Beyond Analysis: Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

by

Donald H. Crosby,

Professor of German Studies, Emeritus, University of Connecticut.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am about to inflict yet another lecture on Tristan und Isolde on you. I do so with much trepidation, not only because there have been six other lectures on the subject in recent weeks, but also because I'm a bit worried about all of us overdosing on what has become Washington Wagnermania! Even though I don't really believe the rumor I have heard, namely that the Washington Monument, under all that camouflage, is being reconfigured to resemble Siegfried's sword Nothung -- surely somebody must be pulling my leg! --there can be little doubt that our fair city has been transformed, at least temporarily, into Bayreuth on the Potomac! Not only have there been lectures on Wagner, but also seminars, symposia, and round-table discussions, with no end in sight! And of course--last but by no means least--there is the opera Tristan und Isolde, which is now nearing the end of a highly successful "run" here at the Kennedy Center. Once thought to be unplayable, and accessible only to holders of a Ph.D. in German philosophy, Tristan und Isolde has been playing to sold-out audiences--audiences which in my observation have been fully appreciative of the Washington Opera's excellent presentation.

Under the circumstances, I feel that talking about Tristan und Isolde this evening will be--to quote an old Hungarian saying--"like carrying water to the Danube." However: Artur Schnabel, a wonderful pianist and musician of an earlier generation, once defined great music as "music which is greater than it can be performed." By extension, there are operas which are greater than they can be discussed or analyzed, and one of these--as I'm sure we'll all agree--is Tristan und Isolde.


For all its reputation as a formidable opera to produce, Tristan und Isolde was originally intended as a mere trifle, an uncomplicated opera designed to get Wagner's creditors off his back. For some time, the composer had been living off the charity--and on the estate--of a wealthy admirer, the Swiss-American businessman Otto Wesendonk. Some Wagner commentators have called Wesendonk a bad businessman, because he kept throwing money into the black hole which was Richard Wagner. I would argue on the contrary, that Wesendonk was the smartest Swiss businessman who ever lived. For a couple of hundred thousand Swiss Franks he purchased immortality: he is the model not only for King Marke in Tristan, but also for Veit Pogner, that genial merchant with deep pockets we meet in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Although Wagner had no qualms about accepting money from patrons--he once remarked that the world owed him a living in return for his being Richard Wagner (and who could disagree?)-- his long-suffering wife Minna, worn-out by trying to make meager ends meet, and having the inborn German hatred of debts, was constantly nagging her husband to write the kind of opera people would pay to see!


Minna's eagerness to cut the financial umbilical cord to the Wesendonks was motivated by more than just a German Hausfrau's pride, however. It had not escaped Minna's notice that Wesendonk had a pretty young wife, Mathilde, who was constantly gushing over her husband, whose roving eye had more than once brought their marriage to the brink of divorce. Minna wasn't the only person urging Wagner to write a simple opera: the Emperor of Brazil, of all people, was looking for a court composer who could compose a national opera for his developing country, and he, too, wanted it kept simple. Wagner' eventually turned down the Emperor, but the idea of writing an uncomplicated opera was reinforced.


Even though Tristan und Isolde eventually evolved into something more than an uncomplicated opera, in its externals it still betrays the economical features which Wagner conceived as the opera's "selling points" to would-be managersand impresarios. Not only is the number of main characters--some would argue that there only two main characters!--manageable, but decor and costumes are simple, well within the budget of even a provincial opera house. One oddity, for a Wagner-opera, is that not a single blue-eyed, blond-haired German turns up on stage, although all these Celts we encounter seem to have picked up German somewhere!

How then can one account for the paradox that this most un-Wagnerian of operas is at the same time the opera which comes closest to defining Richard Wagner?

First of all, Wagner was deluding himself if he seriously thought that, at this stage of his life and career, he could compose an operatic trifle. Composing a lightweight opera about an "elixir of love" was for the Donizettis of this world, not for the Richard Wagners! Secondly, by 1857, Wagner had reached an astonishing level of compositional development. By the time he committed the Tristan-music to paper Wagner had already completed Das Rheingold, a marvel of composition, and most of Die Walküre, which many critics hail as the greatest of the "Ring" operas. One of the marks of Wagner's "new style" was compactness. Although it may seem ludicrous to speak of compactness in the case of a composer who seems to favor five- and six- hour operas, the fact is that Wagner's compositional technique was aimed at an economy of means.

