This is entirely different from his procedure with the Ring, or indeed any of his works, not even excepting the Dutchman. The Dutchman, he said, grew out of Senta's ballad; but I have already shown that this statement was a mere piece of self-deception: not the whole of the Dutchman, not one-tenth of it, grows out of Senta's ballad; Senta's ballad is not an oak-trunk with all the solos, duets, choruses and the rest growing out as branches with leaves grow from a trunk—it is a scaffold-pole upon which these things are tacked in an almost unparalleled fervour of imagination. That Wagner recognized this is plainly seen in the prose remarks he penned, in very cold blood, in his after years, when he looked at his first really fine work as though it had come from the hand of some other composer. Gluck had not one-thousandth part of Wagner's sheer genius, or, born into the nineteenth century, he might have done the thing as Wagner did it in Tristan; Mozart had not one-hundredth part of Wagner's intellectual power, or, born into the nineteenth century, he might have done it. Wagner alone did it. Tristan is a feat accomplished once and for all; at this moment it is impossible to imagine such a feat ever being done again. Those of us who live on for another five hundred years may see something like it; but even then Tristan will not be old-fashioned—not older-fashioned, at any rate, than Antigone or Hamlet, and perhaps less old-fashioned than Macbeth or Lear. The breath, the spirit, which is eternal life, is in it, and it can only perish when the human race perishes.
Far too much theorising has been done about Wagner, and I would not add my quota did I not hope that this small contribution would save complicated explanations, now that I come to deal with the concrete, so to say, with the very stuff of Tristan, the words and the music. We are to be prepared for a drama of human passion in sharpest conflict with a dispassionate, indifferent, even antagonistic world. The passion is the naked elemental thing, the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man; and these twain, had they lived on an island by themselves, might have been happy or unhappy, and felt the passion fade away and no one a penny the worse. As it is, everything seems to oppose them; shock after shock comes upon them; until in the end they are content, feel themselves blest, to be allowed to pass out of life. We are shown them in four clearly defined phases: first, loving one another but the love unconfessed; second, the love admitted and the world opposing it; third, love at its height and the world breaking in upon it; last, love beaten in the fight and retreating to the realms of death. Throughout the drama there is no musical theme representing the idea of the antagonistic world. There are a dozen love-themes and two death-themes and a great number of what in a symphony would be called subsidiary themes. By far the most important theme in the whole opera is that with which the prelude opens, one made up of a couple of phrases ([a], p. [274]).
I shall not for the moment discuss the full significance of the themes as subsequently unfolded: it suffices now to note the use they are put to in this prelude. A continuation of this love subject presently is announced ([b]); then the poison motive ([c]); and finally yet another love theme. A tremendous climax is worked up: the very ecstasy and madness of love; it dies down, and the prelude ends with a sinister and tragic phrase ([d]), leading straight to a sea-song sung from the masthead of a vessel, on which the curtain rises.
