ABSTRACT
Parsifal itself had begun as a partial reworking of Tannhauser, an opera with which Wagner was never fully satisfied. The residue is apparent in a theme associated with the burden of sin, one of the many themes the two works have in common: this is heard near the start of the Tannhauser Overture – a lugubrious contrast to the Pilgrims’ Hymn already announced – and again towards the climax of the ‘Good Friday Music’. The Tannhauser Overture is as good an illustration as any of the ‘overture of action’ that Wagner avoided in his later works. Its dramatic trajectory mirrors that of the opera: an arch-like sonata structure, or sonata with reversed recapitulation, in which the hero struggles with the forces of sin and spirituality between which he is tossed, the whole framed by the introductory procession and final triumph of the Pilgrims.
