Wagner: Prelude to Lohengrin, WWV 75 (Full Score)

The prelude to the opera "Lohengrin", which premiered in Weimar in 1850 and marks the transition from Wagner's romantic opera to a through-composed music drama, represents a significant developmental step among his preludes. Unlike the previous preludes, which anticipated the plot by means of motifs, Wagner here used mystically interwoven, shimmering tone colors that already "narrate" the story of the Holy Grail. He characterized his "Lohengrin" prelude as the "miraculous descent of the Holy Grail in the company of the angelic host". This image is evoked by music that is mysterious and full of sound, approaching, intensifying and then receding again after a powerful climax – no longer, however, in concrete musical-motivic anticipation, but rather with a kind of premonition of what is to come.

Wagner shapes this rising and then fading away of the music as a precisely constructed crescendo study, using the intensity of the orchestration as an essential dynamic element by adding and then silencing individual sections.