Contents
Prelude: Parsifal as Art and Ideology
Part 1: The Process of Composition
1. The Poem and Its Background and Evolution
2. The Genesis of the Music
Part 2: Musical Form and Dramatic Meaning
3. Wagner's Late Style
4. Grail and Anti-Grail
5. The Sense of an Ending
William Kinderman is professor of music at the University of Illinois, has taught extensively in Berlin and Munich, Germany, and held many seminars at the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. He has written or edited many books, including Beethoven and Mozart's Piano Music. He is an accomplished concert pianist, and has recorded Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and last sonatas.
"William Kinderman's excellent new book draws upon decades of
study, speaking and writing; long experience tells in mastery of
multifarious sources, as indeed it did in Wagner's own case."
--Mark Berry, Nineteenth-Century Music Review
"I am eager with anticipation of this new book and will carry it
with me for years to come!"
--Eric Halfvarson, bass
"The best of the bicentennial books that I have
examined...Elegantly written, drawing from cutting-edge scholarship
and historical sources, Kinderman's study probes the genesis,
literary roots, music and afterlives of Parsifal along with its
many contradictions, chief among them that a work centering on
compassion and reconciliation was one from which Hitler drew
inspiration." --Marion Lignana Rosenberg, WQXR Operavore
"William Kinderman points out, in his new book on Wagner's
Parsifal, that the opera is arguably the 19th-century
musical/dramatic work with the richest trove of documentary
sources-sources that can enable us follow its creation with
unprecedented precision...Kinderman is the first scholar to master
all this material, even including numerous snippets of manuscript
that Wagner cut out of his main working sheets as he thought of new
musical ideas.
Kinderman tells a fascinating, if intricate story--a story told
here fully for the first time, and one in which a deft combination
of source study, analytical skill, and a deep understanding of
Wagner and his work
all illuminate the opera in fresh and engaging ways. This is a
welcome, and musically sensitive contribution to Wagner
scholarship." --Patrick McCreless, Yale University
"It is to the great credit of William Kinderman, the distinguished
musicologist and pianist at the University of Illinois who is an
eminent authority on Beethoven, that he tackles the many problems
associated with Parsifal head-on... An enormously enlightening
book." --Wagner Notes
"Kinderman has given us a most comprehensive analysis of this
complicated work." --Wagneropera.net
"[E]xcellent throughout, and... written in a clear, engaging style.
Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"[T]his is a fascinating and well-written study of Wagner's
finalmasterpiece."--Music and Letters
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