13895 Wagner News 174 - Wagner Society of England

Lionel Friend
There were two shapes to the Baroque turn, one the upside down version of the other. In
the more usual one, the first note of the turn is a step above the principal note; it falls
below it and then rises again. The other “inverted turn” is the other way about: the turn’s
first note is a step below the principal note; it then rises before falling back to the main
note. In that period it was mainly used to decorate one single note; later it was used as an
ornament that linked two notes.
Tannhäuser Götterdämmerung
Wagner used both normal and inverted versions. I remember at one time being told
that he came to prefer the inverted one later in his career, and it is certainly fascinating that
the scores of Tannhäuser (in the clarinet melody after Elisabeth’s “So stehet auf ”, for
example) were printed with the normal turn shape, but we know from the edition that Felix
Mottl prepared for Peters that in Vienna in 1875 Wagner asked that these turns should be
begun “from below” (“Dieser Mordent (Doppelschlag) wurde in Wien von unten
aufgeführt.”) As early as Rienzi, though, the turn in the Overture (quoting Rienzi’s Act V
Prayer) is marked to be inverted (the traditional turn sign has a vertical line through it.)
The turns in Isolde’s Transfiguration (“Liebestod”) are the more common way
round. On the other hand in the Götterdämmerung Vorspiel they start from below. In
Holländer and Lohengrin Wagner was still mostly using the traditional sign for this
ornament rather than writing out the four notes in full, and perhaps there is sometimes
room for doubt as to which one he intended. (As already remarked, he seems to have
changed his mind over the years about those in Tannhäuser.)
The turns to which Roger draws attention in Parsifal and which occur in the
pastoral music accompanying Amfortas’ “Waldes Morgenpracht” are particularly
interesting to me because Wagner makes use of both kinds: from below in the cellos (bar
271, under “Waldes”, where they are written as grace notes in small print) and then
immediately from above in the oboe, violas, clarinets and bass clarinet. Wagner would
have been familiar with this figure not only from the Italian bel canto but also from the
instrumental works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. His contemporaries
Chopin, Schumann and Liszt also decorated their melodies with this ornament.
David makes interesting comments about the character and meaning of these
features of Wagner’s music. Personally, I don’t hear any kind of instability (certainly not
in Isolde!) To me they seem to express a kind of rapture, ecstasy, delight, longing, fervour.
But the essential musical thing is, I believe, that they belong to certain melodic phrases,
and do not have an existence apart from the melodies of which they are an intrinsic
feature. In Holländer the turn appears in the melody Senta sings to express her longing
for the Dutchman’s redemption (quoted by the cor anglais in the Overture). In Tristan
turns belong to the melody associated with Isolde’s transfiguration. In Götterdämmerung
they are a characteristic feature of the new melody of Brünnhilde’s loving womanhood
that we hear for the very first time in the dawn transition that leads to her scene with
Siegfried. (In this transition Siegfried's horn theme is also metamorphosed for the first
time into a new, heroic version.) For Amfortas the oboe melody (that I believe never
recurs) has to do with the peaceful relief from his agonies that he feels at this moment.
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