With such a background of critical word-spinning, Roger North's 700 pages for the whole opera seems modest enough, especially when so many pages are devoted to music examples. It is a main virtue of the book that some two-thirds of the work are quoted in a keyboard format that may not always be practical but transcribes more of the orchestral detail than any published score. Of course North is not first in the field with so dedicated a project. Ernst Kurth, relying much on Schopenhauer and Freud, produced in 1920 his Romantische Harmonik und die Krise in Wagners Tristan . For him Tristan marked the harmonic culmination of two centuries' development and the source of future possibilities. Lorenz followed in 1926 with the second volume of his series Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner. His main thesis was that Wagner thought in formal terms of arches or 'bars', a venerable AAB scheme best explained by Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger. Lorenz paid due attention to Wagner's chromaticism, but also emphasized his respect for traditional tonal relationships. He supposed a hypothetical E major as essential key of the opera (North will sensibly have none of this), and around it a circle of keys each symbolizing an idea or emotion.
North acknowledges Schopenhauer as main philosophical influence on the work. Wagner first discovered him in the autumn of 1854 after drafting Act 1 of Die Walkiire, and the appeal was instant. By that December the idea of Tristan already possessed him and he wrote to Liszt about its inspiration: 'Schopenhauer's main conception, the ultimate negation of the will to live, is terribly stern, but in it alone is salvation.' The new work would enshrine 'the simplest yet most full-blooded musical conception'. He expressed his ultimate intention: 'I will wrap myself in the "black flag" which waves over its close and die.' Schopenhauer's exaltation of music as 'the mightiest of the arts' obviously intrigued Wagner. For the composer of Tristan it was good to read that 'music speaks not of things but of pure weal and woe' and that music was 'the true universal language which is understood everywhere'. It hardly mattered that Schopenhauer considered opera 'an unmusical invention for the benefit of unmusical minds' and praised Rossini for his often mocking contempt towards his librettos. Tristan is soaked in Schopenhauer. Wagner's only divergence from his mentor concerns Isolde's little word 'and' in Act 2. Wagner was sufficiently exercised to begin a letter to Schopenhauer about it, and sufficiently uncertain to leave it unfinished.
Mathilde Wesendonck received, notably in the Venice diary, almost a running commentary on the creation of Tristan. Together with Minna and Cosima during that sultry summer of 1857 she had heard readings of the poem, and by the end of the year Act 1 was composed. She was given it with a dedication to 'the angel who had raised him so high'. She provided poems for the five Wesendonck songs, two of which were seminal for Tristan and are so treated by North. The opera was complete in August 1859 and Wagner summed up his achievement to her: 'I should now like to call my deepest and most subtle art the art of transition, for the whole fabric of my art is built on such transitions'. He also claimed that the 'degree of consistency and clarity' that informed every detail of Tristan's structure had 'never before been dreamed of'. Writing in English to William Ellis in March 1892, Mathilde thus described her relationship with Wagner: 'The tie that bound him to Mathilde Wesendonck, whom he than called his "Muse", was of so high, pure, noble and ideal Nature that, alas, it will only be valued of those, that in their own noble chest find the same elevation and selfishlessness of Mind!'
North has many profound insights into the Wagnerian method. Wagner was understandably coy about his debt to Liszt, both harmonic and formal, but North justifiably regards music dramas such as Tristan, Meistersinger and Parsifal as 'symphonic poems after the Lisztian mould, in which the initial idea generates the remainder'. He acknowledges that 'the drama has dictated the musical structure to an unprecedented degree', but maintains also that the structure 'has remained as organized and cohesive as a purely instrumental work'. 'The symphony', he claims, 'became many things after Beethoven; with Tristan it became opera.' Wagner would have claimed no less. Indeed in his Opera and Drama of 1850, an indication of the route he intended to take towards the Ring, he makes telling points quoted by North. He argues the possibility of setting up 'an orchestra with far more individual powers of speech than have even yet appeared', goes on to express his aim of assigning 'to the orchestra a more intimate share in Drama than has hitherto been the case', and avers that the orchestra already had 'a faculty of speech in Beethoven's symphonies'. Wagner knew that 'music cannot think'; but she can express 'the emotional contents of thoughts'. North chides Wagner for his Byzantine manner of expression in theoretical matters. Byzantium, though, is compounded with Brussels in the lumbering translations of Ellis used by North.