No melody ever sang more clearly of the sea; no melody was ever less like a sailor's chanty. I have quoted words and tune in full ([f]). The words set the drama a-going; out of the phrase marked ([g]) the main body of the music of the first scene is spun. Isolda very naturally thinks an insult is aimed at herself: it is the spark that sets a light to the explosive material that has been accumulating in her heart for heaven knows how long. She curses the ship, Tristan, and every one concerned in the conspiracy that is to rob her of the man she loves and hand her over as a slave to the old man she has never seen. Brangaena, her maid, scared out of her wits, begs to know the truth; Isolda screams for air, which she assuredly seems to need; the curtains at the back of her pavilion are opened, and there, on the stern of the vessel, stands Tristan, the enemy whom she loves. From the masthead comes again the sailor's song. This time it does not immediately arouse Isolda to fury; for now her purpose is set—to kill Tristan: take her revenge and end her own life of misery. "Once beloved, now removed, brave and bright, coward knight. Death-devoted head, death-devoted heart," she sings, gazing at Tristan; and at the last words we hear the tremendous death-or murder-theme ([h]), a theme whose sinister meaning is afterwards unfolded. She sends Brangaena to order Tristan to come into her tent. He bitterly avoids understanding her meaning; Brangaena becomes more urgent; Kurvenal, Tristan's servant, a faithful watch-dog, asks to be allowed to reply; Tristan says he can. Kurvenal bellows out a song praising Tristan as the heroic slayer of Isolda's betrothed, Morold. Brangaena precipitately retreats and closes the curtains; Isolda and she face one another in the tent, the second nearly prostrate with dismay, the first boiling with wrath and shame at the insult hurled at her. She now tells Brangaena the whole of the preceding history—her nursing of Tristan and his monstrous treatment of her—and finishes with another curse. Brangaena tries to soothe her; Isolda, outwardly quietened, inwardly is planning how to carry out her purpose; Brangaena unknowingly suggests the means. "In that casket is a love potion: drink that, you will love your aged bridegroom and be happy once again." She opens the casket; "not that phial," says Isolda, "the other." The poison motive ([c]) sounds under the agitated upper strings: "the deadly draught," Brangaena shrieks: at this point the shouting of the sailors is heard as they begin to shorten sail; Kurvenal enters brusquely and bellows at Isolda the order to prepare to land. She refuses to move until Tristan has come in to ask her pardon "for trespass black and base." Here she begins to speak in terrible double-meanings: it is not Tristan's discourtesy on the voyage he must apologise for, but the more tragic occurrences leading up to his bearing her away to Cornwall. She orders Brangaena to prepare the draught, and awaits her victim.
She stands there outwardly composed while one of the finest passages in the whole of the world's music betrays her inward anxiety and suspense ([i]). It is useless to describe the scene in any detail: the words are simple and seemingly direct; the marvellous music alone reveals their fateful, fearful significance. Isolda asks Tristan to sink the ancient quarrel between them—caused by the slaying of Morold—and drink a cup together; he knows perfectly well a large part of her meaning—that she means to poison him. Whether she herself intends what presently occurs no one can tell: I doubt whether Wagner knew much or cared at all. Tristan knows how great is the crime he must make amends for: not merely Morold's death, but the winning of Isolda's heart, the desertion, the cruel coming to claim her as his uncle's bride; he says he will drink—only in oblivion can he find refuge from the toils in which he has involved himself; he lifts the cup to his lips, drinks, and as he drinks Isolda, crying "Betrayed, even here," snatches the cup from him and drains it.
Brangaena has betrayed her: the cup contains not the poison but the love-potion. In this stroke there is no fairy-tale or pantomime foolery. The course the drama now pursues is determined not by a magic draught, a harmless infusion of herbs, but by the belief of the lovers that they have taken poison and are both doomed. Whether Tristan had previously known Isolda to love him does not matter: he knows it now. It has been remarked that the language is ambiguous: or rather, Isolda in her rage may easily be supposed to go beyond the truth when she speaks of having exchanged love-vows with Tristan. She knows that he loves her. They have only a few minutes to live and to love: why not speak? They stand gazing at one another in a state of tremulous emotion, and at last rush into each other's arms. The hoarse voices of the sailors are heard outside hailing King Mark; the ship has reached land; Brangaena enters, and is horrified to find that both have taken the potion; the pair cling to one another; a stream of the most passionate music in existence sweeps on: Brangaena tries to attire Isolda in the royal cloak; Kurvenal shouts to Tristan that the king is coming; Tristan can understand nothing—"What king?" he asks; the deck is crowded with knights; and the curtain falls as the lovers embrace and the trumpets announce the arrival of King Mark.
