His Greatest Operas

Part Two:

Tristan und Isolde

Tristan und Isolde is a musical masterpiece of unmatched proportions. I mean this not only in terms of innovative harmonic vocabulary, counterpoint, dissonance, and floating keys, but by dint of its unparalleled expressiveness. Let me elaborate on this latter quality. It is generally recognised that Ludwig Van Beethoven was the first composer to successfully inject his own, unique personality into his music. His late string quartets are not only the masterpieces of their genre, they are like a musical diary of the composer. Well, Wagner shot past all the earlier efforts that Beethoven had endeavored in this aspect, making Tristan und Isolde the most personal expression of ego in the history of Art. When I write ego, I don't mean in the sense of Paganini's violinistic virtuosics; Paganini was more an example of ego gratification in music . His expression was of a singular facet of his personality: that of the brash, egotistical, insecurity-hiding part. In the case of Tristan und Isolde, Wagner powerfully imposes his personality... his will upon the person experiencing the opera. It's like meeting a story teller whom uses his own individual attributes to make a story even better, to make that story completely his. His personality would leave you no choice but to surrender your own, in order to fully absorb and benefit in the telling. Encountering a story told from such a person would make it so you couldn't hear that story in any other medium without longing for the original personality who presented it to you.

But Tristan und Isolde is even better than that.

Tristan und Isolde was written as the musical representation of desire, or will. There is very little relief musically throughout the opera, because there's very little relief from desire in any person's life, at least in the Occident. The dissonances throughout the opera signify the tension of desire, a tension only resolved through death. The non-resolving nature of much of the music in this opera requires the listener to focus him or herself beforehand. I would like to beg your time here for an excellent set of quotes from the online paper "The Guardian", concerning this opera:

"... a work, which still, at times, defies belief. The lovers' unfulfillable passion finds expression in music that hovers in suspended animation between arousal and climax. If music is itself the embodiment of cosmic Will, then it must remain in an unceasing state of flux, perpetually changing and never finding melodic or harmonic resolution. The entire score consists of protracted chromatic dissonances from which neither the characters nor the listener can escape, and the only responses possible are rejection of the work in its entirety or total immersion."

So, be prepared to really listen to Tristan und Isolde, with minimal distractions, because this is easily Wagner's most difficult opera to absorb. One of the things that coincidentally reinforces this assertion and underscores the groundbreaking nature of the opera, is the fact that there were as many negative as positive reviews of it when it first was performed. In fact, more than one opera house at the time deemed it "unfit for performance". But soon it was recognized for what it was: an explosively innovative work of genius. Many consider it to be the most important work by Wagner, and musically this is quite understandable: nowhere (not even in late era Beethoven) had unresolving harmonies and hard to ascertain keys been used to such monumental effect, in a cohesive way. Where the "post modern" composers like Shostakovich took the influence to often unlistenable extremes, Wagner kept his opera sounding coherent and forward moving throughout, despite the intense dissonances.

The author of this excellent piece, Tim Ashley, goes on to describe how the philosopher Arthur Schoepenhauer's thinking influenced Wagner's writing:

"Schopenhauer rationalised both Wagner's experience and Tristan und Isolde's denouement. The "gloomy prophet" (as Nietzsche called Schopenhauer) had a quasi-Buddhistic vision of the world as driven by an implacable cosmic energy called Will, which links the phenomenal universe in an eternal flux of cause and effect. Desire and volition are perpetually unsatisfied. The only release lies in the voluntary rejection of the strivings of Will and the dissolution of the self in what Schopenhauer, using eastern terminology, calls Nirvana, and which Wagner, in Tristan, calls "the entirety of the moving breath of the world".  (article is quoted with the express permission of the author, Tim Ashley)

Finally, I feel that this summed up the whole Gothic morbidity of the opera, again from Ashley's Guardian article:

"The equation of love and sex with death, around which the opera notoriously pivots, is one reason why Tristan und Isolde remains such a uniquely disturbing experience. Wagner was, of course, working within 19th-century cultural and social parameters that frequently demanded that those - particularly women - who broke with social convention and openly expressed desire should come to a sticky end. Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary are two prime examples, and like them, it is Isolde who sets in motion the work's catastrophic chain of events. Compared with Tolstoy and Flaubert, however, Wagner is extreme. Some have assumed that he portrays the love of Tristan and Isolde as a union of souls capable of transcending the grave, like that of Cathy and Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights, but he goes one step further. His lovers feel a desire for each other so intense that the physical world cannot contain it and its only fulfilment lies in their voluntarily embracing the "supreme pleasure" (the closing words) of the total dissolution of identity, being and life. The Renaissance conceit that called orgasm "the little death" is seemingly pushed to its absolute extreme."

How much more Heavy Metal can you get?

In Act II, the lovers use the words day and night metaphorically. "Day" signifies the light of everyday concerns: the rules and rulers; words in and of themselves; social mores; desire itself; being governed by the abstract. The night represents what is only of the heart: giving into what is felt with no (light-of-day intruding) reservations; surrender of will; letting oneself be taken away with the moment... one could say: love without parents. Tristan asserts to Isolde that it is only in the night that they can be completed, without separation.

It is with ironic intent that when the lovers speak of the "highest joy of love," a resounding dissonance in the orchestra sounds, forcefully shattering the night they gave reign to with inexorable daylight.

It's rare that I get so profoundly moved as to have extreme shivers. That's what this opera gives me. There are few more heavy metal moments in the history of music as Isolde's gusting in the first act, or the Liebestod at the end. I reccomend the Daniel Barenboim-conducted Bayreth dvd of this opera, and the Karl Böhm conducted cd set featuring the most Metal of sopranos, Birgitt Nilsson, and Wolfgang Windgassen as Tristan. Stellar Metal indeed! A great studio recording is the cd conducted by Carlos Kleiber, with Brigitte Fassbaender singing the female lead.

I discover something new from this opera with each listen.

Tristan und Isolde had a huge effect on composers like Mahler, DeBussy, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Schoenberg...even Stravinsky (though he'd never admit it).