CHAPTER V.

"PARSIFAL."

Wagner's Last Drama.--Paradoxical in its Appeals to the

Spectator and Student.--A Religious Play.--Blending

of Buddhistic and Christian Plots.--Socialistic Philosophy

and Asceticism.--Identification of Parsifal and

Christ.--Monkish Relic Worship.--Ethical Idea of the

Drama.--The Apparatus, the Hero, the Trial.--Mission

of the Music.--It must Reconcile Modern Thought and

Feeling and Mediæval Religion.--Imagination and

Fancy.--Suffering and Aspiration.--Original Elements

of the Grail Story.--Parsifal an Aryan Hero.--His Name

as an Index of Moral Character.--"The Great Fool

Tales."--The Holy Grail not Originally a Christian

Symbol.--Percival and Peredur.--Parsifal in Wagner's

Drama.--His Musical Symbols.--Properties of the Talisman:

Physical, it Provides Sustenance; Spiritual, it

is a Touchstone and Oracle.--Its Prototypes in Many

Lands.--The Golden Cup of Jamshid and the Joseph

of Arimathea Legend.--The Grail and Coral.--Dr. Oppert's

Theory.--Blood the Essential Element.--The

Prelude.--Amfortas.--Question and Lance.--Herzeleide.--Musical

Symbols of Suffering and Aspiration.--Wagner's

Interpretation.--Tried by Temptation.--Klingsor.--Kundry.--The

Loathly Damsel and Herodias.--Wolfram's

Married Parzival Pages 162-198

THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA.

CHAPTER I.

THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA: ITS PROTOTYPES AND ELEMENTS.

To understand the real position which Richard Wagner occupies in the

world of art, and to appreciate the significance of the achievements

which have kept that world in a turmoil for two generations, it is

necessary to guard against a very prevalent misconception touching him

and his activities. The world knows him as an agitator and reformer,

but it does not know as clearly as it ought that the object for which

he labored as controversialist and composer was a reform of the opera,

not a reform of music in general. Outside the theatre, it is true,

he exerted a tremendous influence on the development of the musical

art, but that influence he exerted only because he was a gifted

musician who stood in the line of succession with the great ones who

had widened the boundaries of music and struck out new paths for

it--let me say Bach, Haydn, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann.

As a legitimate successor of these Kings by the grace of Genius, he

advanced the musical art indeed, but as a reformer his activities went,

not to music in its absolute forms, but to an entirely distinct and

complex art-form: the modern opera. The term which Wagner invented to

describe what he wished to see as the outcome of his strivings--the

term which his enemies parodied so successfully that the parody has

clung to the popular tongue and lingered in the popular ear, in spite

of all explanation--is "The Art-work of the Future." By this "Art-work"

he meant a form of theatrical entertainment in which poetry, music,

pantomime, painting, and the plastic arts were to co-operate on a

basis of mutual dependence--or better, perhaps, interdependence--and

common aim, the inspiring purpose of all being dramatic expression.

In the history of music and the drama certain strongly-marked phases

are found, in which the interdependence of the elements which Wagner

consorts in his Art-work can be traced; and if we look at these phases

a little thoughtfully, they may help us to understand the present

phase, and we may learn not only how to appreciate what Wagner has

done, but also how to avoid the misconceptions which so frequently

stand in the way of appreciation.

I.

Wagner, then, was a Reformer of the Opera; or, as I think it would

better be put, a Regenerator of the Lyric Drama. The latter definition

is to be preferred, because it presupposes the earlier existence of

an art-form similar in purpose and elements (however dissimilar in

scope and effectiveness it may have been) to that with which Wagner's

name is identified in music's history. The spirit which created that

art-form is as old as humanity; but the record of civilization shows

two manifestations of it so striking that even the most cursory study

ought to disclose Wagner's relationship to them. The Greek stage-plays

were much more closely allied to the modern opera than to the modern

drama. Music was an integral and essential element of them. So says

Aristotle, adding, "and their greatest embellishment." The dramatic

and lyrical elements were inseparable in Greek tragedy, which had its

origin in the Dithyramb, a dance-song. The one modified the other. The

cheer, the gravity, or the horror of the action were reflected at the

same time in the music. While there was music also in comedy, yet, as

Aristotle indicates, it was there of less importance, probably because

comedy--which was really broad enough to meet the modern notions of

farce--was beneath the true level of music as apprehended by the

Greeks. As between the lyre and flute, the Greeks gave a vastly greater

admiration to the former, as is indicated by a proverb quoted by

Cicero: "As they say among the Greeks, they are flautists who cannot

be citharists;" and it is significant that stringed accompaniments

were given to the dithyrambic chorus when its purposes were serious,

and accompaniments on the _aulos_ when those purposes were of lighter

character. Obviously the writers of Greek tragedy were of necessity

versed in the musical art of their time. Æschylus was not merely a

poet; he was also a musical composer. A fragment of a theoretical book

on rhythm by Aristoxenus, a fellow-pupil with Alexander the Great of

Aristotle, has been preserved to us. It is filled with lamentations

over the decadence of dramatic music since the good old days of

Æschylus, and accuses contemporary composers of pandering to the

depraved tastes of the public, and disregarding the noble art of the

Æschylean period. We know that Sophocles was a practical musician.

He was taught both music and dancing by Lampros (or Lamprocles) the

dithyrambist, in his time the foremost professor of these arts in

Athens. It is on record that he played in two of his own dramas, taking

the character of Nausikaa in the "Pluntriæ," and, in "Thamyris," that

of a singer stricken blind by the Muses. In this latter role he so

pleased the popular fancy that, by public vote, a portrait of him,

with a cithara in his hands, was placed in the Painted Porch--a fact

which finds mention in Athenæus. Another indication of his proficiency

as a musician is that he wrote pæans and elegies, and a work in prose

for the instruction of choral artists. It is written that Euripides,

obviously less musician than poet, had to call in the aid of a composer

to supply the essential music for one of his plays. Possibly this

explains the fact that in his tragedies the odes are less intimately

connected with the play than they are in the tragedies of Æschylus.

They no longer form part of the action, and their beauty consists in

their skilfulness of form rather than in the natural union of rhythm

and music.

In the Greek tragedies the actors did not declaim their lines as ours

do; they chanted them. The word which they used to describe what we

call dramatic declamation was _emmeleia_, from _en_ and _melos_, whence

we get our word melody; so that they literally spoke of their plays

as being spoken "in tune." Even the Attic orators, as well as the

later Roman, delivered their orations musically, and, like the actors,

sometimes had the help of an accompaniment on the lyre or flute to

keep them in pitch. Cicero and Plutarch both relate an anecdote to

the effect that Caius Gracchus once lost his pitch in the heat of an

oration, and was brought back to it by a slave with an instrument, who

was concealed behind him for that very purpose. In the plays the chorus

sang the odes which filled the pauses between the various stages of

the action; and as they sang they kept time with solemn dance-steps,

moving from side to side and around an altar which stood in the centre

of the space between the audience and the stage, called then, as now,

the orchestra.[A] The choric odes were sung in unison, but, more

richly than the declamation of the actors, they were accompanied by

instruments which I believe we are justified in assuming (though it is

a debated point) supplied a foundation of harmony for the vocal melody.

Unfortunately, none of the music composed for these tragedies has been

preserved; but we are surely justified in believing that, in spite of

its simplicity (for simple it had to be to meet the demands of Greek

philosophy), it was beautiful, impressive, and, in the highest degree,

expressive music. No people have ever come nearer than those old Greeks

to a correct estimate of the real nature of music and the role that it

can and ought to be made to play in the economy of civilized life. So

convinced were they of the directness and forcefulness of its appeal to

the emotional part of man that they refused to divorce it from poetry,

and hedged its practice about with legal restrictions, fearful that a

too one-sided cultivation of it in its absolute state would tend to

the development of the emotions at a cost of the rational and sterner

elements on which the welfare of the individual and the community

depended. Theirs was surely a lofty ideal: an art which charmed the

senses while it persuaded the reason was a noble art. But it died with

much else that was noble and lovely when the Romans succeeded the

Greeks as arbiters of the civilized world. Under the Romans the lyric

drama degenerated into mere spectacular mummery.

II.

Thus much for the first manifestation of the spirit which is

exemplified in the Art-work of Richard Wagner. I have laid stress upon

the Greek tragedy simply because it was the direct inspiration of the

second manifestation, out of which the Art-work which Wagner reformed

was evolved, through steps that are easily followed by students of

modern musical history. Wherever we turn we find the genesis of

the drama to be the same. I might have chosen the Hindu drama as a

starting-point, and found in it the same intimate association of

poetry, music, and action that characterized Greek tragedy. Or I might

have pointed to the Chinese drama, and invited you to a study of that

association as it has existed for thousands of years, and still exists

in the theatres of the Great Pure Kingdom.

