"Wagner's Parsifal: The Music of Redemption" by Roger Scruton

Wagner's Parsifal: 

The Music of Redemption

by Roger Scruton

An illustrated review

Despite being a classical music enthusiast, and an avid record collector, I must admit that I do not know Wagner’s music very well.  Every year I make a resolution to explore his operas – the Ring cycle first and foremost – and yet I never seem to get down to it.  Perhaps, like Bruckner’s symphonies (another of my “black holes”) the prospect of getting to grips them seems too arduous and daunting.  Parsifal is something of an exception, since I own a number of recordings which I’ve listened to several times.  I therefore relished the challenge of reading the late Roger Scruton’s final work: Wagner’s Parsifal – Music of Redemption.  Scruton died in January of this year, just after concluding the editorial work on the book.  It is now being published posthumously, with the proofreading completed by Professor Robin Holloway: a worthy swansong to a distinguished career.

Scruton was a philosopher whose renown went well beyond the inner circles of his field.  Admittedly, the wider public might know him better for his polemicist defences of traditional conservatism. These landed him – to his glee, chagrin or a mixture of both – into a number of controversies over his lifetime.  However, Scruton was also (or, arguably primarily) a philosopher of aesthetics, with a particular interest in music.   He made of Wagner’s works a specialist area of study, publishing studies on Tristan und Isolde (“Death Devoted Heart: Sex and Sacred in Wagner’s Trisan and Isolde”, 2003) and the Ring tetralogy (“The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring”, 2016). In this area, Scruton’s knowledge of music (he was an amateur composer) served him well.

One of Willy Pogany's illustrations to "Parsifal or the Legend of the Holy Grail" (1912) by T.W. Rolleston

As its subtitle implies, Scruton’s final work explores the idea of redemption as the thematic basis of Wagner’s Parsifal.  This premise is hardly contentious, since even the bare bones of Wagner’s libretto, a retelling of the Grail Story loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval poem Parzival, reveal the opera to be a work about redemption and healing.  The First Act takes us to Montsalvat, the Castle of the Holy Grail, built by Titurel to house and protect the Holy Grail and the sacred Spear, relics of the Passion of the Christ.  Amfortas, the King, is brought in on a litter in barely bearable pain.  He was once seduced by a beautiful woman at the bidding of the sorcerer Klingsor, thereby losing the Spear and procuring a painful wound which can only be healed by a “pure fool made wise by compassion”.   Just then, two knights seize a youth – Parsifal – who has ventured near the castle and killed a swan.  The old knight Gurnemanz realizes that this might be the “innocent” who can restore order at Montsalvat.  The Second Act is set in the gardens of Klingsor’s magic castle.  The flighty Flower Maidens, seducers of many a knight, are excited at the arrival of Parsifal, but the sorcerer has a more ambitious plan and, like a diabolical pimp, sends Kundry out to meet the youth.  As in the legend of the Wandering Jew, Kundry has been accursed after she laughed at Christ’s suffering (lovers of the Gothic will notice here one of the inspirations for Sarah Perry’s Melmoth).  Kundry is now ensnared by Klingsor, who compels her to use her wiles and charms to bring righteous men to their downfall.  Indeed, Parsifal seems impervious to the Flower Maidens, but Kundry knows how to break down his defences:   she draws him to her by evoking memories of the mother whom he has abandoned. Kundry kisses him, but he recoils in horror, suddenly realising the source of Amfortas’s pain. Klingsor throws the spear at him but Parsifal seizes it and, making the sign of the Cross in the air destroys Klingsor’s castle and his evil powers.  The Third and final act brings about the redemption and healing which are the themes of Scruton’s analysis – Parsifal, after years of wandering, returns to Montsalvat on Good Friday.  Gurnemanz baptises him;  Kundry, turned into a sort of penitent Magdalene, washes Parsifal’s feet and he baptises her in turn.  Parsifal heals Amfortas’s wound, is crowned and leads the Knights in the ritual of the Grail as Kundry, freed of her curse, falls dead at his feet.   

An illustration by Franz Stassen (1869 - 1949) used in Oliver Huckel's retelling of Wagner's "Parsifal".
Stassen was a close friend of Siegfried Wagner.  The musical score at the bottom shows the "Dresden Amen" motif.

It does not take a theologian to notice the Christian elements in the opera. However, Scruton argues that the idea of “redemption” proposed by Wagner, albeit partly inspired by Christian doctrines, is considerably different in conception to religious views of redemption.  Indeed, despite the Christian symbolism, the worldview of the opera is equally inspired by Buddhist thought and the philosophy of Schopenhauer.  One could consider Parsifal to be “post-Christian” (although that is not a term which Scruton uses) in that Wagner sought to show the possibility of godliness without the need of belief in a God and redemption in this world rather than in the next:

Whether or not there is a God, there is this hallowed path towards a kind of salvation, the path that Wagner described as ‘godliness’, the path taken by Parsifal, and it is a path open to us all.

