—the last sentence being to the refrain of the song.

Upward scale passages of the violins are suggestive of a sudden impulse, and there now begins (K.A. 25'1) a movement of great musical interest in which Isolde tells Brangaene of Tristan's previous visit to her as "Tantris," recounting how she discovered him by the splinter of the sword, the words: "Er sah mir in die Augen," bringing the characteristic form of the love-motive with the falling seventh (1b). Brangaene cries out in astonishment at her own blindness. Isolde continues to relate "how a hero keeps his oaths": Tantris returned as Tristan to carry her off "for Cornwall's weary king" (K.A. 29'5):

Is. When Morold lived, who would have dared to offer us such an insult?... Woe, woe to me! Unwitting I brought all this shame on myself. Instead of wielding the avenging sword, helpless I let it fall, and now I serve my vassal!

Again rage overcomes her at the thought of Tristan's treachery. Her inflamed imagination conjures up his report of her to King Marke:

Is. "That were a prize indeed, my lord and uncle! how seems she to thee as a bride? The dainty Irish maid I'll bring. I know the ways and paths. One sign from thee to Ireland I'll fly; Isolde, she is yours! The adventure delights me!" Curse on the infamous villain! Curse on thy head! Vengeance! Death! Death to us both!

She subsides exhausted amidst a stormy tutti of the orchestra with the trombones ff.

Br. (with impetuous tenderness). Oh, sweet, dear, beloved, gracious, golden mistress! darling Isolde! hear me! come, rest thee here (she gently draws her to the couch).

The music presents no special difficulties in this scene. It is so complete in itself that, as has been truly remarked, it might well be performed as an instrumental piece without the voice. It would be impossible to follow here the endless subtleties of the working out, nor is it necessary, since they will reveal themselves to every musical hearer who is familiar with the methods of Beethoven. The whole movement is in E minor, and is built on a motive which has grown out of the love-motive by contrary movement, with a characteristic triplet accompaniment. Throughout it follows the expression of the words closely, using the previous motives, and is a model of Wagner's musical style in the more lyric portions. Wagner has remarked in one of his essays how Beethoven will sometimes break up his motives and, taking one fragment, often consisting of not more than two notes, develop it into something entirely new. The following scene is built on motives developed out of the last two notes of the love-motive, either with or without the falling seventh:

[Music]

It must here be noted how entirely Brangaene misunderstands the situation. Wagner has intentionally represented her as a complete contrast to Isolde, as one of those soft, pliable natures who are capable of the most tender self-sacrificing devotion, but are utterly wanting in judgment. Woman-like, she thinks that it is only a passing storm which she can lull with caressing words. Her scarcely veiled suggestion that, though Isolde may marry King Marke, she need not cease to love Tristan, shows the enormous gulf which separates her from her terrible mistress. She suggests administering the philtre which her mother has prepared for Marke to Tristan. The music, in which, so long as Brangaene is speaking, gaiety and tenderness are mingled, is permeated with the love-motive. Isolde thinks of her mother's spells with very different feelings; the music becomes more gloomy, and with the words, "Vengeance for treachery—rest for my heart in its need," the death-motive, with its solemn trombone-chords, betrays the thought in her mind. She orders Brangaene to bring the casket. Brangaene obeys, and innocently recounts all the wonderful remedies which it contains:

Br. For woe and wounds is balsam; for evil poisons antidotes. The best of all I hold it here (holding up the love-potion).

Is. Thou errst. I know it better (seizing the black bottle containing the death-drink and holding it aloft). This is the drink I need!

A motive already heard in the Prelude (bar 29, bassoons and bass clarinet) now becomes very prominent in the brass:

[Music]

The falling seventh here carries an air of profound gloom appropriate to the deadly purpose of Isolde.

At this moment a diversion occurs outside. The ship is nearing the port, and the crew are heard taking in the sails preparatory to anchoring. Kurwenal enters abruptly.

SCENE IV.—I have already remarked how happily Wagner has contrived to hit off the character of the board-ship life. Here it is the clatter and bustle of coming into port that is represented; people hurrying about the deck, the young sailors' motive joyously ringing from the violins and wood, sailors hauling, and the colours fluttering in the breeze (semiquaver motives in clarinets and bassoons), all are preparing for the shore. Kurwenal enters and roughly orders the "women" to get themselves ready to land. Isolde is to prepare herself at once to appear before King Marke escorted by Tristan. Isolde, startled at first by Kurwenal's insolence, collects herself and replies with dignity:

Take my greetings to Sir Tristan and deliver him my message. If I am to go at his side to stand before King Marke, I cannot do so with propriety unless I first receive expiation for guilt yet unatoned. Therefore, let him seek my grace. (On Kurwenal making an impatient gesture, she continues with more emphasis.) Mark me well and deliver it rightly: I will not prepare to land with him; I will not walk at his side to stand before King Marke unless he first ask of me in due form to forgive and forget his yet unatoned guilt. This grace I offer him.

Kurwenal, completely subdued, promises to deliver her message and retires.

The orchestral accompaniment during Isolde's speech has a very solemn character imparted to it by slow chords of the trombones, piano, with somewhat feverish semiquaver triplets on the strings, snatches of the love-motive and other motives being heard in the wood-wind; while in the pauses, runs on the violins mark Kurwenal's impatience. The death-motive will be noted at the words "fuer ungesuehnte Schuld."

SCENE V.—This is a scene of great pathos. Like Elektra[38] when she recognizes Orestes, so Isolde, when left alone with the only friend who is true to her, throws aside all her haughty manner, forgets her wild thirst for revenge, and for a moment gives way to all the tenderness which is hidden under that fierce exterior. Death is just before her; she throws herself into Brangaene's arms, and delivers her last messages to the world. The unhappy girl, still quite in the dark as to her mistress's intentions, only vaguely feeling the presage of some impending calamity, is told to bring the casket and take out the death-potion, Isolde significantly repeating the words in the previous scene. Brangaene, almost out of her senses, obeys instinctively, and in the midst of her entreaties Kurwenal throws back the curtain and announces Sir Tristan.

