# Is Parsifal a Requiem?



## drpraetorus

Could Parsifal be regarded as Wagners version of a Requiem? It is an overtly religious work. The topic is forgiveness and redemption. It really pissed off Nietzsche. Written in his later years, Wagner seems to be sorting out his feelings about life and death and the meaning of it all.


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## Guest

I apologize to everyone in the world for what follows. It's late, and I've wasted the whole day and am angry at myself for being such a worthless piece of so anyway....

A requiem is a particular type of religious work, with more or less the same sections--Kyrie, Dies Irae, Lacrimosa, Resurrexit, Agnus Dei, and so forth. The word itself means "rest." So it is a mass for the dead.

Not sure how forgiveness and redemption fit into that. I suppose they could be made to do so.

One thing I am certain sure of, and that is that pissing Nietzche off is not one of the characteristics of a requiem mass.

Wagner's feelings are inaccessible to us. He's dead. Not that accessing his feelings would have been any easier when he was alive. That is, easier for people who were alive when he was alive. Which we weren't. (I don't care how old my kids will tell you I am. I'm seriously!)

Anyway, sorry everyone. I have no self-control and should probably be banned from everything.


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## palJacky

We all tend to look at the bigger issues the older we get.
'parsifal' does seem to be Wagner's reflection on those things...
but is this really the nature of a 'requiem'?

On the Similar subject. Just received the DG/decca complete wagner opera box (13 operas). 
They chose the analog Solti for 'parsifal'.... 
Surprised given the other ones they could have chosen including the Karajan which many call their favorite.
I think the merits and defects are more evenly divided, but I have yet to find a recording of 'parsifal' that is satisfying on all levels.

NO karajan recordings in this set.

http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Comple...8&qid=1357715162&sr=1-2&keywords=opera+wagner

Sinopoli's 'Tannhauser' and 'dutchman', C. Kleiber's 'tristan', Levine's 'ring' Jochum's 'meistersinger' and a solti again for 'lohengrin'.

downes for 'feen' and 'liebesvot' from BBC recordings and they licenced Hollreiser's 'reinzi' from EMI.

I had four of these sets already.


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## Sid James

I don't see it as a requiem for Wagner but more like the end of the Romantic era and beginning of the Modern era. Schoenberg's 'Transfigured Night' from the following 1890's decade was called by one critic "Parsifal with the ink smeared."

But I think despite it being an innovative work_, Parsifal _especially (&_ The Ring_) ushered into opera but also classical music generally a kind of attitude/trend that everything has to be kind of highbrow to be real music. To be really worthwhile music I mean, approved by the cognoscenti. & I see that as not a very good trend, but not many people here will agree with me on that I think.


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## Rapide

drpraetorus said:


> Could Parsifal be regarded as Wagners version of a Requiem? It is an overtly religious work. The topic is forgiveness and redemption. It really pissed off Nietzsche. Written in his later years, Wagner seems to be sorting out his feelings about life and death and the meaning of it all.


_Parsifal_ is not a requiem but it is a piano concerto.


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## Guest

Sid James said:


> Parsifal [/I]especially (&_ The Ring_) ushered into opera but also classical music generally a kind of attitude/trend that everything has to be kind of highbrow to be real music. To be really worthwhile music I mean, approved by the cognoscenti. & I see that as not a very good trend, but not many people here will agree with me on that I think.


I agree.

I think you'll find, however, that the trend started in the early 19th century, not the late. This was a growing idea from quite early in the century. The coining of the term "classical music," from 1810, was part and parcel of this trend. Explanatory programs proliferated. The message was increasingly that "classical music" was better, that it needed to be understood to be appreciated, that the cognescenti were there to explain everything to the hoi polloi. Everyone was imbued with the notion of the superiority of classical music and of the necessity to study it in order to understand it long before Wagner. His long programs and the detailed charts of leitmotifs certainly exacerbated the trend, however!


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## emiellucifuge

Wagner never published nor approved of any charts of leitmotifs. That is pure myth.
His ideal of 'artwork of the future' was one that expressed the entire needs of the community (volk) from which it came, and the 'Darsteller' of which was also a communal matter.


