, f 2) that seemsto seek its culmination in a g2. This pitch,however, is never achieved. In m. 61, where,according to the rhythmic pattern of the en-tries, one would most likely expect to � nd theg2 and its tonic harmonization, the melody hasalready begun to descend. Indeed, even an al-ternative cadence on a lower G in m. 65 iselided in typical Wagnerian fashion. The har-monic and melodic failure to reach G in thereprise may be involved in portraying Sachs’sinability, at this point in the opera, to ful� ll hisrole within the community represented by theG-major chorale.

The reprise also diverges at a signi� cant mo-ment from the thematic design of the initial Asection. In the initial A section, the fugal en-tries are � t into the strong rhetorical format ofthe sentence. In mm. 8–15, a two-measure ba-sic idea (mm. 8–9) and its varied repetition(mm. 10–11) culminate in a four-measure con-tinuation (mm. 12–15). In the section of thereprise (mm. 59ff.) that corresponds to the con-tinuation portion of the initial A (mm. 12–15),however, musical elements associated with theCobbling Song conspicuously replace previouscadential material. An augmented triad recall-ing the Song (and the Prelude’s C section aswell) initiates an extended borrowing from theSong, namely the playful � ourish that ends the� rst half of the Song’s second strophe (“jetztEngel schustern müssen,” p. 268 of the Schirmervocal score). In the Prelude, however, this quo-tation is muf� ed and distended according tothe musical directions, “hesitantly” and “moltorallentando,” thereby projecting a more melan-choly affect.

At this point in the analysis, one may con-sider a rationale for Wagner’s decision to omitthe � rst subject presentation (corresponding tomm. 5–7 in the � rst A section). By removing

Example 6: The “Agony” chord and itstwo predecessors in the Prelude.



226

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

a.

c.

b.

a.

b.

c.

1

1

1

2

2

2

3

3

3

4

4

4

5

5

5

6

6

6

7

7

7

(’)

8

8

8

9

9

9

10

10

10

a. Cobbling Song, vocal line.b. Cobbling Song, instrumental counterpoint (Klageruf).c. Prelude: melody of reprise (mm. 51–54; 59–64).

Example 7: Collation of Cobbling Song melody andcountermelody with the Prelude’s reprise melody.

these three measures, the � rst two subject en-tries maintain a consistent two-measure stag-ger, which outlines the presentation portion ofa sentence even more clearly than in the initialA section. Aided by deceptive harmonic arriv-als at the beginning of each entry in mm. 55and 57, the phrase structure whets the listener’sappetite for the � nal entry at m. 59, where onealso anticipates the beginning of the � nal por-tion of the sentence, the continuation and ca-dence. Indeed, the arrival of m. 59 is a remark-able event. For the � rst time in either section,the subject entry is accompanied by a verticalsonority that aligns with one’s harmonic ex-pectations and features a major triad (that is,the D-major triad as the basis for the dominantseventh). Wagner decks out this gorgeous har-monic and rhythmic coincidence in m. 59 witha full and variegated string orchestration, onlyto tarnish its brilliance with a deceptive chro-maticism in the following measure, followedby a bass arpeggiation that abandons the tonal-ity (in the cellos and basses, the C of m. 60obliterates the memory of the leading tone Cin m. 58). In m. 62, however, the music gains 29See n. 25 above.

� rmer footing by aligning once again with theCobbling Song, namely the beginning of thethird strophe. Example 7 stacks the pertinentmelodies on each other to facilitate compari-son.

Example 7a presents Sachs’s vocal line fromthe third strophe of the Cobbling Song, strippedof ornamental skips and runs for analytical pur-poses. Example 7b displays the Klageruf as itaccompanies ex. 7a in the score.29 Example 7creturns to the Prelude, forming a melodic linefrom two separate areas of the Prelude’s re-prise: mm. 51–54 and mm. 59–64 (in this ex-ample, an apostrophe in parentheses marks thedivision between these two groups of measures).By eliminating the � rst two entries in mm. 55–58, which form the presentation portion of thesentence, we notice that the melody of ex. 7c isthe synthesis of ex. 7a, the vocal line, and ex.7b, the instrumental line. After emulating theeight-measure Klageruf of 7b, 7c appends thevocal � ourish of 7a for its last three measures.



227


Hn. I

Bsn. I

piùpiù

dolce

Hn. I

Bsn. I

By ending the instrumental melody with vocalmaterial, Wagner “personalizes” the Klageruf,reappropriating it for the character of Sachsjust as the curtain rises on his workshop. Inretrospect, the � rst two entries generatehypermetrical momentum for the arrival at m.59, when the melody realigns with its modelmaterial from the Cobbling Song.

The reprise incorporates elements of A and Cinto the melos (that is, Wagnerian Melodie as amobile Hauptstimme), but reduces B to a ghostlytrace, sensible only as a marker of its own ab-sence. In addition to the chorale texture thatseeps into the reprise, the � rst horn and bas-soon in a Nebenstimme intone the chorale’sHauptstimme of mm. 46–47 (ex. 8a) very softlyin mm. 59–60 (ex. 8b). The suppression of Bwithin the reprise has important implicationsfor the program of the Prelude. If the A sectionshowcases the “bitter complaint of the resignedman” and the C section moves between Sachs’sinner aspirations and dilemmas, the chorale isthe only section that does not relate to Sachs asa private individual. As commentators havenoted,30 the act III Prelude distinguishes itselffrom the Overture (which Wagner also labels as“Prelude” [Vorspiel] in the Erläuterung) in itsthematic reference to Sachs—the Overture con-spicuously omits Sachs-related themes, whereasthe act III Prelude is saturated with them. Themarked absence of the chorale within the re-prise scotches the chorale’s message of commu-nal redemption. By relegating this vision to apipe dream, this omission ousts Sachs from hisputative evangelical pulpit. One can descryWagner’s intent to convey the passive andephemeral nature of the chorale vision in theErläuterung. He does not simply state that thehorns play the chorale; rather, the horns “letthe ceremonious song resound as if from a dis-tance.” Redemption is premature for the long-suffering Sachs, that surrogate Wagner who must� rst learn to renounce his personal desires be-fore he may assume a leadership role in his com-munity and, more broadly, in History itself.

