Speranza
In Wagner's
score, the transformations in Acts 1 and 3 are accompanied by an ostinato theme
on bells: C, G, A and E. Sometimes alone, sometimes in unison with the bass
instruments.
The sun is at its zenith; the time for the sacred meal
approaches. Parz., supporting himself on the old man, asks where they are, for
the forest seems steadily to be disappearing as they enter stone corridors. It
looks as if they are on the right path, and the boy, he realises, is still
innocent, otherwise the way to the castle would not be opening up before them so
readily. They climb stairs and again find themselves in vaulted corridors.
Parzival, hardly feeling that he is walking, follows in a daze. He hears
wonderful sounds. Trumpet notes, long-held and swelling, answered from the far
distance by gentle ringing, as of crystal bells. At last they arrive in a
mightly hall which, cathedral- like, loses itself in a high dome. Light falls
only from above: from the dome - an increasingly louder ringing of bells.
[1865 Prose Draft], editor's emphasis.
agner thought that Chinese
tamtams might supply a suitable sound:
I am now - for honour's sake - making
preparations for the production of Parsifal. Having fared so badly with our
English dragon, let us see if we cannot do any better with the Grail bells.
Following a discussion with experts on the best way of representing the
necessary sound, we agreed after all that it could best be imitated by means of
Chinese tamtams. In what market are these tamtams to be found in the greatest
number and best selection? It is thought to be in London. Good! - Who will be
responsible for selecting them? Dannreuther, of course. And so, my dearest
friend, try to track down 4 tamtams which will produce - at least an
approximation of - the following peal.
It should be noted that - in order
to produce a deep bell-like sound - these instruments must be struck only gently
near the rim, whereas if you hit them sharply in the middle they produce a much
brighter sound that is quite unusable. And so, see what you can do!
[Letter from Wagner to Edward Dannreuther, 1 April 1881, tr. Spencer and
Millington.]
Left: Metal canisters used to produce bell sounds at
Bayreuth from the late 1880's to about 1929. ©Richard-
Wagner-Gedenkstätte.
The tamtams do not seem to have satisfied Wagner
and so he had metal drums constructed to make the appropriate pitches.
Even
these were not quite what he wanted. In the afternoon another scenery rehearsal
with piano accompaniment, the orchestra is permitted to watch and breaks into
hearty applause after the transformation scene, which does R. good, though he
has many difficulties to contend with: the bells are not right ...[Cosima's
diary entry for 5 July 1882. ] Wagner had an instrument built by Steingräber, an
upright piano frame with 24 strings but only four keys, each causing a hammer to
strike six strings tuned to the same pitch. This was placed in the orchestra
pit. It sounded like six upright pianos being played simultaneously.
Since
Wagner's first production, conductors have tried to find better solutions for
the bell sounds.
To use either church bells or tubular bells would be
impractical because of the necessary size. For many years, Bayreuth used the
Mixtur-Trautonium, the first synthesiser, invented in Berlin at the end of the
1920s by Sala and Trautwein. It was similar to the thérémin, but played by
depressing a steel wire on to a steel bar, thus altering the resistance in the
circuit. Timbres were changed by changing the capacitors which controlled the
upper harmonics. (Paul Hindemith wrote a concerto for this
instrument).
Right: a set of Parsifal bells at the Salzburg
Festival.
The Vienna opera used bronze-coated iron rods, struck with a
hammer controlled by a relay and then amplified. Knappertsbusch used a similar
method at Munich from 1962 and it was also used in Mannheim, where the leader of
the orchestra controlled the relays from a box on his desk. In 1973, Sawallisch
returned to the four-string piano frame solution, and the following year used
difference tones generated by a Moog synthesiser. Horst Stein adopted this
solution in Bayreuth in 1975.
ore recently, electronic solutions have been
favoured. In Hamburg, Ludwig and Liebermann used a tape loop of piano sounds,
recorded inside the instrument, mixed with bell sounds. In 1976, Maronn and
Hecht, of the Studio for Musical Communication in Hamburg, produced a
synthesised bell sound based on the analysis of German cathedral bells. This is
produced from an initial recording of 14 superimposed sine waves, to which
various different harmonics have been added at different volumes to produce a
bell-like sound. The mixture is then passed through a magic box which forms a
sound with an extremely short attack time followed by a long exponential decay
of 3-7 seconds. Pitch is controlled by adjusting the speed of the tape. The
results are in use at Bayreuth and major European opera houses.
hat seems to
have been missed, or forgotten, in the history of the Parsifal bells is that
Wagner did not intend these "crystal bells" to sound like church bells. Although
he did not know what oriental temple bells sounded like, it is clear he was
seeking a sound that would suggest temple bells and certainly nothing that
resembles the sound of church bells.
usical facts about the Bells motif can
be found in the Leitmotif Guide, see motif #28.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
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