The Tristan Chord

Tristan und Isolde

In 1859 in Lucerne, one chord changes the course of Western music in an irreversible way, defying contemporary tonality and heading for a new form of composing which will be purely symphonic. The 'Tristan chord', the opening chord of Richard Wagner's in this year completed score for the opera 'Tristan und Isolde', induces a tension set in the first measures to last during the entire opera, moving with ever more complex and deeper suspense towards an ultimate resolve at the final act

Powerful the inner dramas to convey, superhuman the demands on the performers of the opera; the Vienna premiere was cancelled after 77 rehearsels and when, by June 10, 1865, it premiered only once in Munich, the drama's on stage had nearly taken over those in real life of the performers. The opera is stunningly original and abounds with a freedom of Wagner mastering his own theoretical system on opera-composing so that now music speaks for itself. Tristan and Isolde are at the center of action, but significant is the action of the conductor; he senses and shapes the huge structure of the opera from its opening 'Prelude' to the final 'Liebestod'

Audiences gasped at the intriguing dissonances, were left startled by the extended melodies. For contemporary ears all music was in keys, either major or minor, and listeners thought they could tell of every chord which key it was in, or how transitional it was. But the 'Tristan chord' was unanalysable; the music changed keys in every bar, many times more than once, so that it was of no use to place this genius music in terms of tonality. In the 'Tristan chord' Wagner realised in one chord what in his opera 'Parsifal' became whole passages. The next step was complete works, and this is precisely what happened in the generation after Wagner, the tonality-free symphonic composing that pioneered into atonalism.

Musical of idea though it may seem, there was an analogue dimension to Wagner's development. Wagner's acquaintance with Schopenhauer was the great event in his life. There has rarely been so productive a relationship between one great mind and another in a different field as between composer and dramatist Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Wagner was introduced to the works of Schopenhauer in 1854 when he was 41 while the withdrawn philosopher was his contemporary. Two years later the composer had read and reread Schopenhauer's 'Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung' (1819) several times, one of the longest and most demanding masterpieces in the history of philosophy. It was immediate recognition to the fullest extend; here was a structure of ideas and insights offering all of Wagner's artistic concepts and worldviews to take a unified form. As Wagner himself commented on 'Tristan und Isolde', his most Schopenhauerian opera: "It is now the music that is the drama."

According to Schopenhauer, music is the manifestation of the metaphysical will. We human beings are evenso embodiment of metaphysical will in the sense that willing, wanting, longing, craving, yearning, are not just things we do: they are what we are. Music directly corresponds to what we ourselves are in our innermost being, an alternative life.
Schopenhauer completed Emmanuel Kant's thoughts on the division between the 'Phenomenal' and the 'Noumenal' (Kant's 'Ding an Sich', or Plato's 'Ideas') The phenomenal being that part of reality that we can experience, the world of actual or possible phenomena. The noumenal is that part of reality beyond our experience, of which we cannot therefore form an idea with our senses derived from the world of phenomena. For an unknown reason we do have a notion of the undifferentiated, endless space, but we know space only because of its ends. As human beings we are gifted with the act of love to dissolve into a notion of eternity, but eternity we only know as a belief.

Now in 'Tristan und Isolde' the dichotomy of the phenomenal and the noumenal coincides with the division of night and day.'Day' symbolizes the external world that keeps the lovers apart; in the noumenal realm of 'Night', they are united and metaphysically one. Only 'Death' can liberate them from the phenomenal, day and daylight, the world with its false values, vanity and lies. In the consoling darkness of the night there will be no more Tristan, no more Isolde, they will be united in the deepest sense, undifferentiated, nameless, eternal. 'Let us die and never part', where they cease to exist as individuals, has the reality of a belief. From Act II: 'O, nun waren wir/Nacht geweihte' - 'O sink hernieder/Nacht der Liebe/gib vergessen/das ich Lebe/nimm mich auf/in deinem Schoss/lose von der Welt mich los!' - 'Nie erwachen!' - 'In des Tages eitlem Wahnen/bleibt ihm ein einzig sehnen/das Sehnen hin/zur heiligen Nacht/ wo urewig/einzig wahr/ Liebeswonne ihm lacht' - Mild und leise'.

(Half the libretto of 'Tristan und Isolde' concerns the Schopenhaurian imagery of Day and Night; in Act II it is so intensive that in the German-speaking world of opera the whole scene was referred to as 'Tagegespräch', the discussion of the day.)

In Wagner's opera 'Parsifal' the archetypal motif is compassion, the 'Tristan und Isolde' theme is longing, 'das Sehnen' or 'sehnen'. And the music sounds like it. Not only are the inner states of the lovers reflected in the orchestra, or the other way around, since the drama became music; Wagner's device of enhancement through delay in extended resolve of dissonances, overarches the entire opera to the musical equivalent of a transfiguration in Isolde's 'Liebestod' at the final act. Here, 'Death' can be understood as an artful construction, towards a realm brighter than the phenomenal Sun.

This writing is based on notes from'The Tristan Chord - Wagner and Philosophy', Bryan Magee, 2000.