The three thematic entities that contributeto the melos of the revised exposition—the

Klageruf, the fugal exposition, and the Cob-bling Song—form a narrative complex that isinvolved in portraying the Passion of the pro-tagonist. This complex acts like a “red thread”binding together the second and third acts. Withthis term, Thomas Grey pinpoints those the-matic groups whose “intermittent resurfacingsare intuitively understood as signi� cant events,orienting us within the web of the musicaltexture and dramatic text.”31

This complex appears signi� cantly in threeplaces: during the Cobbling Song’s � nalstrophe, in the reprise section of the Prelude,and immediately after Walther completesthe Morgentraum-Deutweise in act III, sc. 4(Schirmer vocal score, p. 443). The latter event,new to my discussion, takes place in a contextsimilar to the Prelude; just as the “agony” chordin the Prelude violently displaces the chorale’scadential tonic, the � nal chord of Walther’s hom-age to artistic inspiration is overridden by themusic accompanying Sachs’s actual complaints.William Kinderman has called particular atten-tion to this moment, asserting that “the musicheard during this long and intense moment rep-resents the climax of the entire internal level ofthe drama.”32 Wagner’s stage directions helpportray the dramatic idea governing this scene—

30For example, see Warrack, Richard Wagner, DieMeistersinger von Nürnberg, p. 12.

a. Chorale segment (mm. 46–47).

b. Chorale trace in reprise section (mm. 59–60).

Example 8: The Trace presenceof the chorale in the reprise.

31Grey, Wagner’s Musical Prose, p. 355.32Kinderman, “Hans Sachs’s ‘Cobbler’s Song’,” p. 176.


http://www.jstor.org/action/showImage?doi=10.1525/ncm.2001.25.2-3.212&iName=master.img-1818.png&w=182&h=51






































228

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

the pain of renunciation. As Walther and Evaapproach their common friend, their mutuallonging consummated in music, Sachs physi-cally tears himself away from them and launchesinto a self-pitying diatribe. Only at the quota-tion from Tristan und Isolde a few minuteslater, however, does Sachs fully recognize hisdesperate position within the love triangle. Thisinteropus reference breaks the meniscus of DieMeistersinger and disrupts the otherwise strictlycontrolled unities of time (Johannestag), place(Nuremberg), and action (sixteenth-centuryMastersingers’ contest). Although Eva’s chro-matically in� ected outburst helps prepare thedirect quotation, listeners often � nd it intru-sive and disturbing. Michael Tanner locates itspurpose in a destructive irony, which gro-tesquely exposes and repudiates the “metaphys-ics of transcendent love.”33 That Wagner hast-ily abandons the Tristan quotation to begin theBaptism scene supports this reading.

IIWagner associated the technique of large-

scale thematic returns with Beethoven’s legacy.He valued this technique particularly for itscapacity to project long-range dramatic struc-ture.34 In transposing Beethoven’s implicitlydramatic techniques from the symphony intothe music drama, Wagner understood himselfto have brought the speci� cally Germanicsymphonic tradition to its culmination.35

Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies,which incorporated thematic recurrence intoheroic-redemptive teleologies, represented par-ticularly signi� cant programmatic achieve-ments. As Arthur Groos has illustrated through

the concepts of typology and prolepsis,36 narra-tives of ful� llment are also central to DieMeistersinger. But the programmatic trajectoryinvolving the thematic complex in question isnot redemptive but pessimistic and outlines anarrative of frustration.

Beethoven’s String Quartet in C Minor, op.131, exhibiting thematic cyclism within a nar-rative of frustration, was well known to Wagnerbefore he had written a note of Die Meister-singer. According to Wagner’s autobiography,he heard Beethoven’s late String Quartets, ops.131 and (presumably) 127 in October 1853, asperformed by the excellent Maurin-ChevillardQuartet.37 The enthusiasm sparked by this ex-perience moved him to begin rehearsing thework with the Heisterhagen-Schleich Quartet.For their chamber music series in Zurich, hecontributed a “programmatic explanation” ofthis work for their public performance on 12December 1854. After a private performance in1855, Wagner next coached this work with theTribschen Quartet in 1870–71.38 Although hehad previously criticized Beethoven’s late stylefor its fragmented design, his encounter in 1853with the late string quartets transformed hisattitude. The Erläuterungen, which were in-tended to “follow the composer in all moods ofhis rich, inner life,”39 are evidence that Wagner’sgrasp of these works had become more sympa-thetic. The possibility that his newly won ap-preciation stemmed from an insight into theiruse for his work as compositional models iscompelling, if unveri� able.40

High esteem for Beethoven’s late style wasnot limited to Wagner. In a letter to FranzBrendel from 1859, Wagner’s con� dant Hansvon Bülow testi� es to his fellow “New Ger-man” that Tristan und Isolde is of such sophis-tication that its distance from the earlier33Michael Tanner, “Richard Wagner and Hans Sachs,” in

Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, p. 93.34“Beethoven’s recollection of discrete thematic identitiesfrom preceding movements within the Finales of the Fifthand Ninth represented, for Wagner, an overt transgressionof the boundaries of instrumental form in the direction ofdrama” (Grey, Wagner’s Musical Prose, p. 105).35Compare the � nal sentence of Klaus Krop� nger, Wagnerand Beethoven: Richard Wagner’s Reception of Beethoven,trans. Peter Palmer (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991 [rev. version of 1975 German edn.]), p. 253:“Wagner saw music drama as the one and only way ofexecuting the legacy of Beethoven. There was a time whenhe had envisaged it as ful� lling history; now it wouldcreatively refute history . . . [as] consummation of every-thing yet to come.”