[Footnote 38: Soph., Elektra, 1205 seq.]

SCENE VI.—My purpose in these notes is to explain what may at first seem difficult; it is no part of my plan to expound the obvious. The following scene, where for the first time the two principal personages stand face to face, though the most important that we have met with so far, is perfectly clear, both in the music and the words. No one could mistake the force of the blasts of the wind instruments with which it opens (No. 8). The device of repeating a motive in rising thirds was adopted by Wagner from Liszt, and is very common in Tristan. We first met with it in the opening bars of the Prelude, where the love-motive is so repeated.

The first part of the scene is a trial of wits between Isolde and Tristan, in which the latter is helpless as a bird in the claws of a cat. The dialogue as such is a masterpiece, unrivalled in the works of any dramatic poet except Shakespeare. At last, crushed by her taunts, Tristan hands her his sword, asking her to pierce him through, only to be answered with scorn still more scathing than before. "No," she says. "What would King Marke say were I to slay his best servant?" There is not a trace of love in the scene; nothing but anger and contempt. In other parts of the act there are indications of smouldering fire which threatens to break out upon occasion, but there is nothing of the kind when they are together. If once, when he lay helpless and in her power, she was touched with pity for so noble a hero, that has long ago been overcome, or only remains as a distant memory of something long past and gone. It has been truly observed that Tristan and Isolde are not like Romeo and Juliet, two children scarcely conscious of what they are doing. Both are in the full maturity of life and in the vigour of their intellectual powers.

In keeping with the dialectic, argumentative character of the dialogue, the music is generally dry and formal, but broken through occasionally with rending cries of agony, and interpolated with moments of tender emotional beauty. The orchestra generally gives the tone to the situation, only occasionally departing from that role to enter at critical moments to support and enforce specific words or actions. The leading motive throughout is the one which I have quoted: "vengeance for Morold."

After some preliminary persiflage, in which she laughs to scorn the excuse which he offers for having kept away from her from a sense of propriety, she at once comes to the point:

Is. There is blood-feud between us!

Tr. That was expiated.

Is. Not between us!

Tr. In open field before all the host a solemn peace was sworn.

Is. Not there it was that I concealed Tantris, that Tristan fell before me. There he stood noble and strong; but I swore not what he swore; I had learned to be silent. When he lay sick in the silent room speechless I stood before him with the sword. My lips were silent, my hand I restrained, but the vow passed by my hand and my lips, I silently swore to keep. Now I will perform my oath.

Tr. What didst thou vow, oh woman?

Is. Vengeance for Morold.

Tr. Is that what is troubling you?

Once, and once only, does the victim turn to retort upon her with her own weapon of irony. The attempt is disastrous. At once changing her tone she assumes the air of an injured woman. Tristan has taken her lover from her, and does he now dare to mock her? As her thoughts wander back to past days of happiness she continues in strains of surpassing tenderness, mingled with hints of warlike music in the trumpets:

Is. Betrothed he was to me, the proud Irish hero; his arms I had hallowed; for me he went to battle. When he fell, my honour fell. In the heaviness of my heart I swore that if no man would avenge the murder, I, a maiden, would take it upon me. Sick and weary in my power, why did I not then smite thee?

She states the reason why she did not slay him when he was in her power in language so strange that I can only give a literal translation:

I nursed the wounded man that, when restored to health, the man who won him from Isolde should smite him in vengeance.

Such is the German; what it means I must confess myself unable to explain, and can only suspect some corruption in the text.

There is a solemn pause in the music; the love-motive is uttered by the bass clarinet. Nothing is left for the vanquished and humbled hero but to offer her what atonement he can. He hands her his sword, bidding her this time wield it surely and not let it fall from her hand. But she has not yet finished with him:

Is. How badly I should serve thy lord! What would King Marke say if I were to slay his best servant who has preserved for him crown and realm? ... Keep thy sword! I swung it once when vengeance was rife in my bosom, while thy measuring glance was stealing my image to know whether I should be a fit bride for King Marke. I let the sword fall. Now let us drink atonement.

The motive of the drink of death is here heard in trombones and tuba. It recurs constantly in the following portion.

She then signs to Brangaene to bring the drink. The noise of the sailors furling the sails outside becomes louder.

Tr. (starting from a reverie). Where are we?

Is. CLOSE TO THE PORT! (death-motive). Tristan, shall I have atonement? What hast thou to answer?

Tr. (darkly). The mistress of silence commands me silence. I grasp what she conceals, and am silent upon what she cannot grasp.

Another dark saying, of which, however, we fortunately have the explanation from Wagner himself. "What she conceals" is her love for Tristan; "what she cannot grasp" is that his honour forbids him from declaring his love for her.[39]

[Footnote 39: Glasenapp's Biography, v. 241 (footnote).]

Even now, on the brink of dissolution, while actually holding the cup which is to launch them both into eternity, Isolde cannot bridle her sarcasm:

Is. We have reached the goal; soon we shall stand ... (with light scorn) before King Marke! (death-motive).

With dreadful irony she repeats the words with which she supposes Tristan will introduce her:

"My lord and uncle! look now at her! A softer wife thou ne'er could'st find. I slew her lover and sent her his head; my wound the kindly maid has healed. My life was in her power, but the gentle maiden gave it to me; her country's shame and dishonour—that she gave as well; all that she might become thy wedded bride. Such thanks for kindly deeds I earned by a sweet draught of atonement offered to me by her favour in expiation of my guilt."

Sailors (outside). Stand by the cable! Let go the anchor!

Tr. (starting wildly). Let go the anchor! Veer her round to the tide! (he tears the cup from Isolde's hand). Well know I Ireland's queen, and the wondrous might of her arts. I took the balsam she once gave to me; now I take the cup that quite I may recover. Mark well the oath of peace in which I say my thanks:

To Tristan's honour—highest faith! To Tristan's woe—bold defiance![40]

Delusion of the heart; dream of presage; sole comfort of eternal sorrow; kind drink of forgetfulness I drink thee without flinching (he puts the cup to his lips and drinks).

