Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde": An Essay on the Wagnerian Drama

by George Ainslie Hight

Indisputably the composer would have written G sharp had the trumpet been able to play it; it was only the defective scale of the instrument which led him to write A, but the effect of hearing A when we expect G sharp is electrifying; the unbending rigidity of the trumpet is here expressed with a vividness and force which nothing else could have given.

Many more examples might be brought from the works of the great composers to show how the horns and trumpets have lost in expressive power by having adopted the chromatic scale of other instruments. Wagner's use of the brass generally is most skilful; he is especially happy in avoiding the blatancy and coarseness which soils the scores of some composers. Neither trumpets nor drums are much used continuously in the score of Tristan. The former are often employed in the lower part of their scale and only for particular effects. Trombones generally utter single chords, or slow successions of chords, adding solemnity to the sound, and crowning a climax. A favourite instrument with Wagner is the harp, and he uses it freely in Tristan. The effect is, as it were, to place the orchestra upon springs, adding lightness and elasticity to the tone, as may be noticed in the accompaniment to the duet at the end of the first act.

We often hear Wagner's melody described as if it were not melody in the ordinary meaning of the word, but a kind of "recitative" or "declamation." The great French singer, Madame Viardot Garcia, was asked on one occasion in a private circle to sing the part of Isolde. She took the score and sang it a prima vista to Klindworth's accompaniment. On being told that in Germany singers could not be found to undertake the part, alleging that it was too difficult and unmelodious, she naïvely asked whether German singers were not musical! Assuredly any person to whom Wagner's music, especially that of Tristan, appears unmelodious is unmusical, or at least defective in the sense for melody. Wagner's music is easy to sing; much easier, for example, than that of Mozart. This, however, is only true for singers who are highly musical. The great majority have not had any real musical education, and it is to these that the common notion that Wagner's music is unsingable, that it ruins the voice, is due. The notion that recitative and melody are things opposed to one another is itself a misunderstanding. The characteristic mark of recitative in the narrow sense is that it is not bound by rhythmic forms, and therefore has a somewhat dry, matter-of-fact character, which would become tedious if it continued unrelieved--as life would be dull without any sweets. Wagner says: "My melody is declamation, and my declamation melody." There is no line of demarcation; they are as inseparably united as emotion and intellect. But although the stream of emotion in human life is continuous, it is not continually at the same tension. Moments of high exaltation alternate with more subdued intervals, and a very large part of the mechanical routine of life is emotionally almost quiescent. In the drama the emotional element alternates with the narrative, and according as the one or the other predominates, the weight of the expression is in the music or the words; each therefore rises and falls in alternation. Even in Shakespeare's spoken drama traces of this ebb and flow may be noticed, the language becoming more musical under the stress of higher emotion. In the opera the intervals between the lyric arias, etc., had to be filled in with dry explanation or narrative, and there arose the recitative secco, a rapid recitation in which the melody is reduced to a mere shadow. The German language was unfitted for dry recitative of this type, and these filling-in parts had therefore to be spoken--a device which proved intolerable, since it destroyed the illusion of the music. Wagner, as we saw, got over the difficulty by choosing a form of drama in which the emotional element was supreme, and the narrative filling in reduced to a minimum. We further saw how in Tristan und Isolde the principle is driven to such an exaggerated extreme as sometimes to render the action almost unintelligible. Nowhere is the music unmelodious or uninteresting, but it is elastic and pliable and changes its character with the emotional intensity of the dramatic situation, being more subdued in parts of the first act, asserting itself whenever rage, irony, tenderness, or other emotion call for expression; omnipotent in the great love-duet, culminating in the nocturne, and once more soaring in highest ecstasy in Isolde's dissolution, with endless gradations in the portions between. Hearers who are not accustomed to the dramatic expression of music attend only to those moments of intense lyric expression, just as in the opera they attend only to the arias; all else appears to them uninteresting and unmelodious. This is to miss the essential thing in Wagner's works--the drama itself; but it is precisely what is done by those hearers who are incapable of the effort of following attentively the dramatic development.

[CHAPTER XI]

OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC

It remains for us now to examine the work itself, scene by scene, that we may see how the principles of art which we have been considering in the preceding chapters are illustrated. The following notes are written with a practical end; they are intended to assist those who are unacquainted with the work and are about to hear it for the first time to follow the composer's intentions. They do not profess to give a full commentary or explanation, but only to start the reader on the right path that he may find the way for himself. Those who read German should begin by thoroughly mastering the text. Tristan is not like a modern problem play to be understood at once from the stage, without any effort. There are many, I regret to say, who spare themselves even this trouble, but it is indispensable, for even if singers always enunciated their words more distinctly than they do, it would be quite impossible to follow the difficult text on first hearing. Beyond this, however, very little preparation is necessary; especially the study of lists of Leitmotive should be avoided, since they give a totally wrong conception of the music. We cannot study an edifice by looking at the bricks of which it is built. Lectures with musical illustrations, provided they are really well done, by a competent pianist, are valuable, and it is also of use to study selected scenes at the piano with text and music, the scene on the stage being always kept before the mind, and the voice part being sung as far as possible. For those who are quick of musical apprehension such studies are not necessary, but the careful reading of the text is indispensable for all. In all studies at the piano the arrangement of Hans von Bülow should be used, even by those who are unable to master all its difficulties, since the simplified arrangements are very imperfect. As a help to those who study the text at home, I have recounted the general course of the action and dialogue just in sufficient outline to enable the reader to follow what is going on, adding here and there a literal translation, where it seemed desirable, especially where the meaning of the original is difficult to grasp.

Some introductory matter must first be told. Marke, King of Cornwall, has lately been involved in a war with the King of Ireland, whose general, Morold, has invaded the country to compel tribute. Tristan, King Marke's nephew, has defeated the army and killed Morold, but himself been wounded in the fight. His wound refusing to heal, he has sought the advice of the renowned Irish princess and medicine-woman, Isolde. She had been the betrothed bride of Morold, and in his head, sent back to Ireland in derision, as "tribute," by the conqueror, she has found a splinter from the sword which slew him, and has kept it. While Tristan is lying sick under her care she notices a gap in his sword, into which the splinter fits, and she knows that he is the slayer of her lover. She approaches him with sword upraised to slay him; he looks up at her; their eyes meet; she lets the sword fall, and bids him begone and trouble her no more. Tristan returns to Cornwall cured. His uncle is childless, and wishes to leave the kingdom to Tristan when he dies. But there are cabals in the state; a party has been formed, under Tristan's friend Melot, to induce King Marke to marry and beget a direct heir to the throne. Tristan joins them, and with great difficulty persuades his uncle to despatch him to Ireland to bring the Princess Isolde to be Markers wife. The curtain rises when they are on board the ship on the voyage to Cornwall, just approaching the land.

The Prelude is a condensed picture of the entire drama. As an instrumental piece it is unable to render the definite actions, but it can give with great distinctness a tone or an atmosphere out of which these acts will shape themselves in the sequel, a presentiment of what is to be. The subject of our work is Love trying to raise itself out of the contamination of human life into a higher and purer sphere, but failing so long as it is clogged with the conditions of bodily existence. The text of the Prelude may be taken from the words of Tristan in the third act:

Sehnen! Sehnen!
Im Sterben mich zu sehnen,
Vor Sehnsucht nicht zu sterben.