36Groos, “Constructing Nuremberg.”37Richard Wagner, My Life [Mein Leben], trans. AndrewGray and ed. Mary Whittall (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1983), p. 503.38Krop� nger, Wagner and Beethoven, p. 47.39“Dem Tondichter in allen Stimmungen seines reicheninnerlichen Lebens . . . zu folgen” (RWGS, IX, 118).40Peckham has argued that textural continuity and thetechnique of thematic repetition with dramatic or psycho-logical motivation were the two main aspects ofBeethoven’s late string quartets from which Wagner ben-e� ted. Peckham, Beyond the Tragic Vision, pp. 266–67.



229


Lohengrin is as great as the difference betweenBeethoven’s op. 131 and his String Quartets,op. 18.41 To clarify his analogy, von Bülow enun-ciates Wagner’s simultaneous mastery of “de-tail-work” (Detailarbeit) and “architectonics”(Architechtonik) in his most recent style.

Musical similarities between op. 131 and DieMeistersinger are noticeable both in theDetailarbeit of the act III Prelude and in theArchitechtonik spanning acts II and III, withinwhich our thematic complex recurs. After theKlageruf has sounded, the Prelude presents afugal, registrally grave, string-quartet texturemarked Adagio, similar to the � rst movementof the Beethoven work.42 In both pieces, the

a. Opus 131, fugal subject.

Vn. I

b. Fugato subject in act III Prelude, A section.

Vc.

c. Cobbling Song melody in Prelude, C section.

Vn. I

dolce

Example 9: Collation of melodic material fromBeethoven’s String Quartet, op. 131, and Wagner’s Prelude.

fugal subject has two phases. The � rst phasehas four notes, mostly of long duration, whichmay be partitioned into two intervallic skips.The second skip is approached by semitone andmoves in opposite direction to the � rst skip.The fourth note of the � rst phase, scale degree ^6in both pieces, receives durational and dynamicaccentuation. A descending stepwise � guremarks the second phase. Although the secondphase of Beethoven’s fugal subject is more elabo-rate than in Wagner’s corresponding music, theexact pitches of op. 131’s C -minor fugal tailappear in the C section’s Cobbling Song quota-tion, as shown in ex. 9. Although the corre-spondence in pitch is an obvious by-product ofthe temporary key area, the desire to clarify theallusion to Beethoven’s Quartet might havehelped motivate the choice of E major, whichstands out within a G-major environment. Thesimilarity between the Song and the op. 131fugal subject implies transitively that the Songquotation in the Prelude’s C section shouldshare features with the Prelude’s fugal subject.Indeed, both begin with relatively long dura-tions, skip intervallically during the � rst phase,and move in stepwise motion during the sec-ond phase. Moreover, the high tessitura of the

41Hans von Bülow, Briefe und Schriften, vol. III (Leipzig:Breitkopf and Härtel, 1895–1908), p. 263; cited inKrop� nger, Wagner and Beethoven, p. 156.42Although Ludwig Finscher suggests a similarity betweenthe act III Prelude’s fugato and Beethoven’s op. 132 in hispaper, he later agrees with Werner Breig’s proposal of op.131 as a model for the fugato. See the discussion transcriptfollowing Finscher’s essay, “Über den Kontrapunkt derMeistersinger,” in Das Drama Richard Wagners alsmusikalisches Kunstwerk, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg:Gustav Bosse, 1970), p. 310. In an article examining therelationship between Beethoven’s op. 130 and Wagner’sTristan, Krop� nger proposes a relationship between op.131’s � rst movement and the act I Einleitung to Tristan;both pieces possess “einen Zwischencharakter zwischenIntroduktion und Exposition.” One can also discern thisstructural feature in the G-minor A section of the act IIIPrelude to Die Meistersinger. See Krop� nger, “Wagners

Tristan und Beethovens Streichquartett op. 130: Funktionund Strukturen des Prinzips der Einleitungswiederholung,”in Das Drama Richard Wagners, p. 271.



230

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

contrapuntal fantasy in the Prelude, also set forstrings, recalls the developmental episodes inBeethoven’s movement (esp. mm. 63ff. in op.131, movt. I). The sustained allusion to op.131’s fugal movement further interrelates theA and C sections, while weakening their rela-tionship to the chorale. The dissociation of Bfrom A and C presages the elision of the choralefrom the Prelude’s reprise section.

