A musical analysis of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

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Wagner's Most Subtle Art

A musical Analysis of Tristan und Isolde

by Roger North

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A detailed musical analysis of Tristan and Isolde both bar by bar and in the long term, showing for example how Wagner derives the whole work from its opening; how he deploys the three basic motives and the 'Tristan' chord individually and independently, while ensuring that they retain their initial relationship as the 'words' of a musical statement which is also an analogue of the drama; how his teeming musical imagination allows him again and again to refer back, while constantly creating anew.

By his masterful handling of the formal determinants of Time, Tempo, Tonality, Theme, Treatment and Text, and by what he proudly called his 'most subtle art of transition' Wagner's music, perhaps the most emotionally potent ever composed, not only matches but is the drama.

"Illuminating" - Sir Reginald Goodall