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## Sid James

I'm surprised you agree with me some guy, are you serious? In any case re what you say it can be said to be reasonable. Eg. that in early c19th, in cases like late Beethoven and Schubert (their late sonatas and quartets), writing for posterity/cogniscenti etc. and music becoming more 'profound' and 'highbrow' by default became the ne plus ultra of the 'greatest' classical music.

Having said that I like many kinds of 'highbrow' stuff, but what I'm saying is that because something has lofty aims or is very deep/serious, doesn't make it necessarily better than other things. It's no big deal, in terms of Wagner, his antithesis is Satie, and he's considered to be a great composer too.

But the matching of_ Parsifal _to 'highbrow' was more a pseudo theory of mine. Stronger is the claim that it was one of the markers along the way to modernism. But of course I'm no fan of this work, nor of Wagner.


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## Wandering

I'd call it his Swan Song maybe? Yeah, I also see it as binding with others like Schoenberg. I couldn't really imagine turn of the century Vienna? Pelleas et Melisande by Schoenberg, this is a work greatly influenced and akin in austerity, grandness, and the very emotionality of Parsifal. When I listen to things like this, it is often difficult to fathom people even being capable of taking themselves and art so suicidal serious.


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## campy

Clovis said:


> I'd call it his Swan Song maybe?


I thought _Lohengrin _was his Swan Song.


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## emiellucifuge

campy said:


> I thought _Lohengrin _was his Swan Song.


Well the swan only dies in Parsifal


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## Wandering

R.I.P.

He was planning another opera, I thinking it was about Amazonian women, wasn't it?


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## Mahlerian

Sid James said:


> I don't see it as a requiem for Wagner but more like the end of the Romantic era and beginning of the Modern era. Schoenberg's 'Transfigured Night' from the following 1890's decade was called by one critic "Parsifal with the ink smeared."


The quote referred to Tristan, actually, but the point is the same regardless.


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## drpraetorus

some guy said:


> I apologize to everyone in the world for what follows. It's late, and I've wasted the whole day and am angry at myself for being such a worthless piece of so anyway....
> 
> A requiem is a particular type of religious work, with more or less the same sections--Kyrie, Dies Irae, Lacrimosa, Resurrexit, Agnus Dei, and so forth. The word itself means "rest." So it is a mass for the dead.
> 
> Not sure how forgiveness and redemption fit into that. I suppose they could be made to do so.
> 
> One thing I am certain sure of, and that is that pissing Nietzche off is not one of the characteristics of a requiem mass.
> 
> Wagner's feelings are inaccessible to us. He's dead. Not that accessing his feelings would have been any easier when he was alive. That is, easier for people who were alive when he was alive. Which we weren't. (I don't care how old my kids will tell you I am. I'm seriously!)
> 
> Anyway, sorry everyone. I have no self-control and should probably be banned from everything.


As with the term Symphony, the term requiem has exapnded it's definition beyond simply the Catholic service for the dead. Even within the more specific definition using the Catholic text and order of service, not all Requie (or is that requiescit) are created equal. Mozarts is the probably the most famous and uses the complete text, however, Faure, which is perhaps the most popular excludes much of the text and could rightly be called a mini requiem.

On the broader interpretation, the German Reguiem is accepted as a requiem because of the title and intent but it is not even intended to be paert of the Catholic tradition and does not use the Latin text at all. Personally, I find it dreadfully dull, but that is neither here nor there as far as this thread is concerned.

There are other dramatic, figurative, uses of the term Requiem, that intend n ot the Catholic service but a rumination on mortality and the possibility of forgiveness and redemption. I would site only "Requiem for a Heavyweight" as one example.

There are many who say that Shostakovich 14 is his version of a Requiem because it also deals with the same issues. Being an atheist he finds no solace in religion.

So, in the broader sense of the term, I would posit that Parsifal is as close as we will get to a Wagnerian Requiem.

It is overtly religious.

The overarching theme is a return to oneness with God, entailing restitution, forgiveness and finally, redemption. The story of Kundry is particularly focused on this. Being as she was cursed for laughing at Jesus on the Via Dolorosa, she spends the rest of her prolonged existance trying to make up for her sin. She does it through the one word that she utters in the final act "Dienen" which is to serve. Parsifal redeems the Grail nights and Amfortas by the restitution of the Spear. Through these acts Parsifal brings oneness between God and Man as shown by the light of the Grail and the Dove at the end.

Because the text and story of Parsifal are Wagners own, the symbolism and intents cannot be fobbed off on a librettisist. Wagner is working his way through his feelings, as an older, sick, man. Looking death in the face and asking what does it mean and is there more?


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## PetrB

Clovis said:


> R.I.P.
> 
> He was planning another opera, I thinking it was about Amazonian women, wasn't it?


Rather happy he did not live long enough to get his hands on Lord Of The Rings, or The Iceman Cometh, or....


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## PetrB

Clovis said:


> I'd call it his Swan Song maybe? Yeah, I also see it as binding with others like Schoenberg. I couldn't really imagine turn of the century Vienna? Pelleas et Melisande by Schoenberg, this is a work greatly influenced and akin in austerity, grandness, and the very emotionality of Parsifal. When I listen to things like this, it is often difficult to fathom people even being capable of taking themselves and art so suicidal serious.


Just read the deeply wonderful "A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888-1889" by Frederic Morton, a slim and elegant book, thoroughly researched, very well-written, for a sense of 'what that was like.'

Turn of the century Vienna was such a hotbed of 'fin du siecle' hysteria and depression that there was a constant stream of suicides, many in a rather gruesomely baroque manner of (self) execution. This was not just 'fin de siecle' but truly, consciously or not, many 'felt' that not only the century but a centuries old 'way things work and how things are' were at a true end -- those who felt it intuitively, or those more conscious of thinking that was going on were correct on that score. It is more an 'end of the world' syndrome, for which, though not at all on the tip of my tongue, there is a word,_ auf Deutsche, natürlich._

In that sovereign state capitol, and that mental state, people attached more meaning than ever possibly attributable to an artwork, a piece of music, saw 'signs' and found profound 'meanings' everywhere, etc. This 'state of mind' ran throughout much of Europe, more in the major capitols, which were densely populated and more visibly 'modern.' It is hard to imagine, really.

[It is no wonder Freud had a goldmine of material in the people of that society in that place and time.]

ADD P.s. Thomas Mann's short story, "Blood of the Walsungs" is another cheery read which might give you more of the same flavor, from just a few decades later, actually.


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## Sid James

PetrB said:


> ...
> 
> [It is no wonder Freud had a goldmine of material in the people of that society in that place and time.]


Yes & in that light, I can see Bruckner's 9th symphony, as well as Mahler's 9th and Berg's_ Violin Concerto 'To the Memory of an Angel' _as unofficial requiems. In terms of the latter, to both young Manon Gropius (of course) and the composer.


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## Novelette

PetrB, that sounds like a fascinating read. I will have to look it up myself.

Thanks for mentioning it!


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## Sid James

& its come to my mind that Liszt's_ La Lugubre Gondola_ pieces (I think he did two) are like premonitions of Wagner's death. Dunno if quite 'requiem' material, but Liszt had a dream of a coffin floating up a gondola, and shortly after it became true. Then after, he did the piece that to my ears sounded quite minimalist, _At Wagner's Grave_, for piano and strings, an amazing piece...


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## PetrB

Sid James said:


> Yes & in that light, I can see Bruckner's 9th symphony, as well as Mahler's 9th and Berg's_ Violin Concerto 'To the Memory of an Angel' _as unofficial requiems. In terms of the latter, to both young Manon Gropius (of course) and the composer.


I will have to use the beautifully put "Inaccessible to us" phrase here.

One cannot not attribute those things you do attribute to other than that which there is wholly documented information.

We know, with certainty, the Berg Violin concerto is, literally, an 'In Memoriam' piece -- the composer told us in his own hand in the dedication. It is as plainly an 'In Memoriam' as is Part's piece titled 'In Memoriam Benjamin Britten.' No guesswork or speculation required.

