Prelude and ‘Love-Death’ from “Tristan und Isolde”
In 1854, when Wagner was in the midst of composing the Ring, the idea for an opera on the Tristan theme came to him. Not till three years later, however, did he begin actual work on it, and the music-drama was finished in August 1859. Complications of various kinds interfered with the production of the opera, but it finally obtained its première at the Royal Court Theater in Munich, on June 10, 1865, under the direction of Hans von Bülow.
Wagner’s version of the tale combines features from numerous legends. Very likely of Celtic origin, the story, as the German composer utilized it, makes room for myriad delvings into psychology and metaphysics, some of which are not easy to follow. We must assume, as Ernest Newman suggests, that the characters and their motivations were perfectly clear to the composer, if they seem not to be altogether to the listener. Here is the essence of the music-drama’s plot, extracted from Wagner’s own description:
We are told of Tristan and Isolde in an ancient love poem, which is “constantly fashioning itself anew, and has been adopted by every European language of the Middle Ages.” Tristan, a faithful vassal of King Marke, woos Isolde for his king, yet not daring to reveal to her his own love. “Isolde, powerless to do otherwise, follows him as a bride to his lord.” In the meantime the Goddess of Love, balked by all this, plans revenge. The Love Potion, which had been intended for the king in order to insure the marriage, is given to Tristan and Isolde to drink, a circumstance which “... opens their eyes to the truth and leads to the avowal that for the future they belong only to each other.... The world, power, fame, splendor, honor, knighthood, fidelity, friendship, all are dissipated like an empty dream. One thing only remains: longing, longing, insatiable longing, forever springing up anew, pining and thirsting. Death, which means passing away, perishing, never awakening, their only deliverance.... Shall we call it death? Or is it the hidden wonder-world from out of which an ivy and vine, entwined with each other, grew upon Tristan’s and Isolde’s grave, as the legend tells us?”
The Prelude, A minor, 6-8, makes a very gradual and long crescendo to a mighty fortissimo, followed by a briefer decrescendo, which leads to a whispered pianissimo. Free as to form and ever widening in scope of development, it offers two chief themes: a phrase, uttered by the ’cellos, is united to another, given to the oboes, to form a subject called the “Love Potion” theme, or the theme of “Longing.” Another theme, again announced by the ’cellos, “Tristan’s Love Glance,” is sensuous, even voluptuous in character.
After the Prelude, the orchestra enters into the “Liebestod” or “Love-Death,” that passionate flow of phrases, taken mostly from the material in the second act Love-Duet. Isolde (in the opera) sings her song of sublimated desire. Franz Liszt is responsible for the application of the term “Liebestod” to that part of the music which originally had been named “Verklärung” by Wagner himself.