One hundred TwenTy-SeCOnd SeASOn Chicago Symphony ...

Program Global Sponsor of the CSO

One Hundred Twenty-Second Season

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti Music Director

Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus
Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant

Thursday, March 14, 2013, at 8:00
Friday, March 15, 2013, at 8:00
Saturday, March 16, 2013, at 8:00

Asher Fisch Conductor
Michael Barenboim Violin

Wagner
Siegfried Idyll

Schoenberg
Violin Concerto, Op. 36

Poco allegro
Andante grazioso
Allegro

Michael Barenboim

Intermission

Mahler
Adagio from Symphony No. 10

Wagner
Prelude to Parsifal

This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Comments by Phillip Huscher

Richard Wagner
Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany.
Died February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy.

Siegfried Idyll R. is her beloved Richard,
and two of the five children are
Although Cosima Wagner was Cosima’s from her previous mar-
born on December 24, she riage to Hans von Bülow, whom
chose to celebrate her birthday she abruptly left for the man that
on the twenty-fifth. Her diary even Hans, a talented pianist and
entry for Sunday, December 25, conductor, admitted to be his
1870, reads: superior in the world of music.
The other three are five-year-old
When I woke up I heard a Isolde; Eva, three; and Siegfried,
sound, it grew ever louder, I eighteen months—Cosima and
could no longer imagine myself Richard Wagner’s children, all born
in a dream, music was sound- before their marriage on August 25,
ing, and what music! After it 1870. Tribschen is the name of the
had died away, R. came in to house on a promontory overlooking
me with the five children and Lake Lucerne, where Cosima and
put into my hands the score Richard made their home. Tribschen
of his “symphonic birthday Idyll is, of course, the Sieg fried
greeting.” I was in tears, but so, Idyll—though it wasn’t given that
too, was the whole household; name for many years, after the
R. had set up his orchestra on Wagners elected to publish their
the stairs and thus consecrated private musical communication in
our Tribschen forever! The exchange for a nice sum of money.
Tribschen Idyll—so the work
is called . . .

Composed First CSO Instrumentation
1870 performance flute, oboe, two clarinets,
March 4, 1892, Auditorium bassoon, two horns,
First performances Theatre. Theodore trumpet, strings
private: December 25, Thomas conducting
1870; Tribschen, Lake Approximate
Lucerne, Switzerland. The Most recent CSO performance time
composer conducting performance 18 minutes
October 23, 2007,
public: December 20, 1871; Orchestra Hall. Bernard CSO recording
Mannheim, Germany Haitink conducting 1999. Daniel Barenboim
conducting. Teldec

2

(“The secret treasure is to become private joys: the domestic bliss of
public property,” Cosima wrote in married life after years of secretive-
her diary.) ness and scandal, the long-hoped-

Richard and Cosima first Richard and Cosima Wagner, 1872
declared their love for each other
on November 28, 1863 (like all for birth of a son, his undying love
the important events in their life for Cosima, and the composition of
together—and many of much lesser Sieg fried (which in turn promised
significance—it is well docu- the completion of the Ring, the
mented); at the time, both were single greatest artistic achievement
married to others—she to Bülow, of his life). It was designed to be
who was a student of her father, performed on the steps leading up
Franz Liszt; he to Minna Planer, an to Cosima’s bedroom at Tribschen,
actress four years his senior, from and its instrumentation was
whom he was estranged. The union dictated by the size of the staircase.
between Richard and Cosima was (The first performance was given
consummated in June 1864. The by thirteen or fifteen players—
following years brought artistic regarding this detail, oddly, there is
triumphs and personal scandals conflicting evidence.) The piece was
as well as an astonishing mixture secretly rehearsed by the conduc-
of private and professional events, tor Hans Richter, who learned to
including the birth of Isolde,
Richard and Cosima’s first child,
on the very day that Bülow, still
Cosima’s husband, began orchestral
rehearsals for Wagner’s newest
work, Tristan and Isolde.

