Wagner's Parsifal: The Music of Redemption

Description

The last book by one of Britain's most prominent public intellectuals is a superbly insightful and moving exploration of Wagner's last opera Wagner's last music-drama tells the story of Parsifal, the 'pure fool, knowing through compassion', who has been called to rescue the Kingdom of the Grail from the sins that have polluted it. The Grail is a symbol of purity in a world of lust and power, but although Parsifal is the culmination of Wagner's life-long obsession with the religious frame of mind, the redemption sought by his characters is far from the Christian archetype. For Wagner, redemption occurs inthis life, when compassion prevails over enslavement, and purity replaces spiritual pollution. His music here ties together suffering and contrition, sin and forgiveness, downfall and redemption in an inextricable knot, healing the fractures and uniting the warring elements in human life in a way that is clear, convincing and uncanny. More than any other of his works, Parsifal expresses in music a depth of feeling for which we do not have words. This short but penetrating book, by a writer who was uniquely both a leading philosopher and musicologist, shows us how Wagner achieves this profound work, explaining the story, its musical ideas, and their coming together into a sublime whole which gives us the musical equivalent of forgiveness and closure. There are few writers who can so enhance our understanding of one of the greatest works in western music.

Sir Roger Scruton, who died just after completing this book, was a writer and philosopher who held positions at the universities of London, Oxford, Boston, St Andrews and Buckingham and who wrote widely on art, architecture, music and aesthetics. His books include his now classic Short History of Modern Philosophy (1981), The Aesthetics of Music (1997), Death-Devoted Heart- Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde (2004) and The Ring of Truth- The Wisdom of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung (2016). He was a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In his weaving of philosophy and musicology into an explication of redemption via the vehicle of compassion, this is an unparalleled, sadly posthumously published offering. It is at once required reading and a launch pad for an infinitude of musings. It is also, it should be clearly stated, magisterial. -- Colin Clarke * Opera Now * This is Roger Scruton's final book. Parsifal was Wagner's final opera. Both works are intended to be taken as Last Words: testaments of belief at the end of a long spiritual journey... you [will] find enormous satisfaction in following the journey of one of our great philosophers making sense of his own life though another's sublime work of art. -- Sue Prideaux * Spectator *