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The Nomenclature of Wagner's Sketches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1974

John Deathridge
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Extract

It is easy to waste words on problems of definition while avoiding the wider significance of what one is supposed to be defining. In the case of a composer's sketches, an adequate terminology can best serve as a means of identification: to place any further claims upon it, especially in view of our underdeveloped concepts in this field, is to invite confusion where little enough order already exists. Nevertheless, it is worth spending a moment on the question as far as Wagner is concerned, if only because the problem of nomenclature has reached a point where it threatens to confuse a discussion of the sketches themselves—a discussion which in any case is only just beginning. This paper has no claim to finality, but rather attempts to clarify an unfortunate and premature entanglement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 101 , 1974 , pp. 75 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 See Strobel, Otto, ‘Richard Wagner als Arbeitsgenie’, Allgemeine Musikzeitung, lvi (1929), 525, 543–4, 563; idem, Fùhrer durch die wiederholte Ausstellung … Genie am Werk, 2nd edn., Bayieuth, 1934, pp. 11–14, 18–24. For Strobel's account in English, see his article on Wagner in The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, ed. R. Sabin, 9th edn., London, 1964, pp. 2341–52. A further, though greatly flawed account in English is Edgar Istel, ‘How Wagner worked’, The Musical Quarterly, xix (1933), 38–44.Google Scholar

2 These short documents already indicate a remarkable characteristic of the sketches as a whole: the accuracy with which they show—in varying degrees of focus— the final work in its finished form. The fact that there are no extant prose sketches previous to the Ring does not of course exclude the possibility that such documents were also made for the earlier works. For facsimile examples of the non-musical sketches, see Strobel, Skizzen und Entwürfe zur Ring-Duchtung, Munich, 1930.Google Scholar

3 Strobel also uses the terms Skizze/Entwurf (Sketch/Draft) to express a qualitative difference, i.e. the relative detail of the prose documents. If used solely as quantitative terms, however, the distinction between them is obscured. For the sake of convenience, I have used ‘sketches’ as a collective term throughout.Google Scholar

4 Facsimiles of both stages from Siegfried Act II (at the point where Wagner initially broke off work to begin Tristan) are to be found in Allgemeine Musikzeitung, lviii (1931), 496, and Zeitschrift für Musik, xcviii (1931), supplement 7. The dating of the sketches is 26 and 27 June 1857 respectively and shows that Wagner must have been working on both stages simultaneously.Google Scholar

5 Strobel calls the first stage of Tannhauser, for example, a Kompositionsskizze, although he had not seen most of the initial sketches. Joseph Clark, who has valiantly tracked down most of these documents, tells me that there is evidence suggesting that they are not continuous for the complete work. See Strobel, Richard Wagner, Leben und Schaffen: cine Zeittafel, Bayreuth, 1952, p. 26. Facsimile from Act I scenes 1 and 3 in Karl und Faber, auction catalogue 108, Munich, 2–3 November 1967, p. 221.Google Scholar

6 See for example the facsimile of the Rheingold sketch (transition to scene 2) in Bayreuther Festspielführer, 1930, opposite p. 120 (also reproduced in Allgemeine Musikzeitung, lviii (1931), 481).Google Scholar

7 The pencil sketch in open score for Walküre is more elaborate than that for Rheingold and can, with justification, be called a ‘full score’. The Rheingold document, on the other hand, begins confidently in ink but soon disintegrates into a more tentative sketch in pencil on sheets of reduced size. Facsimiles of the latter in Programmheft der Bayreuther Festspiele: Das Rheingold, 1970, pp. 4ff. See also the last side of this document reproduced in Die Musik, x/4 (1911), supplement to No. 20. The ‘first side’ of the same document in this supplement is in fact a copy with corrections in Wagner's hand.Google Scholar