In 1869, after the triumphant
premieres of Tristan and Isolde and
Die Meistersinger, Wagner resumed
work on the Ring (which he had
abandoned twelve years earlier),
beginning with act 3 of Sieg fried.
In June his only son, inevitably
named Siegfried, was born. The fol-
lowing year, the Bülows’ marriage
was legally dissolved (Wagner’s
wife Minna had died in 1866), and
on August 25, Richard and Cosima
were married in the Protestant
church in Lucerne. Wagner once
called 1870 the happiest year of
his life.

Wagner composed the Tribschen
Idyll later that year to celebrate his

3

play the trumpet especially for the 1877—remains Wagner’s only
occasion (the part is just twelve instrumental work that is regu-
measures long). larly played. The main theme is a
generous and lilting melody sung
The Idyll, an astonishingly beau- by Brünnhilde in act 3 of Sieg fried
tiful and extravagant birthday gift to the words beginning “Ewig war
from a man not always known for ich” (I always was, I always am,
his generosity, was performed three always in sweet yearning bliss).
times on Christmas Day in 1870. Wagner claimed that this music
After the early morning, wake- came to him during the summer of
up-call premiere, the household 1864 at the Villa Pellet, overlook-
stopped for breakfast. The players ing Lake Starnberg, where he and
then reassembled and the piece was Cosima consummated their union.
repeated, followed by the wedding (He is contradicted, however, by
march from Lohengrin, Beethoven’s his own obsessive record keeping:
Septet, and yet another perfor- the melody was composed that
mance of the Idyll. November 14, when he was alone
in Munich.) A second theme,
Cosima was used to hearing introduced by the oboe, is a lullaby
snatches of extraordinary music Wagner jotted down on New Year’s
around the house, but she immedi- Eve 1868. The music is unusually
ately recognized that the Idyll was intimate and restrained for a com-
unique in her husband’s output. poser who lived a life of excess. It’s
Wagner called the Idyll a sym- the most personal of all his works:
phony in the autograph score, and, the title page of the published
when it was published in 1877, he score refers to “Fidi-Birdsong and
described it as a “symphonic birth- Orange Sunrise”; Fidi was a favor-
day greeting.” He had struggled ite nickname for little Siegfried,
with symphonic form as a young and the sunrise was the “incredibly
composer—he remained fond of beautiful, fiery glow,” in Cosima’s
a very Beethovenian symphony words, of the wallpaper in his room
in C major that he had composed when it was struck by the morn-
when he was twenty-nine—and ing sun. More than any other of
continued to sketch ideas for other Wagner’s scores, the Sieg fried Idyll
symphonies into his last years. marries the private and public sides
The month before his death, he of the most famous composer of the
spoke to Cosima about a single- nineteenth century. The Siegfried
movement symphonic work in of the title is both the third music
which the melodies would flow one drama of the Ring cycle and
into another. Wagner’s son—who was destined to
carry his father’s name and beaked
The Siegfried Idyll—this title silhouette into the next century. 
apparently dates from a
performance in Meiningen in

4

Arnold Schoenberg
Born September 13, 1874, Vienna, Austria.
Died July 31, 1951, Los Angeles, California.

Violin Concerto, Op. 36

In the summer of 1936, Arnold ill-at-ease, in its depiction of an
Schoenberg, his wife Gertrude, individual voice within the larger
and their four-year-old daughter society of the orchestra, and in its
Nuria moved into a new house on uncomfortable conflict between
the now infamous Rockingham tradition and novelty—between
Avenue in Brentwood Park, a conventional forms and a still-new
suburb of Los Angeles. That twelve-tone technique.
September, as he settled into the
place he would live for the rest Schoenberg was a man torn
of his life, Schoenberg finished between worlds. He left Germany
his Violin Concerto, one of the in 1933, following Hitler’s rise to
landmarks of modern music and power, passed through Paris, taught
the piece he later called his favorite briefly in Boston, and settled in
of all his orchestral works. Los Angeles the following year.
In January 1936, when he wrote
For Schoenberg, this was a to Alma Mahler Werfel (twenty-
time of many dichotomies, not five years after Gustav died, she
least of all the mere presence of was married to the novelist Franz
the stern-faced Viennese master Werfel) about the death of his for-
in sunny L.A.—the awkward- mer student Alban Berg in Vienna,
ness of his having settled in a city he complained about his new life
of freeways neatly symbolized in a big American city that didn’t
by the fact that he didn’t even appreciate his music. (Writing
have a driver’s license. The Violin “Hollywood” at the top of his letter
Concerto reflects Schoenberg’s state surely reminded Schoenberg just
of mind as an exile, uprooted and how far removed he was from the

Composed Most recent CSO four horns, three trumpets,
1934–September 23, 1936 three trombones and tuba,
performance timpani, glockenspiel,
First performance February 24, 2004, xylophone, bass drum,
December 6, 1940; Orchestra Hall. Nikolaj cymbals, tam-tam, triangle,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Znaider, violin; Daniel military drum, snare drum,
Barenboim conducting tambourine, strings
First CSO
performance Instrumentation Approximate
April 24, 1969, Orchestra solo violin, three flutes performance time
Hall. Esther Glazer, violin; and piccolo, three oboes, 33 minutes
Irwin Hoffman conducting clarinet, E-flat clarinet and
bass clarinet, three bas- 5
soons and contrabassoon,

intellectual circles of turn-of-the counterpart to his two famous
century Vienna, but times had Viennese pupils, Anton Webern
changed, and even Alma moved and Alban Berg. The father of
to California in 1940.) Now, at the Second Viennese School had
the age of sixty-two, he was barely become an Angeleno. Schoenberg’s
making enough money to support American conversion was relatively
his family, and he worried that swift and surprisingly easy—in
he wouldn’t be able to finish the no time, he was tuning the radio
theoretical works and compositions to football games and picking up
he had already started, including a street lingo like “Take it easy.”
violin concerto begun in a rented In 1938, the inventor of twelve-
house in Hollywood and packed for tone music was even invited to
the move to Rockingham. the Academy Awards to present
the Oscar for best film score. (He
But Schoenberg began to put became ill and had to cancel, but
down roots. In 1936, he talked of he was thrilled that his speech was
building a house in L.A. for his read aloud in his absence.)
family, regretting that Adolf Loos,
the great Viennese architect, had The Violin Concerto reflects
recently died. He always had felt Schoenberg’s status as a man
that he and Loos were kindred spir- between both countries and tradi-
its and fellow adventurers—unlike tions. In 1933, Schoenberg had
the other members of his artistic warmed up for the new project by
generation, whom he dismissed as completely reworking two pieces of
“rather restrained, hesitant, always eighteenth-century music—a key-
staying a few steps back, follow- board concerto by Georg Matthias
ing along only when it was high Monn that he turned into a cello
time”—and he would have enjoyed concerto, and a concerto grosso
their collaboration. He considered by Handel that became a work for
turning to the Viennese modernist string quartet and orchestra—so
Richard Neutra, who had recently the pull of the past was very strong
relocated to California and who as he set to work on a new score in
had “Viennese taste,” but instead, a new country.
Schoenberg bought a newly built
house in Brentwood—a California Schoenberg began the first
Mediterranean affair befitting a movement in 1934, composed
movie star (and down the street the rest of the concerto late in the
from Shirley Temple’s home). summer of 1936, and dedicated
it to Anton Webern, his “dear
In Los Angeles, the man who had friend and fellow warrior.” Otto
once befriended Gustav Mahler Klemperer, the conductor of the
and Richard Strauss now played Los Angeles Philharmonic, talked
tennis with George Gershwin and about premiering the piece in L.A.,
hung out with Charlie Chaplin. London, and Moscow during the
He soon took on a promising new 1937–38 season, but it was another
student—John Cage, an L.A. “warrior,” Leopold Stokowski, who