Now for the second manifestation. Towards the close of the sixteenth

century dissatisfaction with the inelastic artificiality of polite

music took possession of a body of scholars and musical amateurs who

were in the habit of meeting for learned discussion in the house of

Giovanni Bardi, Count Vernio, in Florence. Their discussions led them

to formulate two aims: _First_, To give emotional expressiveness

to music by putting aside polyphony, and inventing what is called

the monodic style. They wrote solos for the voice with harmonic

support for the instruments in the shape of chords. _Second_, They

tried to revive the Greek tragedies, or, rather, to imitate them in

new compositions, to which they applied their monodic music. They

conceived the purpose of music to be to heighten the expressiveness

of poetry, and held the play to be "the thing." To "Euridice," the

first drama of the new style which was published, the composer of the

music, Jacopo Peri, wrote a preface, in which he said that he had

been convinced by a study of the ancients that though their dramatic

declamation may not have risen to song, it was yet musically colored.

This exaltation of speech he evidently thought had its basis in those

variations of pitch, dynamic intensity, and vocal quality which

Herbert Spencer, in his essay on the "Origin and Function of Music,"

shows to be the physiological results of variations of feeling, all

feelings being muscular stimuli. Peri made careful observations of the

inflections which mark ordinary speech, and attempted to reproduce his

discoveries as faithfully as possible in the musical investiture which

he gave to the poet's lines. "Soft and gentle speech he interpreted

by half-spoken, half-sung tones, on a sustained instrumental bass;

feelings of a deeper, emotional kind by a melody with greater intervals

and a lively _tempo_, the accompanying instrumental harmonies changing

more frequently."[B] He bestowed the greatest care on the rhythm of

the music, making it flow along with the rhythm of the words.

These men were as revolutionary in their day as Wagner in ours, many

times as intolerant, and, some will say, perhaps equally visionary.

They revamped the Hellenic myths concerning the power of music, not

as containing a germ of verity wrapped in an ample cloak of poetical

symbolism, but as very truth. What the ancient art had been they did

not know, but they did not hesitate to say that compared with it the

music of their own time (the time of Palestrina and the Netherland

School) was a barbarism, the creation of a people whose natural

rudeness was evidenced even in their uncouth names--Okeghem, Hobrecht,

etc. They could not reconcile counterpoint with the theories touching

the province of music laid down by Plato; and that fact sufficed to

condemn it. Count Vernio himself published a tract stating the purposes

of the reformers. The first step in the process of curing the evil

which had come over music, he said, should be to protect the poetical

text from the musicians who, to exploit their inventions, tore the

poetry to tatters, giving different voices different words to sing

simultaneously. The philosophers of old--Plato in particular--had said

that the melody should follow the verses of the poet and sweeten them.

"When you compose, therefore," said the noble amateur, "have a care

that the text remain uninjured, the words be kept intelligible, and do

not permit yourselves to be carried off your feet by counterpoint,

that wicked swimmer, who is swept along unresistingly by the stream,

and arrives at an entirely different landing-place than he intended

to make. For, as much as the soul is nobler than the body, so much

nobler are words than counterpoint; and as the soul must govern the

body, so counterpoint must take its laws from poetry." Caccini, who

was a famous singing-master, and the first professional musician to

join the Florentine coterie, made many statements in the preface to

his _Nuove Musiche_ which Gluck and Wagner only echoed when they

came to urge their reforms. Thus he recommends the choice of a pitch

which will enable the singer always to use his natural voice, so that

expression may be unconstrained. He advises that the singer emancipate

himself from a too strict adherence to measure, fixing, instead, the

relative value of notes by consideration for the words to which they

are set. More striking than either of these utterances, however, is his

condemnation of the _roulades_ which had come into use even before the

solo style had been invented. He calls these _roulades_ "Long flights"

(flourishes or whirlings) of the voice (_lunghi giri di voce_); and

says of them, literally: "They were not invented as being necessary

to good singing, but, as I believe, to provide a certain titillation

of the ears for the benefit of such as have little knowledge of what

expressive singing means; for if they understood this, they would

unquestionably detest these passages, since nothing is so offensive

as they to expressive singing. And it is for this reason that I have

said the _lunghi giri di voce_ are so ill applied. I introduce them in

songs which are less passionate, and, indeed, on long, not on short

syllables, and in closing cadences." Caccini further advises the

avoidance of artificial tones, and the use of the natural voice in

order that the feelings may have expression. Wagner urges his singers

to leave off the affected pathos which they are so prone to assume with

the song-voice, and to enunciate, breathe, and phrase as naturally

and unconstrainedly as they would if they were speaking the dialogue

instead of singing it. Caccini wished the singer to emancipate himself

from the fetters of musical metre, and to consult the rhythm of the

words. In Wagner's vocal parts the aim is to achieve through music an

increased expressiveness for the poetry, and to this end he raises it

to a kind of intensified speech, which retains as much as possible

of the distinctness of ordinary dialogue with its emotional capacity

raised to a higher power. He desires that the melody shall spring

naturally from the poetry, but also that the poetry shall "yearn" for

musical expression. Caccini recognized the beauty of embellished song,

but restricted the introduction of vocal flourishes to songs which were

wanting in expressiveness--in other words, to songs intended merely

to charm the ear. Wagner (and here I should like to correct an almost

universal misconception)--Wagner never condemned beautiful singing,

even in the Italian sense, except where it stands in the way of

truthful, dramatic utterance. But he raises the question of nationality

and tongue as one which must first of all be considered in determining

how poetry is to be set to music. Deference must be paid to the

genius of the language employed, and also to the vocal peculiarities

of the people who are to perform and enjoy the drama. This is really

Wagner's starting-point. He aims to be a national dramatist. In the

Italian opera the vocal adornments, favored by the inherent softness

and beauty of the Italian language, gradually usurped the first place,

while dramatic motive, which had inspired the invention of the opera,

dropped out of sight. For such an art there is little natural aptitude

in the German, and consequently only a modicum of sympathy. Sung to

florid tunes, German words become worse than unintelligible; the poetry

loses its merit as speech, and the music is robbed of all its purpose

and most of its charm. Believing this, and having already striven to

restore naturalness of expression in the spoken drama, Wagner wrote the

vocal parts of his lyric dramas so as to bring out first the force of

the poetry as such.

There is one more point of resemblance between Wagner and the creators

of the Italian lyric drama which I must refer to briefly. It may help

us out from the sway of that prejudice which we are so prone to feel

towards an innovator, to learn that in so many essentials Wagner has

simply given new expression to old ideas. Already, in his "Euridice,"

Peri concealed his orchestra behind the scenes; but as this device

was borrowed from the old Roman pantomimes, and was a general custom,

I lay no stress upon it. Monteverde, who did not belong to the band

of Florentine reformers, but adopted their theories and put them

into practice with far greater skill than any of the originators

of the new style, added to the instrumental apparatus until he had

a reputation for noise with which that of Wagner, in this respect,

is no circumstance. In his "Orfeo" he employed thirty-six different

instruments, and it has even been suspected that he was the precursor

of Wagner in the device of characterizing his personages by relegating

to each a certain instrument or set of instruments. But this, I am

convinced, is based on a misunderstanding. It is certain, however, that

he used his instruments in such a way as to emphasize climaxes, holding

some of them back until the arrival of moments in the action when their

sudden entrance would have a particularly telling effect.

III.

Where does Wagner touch hands with the first creators of the art-form

of which I have called him the regenerator? What are the fundamental

features of his system? What were the impulses which led him out of the

beaten path of opera composers? I will try to answer these questions

on broad lines, keeping essential principles in view rather than

trifling details.

Wagner must be associated with the Greek tragedy-writers: _First_ (and

foremost), because he is poet as well as musical composer. He unites in

himself the same qualifications (but with the tremendous difference in

degree brought about by the changed conditions) as did Æschylus.

_Second._ Wagner sees in the drama the highest form of art--one that

unites in itself the expressive potentiality of each of the elements

employed in it, raised to a still higher potency through the merit of

their co-operation.

_Third._ Wagner believes, like the Greek tragedians, that the fittest

subjects for dramatic treatment are to be found in legends and

mythologies.

_Fourth._ Wagner believes that the elements of the lyric drama ought to

be adapted to the peculiarities, and to encourage the national feeling

of the people for whom it is created.

This last point is of such vast significance to the question of the

degree of appreciation which Wagner's art ought to receive, and also

to an understanding of his attitude towards Italian music, that I wish

to emphasize it before proceeding further. Wagner is as distinctively

a German dramatist as Æschylus was a Greek or Shakespeare an English.

