Music Of the Day: Wagner's Gut-Wrenching Grief

In classical music, there may be no opening chord so famous as Richard Wagner's opening few moments to his opera Triston und Isolde. The opera is a behemoth--lasting nearly four hours, and is a beast of a performance for any opera company to put on. Luckily, the famous prelude, clocking in at no more than ten minutes, is much more digestible. That is what we will be enjoying together today.

First, some context on the opera. Wagner took great influence from the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer, a nineteenth-century German philosopher, though they never met. Schopenhauer's philosophy was nothing if not pessimistic---He saw life as driven by an insatiable, irrational force, the Will, which leads to perpetual suffering. As Schopenhauer saw it, this suffering will never be realeased---until death.

Wagner's narrative takes us through every stage of this idea---despair, passion, and finally, release upon death. We start off with the prelude to the entire act, when we are introduced to Wagner's titular characters. As the story develops, Tristan and Isolde find themselves caught in a overwhelming love passion. At the end, only when Tristan dies does Isolde receive her release from Schopenhauer's Will (through a beautiful song called Isolde's Liebestod).

To enjoy and understand the Prelude, we must understand where it fits into the story, and its function within the wider work---to convey the despair at the root of Schopenhauer's thought. As we listen, we will see how Wagner crafts his orchestra to surround and overwhelm anyone who listens with nothing less than total, complete, and utter hopelessness.

The famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, upon hearing the prelude, proclaimed, "I simply cannot bring myself to remain critically aloof from this music; every nerve in me is atwitch, and it has been a long time since I had such a lasting sense of ecstasy as with this overture". French nobelest Marcel Proust even described the prelude as "linked to the future, to the reality of the human soul, of which it was one of the most special and distinctive ornaments."

Here, I won't analyze the piece from a musical theory perspective. I simply invite you to listen along, devote your fill attention, and feel your heart leave your soul. We'll listen along to the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. I will share my commentary as we listen along.

Opening: We hear a mournful clarinet rise and fall, listlessly, until the strings come crashing down. The famous Tristan Chord! By introducing such unresolved tension into the piece, Wagner paints a delicate starting picture of uncertainty and melancholy. And, he changed music history forever. The string and wind lines that surround and supply energy to the Tristan Chord, however, repeat this desire theme. The theme repeats, louder, this time with strings. Again, a melancholic string line rises, as if struggling against an unseen force, and is crushed in a resounding and thick musical line.

But, underneath all this surface drama, the cellos are still rising underneath, carrying passion. The violins take over the melody, rising high as the cellos drop out and fade away.

We continue to hear the violins and the cellos engaged in a dialogue, rising and falling with each other, growind and fading away together, until all disappears.

But, no---the strings and the winds, now, form a duet. The strings rise with a tentative minor-key theme, and the strings echo. This repeats, until the strings, surging, glides above and ascends out of the silence.

Now, we are halfway through the pieces. The strings, violins, and brass form a gorgeous layer, blending their sound and enveloping the listener. The strings and winds, engaged in a desparate struggle, create long, luscious melodic lines, as they struggle to break free of this underlying melancholy.

Now, we are at the seven minute mark. The strings surge upwards chromatically, as if imbued with new hope, only to hit another Tristan Chord and fade off. Again and again, the strings surge up, louder and more powerful this time, pushing the limits of their register, only to hit the ceiling. Higher they go, and higher yet they climb, the melodic line stretching. However, listen, past the thick texture crafter by Wagner, for the base line, for even as the strings push and swell, the cellos and low brass descent, solemly and sonorously. This delicate texture engulfs the listener and overwhelm his senses.

This texture has all been building up for the past minute, and now the strings swell! The violins sweep upwards, high and so fast it is as if they were screaming. With one final cry, the strings streak upwards. Behind them, the brass ascends with them, resolving in a resounding fortissimo.

But this theme, this power, and this energy, only happens once. The orchestra has released their outpouring of emotion, and this powerful climax will not happen again. All melodic and harmonic lines now fall, descending on an arpeggio, as the entire texture fades back into nothingness.

That is, until we hear the faint entrance of a familiar sound: The Desire Theme, resolving quietly on the wind Tristan chord. We hear it a second time, then a third, each time building, once again, as the orchestra converges and reawakens. The winds, and strings, still disparate, suddently come together and swell, and our ears strain to hear a climax for the second time, but we are disappointed. The orchestra never builds beyond a mezzo forte. Our orchestra falls back into disarray, back to silence.

Now, when we hear the Desire theme again, is is nothing more than a solo oboe, alone, uttery isolated. It's repeated a second time, even softer than the first, with a solo base clarinet. We will not hear it again. Finally, a low base, finishing on minor chords, brings a solemn end to the piece. We finished as we started: Not with a bang, but with a whimper.