Prelude and Liebestod from ‘Tristan and Isolde’
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
The Prelude to ‘Tristan and Isolde’ is recognised as a landmark in the history of music. It has been hailed as a gateway to modernity, a breakthrough in harmonic language and a release from the fetters of the musical rule-book. No specialised musical knowledge is needed to appreciate the unsettled nature of this masterpiece. From the outset, it seems to search for resolution and rest, finding comfort only with the final curtain. This selection comprises the first and last moments of ‘Tristan and Isolde’, musically linked by Richard Wagner himself to form a single concert item. In 1854, about 15 years earlier, he wrote to Franz Liszt:
Having never enjoyed the true happiness of love, I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams in which, from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find utter repletion. I have devised in my mind a Tristan und Isolde, the simplest, yet most full-blooded musical conception imaginable...
The Prelude’s unsettled mood signals to opera-goers that they are about to be immersed in the most intense narrative of pure love. It has been described as dissonant, but it isn’t dissonant, and nor is it consonant because, throughout, it searches for resolution, finding passionate and restless movement instead. The emotional turmoil aroused by the Prelude reaches its apotheosis in death. In the final act, Isolde dies of love for her mortally wounded Tristan. She takes no poison, nor does she wound herself. The Liebestod expresses her unbearable loss and her certainty that only through death can she be reunited with her lover and achieve what Wagner termed ‘redemption’, a word borrowed from the lexicon of religion to convey the highest state of beatitude. After Isolde’s intense swansong, the orchestra recalls the questing motif of the Prelude, allowing it to resolve in peace and completion at last.