6

conducted the first performances in performance of an important work
Philadelphia in 1940. Always out- of mine,” he told Krasner.
spoken and forward-looking (he led
the American premieres of Mahler’s Although Schoenberg habitually
Eighth Symphony and Stravinsky’s gave the impression that he was
Rite of Spring), Stokowski nearly writing music without concern for
lost his job for programming its reception—“Those who compose
Schoenberg’s new work. because they want to please others,
and have audiences in mind, are
Louis Krasner, who had played not real artists,” he once wrote—he
the premiere of Berg’s Violin did in fact crave an audience. His
Concerto four years earlier, was children remember how thrilled
the Philadelphia soloist. (Krasner he was to hear his works played
recently had given the Chicago on the radio, or how he stopped
premiere of Berg’s concerto under to listen, with childlike delight,
Frederick Stock, in February 1939.) to Transfigured Night blaring from
Before Krasner received the score, the loudspeaker at a juice stand
Schoenberg wrote to him, warning on Highway 1. “There is nothing
that “the difficulties of this work I long for more intensely,” he later
are different ones and greater than said, “than to be taken for a better
those of the Berg concerto.” Krasner sort of Tchaikovsky. People should
was horrified when he first saw the know my tunes and whistle them.”
music, but by the time he played
through the part for an ecstatic Schoenberg already knew he
Schoenberg, he had cleanly mas- would fight till his dying day to
tered its difficulties. Krasner later persuade audiences to listen to his
drew a parallel with Brahms’s con- works “in the same manner as every
certo, then little more than half a other kind of music, forget the
century old, which was at first called theories, the twelve-tone method,
“unplayable” and “unviolinistic.” the dissonances, etc. . . .” He once
told Alma Mahler simply to listen
After the premiere, Schoenberg for “colors, smells, lights, sounds,
wrote to his soloist to congratulate movements, glances, gestures,”
him on the great achievement of knowing that even she came to his
playing the concerto “in such a music hampered by certain precon-
perfect and convincing manner so ceived notions. “Nobody,” he wrote
shortly after it has been written in 1935, while the violin concerto
and so shortly after it had been still sat on his writing desk, “can
called unplayable.” Schoenberg imagine music which he has not
dubbed Krasner the work’s “first heard before, and therefore nobody
conqueror.” But the composer was could have the right expectations
depressed by the general lack of before listening to it.”
interest in his music, particularly
where he most expected it—“none Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto
of my friends and relatives, and also was slow to catch on with violinists
nobody from my publishers wrote and with the public, even though
me one single word about this first Berg’s was programmed with sur-
prising regularity almost from the

7

start. As late as 1968, the composer many smaller unnamed ones. The
Milton Babbitt complained that violin part is a great dramatic
performances of Schoenberg’s score tour de force, ever-changing in
“have been rare to a degree sadly its many moods and expressive
unbefitting one of the most influen- faces, and it asks everything of the
tial compositions of our time.” Only instrument—pizzicato, tremolando,
in recent years, and with the rise of multiple stops, harmonics—and of
a new generation of young violin- its “conqueror.” Schoenberg joked
ists, has it slowly begun to take its that the piece required a violin-
place in the repertory. ist with an extra finger on his left
hand, but no doubt its extreme
Like the Monn and Handel technical demands discouraged
scores Schoenberg dissected performers from taking up the work
and reassembled shortly before for many years.
beginning this work, and like the
violin concertos by the compos- The first movement is the most
ers he most admired—Bach, wide-ranging in its emotional
Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms— makeup. The middle movement is
Schoenberg’s score has three move- one of Schoenberg’s most deeply felt
ments, with slow music at its center. creations. Schoenberg was particu-
The entire concerto is generated larly fond of its opening melody—a
from a single row of notes that can lovely arching theme in the violin—
be transposed and turned or twisted and he quoted it in his essay “Heart
into other shapes. (Schoenberg and Brain in Music” as an example
was so attached to the twelve-tone that demonstrates both. For all its
system that it even governed nam- newness, this is music of an almost-
ing family members: the names of nineteenth-century beauty. (Robert
his son Ronald and his grandson Craft, Stravinsky’s amanuensis,
Roland are both permutations of remembers Pierre Boulez, at home
Arnold.) But the concerto is far in his Paris apartment in 1956,
from formulaic, and the still-new improvising a “funny Brahmsian
twelve-tone technique is handled accompaniment” to the opening
with extraordinary imagination and violin theme.) The finale is lively,
daring, and with surprisingly free- witty, and brilliant—two cadenzas,
wheeling disregard for the “rules.” one at each end of the movement,
are particularly dazzling—and the
In all three movements, the conclusion is one of Schoenberg’s
solo violin is a dominating voice, most stirring. The whole concerto
although its relationship with still sounds amazingly fresh and
Schoenberg’s big orchestra is novel. “Is it not the duty of every
highly charged, complex, and artist,” Schoenberg wrote while
mercurial. The solo role is daunt- he was working on the score, “to
ing and demanding, and it’s filled tell you what you do not know,
with cadenzas, both tradition- what you never have heard before,
ally positioned “official” ones what you never could find out, or
of significant length as well as discover, or express yourself?” 