In his poetry, in his music, in the moral and physical character of his

dramatic personages--in brief, in the matter and the essence of his

dramas--the world must recognize the Teuton. As their spirit roots in

the German heart, so their form roots in the German language. One of

Wagner's most persistent aims was to reanimate a national art-spirit in

Germany. The rest of the world he omitted from his consideration. Those

of his dramas in which he carried out his principles in their fulness

are scarcely conceivable in any other language than the German, and

complete or ideal appreciation of them is possible only to persons who

sympathize deeply with German feelings. His whole system, of dramatic

declamation rests on the genius of the German tongue. He protests

against the attempt to use the _bel canto_ of the Italians in German

opera, because the German language is too harsh for florid music, and

German throats are not flexible enough to execute agile and mellifluous

melodies. In the structure of his system there is everywhere

discernible a recognition of the characteristics, physiological as

well as psychological, which have always marked Teutonic races. Look

at Wagner in the conduct of his polemical battle; in the vehemence

of his sincerity, and the rude, sledge-hammer vigor of his manner,

he is as distinctively a national type as Luther. Aside from all

other considerations, such a man cannot conceive music to be mere

"lascivious pleasings." To the Northern mind there has always seemed to

be something vicious in the influence of Southern art and manners. It

seems to feel instinctively that its vigor is preserved by periodical

rebellion against Roman things, and it points as a reason and a warning

example to the physical and moral degeneracy of those Goths and Franks

who lost their rugged virtues by too long dalliance with the Roman

colonists. "Strength before Beauty," "Truth before Convention"--these

are German ideals in art as well as in morals.[C]

It is only to recognize a truth, which Wagner himself freely confessed,

to say that arts and manners based on such ideals do not always appear

pleasing--that, in fact, they sometimes, at first blush, at least,

appear uncouth and unamiable. But that fact need not long give us

pause. We have simply to recognize that beauty, like everything else

so far as we are concerned, is subject to change, and that a new order

of beauty, which may be called characteristic beauty, has come to

the fore with a claim for recognition as a fit element in dramatic

representation. Are we bound to accept as infallible the popular maxim

that no matter what the state of affairs on the stage, the accompanying

music must delight the ear? Suppose that a composer, utilizing the ear

simply as one of the gate-ways to the higher faculties, and aiming to

quicken the imagination and stir the emotions, should find a means

for doing this without pleasing the ear--would his art be bad for

that reason? Was the agony on the faces of the Laocoön put there by

the sculptor for the purpose of pleasing the eye? Does it please the

eye, or does it fascinate with a horrible fascination, and achieve the

artist's real purpose by appealing through the eye to the imagination

and emotions?

These questions are in the nature of argument and foreign to my

immediate purpose; in the way of contrast, however, the thoughts

to which they give rise will help us to appreciate one phase of

the Teutonism which Wagner has impressed upon his dramas which is

altogether lovely. We will look at it in both of its expositions,

musical and literary, for thus we shall learn something of his

constructive methods as well as his poetical impulses. I refer to

the ethical idea pervading those of his dramas which, like the Greek

tragedies, are based on legendary or mythical tales. The idea is that

_salvation comes to humanity through the self-sacrificing love of

woman_. This idea is at the bottom of the great poems and dramas of

Germany; it is the main-spring of "The Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser,"

and "The Niblung's Ring;" the _chorus mysticus_ which ends Goethe's

"Faust" proclaims it oracularly:

"All things transitory

But as symbols are sent.

Earth's insufficiency

Here grows to event.

The Indescribable,

Here it is done.

The Woman-Soul leadeth us

Upward and on!"

In the creations of Wagner, by a singular coincidence, this beautiful

idea is born simultaneously with the fundamental principle of his

constructive scheme--the use of melodic phrases as symbols of the

persons, passions, and principles concerned in the play. His first

drama based on a legendary story is "The Flying Dutchman." The infinite

longing for rest of the Wandering Jew of the sea, and the infinite pity

and wondrous love of the woman who, through sacrifice of her own life,

achieved for the wanderer surcease of suffering--these are the two

fundamental passions of the play. The legend of the Dutchman and his

doom is told in a ballad which the heroine sings in the second act of

the opera; and this ballad, Wagner tells us himself, he set to music

first, even before he had completed the book. It is an epitome of the

drama, ethically and musically, having two significant musical themes

corresponding to the longing of the Dutchman and the redeeming love of

Senta. The first of these musical themes is this:

[Illustration: score]

The second is this:

[Illustration: score]

Having invented these two phrases for use simply in the ballad, Wagner

tells us how he proceeded with his work:

"I had merely to develop according to their respective tendencies the

various thematic germs comprised in the ballad to have, as a matter

of course, the principal mental moods in definite thematic shapes

before me. When a mental mood returned, its thematic expression

also, as a matter of course, was repeated, since it would have been

arbitrary and capricious to have sought another _motivo_ so long as

the object was an intelligible representation of the subject, and not

a conglomeration of operatic pieces." This is Wagner's account of the

genesis of the "leading motives," or, as I think they would better be

called, "typical phrases," and it directs attention to a misconception

of their nature and purpose which is pretty general even among the

admirers of his works. They were not invented to announce the entrance

of persons of the play on their stage; their duties are not those of

footmen or ushers. Nor are they labels. Neither can they rightly be

likened, as a German critic has declared, to the lettered ribbons

issuing from the mouths of figures in mediæval pictures. They stand

for deeper things--for the attributes of the play's personages; for

the instruments, spiritual as well as material, used in developing the

plot; for the fundamental passions of the story. If they were labels,

they could only accompany the characters with which they had been

associated at the outset, and this we know is not the case; in fact, in

some very significant instances, they enter the score long before the

characters with whom they are associated have been heard of or their

existence is surmised. They are symbols, and hence arbitrary signs, but

not more arbitrary than words. All language is arbitrary convention.

Only the emotional elements at the bottom of it are real, absolute,

universal. It would be just as easy to build up a language of musical

tones capable of expressing ideas as it was to build up a language of

words. In fact, though we seldom think of it, the rudiments of such a

language exist. We are all familiar with some of them, or we should

not involuntarily associate certain rhythms with the dance, and others

with the march. A drone-bass under an oboe melody in 6-8 time would not

suggest a pastoral; trumpets and drums, war; French-horn harmonies, a

hunting scene; and so on. More than this, the Chinese have retained in

their language a relic of the time when music was an integral element

of all speech, not only of solemn and artistic speech, as we see it in

the beginnings of the drama in India, Greece, and China. The meaning

of many words in the monosyllabic Chinese language depends upon the

musical inflection given to them in utterance. In a sense, a phrase

of melody, or a chord, or a succession of chords, of harmony, is a

"bow-wow word," the only kind of word universally intelligible. A great

deal of music is direct in its influence upon the emotions, but it is

chiefly by association of ideas that we recognize its expressiveness

or significance. Sometimes hearing a melody or harmony arouses an

emotion like that aroused by the contemplation of a thing. Minor

harmonies, slow movements, dark tonal colorings, combine directly to

put a musically susceptible person in a mood congenial to thoughts

of sorrow and death; and, inversely, the experience of sorrow, or

the contemplation of death, creates affinity for minor harmonies,

slow movements, and dark tonal colorings. Or we recognize attributes

in music possessed also by things, and we consort the music and the

things, external attributes bringing descriptive music into play which

excites the fancy, internal attributes calling for an exercise of the

loftier faculty, imagination, to discern their meaning. A few examples

in both classes will help to make my meaning plain, and I begin with

the second class as the nobler of the two.

In Wagner's Niblung tragedy two of the musical phrases associated

with Wotan may be taken as symbols of contrasted attributes of the

god. Throughout the tragedy of which he is the hero, Wotan figures,

by virtue of his supremacy among the gods, as Lord of Valhalla, and

consequently as the manifest embodiment of law.

In music the first manifestation of law is in form.

It is impossible to conceive of a combination of the integral

elements of music--rhythm, melody, and harmony--in a beautiful manner

without some kind of form. Form means measure, order, symmetry. In

music more than in any art it is essential to the existence of the

loftiest attribute of beauty, which is repose--an attribute whose

divine character Ruskin proclaimed when he defined it as "the 'I am'

contradistinguished from the 'I become;' the sign alike of the supreme

knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is

incapable of labor, the supreme volition which is incapable of change."

Now what are the musical qualities of which Wagner makes use in order

to symbolize the wielder of supreme power? Here is the phrase whose

innate nobility and beauty appear to best advantage at the opening of

the second scene in "Das Rheingold:"

[Illustration: score]

The melody is built out of the intervals of the common chord--the

triad--the starting-point of harmony, its first and most pervasive law.