The famous Prelude which begins the opera is itself a marvel of compactness. The music begins, and within four measures the world of music has been changed forever! Four measures? How about four notes, for properly speaking the famous Tristan-chord, which has bedeviled generations of theorists, consists of only four notes: f,b.d# and g#. There it is, the Tristan-chord. But perhaps you are not impressed: "What?? Is this the chord, which launched a thousand scholarly monographs? Is this the chord that looks ahead to Debussy and even Schoenberg? Just those four notes? Why my cat could jump on the keyboard and produce those four notes!"

Well, yes, ladies and gentlemen, your cat could jump on the keyboard and produce those notes, but it would help if your cat were a tomcat called Richard Wagner! And lest we be too dismissive of four notes, let us remember that every day we entrust our financial lives and our innermost secrets to the last four digits of our social security number. Computers can do marvelous things with four digits, and composers can do wonderful things with four notes! But if truth were told, what Wagner doesn't do with these four notes is as important, historically speaking, as what he does do. The chord itself, as your ears have already told you, is a dissonant chord, especially since I deliberately played it with as much subtlety as--well, a cat jumping on the keyboard! Wagner stresses the harshness of the chord only at moments of high drama, for example just after the lovers have drunk the love potion. When he introduces the historic chord in the Prelude--which we'll hear shortly-- Wagner ingeniously disguises the dissonance by cushioning the chord, floating it in with the woodwinds, and surrounding it with what Thomas Mann once called "a perfumed haze." By so doing, Wagner creates that aura of ambiguity and illusion which is central to the musical and psychological fabric of the opera.

But dissonant chords disguised or otherwise, are nothing new in music. Beethoven, among others, repeatedly uses dissonant chords for purposes of contrast. What IS new about the Tristan-chord is that Wagner does not resolve it, as our ears might expect, but rather leaves it hanging in the air. So now the chord takes on two qualities: it is dissonant, with all that the word implies, and it is unresolved, incomplete, open-ended. The chord thus becomes a musical metaphor for the basic situation of Tristan and Isolde: their love is not consonant with the religious and feudal laws to which they are bound; and despite the intensity of their yearning, their Sehnsucht for one another, their union can never be complete, at least not in this world.

Years ago, in one of his brilliant lectures to young people, the late Lenny Bernstein compared the closed system of tonality to a baseball diamond. In order to score a run, a batter must start out at home plate--which is the equivalent of what in music is called "the fundamental tone"--and then run to first base, second base, third base, and finally come back to "home plate." Seeing a batter cross home plate gives the baseball fan a feeling of visceral and psychological satisfaction--provided of course that the batter belongs to the home team! Similarly, in music, our ears--either for psycho-acoustic reasons, or because that is what we have become accustomed to--our ears want a musical phrase, or a chord, or a scale, to return to the fundamental tone.

What Wagner does with his Tristan-chord-- to continue Bernstein's analogy--is to stop at third base! Eventually, he does continue on to home plate, but that doesn't happen for approximately four hours! And the only reason Wagner's heresy did not create an instantaneous furor was that it was so new, and so unexpected, that not one of the critics even noticed it. At the risk of kicking a very sacred cow, I must add that In my opinion, at least, too much critical fuss has been made of Wagner's break with tonality. The closed system of tonality had been springing leaks even before Beethoven, and if Wagner hadn't made the break, someone else would have. To judge from the evidence, Wagner himself had no inkling that his Tristan-chord would stand the world of music on its ear--if you will permit the pun. If he had, I can assure you that we would know about it.

Wagner, you see, was what in German is called a "Vielschreiber," that is, a compulsive writer, a graphomaniac who had to write down practically everything that came into his head--including, unfortunately, his crackpot ideas about Jews. Wagner left behind sixteen volumes of prose writings, plus ten thousand letters, many of them of essay-length. Yet in all these ink-filled years, Wagner never discussed the Tristan-chord, or the Prelude for that matter, in anything but highly-colored emotional terms. Tristan und Isolde was written from the heart, not the head!

