Chapter 20

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, avidyâ 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 "_Getäuscht 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 _mässig 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 Brangäne'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]

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.

[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, 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_." 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."