8

Gustav Mahler
Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia.
Died May 18, 1911, Vienna, Austria.

Adagio from Symphony No. 10

After Gustav Mahler’s death, He who wants to go beyond
word got out that he had it must die. It seems as if
asked his wife Alma to burn the something might be imparted
manuscript of his unfinished to us in the Tenth which we
Tenth Symphony. As Arnold ought not yet to know, for we
Schoenberg wrote in 1912, “We are not yet ready. Those who
shall know as little about what his have written a Ninth stood
Tenth . . . would have said as we too near the hereafter. Perhaps
know about Beethoven’s Tenth the riddles of this world would
or Bruckner’s.” Schoenberg lived be solved if one of those who
long enough to learn how wrong knew them were to write a
he was—that Alma couldn’t bring Tenth. And that is probably
herself to carry out her husband’s not going to happen.
wishes. She eventually even pub-
lished the manuscript in facsimile Mahler had gone out of his way
and arranged for the performance to sidestep the issue, calling his
of the two movements that were ninth symphonic work Das Lied von
most nearly complete. But Mahler der Erde, and taking pleasure in the
died believing that his last sym- fact that his Ninth Symphony was
phony would never be played. actually his tenth. Almost as soon
as he completed that work, he began
Like Mahler, Schoenberg super- the Tenth Symphony. But from the
stitiously believed that no composer start, it had a troubled history.
after Beethoven would live to write
more than nine symphonies. “It Under the heading “summer
seems that the Ninth is a limit,” 1910,” Alma Mahler wrote in
he continued. her memoirs:

Composed Most recent CSO Approximate
1910
performance performance time
First performance January 23, 2001, 22 minutes
October 14, 1924, Vienna Orchestra Hall. Michael
Gielen conducting CSO recording
A 1966 performance of
First CSO Instrumentation Mahler’s Tenth Symphony
(realized by Deryck Cooke)
performance three flutes and piccolo, conducted by Jean Martinon,
May 19, 1966, Orchestra Hall. three oboes, three clarinets, is included in Chicago
Jean Martinon conducting, three bassoons, four Symphony Orchestra: The
Deryck Cooke realization of horns, four trumpets, First 100 Years.
complete Symphony no. 10 three trombones and tuba,
harp, strings

9

I took Mahler to Toblach and spotted him hiding under a bridge
then had to go on to Tobelbad, when she and Mahler went out for
as prescribed by the physi- a drive), Mahler demanded that
cian, to cure my ailing nerves. Alma choose between them. The
Mahler remained in Toblach, next morning she took Gropius to
looked after by old, depend- the train station; on her way home
able domestic servants, and he she ran into Mahler, who had come
began to sketch the Tenth. after her, fearing that she had left
him for good. “I would simply have
On June 4, while Mahler worked gone out,” Mahler said later, “like a
on his symphony, Alma was intro- torch deprived of air.”
duced to Walter Gropius, a talented
young architect who had just opened This is the background for the
his own office in Berlin. That night final months of Mahler’s life—a
they went for a long moonlit walk. tale of tabloid exploits, a damaged
By the time Alma left the spa to marriage, an unresolved love affair,
check in on Gustav in mid-July, she and an unfinished symphony.
and Gropius had become lovers— Mahler worked on the symphony
“two souls had found each other, almost obsessively throughout the
their two bodies forgotten,” as she summer of 1910, and then put it
tactfully put it in her memoirs. aside to resume his life as a conduc-
Alma had only been back with her tor (there’s no evidence that he ever
husband for a week or two when the touched it again after his encounter
situation exploded, sparked by an with Freud), awaiting the next
impassioned letter Gropius wrote to summer’s composing holiday that
Alma but “inadvertently” addressed he wouldn’t live to see. He designed
to Gustav. “Whether the young man the new score in five movements,
made a mistake in the stress of emo- like his Fifth and Seventh sym-
tion,” Alma later wrote, “or whether phonies, although the labels on
it was his unconscious wish that it the large folders that he used to
should come into Mahler’s hands, hold the music for each movement
remains a mystery.” Regardless, suggest that he was uncertain
it precipitated the most profound about their sequence. Mahler
emotional crisis of Mahler’s life, wrote “adagio” on the folder for
leading him, at the summer’s end, to the first movement, even though
the Dutch town of Leiden to con- that tempo doesn’t appear until
sult with Sigmund Freud. (Mahler measure sixteen. Instead, he begins
was so nervous about their meeting with a single strand of melody in
that he canceled the appointment the violas, marked andante, that
three times; Freud interrupted his wanders quietly, almost without
summer vacation to see the com- direction, before it encounters the
poser, later saying he couldn’t turn grand adagio theme, rising and dip-
down a man of Mahler’s impor- ping over full, deep chords. It’s one
tance.) When Gropius showed up of Mahler’s greatest creations—a
unannounced at Toblach (Alma theme so subtly inflected that its