We knew enough of Mahler, and what Mahler knew of his health -- a heart condition -- that he well knew he did not have the 'allotment of years' most could expect. His ninth, filled throughout with an insistent theme of the baroque 'turn' , i.e. the 'arabesque,' MIGHT just be a retrospective and a 'goodbye to all that' but more a 'goodbye to all that' about the 'old music vocabulary' -- as is further acknowledged in the adagio of his 10th, i.e. more than aware that music itself was changing, with Schoenberg and Berg literally a younger generation immediately around him, the 10th working with and examining the duodecaphonic, whether serial or not. _Unless we have, again, in Mahler's Own Writing, not 'hearsay' of any of those around him, that his 9th was his personal 'farewell' to life and a mourning of his having to leave it, then that is 'inaccessible to us.'_

We do have more explicitly, from the horse's mouth, Mahler choosing the poems he set in "Das Lied von der Erde." Not only is the chosen poem set as the finale topically _Das Abschied (the farewell)_, but there, the composer added his own words to that text. I think this is as close to 'documented' as will ever be concluded about which of Mahler's pieces is his "Goodby to all that."

The Bruckner - where is the documentation? Of course, each and every composer is part of their time, and it is more than safe to say a good part of the general ethos of that same time can be 'found' in the emotional import of their work, and not at all far off to hear, and find, an older composer's emotional frame of mind present in later works... but past that?

The "Schwanengesang" is in itself a very amplified late romantic notion. It has been around far longer, as in Orlando Gibbons' madrigal "The silver swan" from the 1500's (some think that lyric 'anonymous' others attribute it to Gibbons) and the idea present in both folklore and literature long before. It was raised to the level of sentiment and 'lugubriousness' by the romantics, 'amplified' if you will by a young Schubert, who DID know he was ill and dying, writing a pretty good set of songs on that theme. Lore and Myths in the making.....

Ditto Wagner's Parsifal, a typically (of Wagner) self-centered mosh-pit of a take on if not religion, spirituality, from the elderly and yes sick but still healthily egocentric composer: it is yet, 'not a requiem.'

I'm thinking too, the author of the title, "Requiem for a Dream" used 'Requiem' in its most literal sense, i.e. making a point on something already dead (whether it was apparent to the dramatis personae or not, it is to the audience), and a rite pleading for 'rest.'

Yes, I know there is a more recent and colloquial sense of 'requiem' - which runs parallel with a vogue to be more and more interested in at least vicariously sharing the grief of others over a loss (or more lately a fascination with feeling sorry for ones self -- emo, LOL) but having nothing to do with the traditional ritual high mass pleading for 'rest for the dead.'

Perhaps, just perhaps, it might be better to adhere to the traditional use of the word when referring to any era where this more contemporary and colloquial use was not on anyone's mind? Because it is enough like mixing metaphors that what is being discussed gets less and less clear, or it parallels one of my favorite models of mixed period 'thinking,' applying a feminist view in trying to interpret the meaning of 'Oedipus Rex.'

Again, I find myself in a rather conservative camp here, in that I find many of the current attempts to 'make things of the past relevant to the people of today' as -- massively condescending. Why not more meet those past histories and what came from them on their own terms and within their own context? I think if you really want to 'get into them' that is how to 'get into them.' I do not think people are that 'stupid' or 'unimaginative' that they have to 'imagine what Beethoven would have on his web-site,' for example. Maybe this is a minority opinion. I do think 'all the help' these pieces of the past are being given is pretty deleterious to both their reputation and their contemporary health, and that does the opposite of helping anyone 'access' them or 'understand' them. They really are quite strong enough to stand for themselves.


