Let's do things differently this time. Let's go STRAIGHT to the music and then talk about it afterwards (or while you're listening.)
Prelude to the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner, conducted by Zubin Mehta
Below, we'll get under the hood of this classic that changed musical history.
BUT FIRST, REVIEW TIME!
Some of you may have been getting bored with the music theory posts of late. In a typical Music Appreciation 101 class, they give an abbreviated version of all this, so I may have gone a little beyond the call of duty, admittedly, but to understand what Wagner really changed, what divides music that came before Tristan from music that came after Tristan, we have to get a little bit technical.
In the past three diaries we learned about:
1. Tonality: We learned in diary 18 that "normal" music, everyday music, music before Tristan, was a game with rules. We start out in a single key, the home key, we wander to different chords, the most familiar ones being the IV and V chords. "Normal" music always end with a V -> I chord progression, which is called a cadence. That's the period on the end of the sentence, the reward for a journey well-done.
2. Normal chords: A normal, typical chord, is made up of a root note, a note a third higher, and a fifth higher. The third and fifth intervals provide the most stable and musical-sounding combination of three notes to the human ear.
3. Diminished chords: A diminished chord is a funny type of chord that has a fifth note that is diminished, just a half-note lower. That diminished note screws up the chord, creating an interesting tension-builder, one that is dissonant but not well-rooted in a home key.
4. Suspended chords: A suspended chord is another funny type of chord, one that has a note out of place, suspended half-way on its journey to the destination, dropping into place a little bit late. The dissonance of it creates a sense of expectation as our ears expect and wait for it to resolve to a normal chord.
Introducing Wagnerian harmony
Tristan und Isolde was a historical breakthrough in music because Wagner extravagantly and blithely violated the concept of a home key and treated it like a bitch. Although the Prelude does have some cadences, and it feels and sounds something like traditional music, just a bit fuzzier, large parts of it just blow off the usual rules. It shifts from chord to chord, from key to key, hinting at the possibilities of a cadence without delivering, teasing us with it only to go on to yet a new key. Dissonant chords that cry out for resolution, like diminished chords and suspended chords, are left hanging. It's a touch of creative, musical anarchy.
But Tristan doesn't sound nearly as wild as all that, despite the build-up. We are familiar with this already, to some extent, aren't we? In the development section of Sonata-allegro movements we covered, we had some of this same wild, exciting, creative flight through many keys. But the development had a goal: to create tension before the climactic return to the home key in the recapitulation section.
Good time for a graphic here. Remember this? This described many of the musical pieces we covered earlier in our series, from Mozart up to Brahms.
Now over the years, from Mozart to Beethoven to Schubert to Tchaikovsky to Brahms, development sections became longer, more complex. The heart of newer Sonata-allegro compositions shifted from the harmonically stable melodies of the exposition section to the drama and chaos of the development. It was the fun part. It was the creative part.
Wagner and some Romantics of the middle Romantic period, like Liszt, abandoned traditional forms like Sonata-allegro as old and unsuited to the new age. They tried new forms that were less organized and more suited to ambiguous harmonies. Wagner just took it a step further and did it without excuses.
The Prelude to Tristan und Isolde is famous for Wagner's use of one particular chord, a chord so famous it's named the Tristan chord. The whole Tristan Prelude (and much of the entire opera) is based on this chord.
In the embedded video above, we first hear the full chord at 0:13. Go back and listen to that.
There have been debates for more than a hundred years about what that little segment of music means. There is no conclusive answer, because its ambiguous nature allows multiple ways to hear it.