Before dealing more fully with the music of this act let me quote a few words I wrote elsewhere on the dramatic course of the whole opera. "The end of each act sees the lovers in a situation which is at heart the same, though in externals different. Rapt in each other, they care nothing about the sailors, attendants, approaching crowds, and the rest, at the end of the first act; at the end of the second they scarcely understand Mark's passionate affection—they only know it is an enemy of their love; and, finally, they are glad when death frees them from life, which means an incessant trouble and interruption to them. The tragedy deepens and grows more intense with each successive scene; each separates them more widely from life and all that life means, until in the last act the divorce is complete. This is the purpose of the drama: this is the drama...." When Wagner conceived Tristan he was as fine a master of stage-craft as has ever lived; and certainly by very far the finest who ever wrote "words for music." The first scene prepares us to understand clearly and to grasp firmly the forces that are presently to be let loose and run the drama on to its tragic dénouement; and after that, scene follows scene with absolute inevitability.
III
During Wagner's five years of theorising after quitting Dresden in 1849 he had thought of subjects and written parts of the Ring. Tristan is the greatest work he completed. A reservoir full of music must have accumulated in his brain; and he seems now to have opened the sluices. Never did a more fiery impetuous stream flow from any composer: never was there, in a word, more inspired music. The profusion of the material is wonderful, and even more wonderful is the concentrated quality of that material. In the Ring and Parsifal—as in Lohengrin and Tannhäuser—there are longueurs; in Tristan there are none: not a bar can be cut; there is not a bar that does not hold us. In a paradoxical mood, or irritated, by being obstinately, wilfully, stupidly regarded as one of the trade setters of opera-texts, Wagner declared to Bülow that "one thing is certain, I am not a musician." This has been interpreted as meaning, "I am no musician," whereas, of course, he meant he was very much more than a musician: which, in a sense, he was. He was not a greater genius than Mozart and Beethoven, who had nothing of the dramatist in them, nor than Shakespeare, who was not, technically at least, a musician; but he was something different from both species of men—a dramatist who could not get the drama out of himself without the aid of music, and a musician who could not beat out his music without the aid of drama. Music and drama had simultaneous birth in the case of Tristan, and it is difficult to describe and criticise them separately. There is no other way of doing it, however, and as the drama is the structural foundation I have dealt with it first; but the music is of not less importance.
Many readers will remember how, not so very many years ago, a common criticism of Wagner's music was that it possessed no melody. Happily at this time of day there is no need to try to disprove this; for when we hear the first act of Tristan the first thing to strike us must surely be its richness in melody. It teems with tunes—it is an unbroken tune from the first note of the prelude to the last chord of the act. At times we feel the terrific energy as something that might easily grow wearying to the nerves, and then comes a long song, such as Brangaena's remonstrance to Isolda, which is a sheer delight to the ear and prepares us for the next dramatic outburst. That is the first thing to strike us; the next is the perfect skill with which the sound and feeling, the very breath, of the sea are kept ever present. The body of the music is made up of music growing out of the passage in the sailor-song ([g]); this goes through a hundred transformations, and is put to a hundred uses as the action progresses; and the swing and lilt of it never fail to conjure up a vision of smooth rollers and the sea-wind filling the sail and driving the ship fast towards Cornwall. It takes one shape when Brangaena tells Isolda that they will land before evening; and in nearly the same shape it returns when Brangaena goes to bid Tristan enter her mistress's presence; in the meantime lengthy passages have been woven from it during Isolda's first angry outburst; in one form or another it is worked again and again, always conveying just the feeling of the moment, yet never losing its original colour. Wagner's mastery of the art of pictorial suggestion, while faithfully and logically expressing, explaining and enforcing the actors' emotion, is here at its supremest height. In the Ring he often wrote purely pictorial music for a few pages with simple, almost speaking, parts for the singers, trusting, as he well could, to the stage situation explaining itself and making its own effect. But the burning passion with which Tristan is filled necessitated another mode of treatment, a mode which Wagner alone amongst musicians had the art and strength to employ. Other composers, notably Weber and Mendelssohn, had given the world grand scenic music; but where they left off Wagner began. Their picture is an end in itself: Wagner's are settings for the dramatic action.