The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy; Brian Magee, 2000,
Macmillan
A book review by Peter
McKenzie-Brown
Tristan und Isolde
is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a libretto he wrote himself. I’m
not sure how well you know Wagner. A lot of opera lovers, including my wife,
find his operas difficult and only listen to them under duress. Personally, I
love his work. Today, I want to talk about the evolution of a revolutionary chord
in this opera. I’m not going to push your musical skills too far; my own are
not up to the task, in any case.
Wagner wrote the opera (including its libretto) in the late 1850s; its
first performance was in 1865. It is one of the great works of opera, and broke
new ground in its use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour and
harmonic suspension. In a letter to his lover – the wife of a businessman who had
befriended the composer, and funded his work – Wagner wrote the following:
“There is no
country, no town, no village that I can call my own. Everything is alien to me
and I often gaze around, yearning for a glimpse of the land of Nirvana. But
Nirvana quickly turns back into 'Tristan'; you know the Buddhist theory of the
origin of the world. A breath clouds the clear expanse of heaven: it swells and grows denser, and finally the
whole world stands before me again in all its impenetrable solidity.”
Elsewhere in that letter, Wagner cited a musical passage a young composer named Hans von Bülow had written, and offered a bit of constructive criticism. He did not criticize von Bülow for writing dissonances but for emphasizing them. Rather, he said, composers should conceal their dissonances.
Wagner did not take his own advice,
for soon he would be emphasizing a dissonance himself, using a chord that he
possibly discovered first in the score of von Bülow'sNirwana. Although it could with
justification be called "the Nirwana chord", it has become known as
"the Tristan chord."
First, let’s get the story out of
the way. Tristan is a nobleman from Breton, and the adopted heir of Marke, the
king of Cornwall. Tristan’s job is to accompany Isolde, an Irish princess, to
Cornwall to marry King Marke. With the aid of a love potion, Tristan and Isolde
fall in love aboard ship. This causes a great deal of commotion in the story.
By the end of Act III King Marke has shown himself to be an honourable man, but
Tristan is dead.
The Tristan chord includes the
notes F, B, D♯, and G♯. It is the opening phrase of
the opera, and is a leitmotif – a theme
– relating to Tristan. I read somewhere that it “contains within itself not one
but two dissonances, creating in the listener a double desire, agonizing in its
intensity, for resolution. The chord to which it then moves resolves one of
these dissonances but not the other, thus providing resolution-but-not-resolution.
It is not until we reach the opera’s closing notes that the chord finds
resolution.
When it came to promoting his work,
Wagner was an almost hyperkinetic genius. For example, he promoted and personally
supervised the design and construction of a theatre in Bayreuth, which
contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for
which Wagner wrote as well as the composer's particular vision about the
staging of his works.
It was there, in fact, that American humourist Mark Twain
heard Tristan. “I know of some, and have heard of many, who could not sleep
after it, but cried the night away,” he wrote after the production. “I feel
strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the one sane person in the
community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others
see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during
service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.”
Wagner’s compositions stress musical
themes, and his operas were quite long. Our version of Tristan is more than
four hours in length. In effect, Wagner made the orchestra the prima donna in his opera, and this
innovation affected other German composers.
Some years ago the Calgary
Philharmonic Opera dealt with the Tristan chord in an extraordinary way. The philharmonic
didn’t play the opera, obviously. Rather, it played a composition that began
with the opera’s overture and travelled through its orchestral finale. This was
an extraordinary way to hear the Tristan Chord, which gradually went from
unresolved to full resolution.
Note to readers: I used many
sources for this book besides Bryan Magee’s extraordinary book. A useful online
source is available here.
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