This chord, too, supplies the harmonic structure. Its instrumentation

(for four tubas with peculiarly orotund voices, specially constructed

for Wagner) is unvarying, calm, stately, majestic, dignified,

reposeful. Thus does Wagner symbolize musically the chief deity and

chief personage of his tragedy in his character as Lord of Valhalla.

But through the operation of the curse to which he became subject when

he took the baneful ring, another character than that of a supreme god

is forced upon Wotan. He has plotted to regain the ring, and restore it

to the original owners of the magic gold. He has begotten a new race,

the Volsungs, to execute a purpose which, as the representative of law,

he is restrained himself from executing. He becomes a wanderer over the

face of the earth, a mere spectator of the development of his foolish

plot. How is this new character symbolized? Note the music which

accompanies Wotan when, disguised as the Wanderer, he enters Mime's

cavern smithy in the second scene of "Siegfried:"

[Illustration: score]

The fundamental harmonies are retained. The solemn instrumental color

is held fast. The dignity of the chord progressions is still there.

What, then, is gone? _The element of repose._ The harmonies are still

triads, but tonality, with its benison of restfulness, has been

sacrificed. The phrase is in no key, or rather it is in as many keys

as there are chords. There is another beautiful instance in which, by

the same means, a deprivation which one of the personages of the play

undergoes is made plain to the listener. Note the descending series of

chords which follows Wotan's kiss depriving Brünnhilde of her divinity,

just after he has spoken his pathetic farewell, and just before the

orchestra begins its lullaby, in the final scene of "Die Walküre." Here

the loss of divine attributes in the disobedient goddess is published

by absence of fixed tonality in the chords which accompany the visible

signs of her punishment.

In the last two examples we have been called on to observe how changes

in character and loss of attributes are delineated by departure of

tonality. I will now cite a case in which not the attributes of a

personage, but the property of a thing, is the composer's objective

point. The case is a striking one, for it is a supernatural property

which is to be brought to the notice of the listener, the power of the

_Tarnhelm_ (the familiar cap of darkness of folk-lore) to render its

wearer invisible. The musical symbol of this magical apparatus in the

Niblung tragedy is this:

[Illustration: score]

This phrase is not often used, but whenever it occurs in the music

its mysteriousness arrests attention. What is the source of that

mysteriousness? Nothing else than indefiniteness, vagueness of mode.

The closing harmony is an empty fifth; we do not know whether it is

major or minor, because the determining interval is lacking. Supply a

major third and it is major, a minor third and it is minor; in either

case, however, the mystical property of the phrase, the element which

establishes its propriety, vanishes.

There are many of these typical phrases primarily associated with

personages, whose delineation goes to moods and moral traits. There

are others that are frankly delineative of externals. The giants

in "Das Rheingold" are the representatives of brute force. They

are heavy-witted as well as heavy-footed, and their stupidity and

clumsiness are aptly characterized in their melody:

[Illustration: score (_Fasolt and Fafner, of gigantic stature, armed

with strong staves, enter._)]

The Niblungs are the antipodes in character of the giants--cunning,

resourceful, industrious. Intellectually they are schemers and

tricksters; by occupation they are smiths. Wagner delineates these

activities, the mental as well as the manual, in the orchestral

introduction to "Siegfried." A descending figure (_a_), (two thirds at

the interval of a seventh) characterizes the brooding thoughtfulness,

the cogitation of Mime; the fact that the dwarf is a Niblung Wagner

publishes by means of a rhythmical phrase like the pounding of hammers

(_b_):

[Illustration: score (_a_)]

[Illustration: score (_b_)]

Sometimes Wagner becomes frankly delineative or descriptive, utilizing

imitation of nature where it will be effective, as in the phrases

associated with the Rhine and its denizens--the nixies whom he calls

Daughters of the Rhine. The slow undulation of water in its depths, the

flux and reflux of the element, the ripples on its surface, the motions

of the swimmers, are all pictured to the ear (if I may be permitted

to say so) in the melodies of the Rhine and the nixies whose home the

river is, and the changes of time and treatment to which those melodies

are subjected. The fitful, flickering, crackling crepitation of fire

furnishes a suggestion for the phrase which is typical of Loge, the

fire-god, whether he appears in his elemental form, as in the finale of

"Die Walküre," or bodily as the incarnation of the spirit of mischief

in "Das Rheingold:"

[Illustration: score]

In describing how he proceeded in the composition of "The Flying

Dutchman," Wagner says that when a mental mood recurred for which he

had once found thematic expression, that expression was repeated. He

speaks here only of moods, but he extended the principle involved to

the whole apparatus of the drama--its secret impulses as well as its

external agencies. These agencies, in their physical manifestation,

moreover, are sometimes anticipated by the appearance in the music

of the melodic phrases which typify them; but this never happens

unless they are spiritually present in the drama. This is what I have

called the use of the themes for prophecy, and to me it seems one of

the most beautiful features of Wagner's constructive scheme. Let me

illustrate: the sword, which is the instrument designed by Wotan for

the working-out of his plot for the return of the baneful ring to its

original owners, for itself and as a symbol of the race of demi-gods

who were to be endowed with it; Siegfried, the hero who is to be the

vessel chosen, not by Wotan but by fate in the prevision of Brünnhilde,

to execute the purposes of the god; Brünnhilde herself, not as a

goddess but in the character of loving woman willing and able to make

the redeeming sacrifice; all these are prefigured in the drama by the

entrance of their typical phrases long before the action permits their

physical appearance. They are seen by the prophetic vision of certain

personages of the play and manifested to us through the music. Thus:

the sword phrase appears in the orchestral postlude of "Das Rheingold"

at the moment when Wotan, crossing the Rainbow-bridge with the members

of his divine household, stops in thought and conceives the plot which

is worked out in the tragedy proper; the phrase typical of the heroic

character of Siegfried accompanies Brünnhilde's prediction to Sieglinde

that she shall give birth to "the loftiest hero in the world," in the

drama "Die Walküre;" in giving voice to her gratitude, Sieglinde, in

turn, hails Brünnhilde as the representative of the redeeming principle

of the tragedy, Goethe's "Ewig-Weibliche," by using a melody which

examination shows to be an augmentation of the melodic symbol of

Brünnhilde when she appears as mere woman in the last drama of the

trilogy.

Let this suffice as an exhibition of Wagner's method of inventing and

introducing the melodic material out of which he weaves his fabric,

while we look at some of the principles applied in its use. His system

rests upon the development of these themes, not according to the laws

of the symphony, but in harmony with the dramatic spirit of the text.

The orchestra is the vehicle of this development. It is pre-eminently

the expositor of the drama. It has acquired some of the functions of

the Greek chorus, in that it takes part in the action to publish that

which is beyond the capacity of the personages alone to utter. The

music of the instruments is the voice of the fate, the conscience,

and the will concerned in the drama. To those who wish to listen,

it unfolds, unerringly, the thoughts, motives, and purpose of the

personages, and lays bare the mysteries of the plot and counter-plot.

As the passions and purposes of the drama grow complex, the musical

texture, into which the themes which typify those passions and purposes

enter, grows complex and heterogeneous. The most obvious factors in

this development are changes of mode, harmony, rhythm, time, and

orchestration. A single illustration must here suffice. By applying the

principle of augmentation to a phrase, in the three phases of melodic,

harmonic, and instrumental structure, Wagner illustrates the tragic

growth of Siegfried in the Niblung tragedy. When the hero is merely

a high-spirited lad, roaming through the forest and associating with

its denizens, the phrase appears as the call which he blows upon his

hunting-horn:

[Illustration: score]

When he has entered upon man's estate, has awakened Brünnhilde from her

long sleep, learned wisdom from her teaching, donned her armor, and is

about to set out in quest of adventure, the typical phrase which greets

him has taken on this form:

[Illustration: score]

Finally, the phrase is metamorphosed into that thrilling pæan at the

climax of the Death March, to indicate which is impossible by means of

pianoforte transcription:

[Illustration: score]

IV.

