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Lot Essay
Other works from the edition are in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London, Van Abbenmuseum, Eindhoven and the Herbert Collection, Ghent. The remaining eight examples are presented without the artist's rotating brass display unit.
During the rehearsals for the premiere performance of Parsifal in Bayreuth in 1882 a technical difficulty was encountered. This difficulty concerned the large moving curtain mounted between rollers which, painted with landscape scenery, was intended to accompany Parsifal's ascent along the path to the Temple of the Holy Grail and was to create the illusion of a constantly changing landscape. By a miscalculation there was too much canvas and too little music - the latter invariably ran out before the curtain had completed its cycle and the Grail Temple was attained. To the stage manager's request for more music Richard Wagner, enraged, is said to have replied: 'I don't write music by the meter'.
Nevertheless, his assistant Engelbert Humperdinck saved the situation, composing nine bars and inserting them, with Wagner's approval, into the musical score, for the purpose of facilitating the scene change. In fact, Humperdinck's addition created the so-called Transformation Music, a seamless loop of 33 bars.
(Rodney Graham)
During the rehearsals for the premiere performance of Parsifal in Bayreuth in 1882 a technical difficulty was encountered. This difficulty concerned the large moving curtain mounted between rollers which, painted with landscape scenery, was intended to accompany Parsifal's ascent along the path to the Temple of the Holy Grail and was to create the illusion of a constantly changing landscape. By a miscalculation there was too much canvas and too little music - the latter invariably ran out before the curtain had completed its cycle and the Grail Temple was attained. To the stage manager's request for more music Richard Wagner, enraged, is said to have replied: 'I don't write music by the meter'.
Nevertheless, his assistant Engelbert Humperdinck saved the situation, composing nine bars and inserting them, with Wagner's approval, into the musical score, for the purpose of facilitating the scene change. In fact, Humperdinck's addition created the so-called Transformation Music, a seamless loop of 33 bars.
(Rodney Graham)