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There is another phrase of tragic puissance with which we must now get acquainted. At the first glance which Isolde throws upon Tristan, motionless at the helm of the ship, when the curtains are parted to permit the maid to summon the knight into the presence of the princess, this phrase publishes her dreadful determination to seek revenge for outraged love in murder and suicide. It is the symbol of death, whose relationship to the symbol of fate will easily be recognized:

Death... de - vot - ed head!

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Its ominous expressiveness, apart from instrumental color, which cannot be reproduced on the pianoforte, comes from the sudden and unprepared change of key from A-flat to A.

The culminating scene in the drama is that which brings the first act to a close—the meeting of Tristan and Isolde, and the drinking of the potion. In this scene the device of introducing cheerful and exciting sailors' music to heighten the intensity of a dramatic climax is used with peculiarly startling effect. It produces a marvellous illusion by the suddenness of its entrance, its sharp interruption of the tragic music expressive of the soul-torments of the principal personages, and the unprepared transition from the spectacle of doomed humanity to the joy-inspiring aspect of nature. An almost equally noteworthy effect is the orchestral proclamation of Tristan in his character as a fully-developed tragic hero. Observe how, by augmenting the simple phrase, the orchestra increases the stature of the knight; but note also how, though he looms up in Isolde's door-way like a demi-god clad in steel and brass, a knight capable of overthrowing the choicest spirits of Arthur's Round Table, and scattering thirty of King Marke's knights, the fateful harmonies in their chromatic descent (which have their model in the melody of the wounded Tristan) publish his doom with a prophetic forcefulness that cannot be misunderstood.

There is in this scene, also, a peculiarly eloquent example of the manner in which Wagner permits the music to publish hidden meanings in the text. While Brangäne, obeying her mistress's behest, is preparing the fatal draught, the gladsome noise of the sailors is heard from without. The ship is entering the harbor. Tristan, who is brooding over Isolde's demand that he drink a drink of expiation for the slaying of Morold, suddenly arouses himself. "Where are we?" he asks. "Near the goal," answers Isolde. What goal does she mean? Cornwall, the goal of the voyage? Ah, no! The music tells us; the words are sung to the death-phrase.

IV.

Wagner's skill in plunging his listeners into the mood essential to the proper reception of his drama has no brighter illustration than "Tristan und Isolde." The passionate stress and profound melancholy which mark all that really belongs to the story are prefigured for us in the prelude. That story is more than nine-tenths told in the first act. The music that is introduced to give relief to the mind, and also to heighten the tragic effect by means of contrast, is the music that is related to the scene which is the theatre of the outward action, or to the personages of the play who bear no part in the real tragedy which, as I have already intimated, plays on the stage of the lovers' hearts. These comparatively inactive persons who serve as foils are the young seaman who sings at the mast-head, the sailors, the shepherd who enters in the last act, and Kurwenal, the squire. Kurwenal, rugged yet tender, amiable and picturesque, gentle as a woman at core, shares in the bright, flowing, rhythmically vigorous music which tells of unfettered breezes, heaving billows, and popular pride; while to Tristan and Isolde is given the music made out of the few phrases which, as they unfold themselves over and over again in an infinite variety of combinations and with continually changing instrumental color, bring to our consciousness in a wonderfully vivid manner the torments which are consuming them. In the introduction to the second act we have another mood picture—a picture of the longing and impatience of the lovers; but this idea is presented with such peculiar eloquence and beauty in the first scene that I prefer to pass over the instrumental introduction with this bare reference. I am not attempting a dissection of every scene; my purpose will be attained if I can suggest the things which best indicate the mood in which it is well to listen, and give starting-points to the imagination. The second act differs from the first in that it is all but actionless. In it, however, is presented the catastrophe of the tragedy—the discovery of the guilt of the ill-starred lovers by King Marke. The scene is a garden before Queen Isolde's chamber; the time, a lovely night in summer. A torch burns in a ring beside the door leading from the chamber into the garden. The King has gone a-hunting, and as the curtain rises the tones of the hunting horns dying away in the distance blend entrancingly with an instrumental song from the orchestra, which seems a musical sublimation of night and nature in their tenderest moods. Isolde appears with Brangäne, and pleads with her to extinguish the torch and thus give a signal to Tristan, who is waiting in concealment. But Brangäne suspects treachery on the part of Melot, a knight who is jealous of Tristan and himself enamoured of Isolde, and who had planned the nocturnal hunt. She warns her mistress and begs her to wait. In their dialogue there is lovely fencing with the incident of the vanishing sounds of the hunt like Shakespeare's dalliance with nightingale and lark, in "Romeo and Juliet." Beauty rests upon this scene like a benediction. To Isolde the horns are but the rustling of the forest leaves as they are caressed by the wind, or the purling and laughing of the brook. Longing has eaten up all patience, all discretion, all fear. She extinguishes the torch in spite of Brangäne's pleadings, and with wildly waving scarf beckons on her hurrying lover. Beneath the foliage they sing their love through all the gamut of hope and despair. The text of their duet consists largely of detached ejaculations and verbal plays, each paraphrasing and varying or giving a new turn to the outpouring of the other, the whole permeated with the symbolism of pessimistic philosophy, in which night and death and oblivion (which have their symbols in the music) are glorified, and day and life (which also have their symbols) and memory are contemned. There is transporting music in the duet, and many evidences that in it Wagner wrote and composed with tremendous enthusiasm, veritably with a pen of fire. In the dialogue of this scene lies the key of the entire philosophy of the tragedy. We ought to know this, but we do not need to justify it. If I were to indulge in the unnecessary luxury of criticism, I should suggest that pessimistic philosophy transmitted through verbal plays which are carried far beyond the limits of reason, if not to the verge of childishness, is not good dramatic matter, and half an hour of it is too much. Swinburne, who repeatedly makes use of metaphors and thoughts which tempt one to believe that he made a study of Wagner's drama, also attempts a dalliance with the images of night and day which fill so many of Wagner's pages, but with a difference, and his Iseult, unlike the German Isolde, checks Tristram's song wherein he asks: