25.06.2015

Share:

Piano manufacturer Steingraeber builds a replica of this historic instrument that is ready to launch in Bayreuth

Bayreuth. Richard Wagner had supernatural, strange sounds in mind as a leitmotif for the Temple of the Grail in his “Bühnenweihfestspiel” (Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage), Parsifal, and he required a new instrument to produce them. He called it “Grail bells.” The motif of the Grail in the first and third acts of Parsifal originates in the deepest bass register and is designed to invoke a sacred trembling in the listener. The powerful, bell-like notes lie at almost impossible depths: C - G1 - A1 - E1. Piano manufacturer Steingraeber has now built a replica of this historic instrument, and it is ready to launch in Bayreuth.

On August 8, 1881, Wagner commissioned the Bayreuth piano maker Eduard Steingraeber to create a “bell piano” that was used in the 1882 premiere. And it was still being used by Wolfgang Wagner for his staging at the Bayreuth Festival in 1981. Steingraeber later improved on the original model by using a cast iron frame and by designing the piano as a four-note dulcimer. This model was delivered to the Licéu in Barcelona and the Warsaw Opera House. It was also delivered to the National Theater in Weimar, where it is still in use today.

In 2014-2015, Thomas Zeilmann, head of restoration at piano manufacturer Steingraeber, built this very instrument, true to the original in every detail. It took months to complete the task. It was possible to produce a new and perfect cast iron frame, because the historical mould is still available in the Steingraeber archives.

Udo Steingraeber, owner of the family business, says: “The Parsifal bells are also part of our family history. Four generations of Steingraeber piano builders have created a total of four different kinds of bell pianos for Parsifal. And of these four, the 1882, 1914, 1926 versions still exist.” According to Udo Steingraeber, only Wieland Wagner’s bells, designed by Heinrich Schmidt-Steingraeber as an electro-acoustic piano with pickups, did not survive when the Festspielhaus archives were cleared out in the 1970s.

“Golden Sounds in the Mystical Ground” was the title of the musical instrument exhibition mounted the Leipzig Grassi Museum for the 2013 Wagner Anniversary. At the 2014 Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, the exhibition was set up to include two of the original Parsifal bells and garnered enormous attention: Conductors, general managers of opera houses and orchestra musicians alike were fascinated by the penetrating power of the five to eight-string choirs of the four Grail pitches. Powerful sounds that seemed far more exotic and strange than the modern [Midi] samplers often used for the Grail motive today: “And so to bring a real, acoustic version of the Grail bells to life was only natural,” says Udo Steingraeber. Opera houses are now showing interest in renting this reproduction [of the Grail bells] for their own productions.

Facts

The Parsifal bells are a classic example of Wagner's special instruments. Richard Wagner required four bells with up to twenty notes lower than c0, the strike tone of one of the Pummerin in Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral, which is of the lowest bells in use in the entire world, weighing over twenty tons with a diameter over three metres. To produce his contra low-E bell, Wagner would have needed over 280 tons of cast iron and a diameter of about eight metres!

The first set of Parsifal bells from 1882 was actually a piano, a keyboard instrument with four keys. In 1912-1914, it was transformed into a hammer dulcimer. In 1926-1927, Burkhard Steingraeber built an upright instrument for Siegfried Wagner and Karl Muck.

Parsifal bell pianos provided the fundamental; for the brighter overtones, an ever changing array of other instruments was used, such as the gigantic barrels for Karl Muck (with saw blades suspended inside them) or tam-tams for the 1882 premiere.

From Eduard Steingraeber’s notes: “At a chance meeting in the city in the spring of 1878, Wagner asked me if it would not be possible to produce the four notes of the bells in Parsifal ... on a piano-like instrument by means of large hammers and wide keys.” According to Cosima Wagner’s diary, the decisive discussion took place at Wahnfried on August 8, 1881. On July 26, 1882, the instrument for Parsifal was ready and was played at Bayreuth, along with four tamtams and bass tuba.