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  • 9 - Silence and Gesture in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and Wagner’s Parsifal

  • from Part IV - Reception
  • Edited by Steven Vande Moortele, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Wagner Studies
    Published online:
    17 April 2025
    Print publication:
    24 April 2025, pp 183-201

  • Summary

    This chapter reconsiders ways to interpret the musical gesture of the turn figure in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony by comparing it with Richard Wagner’s use of the same gesture in Parsifal – a work that proved crucial for Mahler’s development as a composer and as a conductor. In Parsifal, the descending second is associated with suffering and pain (‘Strafe’, ‘Klage’, ‘Qual’), but also with the possibility of redemption (‘Erlöse, Rette mich!’). As in the Adagio of Mahler’s Ninth, the melodic turn is omnipresent in Parsifal. This chapter concentrates on three specific moments where this orchestral gesture seems to express the unspeakable: Kundry’s narrative of Herzeleide’s death, her description of the gaze of Christ on the cross (both in Act 2) and her baptism by Parsifal in Act 3. Comparing these moments in Parsifal with similar instants in Mahler’s Ninth highlights their essentially theatrical and transformative nature: where verbal language reaches its limits, physical and musical gestures take over, transforming the silence of the words into material movement.