Kinder-Katechismus zu Kosel's Geburtstag: Faksimile der Reinschrift in den Fassungen von1873 und 1874 by Richard WagnerReview by: David B. LevyNotes, Second Series, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Sep., 1986), p. 172Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/897857 .

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172 MLA Notes, September 1986

edited librettos, and astonishingly varied "monographs" for significant works pro- duced during the first 150 years of com- mercial music drama. Its volumes are in- deed treasure-troves, which duly honor the

Serene Republic that contributed mightily to the development of opera throughout the period covered by this series.

LOWELL LINDGREN Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Richard Wagner. Kinder-Katechismus zu Kosel's Geburtstag: Faksimile der Reinschrift in den Fassungen von 1873 und 1874. Mainz, New York: Schott (European American), 1983. [Facsim., transcription, 16 p.; $11.50]

Copious details concerning the domestic life of Richard and Cosima Wagner in Wahnfried surfaced with the release and publication of the latter's diaries in 1975. While many of these personal commentar- ies reveal an often stormy relationship, the entry for Christmas Day, 1873 (which also marked Cosima's thirty-sixth birthday) be- gins with a reference to the children sing- ing the "Kose- und Rosenlied," a musical composition that surely must rate as the shortest (27 measures!) in the entire Wag- nerian canon. Wagner scored the work for children's voices and piano, the solo sing- ing being designated to Lullu and Boni (Daniela and Blandine, respectively, issue from Cosima's marriage to Hans von Bulow). One year later, Wagner extended the work to 43 measures and orchestrated it for a chamber ensemble comprising flute, oboe, two clarinets, two horns, bassoon, two violins, two violas, cello, and bass. The per- formance of this revised version followed a playing of the Siegfried-Idyll at Wahnfried on 25 December 1874. A recording of this version with members of the Vienna Phil- harmonic and the Vienna Choir Boys was issued as part of London's recorded "In- troduction to Wagner's Ring des Nibelun- gen" in 1968.

Measures 28 to 43 represented more than an instrumental postlude to the children's tribute: the final seven measures introduce none other than the "redemption" motive from the Ring of the Nibelung. According to Ernest Newman, Wagner completed com- position of Gotterddmmerung on 21 Novem- ber 1874, marking the completion of the project that consumed twenty-six years of

his life, and which found its fulfillment at no small sacrifice on Cosima's part. This momentous occasion should have been greeted with jubilation in the Wagner household. Instead, Wagner let loose a tor- rent of recrimination and peevishness to- ward his wife. The storm soon passed, however, and the 1874 revision of the Kinder-Kathechismus may be viewed as a fi- nal reconciliation of their domestic spat. What better musical tribute to Cosima could Wagner have chosen than the "Erlo- sungsmotiv"?

Schott presents a handsome reissue of the facsimile of Wagner's manuscript of both versions of this birthday/Christmas gift, the first publication having been issued in 1937. A brief, but highly informative introduc- tion by Egon Voss, "Huldigung Wagners an Cosima," presents the background suc- cinctly and clearly. Among the interesting information given by Voss is the revelation that Wagner used a three-measure quota- tion of a refrain from a Christmas song, "O du frohliche, o du selige," to intensify the coincidence of Cosima's birthday. The ti- tle's use of the term "catechism," here re- flecting the question-answer format of the clever text, is not to be found in the 1874 revision. The text itself is filled with amus- ing word-play ("Ros' im Mai, Kos' im Mai . . . Cosima!"). A transcription of the 1874 instrumental version, including a keyboard reduction prepared by Friedrich Jung, closes this volume, thus making it useable for anyone who may wish to perform this "codetta" to the Ring.

DAVID B. LEVY Wake Forest University

Giovanni Legrenzi. The Instrumental Music: Sonate a due e tre, opus 2 (1655). Edited by Stephen Bonta. (Harvard Publications in Music, 14.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1984. [Prefatory notes, editorial procedures, facsims., 39 p.; score, 79 p.; critical notes, 3 p.; $30.00]

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