There are thus
now two theatres in the world in which music and drama can be absorbed,
and not merely guessed at.
II. THE LESSON OF PARSIFAL
The performance of "Parsifal," as I saw it at Bayreuth, seemed to me the
most really satisfying performance I had ever seen in a theatre; and I
have often, since then, tried to realise for myself exactly what it was
that one might learn from that incarnation of the ideas, the theoretical
ideas, of Wagner. The music itself has the abstract quality of Coventry
Patmore's odes. I cannot think of it except in terms of sight. Light
surges up out of it, as out of unformed depths; light descends from it,
as from the sky; it breaks into flashes and sparkles of light, it
broadens out into a vast sea of light. It is almost metaphysical music;
pure ideas take visible form, humanise themselves in a new kind of
ecstasy. The ecstasy has still a certain fever in it; these shafts of
light sometimes pierce the soul like a sword; it is not peace, the peace
of Bach, to whom music can give all he wants; it is the unsatisfied
desire of a kind of flesh of the spirit, and music is but a voice.
"Parsifal" is religious music, but it is the music of a religion which
had never before found expression.
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