Is. (tearing the cup from him). Treachery again. Half is mine! Traitor, I drink to thee! (she drinks and dashes the cup to the earth).

[Footnote 40: "Ehre" and "Elend" are dative.]

Instead of falling dead, the lovers stand transfixed gazing at each other. Brangaene has changed the drinks, and they have drunk the draught of love for that of death. Wagner sometimes expects his artists to possess powers beyond those which are allotted to man. The actors have here to express by gesture the change of feeling which gradually comes over them. They start, tremble, the love-motive steals into and at last dominates the orchestra, and they fly into one another's arms.

The increasing commotion outside and the cheers of the men indicate that King Marke has put out from the shore and is nearing the ship. An aside of Brangaene at this moment is not without significance. She has been sitting apart in suspense and confusion; now, as she begins to realize the consequences of what she has done, she gives way to despair. How much better would a short death have been than the prospect of the life that is now before them! The fact of her courage giving way so soon shows that she was only acting under a momentary impulse.

Little more need be said of the rest of the scene. The lovers raise their voices in a jubilant duet. Almost unconscious of their surroundings they are dragged apart. The royal garments are hastily laid over them, and the curtain falls to the joyful shouts of the people as King Marke steps on board.



CHAPTER XII

OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC CONTINUED

Tu sentiras alors que toi-meme tu environnes tout ce que tu connais des choses qui existent, et que les existantes que tu connais existent en quelque sorte dans toi-meme.—Avicebron (MUNK).

ACT II.—If the essence of the drama lies in contrast and surprises, then Tristan und Isolde may be called the most dramatic of Wagner's works. In the first act we had the picture of a woman of volcanic temperament goaded to fury by cruelty and insult; in the second we have the same woman gentle, light-hearted, caressing, with nothing left of her past self except the irresistible force of her will. Isolde is not restrained by any scruples about honour, nor need she have any; in full possession of the man she loves, she can abandon herself to the moment. The music almost shows the flush upon her cheek, and she seems twenty years younger. She is quite conscious of the inevitable end, and quite prepared to meet it, but that is as nothing in the fulness of the present moment. Her words and her actions are characterized by a playful recklessness, an abandon which finds admirable expression in a characteristic motive (No. 9). Thematically related to this is another motive which we shall meet with very frequently in the sequel (No. 10). It is not directly connected with any definite dramatic event except generally with the first scene. The halting fourth quaver in each half-bar imparts a nervous restless character which at the meeting of the lovers becomes a delirium of joy.

The events of the second act seem to take place on the evening of the day after the landing, or at least very soon after—exact chronology is not necessary. The lovers have arranged a meeting in the palace garden in front of Isolde's quarters after the night has set in. A burning torch is fixed to the door; its lowering is to be the signal to Tristan to approach. King Marke and the court are out on a hunt, and the signal cannot be given until they are out of the way.

The Prelude opens with an emphatic announcement of the principal motive of the act (the "daylight"—No. 3) in the full orchestra without brass. A cantabile strain in the bass wood-wind continued in the violoncelli with a broken triplet accompaniment in the strings seems to tell of the expected meeting. The new motive (No. 9) is heard in its proper instrument, the flute, but gives way to No. 10, which is worked in conjunction with the love-motive, settling again in B flat as the curtain rises. It is a clear summer night; the horns of the hunting-party grow fainter in the distance. Brangaene, with anxiety in her expression, is listening attentively and waiting for them to cease when Isolde enters.

A word must be said about the music of the hunting motive. The key is, as has already been said, B flat major. In the bass a pedal F is sustained by two deep horns or by the violoncelli, while six horns (or more) on the stage play a fanfare on the chord of C minor alternating with that of F major. A very peculiar colouring is imparted to the first chord, partly by the very dissonant G (afterwards G flat), partly by the minor third of the chord. This is a completely new effect obtained from the valve horn, fanfares on horns and trumpets having before always been in the major, since the natural scale contains no minor chord. Brangaene and Isolde listen intently: Isolde thinks the horns are gone, and what they hear is only the murmuring of the stream and the rustling of the leaves. The fanfare is taken up by wood-wind (K.A. 85'2(1)), and at last melts into a new sound, with clarinets in 6-8 time against muted violins and violas in 8-8, beautifully suggestive of the rustling of leaves. Then the horns are heard no more. Brangaene, who has been on the alert, suspects a trap behind this hunting-party, which has been arranged by Tristan's friend Melot, but she doubts his good faith. Isolde gaily laughs at her cares; her heart is bursting and she recks of nothing but the approach of Tristan. The music is almost entirely made up of her joyful motive, and there begins a first indication of that wonderful lyric outpouring which continues until it culminates in the Nocturne, and which has placed the second act of Tristan on an eminence of its own, apart and unapproached. She throws open the flood-gates of her heart as in words recalling Lucretius:

Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus Summittit floras, tibi rident sequora ponti.

She tells of the all-ruling, all-subduing might of "Frau Minne." The ode is full of lyric inspiration, and is generally recalled in the sequel by the motive No. 11, which consists of two parts, the melody in the first and second violins, and that in the bass—strictly a horn passage, but here in the lower strings. The accompaniment of the ode is throughout in keeping with the rhapsodical character of the words and melody: note the long, persistent A of the first and second violins in octaves at the words "des kuehnsten Muthes Koenigin, des Weltenwerdens Waltering," followed by their joyous upward flight; the broken chords of the harp; the swelling upward semitones of flute, oboe, and clarinet bringing forth the germ of No. 11b.; the trombone chords at the words "Leben und Tod sind unterthan ihr"; the arpeggio accompaniment of the violas, and the wonderfully poetic climax at the end, "des Todes Werk ... Frau Minne hat es meiner Macht entwandt." Brangaene's entreaties are vain; again she cannot feel what Isolde feels—notice the difference between her melody and the soaring freedom of Isolde's. A little later (K.A. 99'4 seq.) Isolde's immovable resolution is admirably expressed by her persistence on one note. At last she seizes the torch and hurls it to the ground to a terrific downward rush of the strings and the yell of the death-motive in the trumpets, the entire orchestra with drums being heard together for the first time.

SCENE II.—Isolde signals to her lover with her white scarf to music redolent of Weber's Oberon, and of the transition to the final movement of Beethoven's sonata Les Adieux. From the moment when he enters, neither words nor music come to full articulation; all is swept away in the whirlwind of the dominant rhythm

[Music]

a variant of the motive No. 10, in still more rapid tempo. For a great part of the time the entire orchestra is occupied, and until far into the scene the voices are quite unable to pierce the volume of sound from the orchestra.[41]

[Footnote 41: I convinced myself in 1906 that this is not the case in Bayreuth theatre, the acoustic qualities of which are unique.]

We take up the scene again when the storm has in some measure subsided at the words "wie lange fern, wie fern so lang" on p. 109 of the piano score. To make anything like a detailed analysis of the elaborate working out of the daylight motive with other subsidiary motives which now follows would be impossible here, and would only be of use to the student of composition. The music wanders through many keys, but C major is generally discernible as the centre round which the tonality oscillates. The words demand closer attention, and I must invite those of my readers who have been driven back by the difficulties of the road to accompany me along the dull path of literal translation and comment.

The keynote of the dialogue is the opposition of day and night, typifying delusion and reality, avidya and Atman. In the words of Aeschylos:

[Greek: eudousa gap phraen ommasin lamprunetai. e'n haemera de moir aproskopos broto-n.]

The dialogue cannot be understood by the light of the rationalist theory that love and marriage are things to be contracted for the sake of the benefits which they bring to both parties. Those who approach it from this standpoint must be content with the explanation sometimes heard that "lovers are to be excused if they behave like lunatics, since it is part of their condition." This is not quite the poet's intention. With Wagner love is a sacrifice—or for those who so prefer it, a sacrament. Hence the deep mystery of the kinship of love, the vivifying principle, with death, typified in the Hindu emblem of the ling. In the present scene it is often difficult to tell whether the strains denote the languishing of love or the fading away of life. The best preparation would be to read the opening portion of the seventh book of Plato's Republic. It is difficult to think that this passage was not in Wagner's mind when he composed the scene; although the imagery is rather different, the thought is similar. Plato is speaking of the roots of knowledge; Wagner conceives of Love as Plato does of knowledge, and in the minds of both love and knowledge are the same, as are also music and philosophy. The idea comes at once to the front in Isolde's enigmatical

Im Dunkel du, im Lichte ich.

We remember that according to Plato there are two kinds of blindness: one is from living in the dark, the blindness of ignorance; the other from having gazed too steadfastly at the sun when the eyes were not strong enough to bear it. Tristan was dazzled with the light of the sun, and therefore unable to see the truth. For with Wagner the sun is not, as with Plato, the source of all light and truth, but rather the enemy of love and truth. To put it more shortly, the meaning of the line which I have quoted is: "You were blinded by ambition; I saw more clearly." Tristan understands her as meaning the light of the torch for the extinction of which he was so long waiting. Then follows a discussion in which she urges that it was through her act, in pulling down the torch, that he was led from the light of day to the darkness of love. Porges here makes the true remark that the mainspring of Tristan's life is ambition; that love is naturally foreign to him, but that he is at last drawn to it by Isolde.

We resume at p. 114 of the piano arrangement. The German construction is exceedingly difficult and confusing. I translate literally:

Tr. The day, the day that glossed thee o'er, that carried Isolde away from me thither where she resembled the sun in the gleam and light of highest glory. What so enchanted my eye depressed my heart deep down to the ground. How could Isolde be mine in the bright light of day?

Is. Was she not thine who chose thee? What did the wicked day lie to thee that thou shouldst betray thy beloved who was destined for thee?

Tr. That which glossed thee o'er with transcendent splendour, the radiance of honour, the force of glory, the dream of hanging my heart upon these held me in bonds. The day-sun of worldly honours, which, with the clear refulgence of its shimmer, shone bright upon my head with the vain delight of its rays, penetrated through my head into the deepest recess of my heart. That which there watched darkly sealed in the chaste night, that which unconscious I received there as it dawned, an image which my eyes did not trust themselves to look at, when touched by the light of day, lay open gleaming before me.

In these mysterious words Tristan indicates the impression which Isolde had made upon him at their first meeting. He regarded her through the spectacles of his political ambition, with its vain delight of personal glory, which had penetrated from his head to his heart. It illumined the image of Isolde slumbering yet unconscious (ohne Wiss' und Wahn) in his breast, and revealed it to the day—namely, as a prize in the political game which he was playing:

That which seemed to me so glorious and so noble, I glorified before the whole assembly; before all people I loudly extolled the most lovely royal bride of the earth. The envy which the day had awakened against me, the jealousy which became alarmed at my good fortune, the misfavour which began to weigh down my honour and my glory, I defied them all, and faithfully determined, in order to uphold my honour and my glory, to go to Ireland.

Is. Oh vain slave of the day.

Here (K.A. 119'3 at the words "Getaeuscht von ihm....") there begins a new development of the same motive which has occupied us hitherto (No. 3) with the first indications of the syncopated accompaniment which forms so prominent a feature of the following part. Explanations are now finished. The words begin to find wings. For moments it seems as if all consciousness of earthly things were lost and the lovers were dissolved into dreamland:

Wo des Trugs geahnter Wahn zerrinne.

K.A. 122. The modulation into the key of the death-motive, A flat, is effected through the chord of the augmented sixth. The violins keep up a broken triplet accompaniment, trombones entering on the A major chord, oboe lightly breathing the principal motive (No. 3), while the voice follows its independent melody, to us a simile of Wagner's like a boat designed to move exactly upon that sea, and under those conditions. The whole passage is a vision of the death which they are awaiting, but without its bitterness, only as the portal of eternity.

On p. 123 the voice brings the intervals of the chord which throws an atmosphere over the whole of the rest of the scene, and which has already been mentioned as "the soul of the Tristan music." The intervals are enharmonically the same as those of the chord in the first bar of Prelude—F, A flat, C flat, E flat,=F, G sharp, B, D sharp—but the treatment and surroundings are very different.

A reference to the draught occasions a joyful outburst on the part of Tristan, which is of importance as explaining its real significance:

Tr. Oh hail to the drink.... Through the door of death whence it flowed it divulged to me wide and open the joyful kingdom of night, wherein before I had only dreamed as one awake.

The words are accompanied by a violin figure in very rapid tempo, which was already prominent in the early part of the scene at the meeting. The exultant episode soon ends, the stormy tempo continuing, and by degrees all subsides into the discordant motive which I have quoted as the fourth of the fundamental dramatic-musical motives, and seeming to indicate the agony of death (No. 4).

Already there have been indications of a characteristic accompanying rhythmic figure consisting of one note repeated in triplets, and now as the lovers sink on a bank of flowers in half-conscious embrace, its nervous character is enhanced by a complex syncopation. The passage beginning 131'4 is in the mystic mood of Beethoven's last sonatas and quartets. The triplet movement seems inspired by the similar movement in the sonata Op. 110 from the beginning of the slow movement Adagio ma non troppo to the end. In both the feverish pulsation indicates a morbid condition, leading in Beethoven to a calmly triumphant end. The second movement of the quartet Op. 127, Adagio ma non troppo, with which Porges compares the scene, gives a different side, from which the morbid element is absent. The rhythm which dominates this scene is a development of the preceding triplet rhythm and must be taken quite strictly—3-4 time, the first two crotchets being divided into triplet quavers, the last into two. The syncopated chords are on the four strings, all muted, and each divided into two parts. In the tenth bar (counting from the double bar maessig langsam 3-4) the woodwind (Cl. Hr. Fag.) enter, sustaining the chord "sehr weich," the first clarinet having the upper note, quite soft, like a sigh, forming a cadence after each phrase of the voice part. The extreme nervous tensity is emphasized almost beyond endurance by the incessant syncopated triplets of the strings. The lovers are raised entirely away from the external world; it is the sleep of approaching death into which they sink; rather dissolution into eternity. The words begin to lose coherence and meaning, and are often purely interjectional.

One passage may be noted for its interesting modulations, the alternating duet with the words "Barg im Busen uns sich die Sonne." It is in phrases of three bars in rising semitones, A flat—A natural—A natural—B flat, ending in the beautiful strain No. 13 as they fall asleep in one another's arms.

We have now in Brangaene's watch-song, and the instrumental nocturne that accompanies it, reached the highest point of the musical expression, not of the Tristan drama alone, but of all music since Palestrina. Before such music silence is the only thing possible. It scoffs at our words; it is not of this earth. Many will now prefer to draw the veil, to pass over the little that I have to say, and resign themselves to the aesthetic impression. For those who feel curiosity to know the mechanism by which its wondrous effect is brought about, I will analyse the instrumentation. The thematic material employed is very slight; only here and there a motive from the preceding is indicated as if in a dream.

The syncopated pulsations are resumed in one-half the full number of strings muted, and continue to the end, as do the broken chords of the harp. The wood-wind generally sustain soft chords, clarinet, oboe, flute, and horn succeeding each other with the sighs from No. 12.

[Music]

Brangaene's voice on the watch-tower behind the scene enters at once in 3-2 rhythm against 3-4 in the orchestra. At bar 11 (counting from first entry of the harp) four pairs of unmuted violins detach themselves from the body of the strings, and play a quartet independently, with free polyphonic imitation, afterwards joined by soli violin, viola, and 'cello, in such close score and intercrossing as to make the whole resemble a very closely woven pattern of exquisite beauty, but of which the single threads are hardly distinguishable.[42] Half the violas, joined later by half the 'cellos, maintain an accompaniment of broken chords. They are the voices of the night through which are heard the long-sustained notes of Brangaene's watch-song, wood instruments here and there uttering motives like passing dreams from the lovers' melodies:

Realms where the air we breathe is love, Which in the winds on the waves doth move, Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

[Footnote 42: For the independent string parts, see the Appendix.]

At the end three trombones enter, sustaining slow chords. The whole body of the strings, now united, soar once more and subside to rest.

The dialogue which follows is the most difficult in the whole work. It will be necessary to take it sentence by sentence. Tristan, as the cooler and more self-possessed of the two, sees more clearly than Isolde whither they are tending. He has sunk into a state of almost complete oblivion, from which Isolde wishes to rouse him. He replies (139'1(6)): "Let me die, never to awake." Isolde, scarcely yet realizing that this is indeed the only possible ending, asks (139'4): "Must then daylight and death together end our love?" He replies: "Our love? How can death ever destroy that? Were mighty death standing before me threatening body and life—that life which so gladly I resign to my love—how could its stroke reach our love? Were I to die for that [love] for which I gladly would die, yet that love itself is immortal and cannot end with me. So Tristan is himself immortal through his love." Now (141'3(8)) she grasps his meaning: "Our love is the love of both—Tristan and Isolde." Then there follows a little conceit on the virtue of the word "and," i.e. the bond which unites them both together. The notion is according to Kufferath taken from a couplet of Gottfried von Strassburg:

Zwei vil kleinin Wortelin, Min und Din, Diu briuwent michel Wunder uf der Erde.

Tristan continues: "What would die in death (namely, this bodily and worldly life) is only that which comes between us and prevents us from loving and living." Isolde returns to her play with the word "and." "What is true for you is also true for me. Tristan can only die through Isolde's death." The final conclusion is reached in the great duet beginning p. 143'1, "We die but to be united for ever in a more perfect love." with the motive No. 14.

The duet ends with a reminiscence of the nocturne, Brangaene's voice entering with beautiful effect warning the lovers in the midst of their rhapsody. I resume at 146'1. The previous dialogue began with Isolde's rousing of Tristan with the words "Lausch' geliebter." Now he turns to her smiling and asks: "Soll ich lauschen?" and she replies: "Lass mich sterben." She has now attained full insight, and when he finally and seriously puts the question to her: "Shall I return once more to the day?" she replies with enthusiasm ("begeistert"), "Let the day yield to death," and the piercing harmonies of No. 4 indicate the wrench of the parting. Her mind is now quite resolved. To another decisive question she replies: "Eternal be our night!" It is this that Tristan has been waiting for; until he knew that Isolde was ready to accompany him he could not form his own resolve. Herein we have the key of the whole of this complex and difficult scene. Wagner's aim was not, as might appear on a superficial view, to prolong a rhapsodical love-scene, but a dramatic one, to bring the two characters, each being such as he had conceived it, to a full understanding of each other before they could be united in death.

An introductory passage made of the love-motive simultaneously in direct and contrary movement—the union of opposites—leads to a duet which opens with the harmonies of No. 4 (K.A. 117). Its character throughout is triumphant joy, well supported by a running violin accompaniment which continues to the end. In the course of it there appears another important motive (No. 15), first in the clarinet. All ends in a crash of the entire orchestra; Kurwenal rushes in crying, "Save yourself, Tristan," and in the next moment Marke and his court enter conducted by Melot. "The wretched day for the last time."

SCENE III.—Words and music of the next scene need little comment. It may be noted that a great part of Marke's address is in strophic form, with four lines of two accents followed by one of three accents. Tristan stands before Isolde screening her as well as he can, crushed to earth by Marke's calm dispassionate reproaches, with short interludes on the bass clarinet. The music is of great beauty, but, as I have observed in an earlier chapter, the explanatory parts are too much extended. The King calls upon Tristan to say what is the deep, mysterious cause of such a falling off in his honour. Tristan cannot answer, but the love-motive in its most complete form, as in the opening of the Prelude, replies more clearly than words.

Tristan now turns full round to Isolde, and in impressive words asks her whether she is prepared to follow him to the land to which he is now going; it is the land where no sun shines, the dark land of night. The voice takes up the melody No. 12 from an earlier part of the act. Her reply is if possible even more sublime. When Tristan carried her to a stranger's country, she had to follow. Now he calls her to his own, to show her his possession and heritage; how should she refuse? "Let Tristan lead the way; Isolde will follow."

He then calls upon Melot to fight with him, but first lets fall a significant remark:

My friend he [Melot] was ... it was he who urged me on to wed thee to the King. Thy glance, Isolde, has dazzled him too; out of jealousy he betrayed me to the King, whom I betrayed.

From these enigmatical words Wagner leaves us to conjecture what we can. They fight; at the first pass Tristan lets the sword drop from his hand and falls wounded to the earth.



CHAPTER XIII

OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC CONTINUED

ACT III.—Wagner has described the slow introduction to Beethoven's C sharp minor quartet as the saddest music ever written. If there is anything sadder, it is the instrumental introduction to the third act of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan, after being wounded by Melot, has been carried off by Kurwenal to his own home, Kareol in Brittany, where he is discovered lying asleep on his couch in the castle garden, Kurwenal by his side. Nothing could exceed the desolation of the scene, nor the utter woe expressed in the music which begins with a new transformation of the love-motive (1a). Isolde alone can cure the sick man, and word has been sent to her to come from Cornwall. Her ship is just expected, and the shepherd who is on the watch outside plays a sad strain so long as the ship is not seen, to be changed to a joyful one when she appears in sight. The plaintive strain is played on the English horn, an instrument which in the hands of a skilful player is capable of very great expression, and, unlike most of the wood, has a considerable range of soft and loud, a quality of which Wagner has made very happy use.

The melody itself seems to have caused some heartburning to many excellent critics. Even Heinrich Porges describes it as a sequence of tones apparently without rule,[43] and has not a word to say about its enthralling melodic beauty. Really what difficulty there is, is only for the eye, and only in one note, the constantly recurring G flat, which is easily accounted for. In a later part of the scene (p. 200), it will be found fully harmonized.

[Footnote 43: "Eine scheinbar regellose Tonfolge."]

SCENE I.—In the first scene of the third act, Kurwenal attains an importance far beyond what he had in the first and second acts. He, too, is changed; he is no longer the rough, unmannerly servant, the events which have passed and the responsibility now resting upon his shoulders, have brought out the finer qualities of his nature. There is noticeable in his melody all through the act an air of freedom and lofty devotion quite different from his former self. He is, as it were, transfigured, and there is a refinement in his tenderness which may surprise those who have never observed what delicacy and sensitiveness are often hidden beneath a rough exterior among the lower classes.

After a short conversation between Kurwenal and the shepherd, who looks over the wall to ask how the patient is progressing, Tristan awakes, asking with feeble voice where he is. Kurwenal relates how he has brought him to his own home in Kareol, where he is soon to recover from wounds and death. It is some time before Tristan fully understands, and as memory begins to awaken, he tells of where he has been, speaking as one inspired:

I was there where I have ever been, whither for ever I go, in the wide realm of the world-night, where there is but one knowledge—divine utter oblivion,

i.e. in that Brahm, that eternal negation, in which all physical life has its existence. The words are accompanied by pianissimo chords of trombones with tuba. It is the first time that the heavy brass has been heard in this act, and the effect is excessively solemn. He continues:

How has this foretaste (of eternal night) departed from me? Shall I call thee a yearning memory that has driven me once more to the light of day?

The music of this and the following part is very interesting, but the modulations are too subtle and too evanescent for analysis. The motive, which has throughout been associated with the metaphor of daylight, is united with the languishing love-motive and with No. 4, of which three motives the following part is chiefly made up. The combination is expressed in Tristan's word, "Todeswonne-Grauen," "the awful joy of death." The culminating point is reached at the strongly alliterative words, "Weh' nun waechst bleich und bang mir des Tages wilder Drang," when for the moment there is quite a maze of real parts in wood-wind and strings. Immediately following is a very curious passage, nothing else than a succession of augmented chords in an upward chromatic scale, seemingly illustrating the words "grell und taeuschend sein Gestirn weckt zu Trug und Wahn mein Hirn." For a moment Kurwenal seems overawed by the words and sufferings of his beloved master. His free bounding spirits are gone, and he speaks like a broken man. But he soon recovers his former mood as he tells of Isolde's expected arrival. The news, scarcely comprehended at first, is the signal for an outburst of joy on the part of Tristan expressed in a new motive, No. 17, p. 193'4. His joy is so violent that it brings on a return of delirious raving. He seems to see the ship, the sails filling to the wind, the colours flying, but at that moment the sad strains of the shepherd's song tell him that the ship has not yet appeared. He knows the tune, which once bewailed his father's death and his mother's fate when she brought him forth and died. And now it tells of his own lot:

to long—and die; to die—and to long. No! Not so! rather to long and long, dying to long, and not to die of longing.

He cannot find the death for which he longs.

In the following soliloquy the plaintive melody is woven into the orchestral accompaniment and taken by various instruments in turn. I resume at the words "Der Trank, der Trunk, der furchtbare Trank" (p. 207'1), where the full orchestra accompanies with brass and drums, the tempo being still rather slow.

The draught! the draught! the terrible draught! How it raged from my heart to my head.... Nowhere, nowhere may I rest. The night casts me back on the day for ever to feed the sun's rays on my suffering.... The fearful draught which has consigned me to this torment, I, I myself brewed it! Out of [my] father's woe and [my] mother's anguish, out of tears of love ever and aye, out of laughing and weeping, joys and wounds, I have gathered its poisons. Thou draught which I brewed, which flowed for me, which I joyfully quaffed, accursed be thou, accursed he who brewed thee.

He sinks once more into unconsciousness. This drink, this fearful draught which has brought him into his present state, is the work of his whole life, the outcome of all his former deeds. The despair which he feels now as his end approaches is expressed in the motive No. 18, in unison in the wood-wind. Both music and words of this soliloquy offer great difficulties and need close study, with special attention to the tempo.[44] It ends with the F sharp minor chord in the 6-4 position with full brass and drums; then sudden silence in the orchestra as the voice sings the words "furchtbarer Trank."

[Footnote 44: This is the passage which perplexed the greatest of all Wagner singers, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, so much that it hindered him from taking the part of Tristan until light came to him from Wagner himself. See the interesting account in Wagner's Reminiscences of Schnorr von Carolsfeld in his collected works, viii. 221.]

As he lies in a swoon the wood-wind in turns continue the malediction. The tone then changes as Kurwenal stands beside him, uncertain whether he is alive or dead. The wood softly sound the chord which we have so often heard before, No. 12, in syncopated triplets, as in the great duet in the second act (pp. 131 seq.). Above there floats a melody of exquisite tenderness, first in the oboe, then in the clarinet, continued later in a solo violin. A horn quartet then begins the soft theme No. 13, Tristan's failing voice telling how he sees the vision of Isolde floating towards him over the sea. It is as if the strains of the garden scene were hovering in his dreams and calming his troubled thoughts. As he reads in Kurwenal's looks that she is not yet in sight, he once more threatens to become violent, when suddenly the joyful tune, the signal of Isolde's approach, is heard.

SCENE II.—The catastrophe which now follows is one of the most terrible ever conceived by a dramatist. Directly Kurwenal is away, Tristan begins to toss in his bed; he seems almost to rise from the dead. Strange, restless orchestration and 7-4 time seem to show that something is pending. Several motives are hinted at, and at last there breaks out in the lower strings and wood the motive No. 13 from the second act, but now how changed! The tender, dreamy melody, now in distorted 5-4 rhythm, appears like a dance of death, first in C major. A short climax brings it in A major and again in C major with the utmost fury and the force of the entire orchestra. It is as if the very gates of hell had burst and every fiend were dancing around him, shouting: "Live! live! and be for ever damned! false knight! perjured lover!" He springs from his couch, tears the bandages from his body; the blood streams from his wound; he staggers to the middle of the stage as he hears Isolde's voice and sinks into her arms as she enters. The love-motive is heard in the wood-wind like a long dying breath as, breathing the word "Isolde," he expires. The orchestra dies away; one chord is heard alone on the harp, and the violoncello continues the love-motive as he breathes away his life.

Isolde is left alone with Kurwenal, who has followed her. The soliloquy in which she laments the cruel destruction of the plan for saving Tristan is profoundly touching, both in the words and in the melody:

Art thou dead? Tarry but for one hour, one only hour. Such anxious days longing she watched, to watch but one more hour with thee. Will Tristan beguile Isolde of the one last ever-short world-happiness (No. 4). The wound? where? Let me heal it, that, joyful and serene, we may share the night together. Not of the wound—die not of the wound! Let us both united close our eyes to the light of heaven....

Sounds are heard without. Another ship has arrived, and with it Marke in pursuit of the fugitive princess. Hastily the gates of the castle are barricaded. Brangaene's voice is heard imploring them not to resist. It is vain; Kurwenal leaves no time for parley, but rushes upon them and is at once pierced through. He is just able to reach his master's body and die at his side; when Marke has forced an entry he finds nothing but death. Brangaene notices that Isolde is still living, and they now explain. The secret of the love-potion has been told to King Marke, and he has hurried up to renounce his intention of wedding Isolde and to unite her to Tristan.[45]

[Footnote 45: Another proof, if any were needed, that he is not united to her by any indissoluble tie.]

It needed but a few minutes' delay for all to have ended happily. Why did not the poet take the opportunity offered and spare us the harrowing scenes at the end? Why could he not have lowered the curtain on the lovers united with Marke's full approval? Dramatically there was no reason why he should not have done so, but poetically it was impossible. The whole of the story is brought about by Tristan's guilt which had to be expiated; it is not diminished by Marke's generosity.

Isolde now rises to bid the world her last farewell before she departs with Tristan. The words of her swan-song have been described by an English writer as "no more poetry than an auctioneer's catalogue."[46] Of that I must leave my readers to form their own judgment; they must, of course, be read with their context in the drama. She is speaking in a trance, with ecstatic visions before her eyes. The voice melody is mostly built upon the song of union in death in the second act (No. 14), passing into the exultant motive which occurs in the great love-duet (No. 15). The orchestral accompaniment, beginning quietly, gradually swells into a torrent of music quite unrivalled among Wagner's great finales. The end of Goetterdaemmerung is impressive because of the wonderful gathering together of the musical motives of Siegfried's life, but as a musical composition it cannot compare with the end of Tristan. As it approaches the end the love-motive absorbs the whole orchestra, passing into No. 10 from the prelude of the second act, rising higher and higher. The wonderful euphony of tone, the harmony and peacefulness which pervade the surging mass of instruments are due to the consummate art of the instrumentation, and at last as the music seems to leave this earth in its heavenward flight we feel borne away upon its wings. Isolde does not die; she is carried upwards on the pinions of love, dissolved in the ocean of endless melody.

[Footnote 46: A comparison which, by the way, seems a little severe against auctioneers, if, as I presume, the objection is to the want of clearness of the language!]

Her finish has given occasion to the witticism that the most beautiful thing in the work is the last note. To this I see no reason to demur; it contains nothing more entrancing than the rise to the fifth of the chord at her final cadence

[Music: hoech - - - ste Lust.]

Once more the love-motive is softly breathed in the oboi and the whole closes on the chord of B major three times repeated by the orchestra.



CHAPTER XIV

CONCLUSION

Wagner always looked upon himself as one who had broken a new path in art and done some of the first rough work, not as having completed the road. Those who seek to continue his work must have the same goal before their eyes as he had. It is the fate of a great man who more than others longs for human fellowship and love, to live alone and, after death, to overwhelm his contemporaries and successors; he occupies a space which leaves no room for others. In the thirty years which have elapsed since Wagner died, many great composers have come to the front, all of whom without exception show in their external physiognomy the impress of his personality. How many have inherited his spirit? How many have been actuated by his sincerity, his fearless resolve to follow his inspiration from on high at every cost, regardless of all personal advantage? Future ages alone can answer this question. The German nation is at the present day passing through a severe trial of its inner strength. The true Sturm und Drang began for Germany in 1871, and is now at its height. Her mission is indeed a noble one; it is to maintain the principles of law, good government, and pure religion; her genius lies in sober conservatism and high-minded monarchy; her heroes are Duerer, Luther, Frederic the Great, vom Stein, Richard Wagner. It is scarcely surprising if, in view of the history of Germany during the last hundred years, some of her sons have become intoxicated and in their zeal for German ideals threaten to destroy the very principles by which she has risen; if while affecting to despise the southern nations for libertinism they should themselves have cast off the bonds of self-restraint. All Europe is infected with the taint of unbridled licence and shamelessness, in every department of life, intellectual and political. On the stage the public revels in cruelty for its own sake, not in the service of justice; it prefers bombast to bravery, lechery to love; "the basest metal makes the loudest din"; while those to whom we look as our leaders for direction only pander to the common vulgarity and grow rich thereon.

There is one ingredient of art mentioned by Aristotle, although it has been little noticed by critics; his word for it is [Greek: aedusma], "sweetening." The poet should never forget that art, however serious, is intended for our pleasure; the hard edge of fate needs to be tempered by a recognition of the reality and beauty of positive life. The aim of the true poet is not to harrow the feelings with the mere picture of suffering or wickedness. We have enough of these in actual life without going to the theatre; the poet has to show them as subservient to a higher order of beauty and righteousness, and will try to mitigate the pain which they inflict. In the tragedies of the greatest dramatists the sweetness is so conspicuous a feature that it might almost be ranked as a third essential of tragedy, along with the awaking of pity and terror. The purpose of art is to show the unity of truth and beauty, and thus to enhance the power of both, not to sacrifice either in favour of the other. It teaches the divine lesson of nature—perfect fitness united with perfect loveliness.

One more word and I have finished. It is easy to hear too much of Wagner, and I think there can be no question that his works are made far too common in Germany. Wagner's characters are not those of everyday life; they are on a higher and more ideal moral level than ordinary men and women; they are semi-divine. Nor are his works for everyday hearing, but only for high festivals when we can enjoy them at our leisure with our minds prepared. For our daily bread we have other composers as great as he, and more nutritious and wholesome for continued diet—Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and how many more of the highest rank! Caviare and champagne are excellent things at a feast, but we do not wish to live upon them.

Every cultured person should hold it a duty to visit the Bayreuth festival at least once in his life. He need not have any musical training; nothing more is needed than "a warm heart and open senses," and, let me add, sincerity of purpose. Those who go expecting perfect performances and ideal surroundings will be disappointed. Immense care is bestowed on the preparation of the performances, and the site and building present incalculable advantages. On the whole the performances are better than elsewhere, but, excepting in the orchestra, there are many shortcomings, and the fashionable audience from Paris, and other capitals of Europe and America, is far indeed from what was contemplated by Wagner. All honour is due to Madame Cosima Wagner, who has worked unflinchingly against immense difficulties to maintain the honour of her husband's heritage. She is not to blame if she has not fully achieved the impossible; If the tree has partly withered, the fault is not with the gardener; it was too vigorous, too noble, to flourish in the soil of human society.

THE END