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.
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Brangäne'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 Brangäne'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.
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 ofboth--TristanandIsolde." 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, Brangäne'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." Nowheturns to her smiling and asks: "Soll ich lauschen?" andshereplies: "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 urgedme on to wed thee to the King. Thy glance, Isolde,has dazzled him too; out of jealousy he betrayed meto 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.
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 ofTristan 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.
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 forever I go, in the wide realm of the world-night, wherethere 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 bypianissimochords 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) departedfrom me? Shall I call thee a yearning memory thathas 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 wächst 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 täuschend 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! Notso! rather to long and long, dying to long, andnotto 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 backon the day for ever to feed the sun's rays on my suffering....The fearful draught which has consigned meto this torment, I, I myself brewed it! Out of [my]father's woe and [my] mother's anguish, out of tearsof love ever and aye, out of laughing and weeping,joys and wounds, I have gathered its poisons. Thoudraught which I brewed, which flowed for me, which Ijoyfully quaffed, accursed be thou, accursed he whobrewed 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."
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'sReminiscences of Schnorr von Carolsfeldin 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 onlyhour. Such anxious days longing she watched, towatch but one more hour with thee. Will Tristanbeguile Isolde of the one last ever-short world-happiness(No. 4). The wound? where? Let me healit, that, joyful and serene, we may share the nighttogether. Not of the wound--die not of the wound!Let us both united close our eyes to the light ofheaven....
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. Brangäne'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. Brangäne 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]
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 ofGötterdämmerungis 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.
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
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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.
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 trueSturm und Drangbegan 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 Dürer, 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.