Bell piano

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A bell piano (also known as the Grail Bell Piano ) is a musical instrument that was specially made for Richard Wagner by the piano manufacturer Steingraeber & Sons in Bayreuth . The Grail Bell Piano is one of the prime examples of numerous special instruments that were specially made for Richard Wagner.

history

In the spring of 1879, Richard Wagner commissioned the piano maker Eduard Steingraeber to develop a bell for his music-dramatic work Parsifal ( WWV 111) in the form of a piano-like instrument. Wagner's wish was to have an instrument that sounds deeper than the deepest bell in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, i.e. deeper than the deep C. Steingraeber then built the bell piano in 1881 with a cabinet-high, narrow case in piano shape.

The bell piano has around 2.2 meters long strings that are tuned in the CGAE pitch in the deepest bass. The strings are struck by four 8 centimeter wide hammers. The keyboard of the bell piano attached to the front has an extraordinary key width of around 7 centimeters and the four keys are struck with the fist. In contrast to normal pianos and grand pianos, the bell piano only has a single pedal. This lets the struck notes reverberate after you press the pedal. They only fall silent when the pedal is released.

After its premiere in Bayreuth in 1882, the bell piano was also known as the Grail Bell Piano. The bell piano specially built for Parsifal by Eduard Steingraeber is currently on display in the Leipzig Museum for Musical Instruments.

In a newer version from 1914, buttons and mechanics were omitted. The instrument is now operated like a dulcimer. This second generation can still be heard today in the National Theater in Weimar. In 1926 Burkhard Steingraeber further developed the Grail Bell piano and built an upright instrument for Siegfried Wagner and Karl Muck. And it wasn't until 2013 that the Grail Bell was recreated in Bayreuth based on the model from 1914. The newest instrument is a good two meters high and has four choirs, i.e. strings.

In 2016, the composer Wolfram Graf brought the Grail Bell piano back to life and wrote five pieces for the instrument. It is the first new composition for the Grail Bell piano since Richard Wagner. The pieces were premiered on March 11, 2016 in Haus Wahnfried as part of the "Zeit für Neue Musik" festival.

Trivia

The additional designation Grail bell piano goes back to the 1st act, in the piece Parsifal in connection with the Grail Castle, where a voice from on high repeats the words of the prophecy with the last sounds of the Grail bells: “Knowing through pity, the pure gate”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wagner's Parsifal Grail Bells on steingraeber.de, accessed March 14, 2018.
  2. ↑ Kurt Herterich: In historical Bayreuth. Verlag Ellwanger, Bayreuth 1998, ISBN 3-925361-35-9 .
  3. ↑ Special exhibition from May 17, 2013 - January 31, 2014 in the Museum for Musical Instruments of the University of Leipzig ( Memento from October 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) with picture, mfm.uni-leipzig.de, accessed October 1, 2013.
  4. ↑ New composition for Wagner's Grail Bells: The bells never sound lower. Bayerischer Rundfunk, March 9, 2016, accessed on March 17, 2016 .