Since the Tristan-chord consists of only four notes, it is sometimes confused with the so-called "Tristan and Isolde-motif" with which the Prelude begins. This motif consists of the first upward leap of the celli, then the ominous turn downward, then the Tristan-chord itself, and then the trailing four-note chromatic phrase--chromatic meaning it moves in half-steps-- which completes the four measures.

The late Sir George Solti, who was one of our leading Wagner conductors, was once asked how he, a Hungarian Jew, could conduct the music of Wagner, who was a virulent anti-Semite. Solti's reply was: "When I hear, or conduct, the first four measures of Tristan und Isolde, the world of politics doesn't exist for me."

Solti was right: there are no politics in those opening measures, but virtually everything in the opera is: love, yearning, conflict, the German Romantic concept of the Infinite, of open-endedness; even the high priest of gloom, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, is hiding in there somewhere! In ingenious combinations, harmonizations, and modulations this motif is repeated over 100 times in the opera, and whenever you hear it, you know that Tristan and Isolde are on the composer's mind-- which is practically all of the time! I would like to play for you a recording of the Prelude in a version not commercially available, or least wasn't when I obtained it. Richard Strauss, the composer of the Rosenkavalier and a half-dozen other operas with which you are familiar, had more than just his Christian name in common with Wagner.

Because Strauss succeeded Wagner as the "great German opera composer" and, like Wagner, was an outstanding conductor, he was nicknamed in Germany "Richard der Zweite" --- Richard II. Strauss had rather unusual connections to Tristan und Isolde. At the opera's premiere in Munich in 1865, his father sat at the first horn desk. Later, the conductor of the premiere, Hans von Bülow, took on young Richard as a conducting protege. When Strauss fell ill in his twenties and was thought to be on his deathbed, he told his doctors that they couldn't let him die. . . "Because I haven't conducted Tristan und Isolde yet!" Fortunately for us, the doctors complied with his wishes and Strauss lived for another 60 years!

Since Strauss was considered the foremost Wagner conductor of his day, I thought you might enjoy hearing Richard II conducting a bit of Richard I. The recording is as old as I am, so like me it is full of creaks and pops, and sonically it suffers from tired blood, but as a historical document it is still worth hearing. So from the private archives of the Strauss family, here is a bit of the "Prelude to Tristan und Isolde:"

You may have noticed that Strauss keeps strict time in his reading, probably because of the limitations of shellac recordings. Today, conductors--and this includes Maestro Fricke-- tend to cheat on the quarter rests to increase the tension of the silence. More power to them, for who has ever composed silence as eloquently as Wagner?

To move on: neither a nagging wife or an imperial commission could have inspired a masterpiece as unique as Tristan und Isolde. And although creative genius is inhospitable to analysis, it is the task of the cultural historian to articulate some of the factors which may have sparked the creative impulse. In Wagner's case, the shaping of his material was at least in part motivated by the real-life Tristan und Isolde drama in which he was enmeshed. In his fine article in the program, James Holman quotes Wagner's letter to Franz Liszt in which Wagner compares himself to Tristan and laments the fact that he had never known true love. In Mathilde Wesendonk, however, Wagner, felt that he had found the redemptive female for which his operatic characters always seem to be searching. Unlike his wife, Mathilde seemed to "understand" Wagner, to the extent that in the glow of his inspiration she even composed several poems, couched in unmistakable Wagnerian language. These poems, set to music by Wagner, have come down to us as the Wesendonk-Lieder. Add to this love-- which seems to have been both intense and mutual-- the presence of a legal husband, and the insurmountable obstacle of a marriage which neither spouse had any intention of ending, and one has. . . a modern day Tristan-triangle! Incidentally, much scholarly ink has been spilled over the years regarding the question of whether the love between Wagner and Mathilde was platonic, but absent hidden microphones and DNA testing, we'll never know, which is probably just as well. In his recent lecture at the German Embassy, Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's grandson, suggested that biographers have made too much of the relationship between his celebrated grandfather and Mathilde Wesendonk, and that Richard Wagner needed Mathilde only as a muse, not as an object of physical desire. Such situations are not without parallel, and it is true that Wagner did not impregnate Mathilde under the nose of her husband, as he did three times with poor Hans von Bülow. On the other hand, Wagner did propose marriage to Mathilde, which to me suggests that she might have been a bit more than a muse.