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## Flamme

WE need Couchine on this


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## Wandering

PetrB said:


> Just read the deeply wonderful "A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888-1889" by Frederic Morton, a slim and elegant book, thoroughly researched, very well-written, for a sense of 'what that was like.'
> 
> Turn of the century Vienna was such a hotbed of 'fin du siecle' hysteria and depression that there was a constant stream of suicides, many in a rather gruesomely baroque manner of (self) execution. This was not just 'fin de siecle' but truly, consciously or not, many 'felt' that not only the century but a centuries old 'way things work and how things are' were at a true end -- those who felt it intuitively, or those more conscious of thinking that was going on were correct on that score. It is more an 'end of the world' syndrome, for which, though not at all on the tip of my tongue, there is a word,_ auf Deutsche, natürlich._
> 
> In that sovereign state capitol, and that mental state, people attached more meaning than ever possibly attributable to an artwork, a piece of music, saw 'signs' and found profound 'meanings' everywhere, etc. This 'state of mind' ran throughout much of Europe, more in the major capitols, which were densely populated and more visibly 'modern.' It is hard to imagine, really.
> 
> [It is no wonder Freud had a goldmine of material in the people of that society in that place and time.]
> 
> ADD P.s. Thomas Mann's short story, "Blood of the Walsungs" is another cheery read which might give you more of the same flavor, from just a few decades later, actually.


Yes, in no small regard, A Man without Qualities by Robert Musil is a 'War and Peace' version of that Mann short story. Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll check it out.


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## SiegendesLicht

A Requiem? No, more like a hymn to life.


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## Mahlerian

PetrB said:


> We knew enough of Mahler, and what Mahler knew of his health -- a heart condition -- that he well knew he did not have the 'allotment of years' most could expect. His ninth, filled throughout with an insistent theme of the baroque 'turn' , i.e. the 'arabesque,' MIGHT just be a retrospective and a 'goodbye to all that' but more a 'goodbye to all that' about the 'old music vocabulary' -- as is further acknowledged in the adagio of his 10th, i.e. more than aware that music itself was changing, with Schoenberg and Berg literally a younger generation immediately around him, the 10th working with and examining the duodecaphonic, whether serial or not. _Unless we have, again, in Mahler's Own Writing, not 'hearsay' of any of those around him, that his 9th was his personal 'farewell' to life and a mourning of his having to leave it, then that is 'inaccessible to us.'_


I'm glad someone else agrees with me here.

According to la Grange, Mahler may have feared his ill heath at various points during his life, not least during the composition of his 5th symphony, after he suffered a massive hemorrhage, inspiring him, in part, to write that opening funeral march. But around the time of the 9th, while he was suffering from poor health, he was not sure that he was going to die within a few years. Same thing with the 10th, which he had no reason to believe he would not complete.

On the other hand, we know for a fact that Mahler was very interested in the latest trends in composition, taking the side of Schoenberg against his many enemies, even going so far as to buy his paintings anonymously. As for atonality, he confessed that he did not understand the newest music, but that "perhaps he is right", so we know that there was some conflict in his mind regarding these new developments.

If Mahler had lived longer, I suspect that he would have ended up with an expressionist or quasi-expressionist style like Berg's. Perhaps remaining tonal, but approaching atonality very nearly.



PetrB said:


> We do have more explicitly, from the horse's mouth, Mahler choosing the poems he set in "Das Lied von der Erde." Not only is the chosen poem set as the finale topically Das Abschied (the farewell), but there, the composer added his own words to that text. I think this is as close to 'documented' as will ever be concluded about which of Mahler's pieces is his "Goodbye to all that."


In this case, la Grange believes that Mahler is explicitly mourning the loss of his daughter, which had affected him severely.


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## ArtMusic

I watched Parsifal once. It was quite dramatic, a bit long but I thought it was enjoyable. It must be a challenge for the singers though which was where I was more impressed.


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## moody

Flamme said:


> WE need Couchine on this


And if he's not available Couchie will do. Couchine is his French cousin.


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## BurningDesire

Is Mozart's Requiem an opera?


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## Crudblud

BurningDesire said:


> Is Mozart's Requiem an opera?


It has singing in it, so it must be!


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## hpowders

Parsifal is blasphemy and hence cannot be considered a Requiem.

In the Christian religion there was only ONE savior and his name wasn't Parsifal!


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## Woodduck

hpowders said:


> Parsifal is blasphemy and hence cannot be considered a Requiem.
> 
> In the Christian religion there was only ONE savior and his name wasn't Parsifal!


Not to worry, h. Parsifal saves only the order of the Grail, not the world. Jesus still has a monopoly there.

And no, OP, it isn't a requiem.