“Architectonic” similarities between op. 131and Die Meistersinger are best examined inconjunction with their respective Wagneriannarratives. Indeed, it is my hypothesis that theprogrammatic coincidence between the opera’splot and Wagner’s Erläuterung for op. 131 wasthe primary factor that motivated him to selectthis speci� c Beethovenian model for DieMeistersinger. Wagner discusses the programfor op. 131 in three places: the Erläuterung,“On Conducting,” and “Beethoven.” In theErläuterung, Wagner presents the entire Quar-tet as the “re� ection” (Gegenbild) of a day inthe life of a saint, a day in which “not one wishwill be ful� lled—not one!”43 The � rst move-ment represents the morning’s melancholy“awakening,” during which the saintly � guresays a penitential prayer (Bussgebet) and con-fronts God with his belief in the eternally Good.The � rst movement is then interrupted by a“recognizably consoling phenomenon,” corre-sponding to the playful D-major movement in68. At the beginning of the Finale, where the � rstmovement’s fugal subject returns, Wagner dis-covers “the dance of the world itself: wild de-sire, painful complaint, love’s rapture, highestjoy, wailing, anger, voluptuousness and suffer-ing; there lightning blazes and thunder growls:and above everything the monstrous puppeteer(Spielmann). . . : he laughs at himself, since thissorcery was only a game for him.”44

Wagner’s program for op. 131 correspondsclosely to the narrative of frustration in DieMeistersinger. The saint at the center of thisdrama is Sachs—he is, after all, compared to anEngel in the Cobbling Song. Sachs’s day of trialis thus his name day, Johannestag. The Pre-lude, which is involved in a larger operaticpattern of Prelude, Scene (exchange with David),and Aria (Wahn-monologue),45 mediates be-tween the late-night tumult of St. John’s Eveand the “morning sun” of St. John’s Day thatwill brighten Sachs’s workshop; within the dra-matic time span of the Prelude, the “Wach’auf” call of the chorale may mark a literal aswell as � gurative dawn. In correlation to the“morning prayer,” the chorale supplies the sa-cred emblem of beatitude, while the CobblingSong quotation � nds Sachs in a posture of in-nocent supplication, his eyes turned upward—indeed, the original text of the Song quotationrefers explicitly to the heavens.46 David’s play-ful motive in D major enters similarly to the“recognizably consoling phenomenon” inBeethoven’s second movement. The stormy re-turn of the main theme in op. 131’s Finalematches the beginning of Sachs’s diatribe inact III, sc. 4, when his desires are ultimatelyfrustrated.47 Finally, the composer, that all-con-trolling Spielmann, discloses his presence withthe signature motive from Tristan und Isolde,a gesture that smacks of self-parody.

The self-reference brings to light an impor-tant aspect of Wagner’s understanding ofBeethoven’s achievements and his own. Because

45Darcy, “In Search of C Major,” p. 4.46As several scholars have observed, Wagner’s predilectionfor F. G. Waldmüller’s 1823 portrait of the deaf Beethovenwith upturned, “hearing eyes” is re� ected in the image ofBeethoven that he presents in his 1870 essay on the com-poser. See Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image ofBeethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (New York: Rizzoli,1987), p. 295; Krop� nger, Wagner and Beethoven, pp. 1–2;both are cited and discussed in K. M. Knittel, “Wagner,Deafness, and the Reception of Beethoven’s Late Style,”Journal of the American Musicological Society 51 (1998),49–82.47Joseph Kerman calls attention to the “violence of [theFinale’s] main theme, its pent-up emotion, its wildness. . . angry, operatic gestural quality” (Beethoven Quartets,pp. 342–43). If one accepts the hypothesis of op. 131 as amodel for Die Meistersinger, then Wagner successfully re-alized his ambition to transfer Beethoven’s quasi-operaticgestures into a suitable dramatic context.

43Joseph Kerman notes that the phrase “nicht einenWunsch!” is an allusion to Goethe’s Faust. See hisBeethoven Quartets (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p.330.44“Das ist der Tanz der Welt selbst: wilde Lust,schmerzliche Klage, Liebesentzücken, höchste Wonne, Jam-mer, Rasen, Wollust und Leid; da zuckt es wie Blitze,Wetter grollen: und über Allem der ungeheure Spielmann,der Alles zwingt und bannt, stolz und sicher vom Wirbelzum Strudel, zum Abgrund geleitet:—er lächelt über sichselbst, da ihm dieses Zaubern doch nur ein Spiel war”(RWGS, VIII, 180).



231


op. 131 is most signi� cant to Wagner as anautobiographical document, it receives its mostelaborate interpretation not, as one might ex-pect, in the Erläuterung dedicated to it, but inthe “Beethoven” essay. According to Wagner’shermeneutics, compositions represented coun-terparts to the composer’s innermost thoughtsand moods. Die Meistersinger provides an ex-ample of these hermeneutics within his ownœuvre. As we know from his correspondence,he identi� ed strongly with the opera’s protago-nist, the doubly talented “Schuster und Poet.”In accordance with a biographical tradition dat-ing from Wagner’s own lifetime, Die Meister-singer is a sort of Schlüsseloper, in which Sachsrenounces his desire for Eva, just as Wagnerrenounced his passion for Mathilde Wesen-donck. Sharing the experience of frustration,the various identities intermingling in theserelated programs—Beethoven, Sachs, Wagner—seem to blend together.