From the beginning of his career Wagner wrote his own librettos; but

it is only in "Tristan und Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," "Der Ring des

Nibelungen," and "Parsifal" that he realized his conception of what

the poet-composer should be. The starting-point of his reformatory

ideas was that music had usurped a place which does not belong to it

in the lyric drama. It should be a means, and had become the aim. As

an æsthetic principle, he contended that it lies in the nature of

music to be not the end, but a medium, of dramatic expression. He

therefore reversed the old relations of librettist and composer,

and made music, which can only address itself to the emotions and

imagination, dependent for form, spirit, and character on the poetry,

which appeals to reason. Each art when isolated has a restricted range

of expression; but in the Wagnerian drama each contributes a complement

and helps it to convey all its meanings and intentions without the help

of a frequently untrustworthy imagination. In elaborating his theory,

Wagner held that as a poetical form of expression rhyme is useless in

music, because it not only implies identity of vowel-sounds, but also

of the succeeding consonants, which are lost by the singer's need of

dwelling on the vowels. The initial consonant, however, cannot be lost

in song, because it is that which stamps its physiognomy on the word,

and repetition creating a sort of musical cadence which is agreeable to

the ear, Wagner desired alliteration to be substituted for rhyme in the

chief parts of his verse. From the verse-melody thus obtained he wished

the musical melody to spring, words and music becoming lovingly merged

in each other, each sacrificing enough of selfishness to make the union

possible. To what I have already said about the nature of the typical

phrases I wish to add this as a résumé of their purpose: In every drama

there are employed certain dramatic and ethical principles as well as

agencies. The development of these principles in the conduct and words

of the personages, the employment of the agencies, give us the action

and significance of the play. For these principles and agents Wagner

provides musical symbols. The nature of the principles, the character

of the agents, explain the form and spirit of the symbols; the symbols,

in turn, sometimes help us to understand the real nature of the things

symbolized. If we have grasped the fundamental ideas of a drama,

therefore, and appreciated the fitness of their symbols, we shall have

penetrated near to the heart of the Art-work. But it cannot be too

forcibly urged that if we confine our study of Wagner to the forms and

names of the phrases out of which he constructs his musical fabric, we

shall at the last have enriched our minds with a thematic catalogue

and--nothing else. We shall remain guiltless of knowledge unless we

learn something of the nature of those phrases by noting the attributes

which lend them propriety and fitness, and can recognize, measurably

at least, the reasons for their introduction and development. Those

attributes give character and mood to the music constructed out of

the phrases. If we are able to feel the mood we need not care how the

phrases which produce it have been labelled. If we do not feel the

mood we may memorize the whole thematic catalogue of Wolzogen and have

our labor for our pains. It would be better to know nothing about the

phrases and content one's self with simple sensuous enjoyment than to

spend one's time answering the baldest of all the riddles of Wagner's

orchestra: "What am I playing now?"

The ultimate question concerning the correctness or effectiveness of

Wagner's system of composition must, of course, be answered along with

the question, "Does the composition, as a whole, touch the emotions,

quicken the fancy, fire the imagination?" If it does these things, we

may, to a great extent, if we wish, get along without the intellectual

processes of reflection and comparison, which are conditioned upon a

recognition of the themes and their uses. But if we put aside this

intellectual activity, we shall deprive ourselves, among other things,

of the pleasure which it is the province of memory to give; and the

exercise of memory is called for by music much more urgently than

by any other art, because of its volatile nature and the role which

repetition plays in it.

Nothing could have demonstrated more perfectly the righteousness

of Wagner's claim to the title of poet than his acceptance of the

Greek theory that the legends and myths of a people are the fittest

subjects for dramatic treatment, unless it be the manner in which he

has reshaped his material in order to infuse it with that deep ethical

principle to which reference has several times been made. In "The

Flying Dutchman," "The Niblung's Ring," and "Tannhäuser," the idea

is practically his creation. In the last of these three dramas it is

evolved out of the simple episode in the parent-legend of the death

of Lisaura, whose heart broke when her knight went to kiss the Queen

of Love and Beauty. The dissolute knight of the old story Wagner in

turn metamorphoses into a type of manhood "in its passionate desires

and ideal aspirations"--like the Faust of Goethe. All the magnificent

energy of an ideal man is brought forward in the poet's conception, but

it is an energy which is shattered in its fluctuation between sensual

delights and ideal aspirations, respectively typified in the Venus and

the Elizabeth of the play. Here is the contradiction against which he

was shattered as the heroes of Greek tragedy were shattered on the rock

of implacable Fate. But the transcendent beauty of the modern drama is

lent by the ethical idea of salvation through the love of pure woman--a

salvation touching which no one can be in doubt when Tannhäuser sinks

lifeless beside the bier of the atoning saint, and Venus's cries of woe

are swallowed up by the pious canticle of the returning pilgrims.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] For popular purposes there is no harm in letting this statement

stand as made. Of course the reference goes only to the Greek theatre

in its latest form, the evolution of which is indicated, perhaps, in

the comparative weakness of the bond which unites the chorus to the

action in Euripides. The orchestra was, in fact, the centre around

which all the rest, the _theatron_ and the _skēnē_, were gradually

grouped. In the antique festal plays the principal feature was the

dance in a circle around the _thymele_, or altar of Dionysus. It

was only by a slow process that the actor came to be thought of as

anywise distinguished from his companions. As generally in ancient art

priority was indicated by height, there is here a reason for the tragic

_cothurnus_, which might be said to be an inexplicable deformity on any

other theory; for it was only by putting them on stilts, so to speak,

that it was possible to indicate the participants in the dialogue as

apart from the general rout of dancing worshippers. Even in the time

of the three great dramatic writers, it seems probable, disturbing as

such an idea may be to popular impressions, that some, if not all,

plays were performed without any stage. The word _skēnē_ (tent) points

to a temporary structure, used in the first place, perhaps, as a shrine

for the symbols and properties of the god (like the Tabernacle of the

Israelites), then as the dressing-room of the actors; it was succeeded

by the temple when the place had become consecrated to the worship of

Dionysus, then by the structures suited to a given play, and finally

by a permanent stage, which gradually encroached on the space that had

once belonged to the orchestra. These conclusions, at least, seem to be

borne out by the discoveries and arguments of Dörpfeld.

[B] Naumann's _History of Music_, vol. i., p. 524.

[C] _Mephist._ Du weisst wohl nicht, mein Freund, wie grob du bist?

_Bac._ Im Deutschen lügt man wenn man höflich ist.

GOETHE. "Faust," Part II., Act 2, Sc. 1.

CHAPTER II.

"TRISTAN UND ISOLDE."

A vassal is sent to woo a beauteous princess for his lord. While he

is bringing her home the two, by accident, drink a love-potion, and

ever thereafter their hearts are fettered together. In the mid-day of

delirious joy, in the midnight of deepest woe, and through all the

emotional hours between, their thoughts are only of each other, for

each other. Meanwhile the princess has become the vassal's queen. Then

the wicked love of the pair is discovered, and the knight is obliged to

seek safety in a foreign land. There (strange note this to our ears)

he marries another princess whose name is like that of his love, save

for the addition "With the White Hand;" but when wounded unto death

he sends across the water for her who is still his true love, that

she come and be his healer. The ship which is sent to bring her is to

bear white sails on its return if successful in the mission; black, if

not. Day after day the knight waits for the coming of his love--while

the lamp of his life burns lower and lower. At length the sails of the

ship appear on the distant horizon. The knight is now too weak himself

to look. "White or black?" he asks of his wife. "Black," replies she,

jealousy prompting the falsehood; and the knight's heart-strings snap

in twain just as his love steps over the threshold of his chamber. Oh,

the pity of it! for with the lady is her lord, who, having learned the

story of the fateful potion, has come to unite the lovers. Then the

queen, too, dies, and the remorseful king buries the lovers in a common

grave, from whose caressing sod spring a rose-bush and a vine, and

intertwine so curiously that none may separate them.

Here, in its simple forms, is the tale which half a millennium of

poets have celebrated as the High Song of Love, the canticle of all

canticles which hymn the universal passion. British bards, French

_trouvères_, and German _Minnesinger_, while they sang of the joys

and sorrows of humanity, united in holding up Sir Tristram and La

beale Isoud as the supreme type of lovers. To-day our poets, writing

under the influence of social and moral systems, radically different

from those which surrounded the original singers, send back the

perennial note with fervor. But the moralist shakes his head, sinks

into perplexed brooding, or launches the thunders of his righteous

wrath against the storied lovers and their sin. We wish to study the

manner in which a great dramatic poet of our day has presented this

profoundly tragical yet universally fascinating tale. Must we confront

the problem and seek to reconcile the paradox created by the attitudes

of poet and moralist? Or may we put aside the phenomenon as one whose

interpretation is to be left to each individual's notions of the True,

the Beautiful, and the Good, and address ourselves directly to a

study of the drama as a work of art regardless of its ethical phases?

Eventually, I am inclined to believe, we shall be obliged to do the

latter; but as appreciation of what the poet-composer has done depends

upon an understanding of his purposes, and this again upon a discovery

of the elements of the legend which seemed to him potential, we are

compelled to make at least a cursory survey of some of the phases

through which the story has gone in the progress of time; for each

poet, passing the original metal through the fires of his imagination,

brought it forth changed in color and enriched with new designs. In the

new color and adornments we study something of the social institutions

and moral and intellectual habits of the poet's time, these being

superimposed on the original idea embodied in the fundamental story.