8 Limited space forbids a discussion of the terms Partiturskizze and Partiturerstsckrift.Google Scholar

9 Allgemeine Musikzeitung, lvi (1929), 523ff.Google Scholar

10 Bayreuther Festspielführer, 1938, pp. 157ff. The title is a quotation taken from Glasenapp who claims, without naming his source, that Wagner used the expression to describe Beethoven's ‘melody’. See Carl F. Glasenapp, Das Leben Richard Wagners, 4th edn., Leipzig, 1907, v. 395.Google Scholar

11 A case in point is the so-called Orchesterskizze of Rienzi which, as Strobel admits, he labelled without having seen it. See Allgemeine Musikzeitung, lvi (1929), 563 (note 9).Google Scholar

12 Sāmtliche Werke, Mainz, 1970–. The editors have informed me that the proposed alternative will be modified as the edition proceeds. The first published volumes (Parsifal) still retain Strobel's nomenclature.Google Scholar

13 International Musicological Society, Report of the Eleventh Congress, Copenhagen, 1972, Copenhagen, 1974, i. 240–46.Google Scholar

14 Robert Bailey, The Genesis of ‘Tristan und Isolde’ and a Study of Wagner's Sketches and Drafts for the First Act (unpublished dissertation), Princeton University, 1969, p. viii.Google Scholar

15 The etymological root of ‘sketch’ and its German equivalent (Skizze) is the Greek word skhedios = ‘done extempore’. The German word Entwurf stems from Middle High German entwērfen, originally used to signify the completion of a tapestry with the use of a shuttle to lead the weft or woof (cross-threads) through the vertical wires separating the warp (lengthwise threads). The original meaning of ‘draft’ is less clear; it is related to ‘draw’ and the German word tragen, and probably derives ultimately from the Latin trahere = to drag.Google Scholar

16 See Tyson, Alan, ‘Stages in the Composition of Beethoven's Piano Trio Op. 70, No. 1’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, xcvii (1970–71), 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See e.g., Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonk, 19th edn., Berlin, 1904, pp. 106, 136, 144. In his inscription of the second stage of Tristan to Mme Marie Kalergis in 1860–61, Wagner describes the manuscript as a Kompositionsentwurf. See Bailey, The Genesis of Tristan…, pp. 86–87.Google Scholar

18 Report of the Eleventh Congress, p. 245.Google Scholar

19 Kōnig Ludwig II und Richard Wagner: Briefwechsel, ed. Otto Strobel, Karlsruhe, 1936, ii. 282.Google Scholar

20 A Discussion of the Origin, Style and Performance of Wagner's ‘Rienzi’ with special reference to the sketches, Oxford University, 1974.Google Scholar

21 Even the borderline between ‘sketch’ and ‘autograph’ is not without its difficulties. See for example Lewis Lockwood, ‘On Beethoven's Sketches and Autographs: Some Problems of Definition and Interpretation’, Acta Musicologica, xlii (1970), 32–47.Google Scholar

22 Both Parsifal manuscripts are in the Wahnfried Archives, Bayreuth. The first side of the second document is reproduced in Richard Wagner, Mein Leben, Jubilee Edition, Munich, 1963, facing p. 753.Google Scholar

23 I have adopted this solution in the forthcoming published version of my thesis: Wagner's Rienzi: a Reappraisal based on a Study of the Sketches and Drafts, Appendix I. For facsimiles of Egerton 2746 (f.3) and the first page of the Burrell composition draft discussed above, see Plates II and III.Google Scholar

24 Documents in this category are usually discarded sections of the main composition draft. Even when making minor mistakes or alterations in his detailed drafts, Wagner often removed the offending pages and copied them out again. For an example from the beginning of Siegfried Act III, see Rauch, Nicolas, auction catalogue 404, Geneva, 29–30 April 1957, plate 31. An example from Rienzi is described and analyzed in Deathridge, op. cit., Ex. 13b and Appendix I. source 9c.Google Scholar

25 In English, Strobel's nomenclature is familiar from the writings of Ashton Ellis and Ernest Newman.Google Scholar