The qualities of the idealist are re� ected inthe three characteristics that underpin Wagner’simage of Beethoven: an introspective musicalmind, religious faith and optimism, and an“emancipating tendency in his art.”48 The shortbiographical summary that immediately pre-cedes the discussion of op. 131 in the“Beethoven” essay contextualizes these char-acteristics, which are thrown into sharp reliefby the experience of frustration. Sti� ed by Jesu-itical dogma in Vienna, Beethoven had tostruggle to maintain his identity and values.Although he was himself baptized and raised asa Catholic, “the whole spirit of German Protes-tantism lived in him.” As a musician, Beethovenfollowed the example of J. S. Bach and em-braced his “miraculous work” (Wunderwerk)as “the bible of his faith.” In the “magic bookof the necromancer [Bach], who let the light ofthe macrocosm shine over the microcosm,”Beethoven came to understand the sacred powerof music and became himself a saint (einHeiliger). His sainthood was both a blessingand a curse; his visions of truth and beautybrought him into con� ict with a fallen world.Within this world, optimism was a “mistake”that would “revenge itself through increased

suffering and sensitivity to [this suffering].”49

Disillusioned, the saint will “always fall fromthe paradise of his inner harmony back into thehell of the horribly dissonant (disharmonisch)existence, a situation which he may again andat last resolve harmoniously (sich harmonischaufzulösen) as an artist.”50 This general descrip-tion of the saintly predicament � ows into thediscussion of op. 131, a work of musical litera-ture (Tondichtung) that, for Wagner, depictsBeethoven’s inner life according to the para-digm of disillusionment.

This narrative, in conjunction with certainmusical features, relates the act III Prelude tothe Beethovenian legacy. The � rst movementof the String Quartet and Wagner’s Prelude bothpay homage to Bach by appropriating eigh-teenth-century polyphonic textures. The evan-gelical outburst of the chorale illustrates the“macrocosm”—the milieu of an enlightened,Lutheran Volk—shining forth its G-major re-demption on the darker counterpoint of the G-minor “microcosm.” The disillusionment ofthe saint and his concomitant increase in suf-fering have three possible musical representa-tions in the Prelude: in the dissonant clash asthe idealistic vision of the Cobbling Song meetsthe all-too-human sexual desire represented inthe contrapuntal fantasy; in the “agony” chordthat estranges the chorale from the renewedKlageruf; and in the suppression of the choralefrom the reprise section. Although the abruptmove from the chorale to the dissonant harmo-nization of the Klageruf in the reprise perfectlyrealizes the saint’s fall from paradise into the“disharmonisches Dasein” of the mortal world,the consonant resolution (note the wordplay inharmonisch sich aufzulösen; Au�ösung alsorefers to a resolution in music) of this dilemmadoes not seem to form part of the Prelude.While the self-parodic quotation of Tristan, the� nal station of the opera’s op. 131-derived“Architechtonik,” spotlights the arti� ce of the

48Krop� nger, Wagner and Beethoven, p. 65.

49“Der Irrtum des Optimisten rächt sich nun durchVerstärkung dieser Leiden und seiner Emp� ndlichkeitdagegen” (RWGS, VIII, 179).50“So fällt er aus dem Paradiese seiner inneren Harmonieimmer in die Hölle des furchtbar disharmonischen Daseinszurück, welches er wiederum nur als Künstler endlichharmonisch sich aufzulösen weiß” (ibid.).



232

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

artist (Künstler), it is too dissonant and incon-clusive to resolve the painful vision ofhumankind’s fallenness as expressed in theKlageruf.

Large-scale tonal design may solve the prob-lem of consonant resolution in the Prelude.The “search for C major,” which Warren Darcyproposes as the overarching tonal narrative forDie Meistersinger, involves the G-major Pre-lude musically and programmatically. The Pre-lude-as-structural-dominant receives local andglobal resolutions. It is locally resolved to Cmajor at the end of the Wahn-monologue. Here,Sachs seizes on a solution to end the socialdisunity in Nuremberg—he will use his inge-nuity as an artist “to steer madness with � -nesse” (Wahn fein zu lenken). The Prelude’sstructural dominant is resolved at the end ofthe opera, by which point Sachs has squelchedhis individual desires and successfully engi-neered social unity.

An alternative response denies that the op-era ever resolves the pessimistic vision of thePrelude.51 Wherever the Klageruf reappears inact III, it helps sustain the negative valuationof the world contained in the Prelude. Its con-sistent appearance after the C-major Prize Songexpresses skepticism toward musical and pro-grammatic Au�ösung in general.52 Sachs’s lastword, the admonition “Hab’ Acht!”, broadensthis skepticism into a communal value. Ac-cording to this perspective, the concept ofWahn, associated since the beginning of act IIIwith the Klageruf, is an integral aspect of real-ity toward which the only proper attitude isresignation. Whether appearing in the form ofdeception, cruelty, inconstancy, lust, or someother vice, Wahn is the engine behind all hu-man affairs. This Schopenhauerian insight, ly-ing at the core of Die Meistersinger, may haveprohibited Wagner from silencing the Klageruf,the sound of suffering.

Thomas Grey has drawn attention to the“disruptive fanfares” in the slow movementsof Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphoniesthat anticipate the “momentous” arrival of their� nal movements, a proleptic technique linkingBeethoven’s work with Wagner’s.53 In DieMeistersinger, however, the “red thread” underexamination traces not a positive but a nega-tive trajectory within a narrative of frustration.Even after this narrative reaches its terminuswith the Tristan quotation, the Klageruf con-tinues to appear in a deliberate deferral of “con-sonant resolution.” The act III Prelude, in whichthe redemption of the “Wach’ auf” gesture issubsequently negated by the renewed Klageruf,embodies the act’s large-scale narrative designand exploits its speci� c technique of leitmotivicdeferral. If the Overture sports the grin of com-edy, the Prelude rotates the dramatic mask toexpose the saturnine grimace of tragedy. As theemblem for disillusionment and resignation,the Prelude represents the concise philosophi-cal statement of the opera.

IIIIf the allusion to op. 131’s � rst movement

accounts well for the texture of the A and Csections in the Prelude, the best compositionalprecedent for the difference between the A andB sections is Berlioz’s Harold en Italie. In theintroduction to the � rst movement of this sym-phony, a G-minor fugue begins slowly in thelow strings, eventually yielding to Harold’s idyl-lic G-major idée �xe. A passage in the “OpenLetter to Liszt” proves Wagner’s direct knowl-edge of this work.54 Liszt’s contemporaneoustract, “Berlioz und seine Harold-Symphonie”(1855), exalts it as an exemplar for programmusicians. To pay homage to Berlioz in the actIII Prelude, a piece composed in 1862 at theheight of New German rhetorical fervor,strongly allies Wagner with this aestheticschool.

Liszt’s “Berlioz” essay represents a mani-festo for this school, which valued the inven-tion of new forms according to a literary

51In contrast, the irritant in Tristan, the so-called Sehn-suchtsmotiv, appears in the very last measures of thatopera as if resolved within a plagal cadence in B major.52Compare Michael Tanner’s assessment that the Klageruf’s“expressive burden is just that—a burden. The fact thatSachs responds over and over again to the Prize song withpain suggests that he � nds in it, for all his admiration,something of a promise which he knows cannot be ful-� lled” (Tanner, “Wagner and Sachs,” p. 96).

53Grey, Wagner’s Musical Prose, p. 105.54“Über Franz Liszts symphonische Dichtungen,” GSD, V,194.



233


impulse rather than composing abstractTonspiele—an aesthetic priority conveyed inthe coinage, “symphonic poem.” Accordingly,he spends more time discussing the introduc-tion to the � rst movement’s sonata form, asection often reserved for compositional ex-perimentation, than the sonata form itself.55

The main attraction of Berlioz’s introductionfor Liszt was its careful design of diametricalcontrast, a feature that would not have escapedthe attention of the composer of the act IIIPrelude.

Not only compositional details but also ge-nealogy of form interrelate New German aes-thetics and the act III Prelude. A musical genreenjoined to dramatic purpose, the overture isinvoked by both Wagner and Liszt as the prede-cessor to program music. Furthermore, thePrelude’s dual responsibility—to introduce dra-matic action and simultaneously serve as anautonomous concert piece—transforms it intoa case study for aesthetics in mid- to late-nineteenth-century classical music. Grey’s “aes-thetic schizophrenia” and Dahlhaus’s “twofoldtruth” describe the tensions gripping composi-tion at this time.56 The imperative to unfoldmusic organically from within opposed the im-perative to represent an externally imposed nar-rative. These two compositional approaches,the “esoteric” and the “exoteric” respectively,were loosely correlated with speci� c sectors ofthe audience—the connoisseurs and the masses.In the “Berlioz” essay, Liszt espouses typicalNew German values by upholding the “exo-teric” approach. The “berufener Musiker” (mu-sician by calling) and “dichtender Symphonist”(poeticizing symphonist) distinguish themselvesfrom the “mere,” “speci� c,” and “professionalmusician” by allowing the Idea to give birth tothe musical work. Moreover, an intimacy be-tween composers and their compositions is as-sumed. When the composer does not “speak to

people either of his pains or joys, nor of hisrenunciation or desire, he remains indifferentto the masses and interests only those contem-poraries who are able to judge his skill.”57

As testimony to contemporary aesthetic de-bates, the Prelude foregrounds the con� ict be-tween the esoteric and the exoteric in the di-chotomy represented by the A and the B sec-tions. Wagner describes fugal counterpoint,which exists in the A section, as “the arti� cialplay of art with itself, the mathematics of feel-ing, the mechanical rhythm of egoistic har-mony.”58 An opaque texture and overly regu-lated compositional process made counterpointinto the very image of a socially alienated artthat “exists for itself alone.”59 In contrast, thechorale is the music of a uni� ed multitude,speci� cally the German Volk of the LutheranReformation. Partly due to the generality ofLiszt’s terms, felicitous coincidences arise be-tween the Prelude’s content and the exotericmessage of the program composer: the “painsand joys” of the � rst A section and both Bsections, respectively, yield to the “desire” and“renunciation” of the C section and the reprisesection.

In the Prelude, esotericism is present in amore positive form as a Kunst des Übergangs.The permutation of one theme into another(for example, the Klageruf into A’s fugal sub-ject or C’s canonic motive into the Eva motive)and the seamless interweaving of musical sec-tions (for example, B with C) shape the musicinto an organically unfolding event.60 The

55Franz Liszt, “Berlioz und seine Harold-Symphonie,”Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, ed. L. Ramann (Leipzig:Breitkopf and Härtel, 1882), pp. 76–81.56Dahlhaus, “The Twofold Truth in Wagner’s Aesthetics:Nietzsche’s Fragment ‘On Music and Words’,” in BetweenRomanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Musicof the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,1980), pp. 19–39.

57“Das er aber zu den Menschen weder von seinenSchmerzen und Freuden, noch von seinem Entsagen undBegehren spricht, so bleibt er den Massen gleichgültig undinteressirt nur die Zeitgenossen, die seine Fertigkeit zubeurteilen im Stande sind” (Liszt, “Berlioz und seineHarold-Symphonie,” pp. 48–49).58“Das künstliche Mitsichselbstspielen der Kunst, dieMathematik des Gefühls, der mechanische Rhythmus deregoistischen Harmonie” (“Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,”GSD, X, 95).59“In seiner Er� ndung ge�el sich die abstrakte Tonkunstdermassen, dass sie sich einzig und allein als absolute, fürsich bestehende Kunst ausgab” (ibid., p. 95).60On thematic resemblances, see Dahlhaus, RichardWagner’s Music Dramas, pp. 78–79; on Wagnerian musicdrama as an “unfolding event,” see Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley andLos Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 195–206.