In one of the beautiful tales of Northern mythology (a tale in which

I am tempted to think a relic of the primitive Tristram myth may one

day be found) we are told how Skirnir cunningly stole the reflection

of Frey's sunny face from the surface of a brook, and imprisoned it

in his drinking-horn that he might pour it out into Gerd's cup, and

by its beauty win the heart of the giantess for the lord for whom,

like Tristan, he had gone a-wooing. A legend which lives to be

retold often, is like the reflection of Frey's face in this beautiful

allegory; each poet who uses it spreads it upon a mirror which not only

reflects the original picture, but also the environment of the relator.

It will be necessary to remember this when we attempt an inquiry into

the morals of Wagner's drama.

I.

To readers of English literature opportunities to acquaint themselves

with the legend which is the basis of Wagner's drama have been given

by Sir Thomas Malory, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, and Swinburne, to say

nothing of critics and commentators. The story is of Keltic origin, and

is supposed to have got into the mouths of the German _Minnesinger_ by

way of France. The most admirable as well as complete version extant is

the epic poem of Gottfried von Strassburg, written in the thirteenth

century. Sir Walter Scott, who was deeply interested in the literary

history of the tale, in 1804 edited a metrical version of it from a

manuscript said to be the production of Thomas the Rhymer, who lived

about a century after Gottfried, if, indeed, he lived at all. From this

manuscript Scott argued in favor of a Welsh source for the romance

instead of a Norman, as was then generally accepted. The author of

the German epic followed a French version, as was customary with the

_Minnesinger_ of his period. Tennyson's share in the exposition is

exceedingly scant and wholly valueless. It is found in the poem, "The

Last Tournament," one of the "Idyls of the King." Arnold's is much more

interesting. He treats directly of the outcome of the tragedy in his

poem "Tristram and Iseult," and indirectly relates nearly all that is

essential to an understanding of the story. His poem presents the death

scene of Tristram in Brittany, with the fanciful imaginings of the

dying man while waiting for the coming of Iseult, who has been summoned

from Tintagel. The whole tale is related by Swinburne in his "Tristram

of Lyonesse."

The names of the chief personages in the romance vary slightly in the

different German and English versions, but the variations need lead no

one astray. Wagner's Tristan is otherwise known as Sir Tristrem and

Tristram. All derive the name from the French word _triste_, and find

in it a premonition of his fate. Thus Arnold:

"Son," she said, "thy name shall be of sorrow;

Tristram art thou called for my death's sake."

The poet speaks of the hero's dying mother. So also Swinburne:

"The name his mother, dying as he was born,

Made out of sorrow in very sorrow's scorn,

And set it on him smiling in her sight,

Tristram."

Isolde is variously Iseult, Ysolt, Isoud, and Ysonde; Brangäne is

Brangwain and Brenqwain; Kurwenal, Gouvernayle. The changes in

orthographical physiognomy are trifling and easily recognized.

It cannot be amiss to call attention to several deviations in Wagner's

drama from the legend as it has been handed down by the poets. The

majority of these deviations will be found to be full of significance.

At the outset we are confronted with the chief of these. In all the

other versions the love-potion is drunk by Tristan and Isolde by

mistake. In Mr. Swinburne's poem Tristram toils at the oars,

"More mightily than any wearier three,"

and when he rests, calls for a drink,

"Saying: 'Iseult, for all dear love's labor's sake,

Give me to drink, and give me for a pledge

The touch of four lips on the beaker's edge'."

Iseult's maid, Brangwain, is asleep, and the Princess, not wishing to

awake her, herself looks for wine and finds a curious cup hid in the

maid's bosom. She thinks its contents wine and drinks, and hands it to

Tristram to drink. It is the love-draught prepared by Queen Iseult and

intrusted to Brangwain, to be by her sacredly guarded and given to Mark

and Iseult on their wedding night. Mr. Arnold also has these lovers

drink unwittingly

"----that spiced magic draught

Which since then forever rolls

Through their blood and binds their souls,

Working love, but working teen."

In this respect both English poets follow the German epic of Gottfried

von Strassburg. The dramatic significance of Wagner's variation can

be reserved for discussion hereafter. Its value as intensifying the

character of Isolde is obvious at a glance.

Tennyson omits all mention of the love-potion, and permits us to

imagine Tristram and Iseult as a couple of ordinary sinners, the

former's doctrines on the subject being published in lines like these:

"Free love--free field--we love but while we may;

The woods are hush'd, their music is no more:

The leaf is dead, the yearning passed away:

New leaf, new life--the days of frost are o'er:

New life, new love to suit the newer day:

New loves are sweet as those that went before;

Free love--free field--we love but while we may."

The next important variation (I do not speak of omissions which are

inevitable in throwing an epic into dramatic form) is in the scene

which follows the discovery of the lovers by King Marke. To discuss

this in all its bearings would require more space than I shall care

to employ for the purpose, but it is well to know it. The wronged

Marke of Wagner, some will say as many have said, is not wronged at

all since he chooses to remain inactive, whereas the popular impulse

is illustrated in Tennyson's version, where Mark cleaves Tristram to

the brain on discovering his treachery. But the Marke of Gottfried and

the Mark of Swinburne are scarcely more comprehensible in their conduct

than Wagner's Marke. In Gottfried's epic, after the king has repeatedly

sent the lovers away and taken them back again, he is finally convinced

of their guilt. But before he takes action against Tristan, the latter

escapes. In Swinburne, Tristram is taken and led towards the chapel for

trial. On the road he wrenches a sword from Moraunt's hands, kills him

and ten knights more, leaps into the sea from a cliff, and escapes,

aided by Gouvernayle.

In his last act, Wagner has proceeded with the utmost freedom, as in

all respects he had a right to do, since no authentic version of the

close of the legend has been preserved. Karl Simrock, following the old

English "Sir Tristrem," appended to his translation into modern German

of Gottfried's epic the episode of Tristan's life in Brittany with a

second Isolt, called Isolt of the White Hand. Being low with a wound

received in combat, Tristan sends for the first Isolt, cautioning his

brother-in-law (as Ægeus cautioned Theseus in Greek story), who goes

on the mission, to hoist white sails on returning if successful, black

if not. Isolt of the White Hand, who is watching for the return of

the ship, moved by jealousy, announces that the sails are black, and

Tristan dies just as Isolt enters the chamber. This version Swinburne

follows, but Arnold adds a beautiful touch to the old legend by making

the second Iseult tend her husband with unflinching love and unfailing

fidelity, even while she awaits the coming of her rival. Arnold gives

Tristram and the second Iseult a family of children; Swinburne keeps

the latter a "maiden wife." Bayard Taylor, in writing about Gottfried's

epic, almost angrily refuses to believe that Iseult of the White Hand

killed her knight by the falsehood about the sails. Wagner saves

himself this embarrassment, and ennobles his hero by omitting the

second Isolde from the play altogether, a proceeding which not only

brings the tale into greater sympathy with modern ideas of love, but

also serves marvellously to exalt the passion of the lovers.

II.

Wagner tells the story of the tragedy in three acts. Few dramas have

so little to offer in the way of action, if by action we are to

understand incident and diversity of situation. At Bayreuth, in the

summer of 1886, Mr. Seidl characterized it very aptly as consisting in

each of its three acts as merely preparation, expectation and meeting

of the ill-starred lovers. Yet I doubt not that many will agree with

me, that the effect of the tragedy upon a listener is that of a play

surcharged with significant occurrence. The explanation of this is to

be found in the fact that music which has a high degree of emotional

expressiveness makes us forget the paucity of external incident, by

diverting interest from externals to the play of passion going on in

the hearts of the personages. This play is presented to us freed from

every vestige of spectacular integument in the instrumental prelude to

the drama. I want to lay stress on this statement. It is the passion

of the lovers to which the composer wishes to direct our attention at

the outset, and to do this most effectively he constructs his musical

"argument of the play" out of melodic phrases which have purely a

psychological significance. There is considerable music of the kind

that I will call scenic in the score of "Tristan und Isolde," but none

of it is introduced in the prelude, which for that reason appeals much

more directly to the emotions and the lofty faculty of imagination than

it does to the fancy. It is true that this makes the task of analytical

study more difficult, but for this there is compensation in the fact

that enjoyment of its beauties and apprehension of its purposes do

not require the intellectual activity conditioned by a following of

its typical phrases through the web and woof of the composition. This

is characteristic of the entire score of the drama. More than any

other of the dramas of Wagner, with the possible exception of "Die

Meistersinger," it shows the spontaneity in artistic creation, without

which a real art-work cannot come into existence. Wagner himself

expressed a preference for "Tristan" over others of his works, and

based it on the solid ground that in the composition of its score he

had proceeded without thought of his own theories; in other words, he

worked spontaneously and not reflectively. The result is strikingly

noticeable in the fact that, though there are comparatively few typical

melodies in the score, one is much less inclined to dissect it for the

pleasure which such a process brings than any other of his scores. The

direct, sensuous, and emotional appeal is sufficient. Yet we know that

it is a perfect and complete exemplification of his theories.

To come back to the prelude:

An ardent longing for the unattainable; a consuming hunger

"----which doth make

The meat it feeds on;"

a desire that cannot be quenched, yet will not despair; finally, at the

lowest ebb of the sweet agony, the promise of an end of suffering, in

self-forgetfulness, oblivion, annihilation of individual identity, and

hence in a blending or union of identity--these, according to Wagner's

exposition and the play itself, are the elements which are prefigured

in the instrumental introduction. What are their musical symbols?

The fundamental theme of the drama, the kernel of its musical

development, is the phrase which we hear at the beginning of the

prelude:

[Illustration: score]

Brief as this is, it illustrates one step in the melodic development,

in respect of which "Tristan und Isolde" is Wagner's most marvellous

achievement. It is a unit, in so far as it stands for the passion

of the pair, in both its aspects of blissful longing and infinite

suffering, but it is nevertheless already complex. It is two-voiced.

One voice descends chromatically, the other (beginning with the third

measure) ascends by similar degrees. A figure like that used in music

to indicate a _crescendo_,

[Illustration]

presents a symbol of duality in unity for the eye like that of this

phrase for the ear. How simple yet profound is the idea that all the

conflicting passions of the drama are one in origin and in nature.

Am I becoming fantastical in thinking that Wagner purposed that this

philosophical concept should be stated in the basic material of his

music? I think not; but if there is a haunting fear that way it may be

dissipated by looking a little further into the prelude. After a brief

development of this first musical thought by means of repetition on

various degrees of the scale and changes of instrumental color, two new

phrases are reached. The first:

[Illustration: score]

followed immediately by:

[Illustration: score]

Now, let us stop to note some resemblances, and from significant

portions of the play derive a meaning for our symbols. In this we

cannot be helped, as we sometimes are, by natural likenesses. These

melodies are not imitative or delineative of external things; they

are the result of efforts to give expression to soul-states. At the

beginning of Scene 5, Act I., the entrance of Tristan is proclaimed in

a manner that leaves no doubt as to the meaning of the first of the two

phrases now under investigation. The melody there appears extended,

in augmentation, as the musicians say. It stands for the hero of the

tragedy. The genesis of the love of Tristan and Isolde must next be

studied. That love antedated the beginning of our tragedy. Isolde

relates the story of its beginning to her maid. Disguised as a harper,

Tristan had come to Ireland to be healed of a wound received in battle

with Isolde's betrothed, whom he had killed. Isolde nursed him, but

before he was completely restored to health she discovered that the

edge of his sword was broken, and that a splinter of steel taken from

the head of her dead lover fitted into the nick. The slayer of her

betrothed lay before her. She raised the sword to avenge his death,

but as she was about to strike, Tristan turned his glance upon her. He

looked not at the threatening sword, but into her eyes, and in a moment

her heart was empty of anger. Hatred had given place to love. Note here

that while Wagner uses that silly apparatus of mediæval romance, the

philter, it is not as the creator or provoker of love; that is born

without the aid of magic other than Nature's. "He looked into my eyes,"

says Isolde, and immediately the tender second phrase is uttered by the

orchestra. It is thus that this phrase is identified with the glance

which aroused Isolde's love.

The material which has now been marshalled is practically all that

is contained in the prelude; but there are two modifications of the

fundamental phrase which ought to be noticed. One of these, frequently

treated responsively by the instruments to build up a climax,

[Illustration: score]

seems to depict the gradual recognition by the lovers of the state into

which the potion has plunged them. The other is a harmonized inversion

of the same figure,

[Illustration: score]

to which an added character is given by the jubilant ascent of

thirty-second notes, and which, from several climactic portions of the

drama, we discover to be significant of the lovers' joyful defiance of

death--a sentiment which will be better understood after the philosophy

of the tragedy has been studied.

Wagner has himself given us an exposition of this prelude. In one of

his writings, after rehearsing the legend down to the drinking of the

fateful potion, he says:

"Now there is no end to the yearning, the longing, the delight, and

the misery of love. World, might, fame, splendor, honor, knighthood,

truth, and friendship all vanish like a baseless dream. Only one thing

survives: desire, desire unquenchable, and ever freshly manifested

longing--thirst and yearning. One only redemption: death, the sinking

into oblivion, the sleep from which there is no awaking!

"The musician who chose this theme for the prelude to his love-drama,

as he felt that he was here in the boundless realm of the very element

of music, could only have one care: how he should set bounds to his

fancy; for the exhaustion of the theme was impossible. Thus he took

once for all this insatiable desire; in long-drawn accents it surges

up, from its first timid confession, its softest attraction, through

throbbing sighs, hope and pain, laments and wishes, delight and

torment, up to the mightiest onslaught, the most powerful endeavor to

find the breach which shall open to the heart the path to the ocean of

the endless joy of love. In vain! Its power spent, the heart sinks back

to thirst with desire, with desire unfulfilled, as each fruition only

brings forth seeds of fresh desire, till, at last, in the depth of its

exhaustion, the starting eye sees the glimmering of the highest bliss

of attainment. It is the ecstasy of dying, of the surrender of being,

of the final redemption into that wondrous realm from which we wander

farthest when we strive to take it by force. Shall we call this Death?

Is it not rather the wonder-world of Night, out of which, so says the

story, the ivy and the vine sprang forth in tight embrace o'er the tomb

of Tristan and Isolde?"

III.

We are on board a mediæval ship within a few hours' voyage of Cornwall,

whither Tristan, knight and vassal, is bearing Isolde as bride of King

Marke. Isolde is an Irish princess, daughter of a queen of like name

with herself. The first scene discloses her to be a woman of most

tumultuous passion. Hearing the cheery song of a sailor, she bursts

forth like a tempest and declares to her maid, Brangäne, that she will

never set foot on Cornwall's shore. She deplores the degeneracy of

her mother's sorcery, which can only brew balsamic potions instead of

commanding the elements; and she wildly invokes wind and waves to dash

the ship to pieces. Brangäne pleads to know the cause of her mistress's

disquiet--what I have already related of the previous meeting between

the princess and King Marke's ambassador.

After telling this tale to Brangäne, Isolde sends the maid to summon

Tristan to her presence, but the knight refuses to leave the helm

until he has brought the ship into harbor, and his squire, Kurwenal,

incensed at the tone addressed by the princess to one who in his eyes

is the greatest of heroes, as answer to the summons sings a stave of a

popular ballad which recounts the killing of Morold and the liberation

of Cornwall by his master. The refusal completes the desperation of

Isolde. Outraged love, injured personal and national pride (for she

imagines that he who had relieved Cornwall from tribute to Ireland

was now gratifying his ambition by bringing her as Ireland's tribute

to Cornwall), detestation of a loveless marriage to "Cornwall's weary

king," a thousand fierce but indefinable emotions are seething in her

heart. She resolves to die, and to drag Tristan down to death with her.

Brangäne unwittingly shows the way. She tries to quiet her mistress's

fears of the dangers of a loveless marriage by telling her of a magic

potion brewed by the queen-mother with which she will firmly attach

Marke to his bride. Thus innocently she takes the first step towards

precipitating the catastrophe. Isolde demands to see the casket of

magical philters, and finds that it also contains a deadly poison.

Kurwenal enters to announce that the ship is in harbor, and Tristan

desires her to prepare for the landing. Isolde sends back greetings

and a message that before she will permit the knight to escort her

before the king he must obtain from her forgiveness for unforgiven

guilt. Tristan obeys this second summons, and in justification of his

conduct in keeping himself aloof during the voyage he, with great

dignity, pleads his duty towards good morals, custom, and his king.

Isolde reminds him of the wrong done her in the slaying of her lover

and her right to the vengeance which once she had renounced. Tristan

yields the right, and offers her his sword and breast, but Isolde

replies that she cannot appear before King Marke as the slayer of his

foremost knight, and proposes that he drink a cup of reconciliation.

Tristan sees one-half her purpose, and chivalrously consents to pledge

her in what he knows to be poison. Isolde calls for the cup which she

had commanded Brangäne to prepare, and when Tristan has drunk part of

its contents she wrenches it from his hand and drains it to the bottom.

Thus they meet their doom, which is not death and surcease of sorrow,

but life and misery, for Brangäne had disobeyed her mistress out of her

love and mixed a love-potion instead of a death draught. A moment of

bewilderment, and the two fated ones are in each other's arms, pouring

out an ecstasy of passion; then the maids of honor robe Isolde to

receive King Marke, who is coming on board to greet his bride.

These are the dramatic contents of the first act, whose musical

investiture is now to be looked at a little analytically. At the outset

there is an example of the skill with which Wagner employs the charm of

contrast. I have said that the music of the prelude is not scenic--it

aims at moods and passions, not at pictures. The drama opens with music

of the other kind. As the curtain is withdrawn we see within the tent

erected for Isolde on the deck of the ship. Hangings conceal all else

from view; but the first music which we hear is the voice of an unseen

sailor at the mast-head, who sings to the winds that are blowing him

away from his wild Irish sweetheart. The melody has a most insinuating

charm, especially its principal phrase:

[Illustration: score]

There is something of the buoyant roll of the ship and the freshness of

sea-breezes about it. It plunges us at once into the scenic situation,

puts us on shipboard, and helps us to share in the pleasurable

sensations of the voyage to Cornwall, especially when, a moment later,

it accompanies and amplifies Brangäne's account of the happy progress

of the voyage. Scarcely have we surrendered ourselves to this pleasure,

however, before Isolde's outburst of rage turns our attention from

the scenes to the personages of the play. What was innocent delight

to the singer and to us (who are now playing sympathetically along in

the drama) has somehow loosened an emotional tempest in the heart of

the passenger most concerned in that voyage. Suddenly, as we listen

to her imprecations, the whole past of the heroine is revealed--she

stands before us, not the inexperienced, unconcerned princess of the

other poems, but a fully developed woman, a furious woman, a tragic

heroine ripe for destruction. It is a favorite device of poets and

musicians--of all creative artists, indeed--to invite Nature to take

part in the play of their creations. We think a thunder-storm the

proper accompaniment of a murder, and balmy sunshine of a wedding. Here

the breezy sea-music has provoked a storm of passion, and the composer

permits the enraged princess to lash it into a fury. To suit her mood

he invokes dark clouds to obscure the sunshine of its tonality, sends

harsh harmonies hurtling among the simple chords that sounded its

original innocency, and stirs up a whirlwind out of its first quiet

movement. But when, a few moments later, Isolde has checked her wild

passion, the music settles back into its original quietude, and in

time with its measured pulsations we see the sailors pulling upon the

ship's tackle. Now it sings its "Yo-heave-ho!" as decorously as any

shanty-song.

I have referred to the duality in unity of the fundamental idea in

the music of the drama. A study of the scene in which Isolde resolves

upon the double crime of murder and suicide will disclose how relation

in thought, emotion, and dramatic motive is expressed by relation in

musical symbol. The symbol of longing contained in the fundamental

phrase shows ascent in chromatic degrees. Observe, now, that in Act I.,

Scene 3, the sufferings of the wounded Tristan are depicted in a theme

composed wholly of descending half-steps,

[Illustration: score]

and note, too, that the closing cadence of the short phrase which

stands for the love-glance is a downward leap of seven degrees.

In this phrase, as we first hear it, there is much tenderness and

gentle happiness; but in the glance there was the phantom of that

Life-in-Death who won Coleridge's Ancient Mariner from the grisly

skeleton in their awful game of dice. Though we do not suspect it, at

first, that downward leap of a seventh is an ominous symbol--the symbol

of Fate, which might have been heard under the yearning voices of the

prelude, and is now proclaimed by the gloomy basses in the scene

wherein Isolde selects the poison from the casket of philters which her

mother had given in charge of Brangäne:

[Illustration: score]

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:

[Illustration: score]

Death... de - vot - ed head!

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:

"Love, is it day that makes thee thy delight,

Or thou that seest day made out of thy light?"

by calmly observing,

"I have heard men sing of love a simpler way

Than these wrought riddles made of night and day."

I have said that we ought to know something of the philosophy of

the tragedy. In Wagner's exposition of the prelude he wishes us to

observe the "one glimmering of the highest bliss of attainment" in the

surrender of being, the "final redemption into that wondrous realm

from which we wander farthest when we try to take it by force." For

this wondrous realm he chooses death and night as symbols, but what he

means to imply is the Nirvana of Buddhistic philosophy, the "final

deliverance of the soul from transmigration." Nirvana is the antithesis

of Sansâra. Sansâra, the world, means turmoil and variety, and each new

transmigration means another relapse into the miseries of existence.

The love of Tristan and Isolde presents itself to Wagner as ceaseless

struggle and endless contradiction, and for such a problem there is

but one solution--total oblivion. Nirvana is the only conception which

offers a happy outcome to such love; it means quietude and identity.

The duet is rudely interrupted in its moment of supremest ecstasy by

a warning cry from Brangäne. Kurwenal dashes in with a sword and a

shout: "Save thyself, Tristan!" King Marke, Melot, and courtiers at

his heels. Day, the symbol of all that is fatal to their love, has

dawned. Tristan is silent, though King Marke, in a long speech, bewails

the treachery of his nephew and friend. Much ridicule has been poured

out on this scene, which the ordinary theatre-goer finds dramatically

disappointing. There can be no question that the popular sentiment is

better expressed by Tennyson, in the corresponding scene in his poem,

"The Last Tournament:"

"But while he bow'd to kiss the jewell'd throat,

Out of the dark, just as the lips had touch'd,

Behind him rose a shadow and a shriek--

'Mark's way,' said Mark, and clove him thro' the brain."

One need not be an advocate to say that though Marke's sermonizing may

be theatrically disappointing, it offers in itself a complete defence

of its propriety. From the words of the heart-torn king we learn that

he had been forced into the marriage by the disturbed state of his

kingdom, and that he had not consented to it until Tristan (whose

purpose it was to quiet the jealous anger of the barons) had threatened

to depart from Cornwall unless the King revoked his decision to make

him his successor. Tristan's answer to the sorrowful upbraidings

of Marke is to obtain a promise from Isolde to follow him into the

"wondrous realm of Night;" then (note this as bearing on the ethics of

the drama), seeing that Marke did not wield the sword of retribution,

he makes a feint of attacking Melot, but permits the treacherous friend

to reach him with his sword. He falls wounded unto death.

V.

The dignified, reserved knight of the first act, the impassioned lover

of the second, is now a dream-haunted, longing, despairing, dying

man, lying under a lime-tree in the yard of his ancestral castle in

Brittany, wasting his last bit of strength in feverish fancies and

ardent longings touching Isolde. Kurwenal has sent for her. Will she

come? A shepherd tells of vain watches for the sight of a sail by

playing a mournful melody on his pipe. What a vast expanse of empty sea

is opened to our view by the ascending passages in long-drawn thirds!

How vividly we are made to realize the ebbing away of Tristan's vital

powers!

In the music of this act, if anywhere in the creations of Wagner, we

are lifted above the necessity of seeking significances. Even the

pianoforte can speak the language of this act. There is not one measure

in it which does not tell its story in a manner which puts mere words

to shame. Oh, the heart-hunger of the hero! The longing! Will she

never come? The fever is consuming him, and his heated brain breeds

fancies which one moment lift him above all memories of pain, and the

next bring him to the verge of madness. Cooling breezes waft him again

towards Ireland, whose princess healed the wound struck by Morold, then

ripped it up again with the avenging sword with its telltale nick. From

her hands he took the drink whose poison sears his heart. Accursed

the cup and accursed the hand that brewed it! Will the shepherd never

change his doleful strain? Ah, Isolde, how beautiful you are! The ship,

the ship! It must be in sight! Kurwenal, have you no eyes? Isolde's

ship! A merry tune bursts from the shepherd's pipe. It is caught up by

the orchestra and whirled away on an ocean of excited sound. It is the

ship! What flag flies at the peak? The flag of "All's well!" Now the

ship disappears behind a cliff. There the breakers are treacherous.

Who is at the helm? Friend or foe? Melot's accomplice? Are you, too, a

traitor, Kurwenal?

Tristan's strength is unequal to the excitement of the moment. His

mind becomes dazed. He hears Isolde's voice, and his wandering fancy

transforms it into the torch whose extinction once summoned him to

her side: "Do I hear the light?" He staggers to his feet and tears

the bandages from his wound. "Ha, my blood, flow merrily now! She who

opened the wound is here to heal it!" Life endures but for one embrace,

one glance, one word--"Isolde!"--which is borne to her ears by the

sadly sweet phrase, typical of the first glance of love--the word and

tones which first he had uttered after the potion had made him forget

all but his love.

While Isolde lies mortally stricken upon Tristan's corpse, Marke and

his train arrive upon a second ship. Brangäne has told the secret of

the love-draught, and the king has come to unite the lovers. But his

purpose is not known, and faithful Kurwenal receives his death-blow

while trying to hold the castle against Marke's men. He dies at

Tristan's side. Isolde, unconscious of all these happenings, sings out

her broken heart and expires.