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## Guest

An odd bump, 

But I would like to point out that Parsifal should stick to being a requiem, because clearly Schubert's Erlkonig is the superior opera. But then again, I like other requiems, so Parsifal might have better luck as an oboe sonata.


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## Mandryka

What actually happens to him when he snogs Kundry? Is he really God in Act 3? This opera is a load of nonsense in my opinion.


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## hpowders

If Parsifal is a Requiem, then I am the Pope.

The Savior's name is not and never was named Parsifal.


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## hpowders

Woodduck said:


> Not to worry, h. Parsifal saves only the order of the Grail, not the world. Jesus still has a monopoly there.
> 
> And no, OP, it isn't a requiem.


Depicting Parsifal with redemptive powers, the same as Christ the Lord is blasphemy where I come from.

I like the Gurnemanz monologues. They are in keeping with Christianity.


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## ArtMusic

The opera by Wagner is not a requiem, it's an opera with some religious themes but many operas do.


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## hpowders

If Parsifal is a requiem, then I must learn to stop writing in dense, dissertation-like paragraphs.


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## hpowders

If Parsifal is a Requiem, then I am chief celebrator of the Easter Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Easter Sunday.


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## Guest

hpowders said:


> If Parsifal is a Requiem, then I am chief celebrator of the Easter Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Easter Sunday.


"If Parsifal is a Requiem, ..." = new TC meme?


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## HIDEKI SUKENOBU

Maybe. You made me think of Verdi, who you know rewrote his requiem which he wrote part of it when Rossini died.


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## Woodduck

If - and only if - Parsifal is a requiem is it not sheer lunacy and/or evidence of too much free time to continue posting under this thread.


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## Itullian

hpowders said:


> If Parsifal is a Requiem, then I am the Pope.
> 
> The Savior's name is not and never was named Parsifal.


Does it need to be?


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## DavidA

Parsifal a requiem? Where do people get these strange ideas from? A requiem is a mass for the dead with a specific text. Because a piece contains solemn music and uses religious symbols does not make it a requiem.


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## hpowders

If Parsifal is a Requiem, then Götterdämerung is a funeral mass.


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## Il_Penseroso

These are Stravinsky's notes on Parsifal, Wagner and Religion in his book Chronicle of my life. I've found it somehow clarifying and not irrelevant to the debate started on this thread:



> _I was roused from that peaceful existence by an invitation from Diaghilev to join him at Bayreuth to hear Parsifal in its hallowed setting. I had never seen Parsifal on the stage. The proposal was tempting, and I accepted it with pleasure...[and this was in 1912]
> 
> The performance that I saw there would not tempt me today, even if I were offered a room gratis. The very atmosphere of the theatre, its design and its setting, seemed lugubrious. It was like a crematorium, and a very old-fashioned one at that, and one expected to see the gentleman in black who had been entrusted with the task of singing the praises of the departed...
> 
> I do not want to discuss the music of Parsifal or the music of Wagner in general. At this date it is too remote from me [1936, when the book was published for the first time]. What I find revolting in the whole affair is the underlying conception which dictated it the principle of putting a work of art on the same level as the sacred and symbolic ritual which constitutes a religious service. And, indeed, is not all this comedy of Bayreuth, with its ridiculous formalities, simply an unconscious aping of a religious rite?
> 
> Perhaps someone may cite the mysteries of the Middle Ages in contravention of this view. But those performances had religion as their basis and faith as their source. The spirit of the mystery plays did not venture beyond the bosom of the Church which patronized them. They were religious ceremonies bordering on the canonical rites, and such aesthetic qualities as they might contain were merely accessory and unintentional, and in no way affected their substance...
> 
> It is high time to put an end, once and for all, to this unseemly and sacrilegious conception of art as religion and the theatre as a temple._


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## Itullian

^^^^^Agree..............


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## hpowders

If Parsifal's a Requiem then Hansel and Gretel is an object lesson in good parenting.


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## KenOC

hpowders said:


> If Parsifal's a Requiem then Hansel and Gretel is an object lesson in good parenting.


Hansel and Gretel -- wasn't that the one about the two kids who murdered the old lady in the forest? A dark tale of youth running wild!


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