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GRIEF.
The ensuing long ascending passage expresses loneliness most eloquently. This is interrupted by a new motive, heard frequently in this act, the motive of Anguish:
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ANGUISH.
The melody played by the shepherd's pipe has received various titles, but it speaks its own language of melancholy. The music allotted to Kurvenal in the opening scene of the act is similar in character to that which he sings in Act I., and at one place is a repetition of it. In the long speeches of Tristan we hear repeated with powerful dramatic significance the motives of Day and Night, the Love theme, the Death theme, the motive of Anguish, and snatches of the love duo of Act II. The musical material of the entire act is now woven of what has already been heard. The motives melt and flow in a stream of marvellous melody, till at the end Isolde proclaims her hero's greatness in the "Liebestod," which is a repetition, with some developments, of Tristan's "So stürben wir um ungetrennt, ewig einig ohne End'," and the motive of the Triumph of Love: