SOME REMARKS ON THE MUSICAL DICTION OF _TRISTAN UND ISOLDE_
Before beginning the detailed consideration of our work, I wish to say
a few words on some features of the music. As I am writing for the
general reader and not for the musician, I shall endeavour to express
myself in generally understood terms, and avoid technical details.
Each of Wagner's works presents a distinct and strongly defined
musical physiognomy marking it off from all the others. The music of
each is cast in its own mould and is at once recognizable from that of
the rest. The most characteristic features of the music of _Tristan
und Isolde_ are its concentrated _intensity_ and the ineffable
_sweetness_ of its melody. The number of musical-dramatic motives
employed is very small, but they are insisted upon and emphasized by a
musical working out unparalleled in the other works. In
_Rheingold_, for example, some twelve or fifteen motives--if we
count only those of well-marked contours, and which are used in
definite dramatic association--can be distinguished; whereas in the
whole of _Tristan_ there are of such _Leitmotive_ in the
narrowest sense not more than three or four. The treatment is also
very different. The _Ring_ is not entirely innocent of what has
been wittily called the "visiting-card" employment of motives, while
in _Tristan_ the musical motive does not repeat, but rather
supplements, the words, indicating what these have left untold, thus
entering as truly into the substance of the drama as it does into that
of the music.
The most important motive of all, the one which pervades the drama
from beginning to end, is the love-motive. Its fundamental form is
that in which it appears in the second bar of the Prelude in the oboe
(No. 1).[35] Variants of it occur without the characteristic semitone
suspension (1_a_) or with a falling seventh (1_b_). The
cello motive of the opening phrase of the Prelude may also be
considered as derived from the same by contrary movement (1_c_).
[Footnote 35: See the musical examples at the end.]
Of equal importance, though occurring less frequently, and only at
important and decisive moments, is the death-motive (2). This motive
is less varied than the last, recurring generally in the same key--A
flat passing into C minor--and with similar instrumentation, the brass
and drums entering _pp_ on the second chord.
The second act opens with a strongly marked phrase which is the
musical counterpart of the great metaphor so conspicuous throughout
the act, of the day as destructive of love. The working out of this
motive whilst the lovers are together is a marvel of musical
composition, and it always returns in the same connection.
Perhaps we may also include among these fundamental musical-dramatical
motives one occurring in the middle of the second act at the words
"_Sehnen hin zur heilgen Nacht_" (No. 4). It is akin to the
death-motive proper, but the solemn harmonies are here torn asunder
into a strain so discordant that without the dramatic context it would
scarcely be bearable. It is the rending of the bond with this life and
with the day. The music here reminds us that, however heroically the
lovers accept their inevitable end, they feel that it means a rough
and painful severance from that life which was once so dear and
beautiful.
Other motives are reminiscences more or less of a purely musical
nature or connected only in a general way with scenes or incidents of
the drama. They call back indistinctly scenes of bygone times, and
will be spoken of as they occur in the work.
The best preliminary study for Wagner's use of motives is that of
Beethoven's sonatas and symphonies. _Macmillan's Magazine_ for
July, 1876, contains a valuable article by the late Mr. Dannreuther
which will be useful as an introduction, and ought to be familiar to
all who are interested in modern developments of music. Mr.
Dannreuther there treats of the type of variation peculiar to
Beethoven, which he compares to the metamorphosis of insects or of the
organs of plants: "It is not so much the alteration of a given
thought, a change of dress or of decoration, it is an actual creation
of something new and distinct from out of a given germ." He then
proceeds to trace the principle in some of Beethoven's later works,
and shows how for example the great B flat sonata (Op. 106) is built
upon a scheme of rising tenths and falling thirds; the A flat sonata
(Op. 110) upon two simple melodies. Wagner's procedure is similar; he
takes a musical motive which has already been used and brings forth
out of it something totally new, scarcely resembling its parent in
external features, and yet recognizable as the same.
The problem before Wagner was how to render this new acquisition
available for the drama, and we shall best understand him if we look
upon him as all his life seeking its solution, each work representing
an experimental stage rather than a perfectly finished model. In the
earlier part of the _Ring_ he began with a purely conventional
conjunction of a musical strain with a tangible and visible object--a
ring, a giant, a goddess, etc. This is wrong method, and, although
generally his instinctive sense of dramatic propriety kept him from
going very far astray, the effects of his wrong procedure are
occasionally visible. Why, for example, should a given melody in
thirds on two bassoons denote a ring? and why should it bear a
thematic kinship to another melody denoting Walhall? The association
is purely conventional and serves no purpose, for the material object,
a ring, is fully expressed in the word; there is nothing more to be
said about it than that it is just a ring, and we do not want the
bassoons to repeat or confirm what is quite intelligible without them.
In _Tristan_ this pitfall is mostly avoided, but it is in _Die
Meistersinger_ and _Parsifal_ that we find the motives most
skilfully employed.
A critical analysis of the harmonic structure of our work does not
fall within the scope of this treatise. It will be found in text-books
specially devoted to the subject. I can here only offer a few general
remarks.
Modern harmonies are made theoretically much more difficult than they
need be by our system of notation, which grew up in the Middle Ages.
The old modes knew no modulation in our sense, and in the seventeenth
century, when the tempered system came into vogue, making every kind
of modulation possible, the old notation was retained. How unsuited it
is for modern music appears from the drastic contradictions which it
involves. It is quite a common thing to see the same note
simultaneously written as F sharp in one part and as G flat in
another. This is what makes modern harmony seem so much more difficult
than it really is, for when the music comes to be _heard_, these
formidable-looking intervals resolve themselves into something quite
natural and generally not difficult of apprehension by a musical ear.
Unfortunately we are compelled to learn music through the medium of a
keyed instrument, generally through the most unmusical of instruments,
the piano, and we learn theory largely through the eye and the reason
instead of through the ear. The problems of harmony will seem much
simpler if we remember that its basis is the _interval_--music
does not know "notes" as such, but only intervals--that the number of
possible intervals is very small and their relations quite simple, and
that everything which is not reducible to a very simple vulgar
fraction is heard, not as a harmony, but as a passing note, an
inflection of a note of a chord. In fact the advance made in chord
combinations since the introduction of the tempered system is not very
great. All, or nearly all, the chords used by Wagner are to be found
in the works of Bach. The suggestion to explain Wagner's harmonies by
assuming a "chromatic scale" rests upon a misapprehension of the
nature of a scale. Every scale implies a tonality, i.e. a tonic note,
to which all the other notes bear some definite numerical relation.
There cannot be a chromatic scale in the scientific sense in music;
what we call by that name in a keyed instrument is merely a diatonic
scale with the intervals filled in; it always belongs to a definite
key, and the accidentals are only passing notes. It is in passing
notes that we must seek the key to Wagner's harmonies. With Wagner
more than with any other composer since Bach the parts must be read
horizontally as well as vertically. As long as we look upon harmonic
progressions as vertical columns of chords following one upon the
other we may indeed explain, but we shall never understand them. Each
chord must be viewed as the result of the confluence of all the
separate voices moving harmoniously together. This, too, will help us
to grasp the character of "altered" chords, so lavishly employed by
Wagner, and of "inflection," by which term I mean to denote all kinds
of passing notes, appoggiaturas, suspensions, changing notes, and the
like. All are phenomena of harmonic notes striving melodically
onwards, either upwards or downwards.
Although little has been done in the invention of new combinations,
the character of the harmonic structure has changed considerably since
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is evident at
first glance on comparing a score of Haydn or Mozart with one of
Wagner or Liszt. There, although chromatic harmonies are not
unfrequent, they occur only sporadically, the general structure being
diatonic, whereas with the later masters the whole tissue is
chromatic; the score fairly bristles with accidentals, and a simple
major or minor triad is the exception. Very different too is the
periodic structure. The phrases no longer fall naturally into
eight-bar periods interpunctuated with cadences, but are determined by
the text, and although the eight-bar scheme is generally
maintained--much disguised, it is true, but still recognizable--it is
determined not by half-closes at the sections, but by the eight beats
of the two-line metre, while the periods follow each other in even
flow without any indication of cadence. In other words the musical
form is governed by the declamation.
Theory of harmony is one thing, living music quite another. The
musical hearer of a work like _Tristan und Isolde_ will
understand its harmonic structure, though he know nothing of the
theoretical progression of the chords, provided the performance be
good, i.e. correct, just as a man ignorant of grammar will understand
a sentence which is clearly enunciated. The composer needs no theory
of harmony; his ear is his only guide, as the eye of the artist is a
sufficient guide for his colouring without any theory of colour. There
is only one thing which the composer must keep before him and which
the hearer must consciously be able to recognize--the Tonality. The
problem of harmony therefore in practice reduces itself to that of
modulation. To recognize the tonality quickly and certainly, look for
the cadences. They are as it were landmarks, placed along the melodic
road, indicating from time to time where we are.
I cannot dismiss the subject of harmony without mentioning the chord
which from its employment at decisive moments and its extraordinary
mystic expressiveness has been called the soul of the _Tristan_
music. Its direct form is
[Music]
as it occurs in the beginning of the Prelude.
The instrumentation of _Tristan_ does not present any special
features different from that of Wagner's other works. It is less
heavily scored than the _Ring_, and at the same time the
instrumentation is more concentrated. Wagner usually employs his wind
in groups of at least three in each colour--e.g. three flutes, two
oboi and one English horn, two clarinets and a bass clarinet,
etc.--and so is able to keep his colours pure. It is partly to this
that the extraordinary purity of his tone in the tutti is due, partly
also to the sonority imparted to the brass by means of the bass tuba,
and still more to the consummate skill of the composer in the
distribution of his parts.
There is an interesting note at the beginning of the score in which
the composer seems to be trying to excuse himself for using valve
instruments in the horns. While admitting the degradation of tone and
loss of the power of soft binding resulting from the use of valves, he
thinks that the innovation (which I need scarcely observe is not his)
is justified by the advantage gained in greater freedom of movement.
In such matters one must be allowed to form one's own judgment, and
though it may seem like trying to teach a fish to swim, a humble
amateur may be permitted to wish that Wagner had here resisted the
tide of progress. It is not only that the tone and power of binding
are injured, but the whole character of horns and trumpets is altered
when they are expected to sing chromatic passages like the violin and
the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to bring
it before the reader with some examples. The essential character of
the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near
the beginning of the overture to _Der Freischütz_, and it is the
contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F horn
which gives the character to this lovely idyll. The trumpets are
capable of even less variety of expression than the horns, as their
individuality is even more strongly marked. How entirely that
character is conditioned by the mechanism of the instrument may be
illustrated by an example. The third movement of Beethoven's seventh
symphony contains an interlude _molto meno mosso_. The choral
theme is accompanied by a continuous A, sustained in octave in the
violins, which in the intervals between the verses descends to G sharp
and returns
[Music]
The repeat at the end enters _ff._ after a strong crescendo, and
at this point the sustained A is taken over from the violins by the
trumpets and given forth with piercing distinctness above the tutti of
the orchestra, the effect being one of extraordinary brilliancy. Now
comes the point with which we are concerned. In the intervals the
trumpet cannot descend to G sharp, because it has not got the note in
its natural scale, and is therefore obliged to repeat
[Music]
Indisputably the composer would have written G sharp had the trumpet
been able to play it; it was only the defective scale of the
instrument which led him to write A, but the effect of hearing A when
we expect G sharp is electrifying; the unbending rigidity of the
trumpet is here expressed with a vividness and force which nothing
else could have given.
Many more examples might be brought from the works of the great
composers to show how the horns and trumpets have lost in expressive
power by having adopted the chromatic scale of other instruments.
Wagner's use of the brass generally is most skilful; he is especially
happy in avoiding the blatancy and coarseness which soils the scores
of some composers. Neither trumpets nor drums are much used
continuously in the score of _Tristan_. The former are often
employed in the lower part of their scale and only for particular
effects. Trombones generally utter single chords, or slow successions
of chords, adding solemnity to the sound, and crowning a climax. A
favourite instrument with Wagner is the harp, and he uses it freely in
_Tristan_. The effect is, as it were, to place the orchestra upon
springs, adding lightness and elasticity to the tone, as may be
noticed in the accompaniment to the duet at the end of the first act.
We often hear Wagner's melody described as if it were not melody in
the ordinary meaning of the word, but a kind of "recitative" or
"declamation." The great French singer, Madame Viardot Garcia, was
asked on one occasion in a private circle to sing the part of Isolde.
She took the score and sang it _a prima vista_ to Klindworth's
accompaniment. On being told that in Germany singers could not be
found to undertake the part, alleging that it was too difficult and
unmelodious, she naïvely asked whether German singers were not
musical! Assuredly any person to whom Wagner's music, especially that
of _Tristan_, appears unmelodious is unmusical, or at least
defective in the sense for melody. Wagner's music is easy to sing;
much easier, for example, than that of Mozart. This, however, is only
true for singers who are highly musical. The great majority have not
had any real musical education, and it is to these that the common
notion that Wagner's music is unsingable, that it ruins the voice, is
due. The notion that recitative and melody are things opposed to one
another is itself a misunderstanding. The characteristic mark of
recitative in the narrow sense is that it is not bound by rhythmic
forms, and therefore has a somewhat dry, matter-of-fact character,
which would become tedious if it continued unrelieved--as life would
be dull without any sweets. Wagner says: "My melody is declamation,
and my declamation melody." There is no line of demarcation; they are
as inseparably united as emotion and intellect. But although the
stream of emotion in human life is continuous, it is not continually
at the same tension. Moments of high exaltation alternate with more
subdued intervals, and a very large part of the mechanical routine of
life is emotionally almost quiescent. In the drama the emotional
element alternates with the narrative, and according as the one or the
other predominates, the weight of the expression is in the music or
the words; each therefore rises and falls in alternation. Even in
Shakespeare's spoken drama traces of this ebb and flow may be noticed,
the language becoming more musical under the stress of higher emotion.
In the opera the intervals between the lyric _arias_, etc., had
to be filled in with dry explanation or narrative, and there arose the
_recitative secco_, a rapid recitation in which the melody is
reduced to a mere shadow. The German language was unfitted for dry
recitative of this type, and these filling-in parts had therefore to
be spoken--a device which proved intolerable, since it destroyed the
illusion of the music. Wagner, as we saw, got over the difficulty by
choosing a form of drama in which the emotional element was supreme,
and the narrative filling in reduced to a minimum. We further saw how
in _Tristan und Isolde_ the principle is driven to such an
exaggerated extreme as sometimes to render the action almost
unintelligible. Nowhere is the music unmelodious or uninteresting, but
it is elastic and pliable and changes its character with the emotional
intensity of the dramatic situation, being more subdued in parts of
the first act, asserting itself whenever rage, irony, tenderness, or
other emotion call for expression; omnipotent in the great love-duet,
culminating in the nocturne, and once more soaring in highest ecstasy
in Isolde's dissolution, with endless gradations in the portions
between. Hearers who are not accustomed to the dramatic expression of
music attend only to those moments of intense lyric expression, just
as in the opera they attend only to the _arias_; all else appears
to them uninteresting and unmelodious. This is to miss the essential
thing in Wagner's works--the drama itself; but it is precisely what is
done by those hearers who are incapable of the effort of following
attentively the dramatic development.