Chapter 22

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 (1_a_). 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."_]