10

mood and destination seem to In 1924, Alma Mahler Gropius
shift with every turn of phrase. asked her new son-in-law, the
This is already music of anguish twenty-three-year-old composer
and impending drama, but, like Ernst Krenek, to “complete”
Mahler’s life at the time, it’s headed Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. (Krenek
for a full-blown crisis, unforget- had married Gustav and Alma’s
tably depicted here by a screaming daughter, Anna, the previous year.)
trumpet on a sustained high A and Although Krenek felt the job was
by a giant, suffocating chord with “obviously impossible,” he managed
dissonance piled upon dissonance. to prepare a performing edition
(The chord contains nine of the for full orchestra of two move-
twelve notes of the scale.) For a ments, the Adagio and Purgatorio,
moment, we glimpse something the third movement, which was
new in Mahler’s music—what nearly complete.
Schoenberg had called that “which
we ought not yet to know, for Shortly after Mahler’s death, his
we are not yet ready.” The music biographer Richard Specht sug-
quickly regains its composure, gested that Arnold Schoenberg,
however, eventually unfolding into a “musician of high standing,
a glowing final cadence—a triumph devoted to Mahler, and intimate
of art over the reality of Mahler’s with his style” would best bring
life, shattered so badly that he the Tenth Symphony to comple-
couldn’t put it right again. tion. Alma didn’t follow his advice
at the time, but many years later,
Anumber of postscripts. Alma in 1949, she invited Schoenberg,
Mahler and Walter Gropius then seventy-five years old, to
continued to see each other and to her apartment to discuss the
exchange love letters, even while project. Schoenberg examined
Mahler was dying. They married in the manuscript in Alma’s study
1915 and divorced four years later. for an hour and then declined to
Their daughter, Alma Manon, who take the job. Eventually, however,
died of complications from polio in performing editions of the entire
1935, was memorialized by Alban symphony have been prepared by,
Berg in his Violin Concerto. among others, Deryck Cooke and
Remo Mazzetti, whose versions
Gropius, who founded the have been played by the Chicago
Bauhaus movement at Weimar in Symphony Orchestra.
1919, became an internationally
famous architect in his post-Alma During her last years, Alma
years. He and his associate Adolph proudly displayed the manuscript
Meyer entered the Chicago Tribune of the Tenth Symphony in her
Building Competition in 1922. living room. The score was opened
Their design, an austere modern- to the page where, at the height
ist structure wrapped in bands of of the Gropius crisis, Mahler had
Chicago windows, didn’t make scribbled “To live for you! To die
the finals. for you! Almschi,” pointedly using
his wife’s pet name. 

11

Richard Wagner

Prelude to Parsifal

On April 14, 1865, Richard epic Parzifal on a summer holiday
Wagner wrote to his adored and in Marienbad in 1845, and was cap-
wonderful friend (to use his saluta- tivated by the story of a young man
tion) King Ludwig II of Bavaria: who sets out to find his place in the
world and instead discovers human
A warm and sunny Good compassion and the Holy Grail.
Friday, with its mood of sacred But over the next years, his reading
solemnity, once inspired introduced other subjects that he
me with the idea of writing wanted to set to music first, includ-
Parzifal: since then it has lived ing the sixteenth-century guild of
on within me and prospered, mastersingers and a magic ring.
like a child in its mother’s
womb. With each Good Friday Still, the hero Parsifal was never
it grows a year older, and I then far from his thoughts. (Wagner
celebrate the day of its concep- changed the spelling because he
tion, knowing that its birthday mistakenly thought that Parsifal
will follow one day. was Persian for “pure fool,” the per-
fect representation of his guileless
The idea of Parsifal lived within hero.) Wagner first wrote an opera
Wagner for thirty-six years, the lon- about the hero’s son, Lohengrin,
gest gestation of any of his works, and later toyed with the idea of
including the entire Ring cycle. having Parsifal appear at Tristan’s
Wagner first read Wolfram von bedside. But Parsifal didn’t take
Eschenbach’s thirteenth-century shape until a particularly lovely
morning in 1857, when he quickly

Composed Most recent CSO Approximate
opera: 1877–1881 performance time
performance 14 minutes
First performance May 21, 2005,
prelude: December 25, 1878; Orchestra Hall. Daniel CSO recording
Bayreuth, Germany Barenboim conducting 1999. Daniel Barenboim
conducting. Teldec
opera: July 26, 1882; Instrumentation
Bayreuth, Germany three flutes, three oboes
and english horn, three
First CSO clarinets, three bassoons
performance and contrabassoon, four
April 1, 1892, Auditorium horns, three trumpets,
Theatre. Theodore three trombones and tuba,
Thomas conducting timpani, strings

12

sketched a drama in three acts, later submerged orchestra pit, Wagner © 2013 Chicago Symphony Orchestra
insisting, despite the evidence, that mixes orchestral colors with extraor-
the day was Good Friday. It was dinary individuality and refinement.
still another twenty years before (The opening phrase calls for just
he actually began work on it, and one player on each stand of violins;
the score took him more than three using the entire section would
years to complete. Wagner always subtly, but perceptibly, affect the
intended Parsifal to be his final way the theme sounds.)
work, and, in fact, he died seven
months after the premiere was So sensitive was Wagner’s ear
given in Bayreuth on July 26, 1882. that a single sonority can change
the complexion of the music. A
The prelude is the first music soft tremolo on one note in the low
Wagner wrote for Parsifal; it strings, for example, alters the way
was composed during the summer we hear the opening theme when it
of 1877. Wagner orchestrated it returns otherwise unchanged—it’s
a year later (the opera itself was as if a cloud has crossed the sun.
only half done) so that it could be Even the silences are conceived as
performed for his wife Cosima’s colors in the palette of this music;
forty-first birthday on Christmas they aren’t merely pauses between
Day, 1878. Wagner told Cosima, phrases or sections, but indispens-
“My preludes must consist of the able elements in Wagner’s design.
elements, and not be dramatic like (It’s equally important where
the Leonore overtures, or the drama they do not occur—a great brass
becomes superfluous.” The Parsifal statement ends only to reveal the
prelude isn’t dramatic, but it is an strings already playing, to stunning
extraordinarily powerful piece that effect.) The prelude is spacious and
prepares us for the drama that fol- reflective; with each sentence in
lows. Wagner sets out his elements this measured opening paragraph,
side by side—often separating Wagner suggests the pace and mag-
them by wide-open spaces—but he nitude of the opera that follows.
doesn’t throw them into action yet.
When Wagner conducted a
Parsifal begins magically, with a private performance of the prelude
striking sonority—muted violins for King Ludwig II of Bavaria
and cellos with a single clarinet and on November 12, 1880, he gave
bassoon (joined briefly by english Ludwig a program note which
horn)—that’s as individual and outlines the music’s three themes:
instantly recognizable as a familiar Love—the opening melody, slow
voice. A seamless melody unfolds and seemingly unmeasured, like
slowly, as if without pulse or direc- plainchant; Faith—the choral
tion at first, leading, after reflection, “Dresden Amen” Wagner appro-
to new ideas. Writing for the first priated from Lutheran usage;
time in his long career for the acous- and Hope—the steady march of
tics of the theater he had painstak- the brass. 
ingly designed at Bayreuth, with its
Phillip Huscher is the program annota-
tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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