Prelude and Liebestod - Wagner (1813-1883)

The Prelude, Tristan and Isolde, was first performed in a concert before the opera had been completed. It was joined with the Transfiguration, popularly known as the Liebestod, in 1863, two years before the stage première of the complete opera. Fifteen years had elapsed since the first performance of Wagner’s last opera, Lohengrin, which the composer had been unable to attend because of the exile imposed for his part in the Dresden uprising of 1849.

Tristan and Isolde is based on a number of medieval romances telling the story of an illicit love between Tristan, King Mark’s right hand man, and Isolde who is engaged to the king. The pair had fallen in love when Isolde, not knowing his true identity, had tended the wounded Tristan back to health in Ireland. Later, when Tristan is sent to Ireland to bring Isolde back for a dynastic marriage with the king, the distraught lovers resolve to take poison. However, given a love potion instead, they find their ardour ever intensified. After a night of passion together, the lovers are found out and, as they escape into the night, Tristan is mortally wounded by the Knight Melot. Isolde follows Tristan but arrives too late, finding King Mark mourning his death having discovered about the potion. She herself dies of grief and in the Liebestod sings of her vision of Tristan rising again.

The first performance of both the Prelude and the opera were revolutionary moments in the history of music. Wagner had been working in isolation without performances and, during this time, his musical language had transformed dramatically, utilising more advanced chromatic harmony. The first chord of the Prelude has proved very contentious amongst theorists as it is strangely resistant to analysis. As the piece progresses, Wagner creates an endless chain of music. Key changes are highly complex and move chromatically, creating a never-ending flow of increasing intensity. Each musical sentence elides with another, avoiding any sense of completion – each apparent culmination becomes the beginning of something else, continually avoiding any sense of resolution, thus creating an impression of ever-delayed gratification.

As in many of his late compositions, Wagner makes use of musical phrases linked with a theme or character, known as Leitmotifs. The opening cello phrase represents grief in the opera, whilst the first oboe phrase is linked with the idea of desire or the potion itself. Later, as the music reaches its first culmination, the basses play a three-note phrase, ending with an awkward leap downwards representing death. The Transfiguration is primarily a recapitulation of two passages from the love scene at the end of Act II of the opera.

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