Wolfgang Wagner also maintains that Wagner wasn't in love when he composed Tristan und Isolde. There, too, he may be right, but while Wagner was composing the passionate Second Act, he kept a diary just for Mathilde. The diary runs to hundred of pages, and here are two typical entries. First: "Your caresses are the crown of my life, the blissful roses that flower out of the crown of thorns that is my head's only adornment. " · Then, a bit later, "Thus you dedicated yourself to death in order to give me life, and thus I received your life so that I can now leave this world with you, suffer with you, die with you!" If Wagner wrote that way when he wasn't in love, one wonders how the entries would have read had he really been in love!


Mathilde, by the way, seems to have been something of a celebrity "groupie." After the breakup with Wagner, she tried to establish a relationship with Schopenhauer--and had about as much luck as Wagner did, which is to say: none! Much later, she tried to persuade Johannes Brahms to set some of her verses to music. Brahms demurred, perhaps because the verses were intended to be read at. . . cremations! Having dealt professionally with German medieval literature over the course of a long career, I should probably say a few words at this point about Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan und Isolt. Every commentator routinely states that Wagner's plot is derived from Gottfried's version, which makes me wonder whether the commentators have actually read Gottfried's epic poem. Certainly I suspect that they haven't had to slog their way through the Middle High German text, line by line, as I did as a graduate student!

In its own right, Gottfried's Tristan is a major work which in form and content surpasses any of the other versions which were then circulating in Europe. His Tristan deserves its place in that great triumvirate of medieval German literary texts which have enriched world literature, the other two being Parsifal and Das Nibelungenlied. Parsifal's quest for the Holy Grail is the prototype of what is called "the quester adventure," a seminal form of fiction which endures even today (think of the adventures of Indiana Jones, or of the "Star Wars" trilogy!)

As for Das Nibelungenlied: it is really two great works in one! Part One provides a literary repository for the mythological figures of Siegfried and Brünnhild; and Part Two, with its fictionalized version of the historical battle between the Huns and the Burgundians, serves as the German Iliad.

Since these three texts, taken together, spawned no fewer than seven Wagnerian operas, it follows that Wagner knew his medieval German literature well! It is all the more surprising, therefore, that there are actually very few touching points between Gottfried's text and Wagner's. If anything, it is the differences between the two versions which are of interest. Take, for example, the key motif of the Liebestrank, or love potion. In Gottfried, the Liebestrank is an aphrodisiac, pure and simple, liquid Viagra brewed by Isolde's worldly-wise mother in order to jumpstart the nuptial activities between an out-of-practice widower and a presumably nervous young virgin. The circumstances under which Gottfried's Tristan and Isolt imbibe the love potion are banal and accidental. Tristan calls for some liquid refreshment, a servant finds a flask filled with what looks like wine, the clueless couple drink the love potion and set out in search of the nearest bed. Richard Wagner, who in this opera--and elsewhere--repeatedly out-Freuds Siegmund Freud, will have none of this. One one level, his Tristan and Isolde pretend that the libation is a drink of reconciliation, on another level, each one thinks he or she is participating in an unspoken suicide pact.

Yet on a third level, the draught is neither a drink of reconciliation nor a fatal poison, but a love potion. To this one may add a fourth level, since--at least to our modern mind--the love potion seems less of an aphrodisiac than a placebo, a dis-inhibitor which, like a round of drinks at a cocktail party, serves as a psychological ice-breaker. In one of his two brilliant essays on Wagner, Thomas Mann, the great novelist and Wagner expert, claims that Brangäne could just as well have brought the lovers "a glass of water." A glass of water seems a bit too Methodist for me, and I would hold out for an extra dry martini, but Mann was on the right track.