234

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

artwork that results from combining suchesotericism and exotericism is a “a sequence ofsoul-states” (eine Folge von Seelenzuständen)—a concept of music popularized by A. B. Marx’sstudy of Beethoven and widely promoted bythe New Germans.61 In this formulation, theexoteric (the recognizable soul-states) and theesoteric (the musician’s careful layout and or-dering of these states) merge symbiotically toform a Gesamtästhetik designed to appeal toconnoisseur and pedestrian tastes alike.62 InDie Meistersinger, the facility to move betweensocially differentiated strata � nds its embodi-ment in the great individual of Hans Sachs,who is both Cobbler and Poet. The Prelude isnot only a portrait of Sachs’s inner life but alsoa paean to the breadth and depth of any greatindividual who, to borrow a phrase from earlyNietzsche, can “organize Chaos” and juxtaposeantipodes. It is perhaps unnecessary to add thatthe great individual behind the Prelude (Wagner)is, from one perspective, the great individual ofthe Prelude.

A biblical metaphor in Liszt’s “Berlioz” tractfurther expands the signi� cance of dichotomiesin the Prelude. Midway through the essay, Lisztcompares reactionary composers to the “Phari-sees of the Old Testament,” who cleave to “theLetter of the Law, even at the risk of killing itsSpirit.” In an 1849 libretto draft for an operaentitled “Jesus of Nazareth,” Wagner cites thesame biblical verse. Thirteen years later,Wagner’s juxtaposition in the Prelude of anarcane fugal texture and a sacred polyphony infree chorale style would set this con� ict intones.63

The Spirit of the Law, Liszt continues, isembodied in the Love of the New Testament,which inspires progressive artists to strive to-ward the In� nite (das Unendliche), the Ideal,and the Beautiful.64 Wagner’s “Open Letter” onLiszt’s symphonic poems, written in the periodbetween the publication of Liszt’s “Berlioz”essay and the composition of the act III Pre-lude, transposes this dichotomy from the realmof production to the sphere of reception. Thecharge of incomprehensible formlessness lev-eled at Liszt’s newest compositions by the “em-bittered guardians” of tradition is nulli� ed bythe testimony of a more enlightened audiencethat experiences, during the performance of thenew artwork, a “sudden elevation from its ha-bitual mode of perception.”65 Whereas the tra-ditionalists are paralyzed by their fear of theNew, an enlightened few are able to overcomethe alienation estranging artwork from recipi-ent by adopting an attitude of Love toward theartist. In Wagner’s essay, Love allows listenersan empathetic insight into the mysterious work-ings of the individual artist, enabling them toview the work through the eyes of its creatorand thereby to grasp its signi� cance. In DieMeistersinger, one may recognize at least threecorrelatives to Wagner’s theory of reception:the eruption of the chorale at m. 16 of the actIII Prelude, jolting listeners out of their ha-bitual modes of perception; the dramatic ideabehind the chorale, the love for Sachs that in-spires the people of Nuremberg to perform aspontaneous celebration of their cultural hero;the empathetic gesture whereby the Folk hon-ors Sachs by performing his own composition,the “Wach’ auf” chorale. In singing both his

61Compare Liszt, “Berlioz und seine Harold-Symphonie,”p. 34.62With a metaphor that Thomas Mann enjoyed to quote,Nietzsche described the simultaneous appeal of Wagner’smusic to high- and lowbrow audiences as its “double vi-sion” (doppelte Optik).63In Wagner’s German, the reference to Romans 7:6 reads“im neuen Wesen des Geistes und nicht im alten Wesendes Buchstabens” (“Jesus von Nazareth,” RWGS, VI, 239).Compare this reference to a modern English edition of thisverse: “But now we are discharged from the law, dead tothat which held us captive, so that we are slaves not underthe old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” (TheHarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Ver-sion, ed. Wayne A. Meeks [1st edn. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993], p. 2125).

64“Leider müssen wir eingestehen, dass zwischen denberufenen und den professionellen Musikern ein heimlichlodernder, aber unversöhnlicher Streit besteht. Die letzterenhalten sich, wie die Pharisäer des alten Bundes, an denBuchstaben des Gesetzes, selbst auf die Gefahr hin seinenGeist zu tödten. Sie sind ohne Verständnis für die im neuenTestament geoffenbarte Liebe, für den Durst nach demUnendlichen, für den Traum von einem Ideal, für dasStreben nach dem Poetischschönen unter allen Formen”(Liszt, “Berlioz und seine Harold-Symphonie,” p. 59).65“Sie wissen, dass dies meine gute Meinung über dasPublikum bestätigte, von dem wir allerdings nichts andres,als eine plötzliche Erhebung aus seinem gewohntenAnschauungswesen verlangen dürfen” (“Über Franz Lisztssymphonische Dichtungen,” GSD, V, 196).



235


music and his poetry, the Folk not only partici-pates in the artwork but completes it throughits realization.

Sachs’s poem “Die Wittemberg’sche Nachti-gall,” on which the “Wach’ auf” chorale isbased, might have stimulated Wagner to repre-sent biblical programs in the Prelude. In thepoem, the song of the nightingale (MartinLuther) awakens the sheep (the faithful congre-gation) from their slumber and leads them outfrom the clutches of the wolves (the Romanclergy) into safe pastures.66 So too does the cryof “Wach’ auf!” initiate the movement in thePrelude from the dark fugal music of the “Phari-sees” to the luminous Lutheran chorale, whichwill be sung on the pastures of Nuremberg.Moreover, just as the dominant-tonic cadencesetting the resurrection formula “Wach’ auf!”simultaneously launches the love-suffused cho-rale and terminates the esoteric fugue, so toodoes the Jesus of Wagner’s libretto at oncelaunch a new sacred era and annihilate the“wise and learned men” with the simple truththat “God is love.”67

Liszt’s biblical metaphor also interacts withplot elements within the opera. The bass fugaltexture harks back to an act I scene in whichthe Guild members form a critical jury. AfterBeckmesser lists the various improprieties ofWalther’s Spring Song, the Guild memberschime in slowly and softly with a fugal subjectbeneath the phrase, “Man ward nicht klug”(We did not understand it), con� rmingBeckmesser’s negative verdict. The mandarinMastersingers, whose myopic adherence to out-moded laws threatens them with cultural irrel-evance, resemble Liszt’s Pharisees, a similarlyexclusive association whose meager wisdomlies in “self-opinionated squabbling and sterile,pointless inquiries into the subtleties of therules.”68 The subject of the contrapuntal “criti-

cism” in the Prelude, however, is not Walther’sSong but Sachs’s signature Klageruf. The juxta-position of the Klageruf with its critical recep-tion (the fugal exposition) evokes a scene fromthe Gospel of John. When asked by the Phari-sees’ messengers who John is, he responds, “Iam the voice of one crying out in the wilder-ness” (John 1:23). As Wagner indicates in thelibretto, John the Baptist is Sachs’s typologicalpartner on the opera’s plane of biblical meta-phor; in the Prelude, John’s vox clamantis indeserto becomes Sachs’s Klageruf.

Interpreting the Prelude’s fugal expositionas a representation of dissonant “squabbling”leads one to imagine a more general signi� -cance for counterpoint in Die Meistersinger, aproject outlined and proposed by LudwigFinscher over thirty years ago.69 The act II riot,itself an ampli� ed version of the act I melee inthe Guild,70 presents counterpoint as noise, theaural equivalent of the ensuing violence onstage.The juxtaposition of the act II riot and thePrelude invites the listener to interpret the fugaltexture as a sublimation of the preceding vio-lence—the Guild’s hostility differing only indegree, not in kind, from the hostility of theNuremberg citizenry. Ludwig Finscher’s de-scription of the contrapuntal episodes in thePrelude as “meditative” may extend this inter-pretation further in two ways.71 One might un-derstand the Prelude to unfold Sachs’s thoughts,and the fugal exposition may represent his medi-tation on the Guild; its extremely slow temposimulates his intense scrutiny of the Guild’sdiscourse and tenets. If the Prelude is both acornerstone within Wagner’s “most perfect mas-terpiece” and a general testament to artisticachievement (as suggested by its involvementwith Beethoven’s legacy and New German aes-

66For a description of the poem, see Warrack, RichardWagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, pp. 55–56.67Wagner, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Jesus of Nazareth and OtherWritings, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Lincoln: Universityof Nebraska Press, 1995), VIII, 305.68“Ihre Weisheit besteht in rechthaberischem Streiten, insterilen müssigen Untersuchungen über Subtilitäten derRegel” (Liszt, “Berlioz und seine Harold-Symphonie,” p.59). In a related programmatic context, subterranean con-trapuntal texture may represent intrigue, as in Verdi’s Un

ballo in maschera. One might also wish to compare theGuild to the Knights of the Grail in Parsifal, an elite, all-male group shackled to tradition and threatened by super-annuation.69Finscher, “Über den Kontrapunkt,” p. 309.70Groos remarks that “the same Nuremberg citizens whoseem so united in their choral profession of faith are ca-pable of the personal antagonisms that set them againsteach other in the contrapuntal riot at the end of act II—apublic escalation of the fragility already revealed withinthe guild of the Mastersingers at the end of act I” (Groos,“Constructing Nuremberg,” p. 23).71Finscher, “Über den Kontrapunkt,” pp. 303–09.



236

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

thetics), then the fugal exposition may repre-sent the composer’s meditation on his owncraft. The slightly vagrant tonality of both thefugal exposition and the contrapuntal fantasyin the Prelude hints at the danger implicit inall tonal counterpoint. Just as the individualegos of the Mastersingers spawn dissensionwithin the Guild, the independence of melodiclines threatens to destroy the coherence of aharmonic context. While showcasing composi-tional skill, tonal counterpoint is neverthelessan act that coerces potentially disparate ele-ments (“voices”) into regulated matrices. Onceone glimpses the disconcerting alternative tosuch regulation, however arbitrary it mayseem,72 in the unstable and nameless harmo-

nies of Tristan, one better grasps the import ofwhat Dahlhaus has called “second diatonicism”in Die Meistersinger—a tonal dialect whosedegree of chromaticism exposes the diatonicelement as arti� cial without disrupting its regu-latory function.73 The price of social harmony,for people as well as tones, is self-abnegation.To ward off the temptations of a desocializingWahn and resign oneself to this reality, thePrelude tells us, is as great a challenge asany facing the individual.

72Thinking in particular of Wotan in The Ring, Adornowrites that “in Wagner, law is unmasked as the equivalentof lawlessness” (Theodor Adorno, In Search of Wagner[Versuch über Wagner, 1952], trans. Rodney Livingstone[Manchester: New Left Books, 1981], pp. 117–18). 73Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 205.



Documents

Puri - The Ecstasy and the Agony