[599W-{5/53}Explanatory Program: The Flying Hollander Overture: PW Vol. III, p. 228]
[P. 228] {FEUER} “ … he’s curst to all eternity to hunt the desert seas for spoils that yield him no delight, but ne’er to find the only thing that could redeem him!” [599W-{5/53}Explanatory Program: The Flying Hollander Overture: PW Vol. III, p. 228]
[600W-{5/53}Explanatory Program: The Flying Hollander Overture: PW Vol. III, p. 229]
[P. 229] {FEUER} “What draws him with such might – it is a woman’s look, which, full of sad sublimity and godlike fellow-feeling, thrusts through to him! A heart has opened its unending depths to the unmeasured sorrows of the damned: for him must it make offering, to end alike his sorrows and its life.” [600W-{5/53}Explanatory Program: The Flying Hollander Overture: PW Vol. III, p. 229]
[601W-{5/53} Explanatory Program: Lohengrin Overture: PW Vol. III, p. 231-232]
[P. 231] {FEUER] “From out a world of hate and haggling, Love seemed to have vanished clean away: in no community of men did it longer show itself as lawgiver. Yet midst the empty care for gain and owning, the only orderer of world-intercourse, the unslayable love-longing of the human heart began at last to yearn again for stilling of a need which, the more it chafed and burned beneath the weight of actuality, the less was able to be satisfied within that actuality itself. Devout imagination therefore set both source and bourne of this unfathomable love-stress outside that actual world, and, longing for the solace of its senses by a symbol of the Suprasensual, it gave to it a wondrous shape; under the name of the ‘Holy Grail’ this symbol soon was yearned and sought for, as a reality existing somewhere, yet far beyond approach. ‘Twas the precious vase from which the Saviour once had pledged his farewell to his people, the vessel whereinto his blood had poured [P. 232] when he suffered crucifixion for his brethren, the cup in which that blood had been preserved in living warmth, a fountain of imperishable Love. Already had this cup of healing been reft from worthless Man, when once a flight of angels brought it back from Heaven’s height, to lonely men athirst for Love; committed it to keeping of these men, miraculously blest and strengthened by its presence; and hallowed thus the pure to fight on earth for Love Eternal. This wonder-working Coming of the Grail in escort of an angel-host, its committal to the care of chosen men, the tone-poet of ‘Lohengrin’ – a Grail’s knight – selected for the subject of a sketch in Tone, as introduction to his drama, and here he may haply be let depict it to the fancy’s eye.” [601W-{5/53} Explanatory Program: Lohengrin Overture: PW Vol. III, p. 231-232]
[602W-{11-12/53} ML, p. 505]
[P. 505] [Speaking of his Rheingold, Wagner states that:] “… the sketch for the whole composition was completed as early as January 16th 1854, and thus the plan for the musical structure of the entire four-part work was prefigured in this work’s thematic relationships. For it was here, in this great prelude, that the thematic foundation for the whole had to be laid.” [602W-{11-12/53} ML, p. 505]
