Sunday, April 27:
R. slept well. I tell him he will not know now what to do with his time! ... I write in my diary and read Malwida’s book, just arrived. Silence, no more sounds of music in Wahnfried—instead, a hideous military band! R. reads the B. Blätter, pleased with all three, Glase., Wolz., Schemann; he is vexed over the misprint in the old edition of The Artwork of the Future—“heavenly [himmlisch] beauty” instead of “sensual [sinnlich] beauty” (returning to this in the evening, he says the fact that Glasenapp has retained it could lead one astray about the whole thing). He says our confederation still lacks a musician to write a critique of modern music. R. is annoyed with M[alwida] for speaking out against religious acts; he agrees that the church has nothing to do with marriage, which is in fact alien to its spirit, and which it simply tolerates; but birth and death are both its concern. He says he cannot understand how one can hold out against baptism when one has been born into a Christian community, though he does admit that if one has been born outside it, there is no point in seeking admission to it, since the church is now in such a bad way. He can think of nothing more unbearable than a priest, but that has nothing to do with the act of baptism or the symbol of redemption.
After lunch we start to talk about the actor Jefferson, and R. recalls the ghostly scene on the mountains and the wonderful power of music—how the threadbare, indeed pitiful accompaniment elevated and transformed the overall impression.
In the evening we ask Wol. to join us, so that we may congratulate him on the periodical. The very numerous performances in Cologne (mostly of Holländer) have brought in new members. We go through Parsifal, from the second entrance into the Temple up to the end; R. said yesterday what he has said before: that the orchestration would be completely different from that of the Ring, no figurations of that kind; it would be like cloud layers, dispersing and then forming again. The naivete which had kept sentimentality at bay in the “Forest Murmurs” would also keep it at bay in Parsifal; in the former it was the naivete of Nature, here it would be the naivete of holiness, “which is free of the dross of sentimentality.” He plays certain intervals to us, saying, “That would be absolutely impossible in Parsifal.” “And so that you can see what a foolish fellow I am,” he tells Wolzogen, “I’ll show you what I intend to alter in the first act.” He looks for the chord in the first act, but cannot find it: “Yes, of course, it is in the Prelude; when I heard it, I said to myself, ‘Not bad on the whole, but this chord must go.’ ” He thinks it is too sentimental.
Discussion of the final, wordless scene. R. says he will cut some of the music if the action on stage is insufficient, but it gave him pleasure to be able to show that he was not wearied. Talk of Amfortas, his weakness, his exhaustion, and just the one terrible moment when he tries to force them to kill him. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about the work is its divine simplicity, comparable to the Gospels—the “pure fool” who dominates everything. ... As R. himself said, “It is all so direct!” . . .