When we meet Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in Act One, they are already deeply in love, and all that nasty repartee we hear is nothing but a defense mechanism. Isolde speaks with the scorn of a woman who feels spurned by the man she loves; Tristan's tight-lipped replies spring from an inner struggle to keep his turbulent emotions in check. And all of this, ladies and gentlemen,is Wagner's invention. But even a Richard Wagner would have been hard-pressed to make great music out of Gottfried's Liebestrank. What he does with his own perspicacious version is to give us one of the greatest moments in all his operas: a musical translation of the ambivalence and paradox inherent in the lovers' fateful libation. Since it is a long scene, we have time to hear only the introduction of what in German is called the "Blick-Motif" -- the glance of love. Ushered in by

harp arpeggios--almost a Wagnerian cliche when love is on his mind -- the glance of love is accompanied by the musical signatures of the lovers' names: "Tristan" -- (high-low) --and "I-sol-de", with the strong beat on the second syllable.

In virtually all respects Wagner's version of the Tristan-legend betrays a 19th century sophistication absent from the medieval model. Although it would be an oversimplification to claim that Gottfried's poem is "all about sex"-to use a Washington expression -- his Tristan, Isolde, and Marke do seem to spend a good deal of time playing musical beds--or in Gottfried's version, non-musical beds. With great inventiveness, the star-crossed lovers find ever-new ways of deceiving Marke, even while the suspicious king sharpens his skills at playing a medieval version of "Gotcha!"

By comparison, Wagner's plot would earn nothing worse than a PG if there were a rating system for operas. Even in our own production, where the lovers indulge in a good deal more smooching than I have seen elsewhere--that must be the Washington influence!--the deportment of the lovers is marked by distance and reserve. In a half-hour of rambling discourse in the love duet, they say nothing more intimate than "Let us die together". Why then, you might well ask, has the Second Act been decried as obscene, or pornographic, as if it were a 19th century version of a Times Square peep show. Well, as they might say over on Pennsylvania Avenue: "it's the music, stupid." If I may permit myself a more scholarly explanation: what Wagner achieves in this act is something no composer before him had ever attempted.

Through whatever indefinable, inexplicable means he has at his disposal, Wagner gives musical expression to the chemical and psychological excitement of a perfectly normal human love act. It is all there: the pulse-quickening anticipation, the gradual loss of control, the sense of self-abandonment, the give and take of mutual love, and,yes, of mutual passion, the giddy temporary insanity of sexual fulfillment. And although this may make the auditor feel uncomfortable--few of us want to be confronted with our inner child in front of 3,000 people--by any objective assessment, Wagner works his miracles without ever stooping to the vulgarity of composers who have come after him.

We will listen now to part of the first episode of the love duet. As Isolde waits in the dark for her beloved, the orchestra pours forth music rich in nocturnal ambience: night-blossoming flowers seem to spring to life, cooling zephyrs caress the ear, the mood is one of tingling, even tumescent erotic anticipation. And once Isolde catches sight of Tristan rushing toward her through the darkness, the music increases in urgency, and when the lovers hurl themselves into each other's arms, the music fairly explodes into frenetic, shaking rhythms. Words of caution to anyone here tonight who will experience his or her first Tristan und Isolde: the love duet that ensues at this point does not continue at this frenetic pace. This love duet is, to put it simply: long. 1, 065 measures long, to be exact, or about three times the length of any other operatic duet musicologists have been able to find. Analysts have discerned FIFTEEN episodes in this love duet, most of which move at -- shall we say -- an unhurried tempo! It isn't until the 15th episode, as the lovers resolve to sacrifice their identities to a higher ideal--the metaphysical ecstasy of nirvana -- that the music which has been quiescent and ruminative begins to surge with almost

unbearable intensity. Wagner almost certainly intended these escalating crescendos -- called in German Tristan-Steigerungen -- to signify the lovers' impatience for a mystical union beyond the grave. Audiences however, perhaps not being familiar with metaphysical ecstasies, and hearing the lovers' dialogue dissolve into what sound like erotic whoops, yelps, and shrieks, tend to interpret this frenetical musical agitation as an indication of an activity more earthly in nature.