In this regard, Scruton’s examination of Wagner’s use of ritual is particularly interesting.  The Grail ceremonies portrayed in the opera are, very evidently, based on the sacrament of Communion in Christianity (and Catholicism in particular).  This is emphasized in some of the earliest posters and illustrations associated with the opera, which emphasize Christian imagery.  However, Wagner himself takes an almost anthropological approach to these rites, invoking the gravitas of religious rituals without implying any belief in their underlying theology.  Significantly Wagner described Parsifal not as an opera, but as A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage (“Bühnenweihfestspiel”), highlighting the mystical aspects of the work.  Yet, as Scruton pointed out, the final scene, with its appropriation of religious rites is also evidently not a Christian ceremony, leading Stravinsky to label it “blasphemous” and Debussy “ridiculous”.    

In developing his view of the opera, Scruton looks closely at plot (particularly in Chapter 2) and the music (particularly in Chapter 5).   It is notoriously challenging to write about the meaning of music, that most abstract of forms, and inevitably there are moments where Scruton, like the best of authors on the subject, resorts to “poetic” phrases in a bid to express what can barely be put into words.  Thus, we are told, “Faith, suffering, guilt, atonement, woe, redemption – these are the aspects of our world that are most tightly woven into the musical fabric, by melodies and harmonies that are saturated with the inner life”.  That said, Wagner’s use of leitmotifs  -  musical themes appearing throughout the opera in representation of a character or concept – invites the sort of close scrutiny and exercise in extra-musical interpretation which Scruton embarks upon in this book.  His views on how the leitmotifs are combined to achieve not just musical effects but also a philosophical meaning are certainly interesting and cogently put.  In this regard, Chapter 6 of the book is particularly helpful, reproducing as it does all the various leitmotifs used in the opera.  Here, Scruton acknowledges his reliance on the analytical catalogue produced by Derrick Everett, available on Everett’s Monsalvat website – probably the best resource on Parsifal available on the internet.  Scruton borrows from Everett the name for the melodic idea which opens the prelude to the music-drama – the Grundthema.  It is an apt moniker: Scruton shows (following other musicological studies) how, in a Beethovenian manner, the “Grundthema” can be further split into shorter motifs each of which takes a life and meaning of its own.  Like the Grail in Parsifal, the opening theme is a “horn of plenty” providing many of the musical building blocks for the whole opera.

Another of Franz Stassen's illustrations. The score shows the opening theme of the music drama - which Scruton, following Derrick Everett calls the "Grundthema" 

Sometimes I felt that rather than discussing the opera, Scruton was using it as a springboard to address philosophical themes which were dear to him – such as the idea of compassion and duties towards animals (which he explores in Animal Rights and Wrongs) and sex and desire (the subject of his 1986 study Sexual Desire).  Scruton, typically, casts his net of references wide – myth and anthropology, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Schenkerian analysis, Christian theology and Buddhist thought.  All are invoked in a bid to shed more light on Wagner’s enigmatic drama.

Scruton’s book is a slim volume but by no means an easy read – and I say that as a musician (admittedly an amateur one) with a basic degree in philosophy.  So possibly I wouldn’t recommend this book as a beginner’s guide to the opera (in that regard I would, once again, refer to the Monsalvat website which includes materials of use to readers of all levels – from initiates to the opera to its greatest aficionados).  However, Scruton provides an insightful and multi-disciplinary analysis of Parsifal which comes across as a labour of love. 

Parsifal by Spanish painter Rogelio de Egusquiza (1865 - 1915). Egusquiza was a friend and admirer of Wagner, whose operas he helped popularize in Spain. 

I cannot but end a review about a book on music with some listening suggestions.  I will start with a recording of the Act 1 prelude, which presents the ethereal, timeless “Grundthema”.  This version is taken from the 1951 Hans Knappertsbuch recording featuring the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra. 

The sublime performance shines through the sonically-limited mono recording.  But for those who prefer a better sound, here’s the same prelude, taken from the set recorded by Herbert von Karajan at the helm of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

During the Covid lockdown period, one of the classical music stars whose “home concerts” proved particularly popular was Igor Levit.  Here he performs  the Solemn March to the Holy Grail in a piano transcription by Franz Liszt, Wagner's father-in-law 

To end, here’s the final scene of the opera in the production by Pierre Audi.  It was filmed at the Nationaltheater, Munich in a performance featuring Jonas Kaufmann as Parsifal, Christian Gerhaher as Amfortas, Nina Stemme as Kundry and René Pape as Gurnemanz.  Kirill Petrenko conducts the Bayerisches Staatsorchester.

Kindle Edition, 208 pages

Published May 7th 2020 by Penguin