[1139W-{11/15/82} CD Vol. II, p. 952-953]
[P. 952] {FEUER} {SCHOP} “In the salon he talked to me about character and said it was foolish to praise it, for either it was meaningless, or a [P. 953] person could not act otherwise than he had done. (‘For example, when I did not wish to compose a ballet for ‘Tannhaeuser’: I could not have acted differently.’) I ask him whether he does not admit struggles inside a noble person. ‘Yes, but the decision is preordained. And the actions are what matter.’ “ [1139W-{11/15/82} CD Vol. II, p. 952-953]
[1140W-{11/82} ‘Parsifal’ at Bayreuth, 1882: PW Vol. VI, p. 304-305]
[P. 304] “Before all else we had to adhere to the greatest distinctness, especially of speech: a passionate phrase must have a confusing, and may have a forbidding effect, if its logical tenour remains unseized; but to seize it [P. 305] without effort, we must be enabled to plainly understand the smallest link in the chain of words at once: an elided prefix, a swallowed suffix, or a slurred connecting syllable, destroys that due intelligibleness forthwith. And this selfsame negligence directly extends to the melody, reducing it through disappearance of the musical particles to a mere trail of isolated accents, which, the more passionate the phrase, at last become sheer interjections; the weird, nay the ridiculous effect whereof we feel at once when they strike on our ear from some distance, without a vestige left of the connecting links. If in our study of the Nibelungen-pieces six years back the singers already were urged to give precedence to the ‘little’ notes, before the ‘big,’ it was solely for sake of that distinctness; without which both drama and music, speech and melody, remain equally un-understandable, and are sacrificed to that trivial Operatic effect whose employment on my own dramatic melody has called forth such confusion in our musical so-called ‘public opinion’ that nothing but this indispensable distinctness can clear it up. But that involves complete abandonment of the false pathos fostered by the mode of rendering condemned.” [1140W-{11/82} ‘Parsifal’ at Bayreuth, 1882: PW Vol. VI, p. 304-305]
[1141W-{11/82} ‘Parsifal’ at Bayreuth, 1882: PW Vol. VI, p. 312]
[P. 312] {FEUER} {anti-FEUER/NIET} “Thus even the influence of oursurrounding optic and acoustic atmosphere bore our souls away from the wonted world; and the consciousness of this was evident in our dread at the thought of going back into that world. Yes, ‘Parsifal’ itself had owed its origin and evolution to escape therefrom! Who can look, his lifetime long, with open eyes and unpent heart upon this world of robbery and murder organised and legalised by lying, deceit and hypocrisy, without being forced to flee from it at times in shuddering disgust? Wither turns his gaze? Too often to the pit of death. But him whose calling and his fate have fenced from that, to him the truest likeness of the world itself may well appear the herald of redemption sent us by its inmost soul. To be able to forget the actual world of fraud in this true-dream image, will seem to him the guerdon of the sorrowful sincerity with which he recognised its wretchedness.” [1141W-{11/82}‘Parsifal’ at Bayreuth, 1882: PW Vol. VI, p. 312]