The Third Act of Tristan und Isolde was written under circumstances which one can only call grotesque. The Second Act had been composed in Venice, in a palace on the Canal Grande, with the rent paid for by Wesendonk, of course. But since Venice was under Austrian control, and Wagner was still under the threat of arrest in neighboring Germany, the composer thought it best to return to Switzerland, a country that had safely harbored him for seven years. Not wanting Wagner on his doorstep again, Otto Wesendonk thought it best to rent a room for him in a hotel in Lucerne, an offer the impecunious composer had no choice but to accept.

Granted: the management did its best to accommodate its famous guest. His grand piano was somehow muscled up the stairway, and no objections were raised when Wagner redecorated his room with the oriental rugs, the silk wall hangings, and the bottles of exotic perfumes he felt were essential to furthering his creative mood. Despite frequent interruptions caused by inebriated accordion players and yodelers, the composer somehow found the energy and focus to commit to score the sublime music which brings the opera to its conclusion.

This music is commonly called the "Liebestod," and although Wagner commentators -- including James Holman -- keep reminding us that Wagner himself didn't use that designation, the word Liebestod has an impeccable Wagnerian pedigree, since it comes from the love duet in the Second Act. And a wonderful word it is! When I use the English translation "love death," the words "love" and "death" are pretty evenly accented, but if I use the German term Liebestod, where does the accent fall? Yes, on the word "Liebe." And that is appropriate, since both in the text, glorious in its own right, and in the music, which is beautiful beyond description, the accent is indeed on Liebe rather than on Tod. For that matter: by the time this opera has run its course, the words "love" and "death" have been so altered in their psychological implications that they are virtually interchangeable.

Perhaps for that reason, there has been a tendency, over the last ten years, for stage directors such as Jean-Pierre Ponelle and Ruth Berghaus to try to bring Tristan back to life at the end of Act Three, and now one of them --Peter Konwitschny -- has succeeded. In the final scene of the current Munich production, there are two white caskets on center stage, while off to the side, in a world of their own as it were, are Isolde and Tristan! And as Isolde pours forth that other-worldly music -- music which, as Thomas Mann once said, is beyond all description and understanding --Tristan nods approvingly and strokes her hand. Rather than keep you in suspense, I can assure you that in the Washington Opera production, Tristan will not be brought back to life. Our director evidently feels that an operatic hero who tries to commit suicide three times in one evening deserves to rest in peace. And so he does.

After a performance of Tristan Richard Strauss once made a terse comment. He said: "Das ist keine Musik mehr" the sense of which would be, in English, "One can't call that music." And what Strauss meant is that that the Tristan-music, such as we have heard this evening, resonates on a different level of consciousness than other music --even great music. That is one key to understanding the extraordinary effect that Tristan und Isolde, unlike any other opera in the canon -- has had on listeners, especially on creative --and re-creative -- personalities.

Of the many conductors, composers, and authors who have been struck to the soul by the Tristan-music one may mention Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, and Karl Böhm; Puccini, Debussy and Mahler; Thomas Mann, James Joyce, and T.S, Eliot. Even the composer himself was not immune to the almost hypnotic power emanating from this matchless score. In letters to Liszt and to Mathilde Wesendonk, Wagner hinted that he had lost control over his own creation, a perfect performance of which, he felt, would drive audiences mad.

Earlier in this long evening, I stated that Tristan und Isolde was one of those operas which is greater than it can be analyzed or discussed. I trust you will agree that I've proved my point. And, because I have failed to unlock all of the secrets of this incommensurable work, I'm afraid that I, too, like Wagner in the Prelude, have left you marooned on third base. But for that I will not apologize, because in a sense great art---and great artists--can only take us as far as third base. If a work of art--be it a poem, a novel, a play, a symphony, or an opera--is to be more than just a vehicle for self-expression, then it demands, for its completeness, an understanding eye, or ear, or brain. Ultimately, the way to "home plate" lies in the effort you and I make to enlist our nerves, our imagination, our sensibilities, and our intellect in order to complement --in order to complete--the artist's vision. It would be very gratifying if my comments tonight have helped point you in that direction.