If you have the time and the stomach for it, you can plow through Wikipedia's analysis of the Tristan Chord. But I'll just give you one quote, which I won't require anybody to understand. I just present it to give you the flavor of the debate:
Mayrberger's opinion
After summarizing the above analyses Nattiez asserts that the context of the Tristan chord is A minor, and that analyses which say the key is E or E♭ are "wrong". He privileges analyses of the chord as on the second degree (II). He then supplies a Wagner-approved analysis, that of Czech professor K. Mayrberger (1878), who "places the chord on the second degree, and interprets the G♯ as an appoggiatura. But above all, Mayrberger considers the attraction between the E and the real bass F to be paramount, and calls the Tristan chord a Zwitterakkord (a bisexual or androgynous chord), whose F is controlled by the key of A minor, and D♯ by the key of E minor." According to Hans von Wolzogen, Wagner, "with considerable delight believed he had found in this heretofore unknown man from faraway Hungary the theorist he had long been waiting for."
Ah. So it's a bisexual chord! I didn't even think of making a bisexual chord diary. Oh well, consider it done.
What a great deal of fuss over a little four-note chord.
The Tristan Chord: C F# A# D#.
I've taken the liberty of moving everything up a fifth to start it on a C. Just for comparison's sake, let's see our normal everyday C major chord again.
Normal everyday C major chord
So here we are, under the hood. Looking at the Tristan chord, we can see elements of a diminished chord and a suspended chord. Moving the notes around, you can try to make it something more familiar, like an A# minor suspended sixth chord, but that's not how Wagner used it. The problem is one of function. What is the function of the chord? Where does it come from, where does it want to lead us?
"Normal" music.
In the game of music, chords lead us from and to the beginning and the exit. In Tristan, Wagner gives us his chords without function, no clear from and to. We are left to just enjoy the sheer dissonance of them as a thing in itself.
Where are Wagner's chords in Tristan going? Wagner gives no answer and seems little concerned. He presents his dissonant chords in such a way that they create tension and expectation without the release of the V-I cadence. Oh, we, the listeners, still expect a cadence -- every song we sang in kindergarten had cadences and we're junkies for it by now -- but we are left hanging again and again. Just one more mountain to climb, we're almost there, this must be it... The tension from all that expectation denied is enormous. And that is what gives Tristan its power. In our primitive musical unconscious, we are like rats pressing the lever going, "The next one will have a pellet for sure! I just know it!" The failure to get our pellet (a cadence) just increases the tension and expectation.
Vertical complexity
Harmony and polyphony are what make western music distinct from the music of all other cultures (although somebody will correct me with examples, I'm sure). Western music is more complex vertically than horizontally because of the way notes can stack upon each other to form extra voices and chords. The limits on the vertical complexity of music were already changing in the mid-Romantic period with composers like Chopin and Liszt. Tristan und Isolde opened the doors for much more vertically complex music.
Wagner's EVERYWHERE!
Now, don't think from all the discussion above that Wagner's music is that far out there. It's more complicated to explain than it is to listen to. Today, we're all very familiar with Wagnerian harmony from movie scores.
Here are a couple of nice examples:
Madame Bovary (1949), score by Miklos Rosza
Vertigo (1958), Score by Bernard Herrmann
Little Buck Cheeser (MGM cartoon 1937), composer unknown
I can think of many other great examples, like Star Wars, Hannibal, Lord of the Rings, Gone with the Wind, and The Adventures of Robin Hood, Dressed to Kill, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments. It's a musical language familiar to us but alien to audiences of the mid-nineteenth century. If modern film music is the populist branch of classical music, then the pervasiveness of Wagnerian harmony marks Wagnerian harmony as a huge success story. Famous Oscar-winning film composer of the 30s, Max Steiner, on Wagner: "If Wagner had lived in this century, he would have been the No. 1 film composer."
The lasting implications of Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde may not have an unfamiliar sound to us, today, but it was pivotal. By blowing off the normal rules of the game of music, the functional use of harmony and chords, he opened a Pandora's Box. It launched a harmonic arms race that would lead to far wilder music by other composers that would scoff the normal rules and expectations of music and even create new ones of their own.
That is why I chose, weeks ago, to separate the Romantics into those pre-Wagner and post-Wagner. It's not exactly a chronological distinction with a specific year dividing the two groups, but one that divides composers according to their faithfulness to music tradition.
Next week: More Wagner!