The Siegfried Idyll stairs
Where fifteen musicians played at dawn on Christmas 1870.
Alessandro Gallo — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Davide Mauro — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Studio1521 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Studio1521 — CC BY-SA 4.0
On a small spit of land reaching into Lake Lucerne, about twenty minutes' walk south of the centre, stands a quiet yellow country house called **Tribschen**. Here the German composer **Richard Wagner** lived for six years between 1866 and 1872 — by his own account the calmest years of a turbulent life. He finished *Die Meistersinger* and *Siegfried* here, worked on *Götterdämmerung*, and married **Cosima**, the daughter of the composer Liszt, in Lucerne in 1870. In this house one of music's gentlest stories took place: on Christmas morning 1870 Cosima woke to a complete new piece being played by fifteen musicians standing **on the villa's staircase** — her birthday present from her husband, the work later known as the *Siegfried Idyll*. The philosopher **Nietzsche**, then a friend, was among the guests. The city bought the house in 1931 and opened it as a museum in 1933; it holds manuscripts, letters, photographs and Wagner's own 1858 Erard grand piano, still played at small concerts. The museum is small — five ground-floor rooms — and will mean little to anyone who does not know Wagner. But **the setting is half the pleasure**: a garden on the water with the mountains straight ahead, and the lakeshore walk out from town is lovelier than the museum itself. It was also from here that the first Lucerne Festival began in 1938, with a concert conducted by Toscanini in front of the house.
Where fifteen musicians played at dawn on Christmas 1870.
Wagner's own 1858 instrument, played at small concerts.
Grass and trees at the water's edge facing the mountains.
Richard-Wagner-Weg 27, 6005 Lucerne
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