There are admirable points of detail in this perceptive study. Take, for instance, the treatment of Tristan's arrival in Act 2. There has been insistent emphasis on a bass F, indeed 133 bars of what seems dominant preparation in the prelude to the act and first scene. A B-flat chord seems inevitable, but North aptly describes Wagner's procedure: 'Classical symmetry might require this, but Wagner is ruled by psychological necessity.' The demand, therefore, is indeed 'for a forcible, climactic affirmation of a key', but Wagner will not worry if it is the wrong one, 'particularly if it happens to be the right one forced upwards by the extreme tension of the moment'. So C is justified. As the work proceeds, North observes that key associations with character or situation begin to take 'precedence over any structural functions a key might have'. Concerning the start of the Act 2 'Sterbelied' and its 'Transfiguration' by Isolde, North tellingly observes that the 'sequential minor third upward movement of its theme is the same as that of the opera's opening, on which it is based'. In wider context, C vies with A minor not only in the opera's prelude but throughout Act 1. North explains what led Wagner into musical territory hitherto unexplored and where even he trod with awe and foreboding: 'his expansion of music's harmonic language is driven by the extreme emotional requirements of his text.' North dubs it 'a text that no other composer could remotely have done justice to'. Nor, it is safe to say, would anyone have been tempted to try.
This is an impressive analytical study of Tristan, but North has also allowed his fertile imagination free rein. Nautical matters are properly touched on (indeed rumour has it that North comes of naval stock). At one point they are said to save Isolde's dignity; then Brangaene gives her 'state of the voyage report'; and as the ship approaches Cornwall, Tristan 'hurriedly shouts some anchoring orders (one hopes unheeded) and then snatches the cup'. Later he is likened to the Bellman in The Hunting of the Snark; I take it the reference is as follows:
...He had hoped at least, when the wind blew East, That the ship would not travel due West!1
By Act 3 Isolde is the 'oversea doctress', and even a minimal character is swept into the catastrophe: 'The helmsman merely rushes in to tell Kurvenal the battle is hopeless, only to be recruited into it'. In Act 2 Isolde becomes a tennis star of no uncertain views: while at the net, she 'kept Tristan running all over the court'; at the end of the match 'she points out what a post-drink daytime dog's breakfast Tristan has created now'. Occasionally Wagner earns North's disapproval, as at Kurvenal's 'college brotherhood song' in Act 1, or when Isolde waves her Act 2 handkerchief in time with the music and will therefore 'appear to be conducting the orchestra'. His unfavourite moment is 'Wagner's village organist's ending plus Sweet Genevieve slithering 6ths' imposed on the lovers just before Brangaene's first watch song.
Any Wagner commentator is faced with the problem how to label a work's thematic material. North quotes Wagner from The Brown Book on 'the musical motives that restlessly arise, evolve, combine, separate, then merge anew, grow, diminish and at last contend, intermingle and almost intertwine themselves'. One can agree with North that the work provides a 'veritable maze of musical cross-reference', and he demonstrates convincingly that so much of Tristan can be derived from its first 17 bars. The thematic tags involved he simply labels, a, b and c. This is essentially wise, as more precise names can be misleading in the long run. Yet even prudence such as this has its dangers. Apparently harmless alphabetical identities can begin to touch human sympathies, as when we are faced with 'an inverted a, a reordered a, a reverse inverted a and a headless a', or when there appears 'a very different a, diatonic, inverted and angry'. Motif b has a rougher time, suffering 'a treatment which would ordinarily destroy b's identity', becoming later 'short of breath', and ending in desperation: 'Repeated b's always call for c'. Not that there is much to be expected from c. We linger over 'the process of beheading c'; it has to perform 'bothways up'; is 'left in the air, unfinished'; and the 'final c becomes a plaintive echo'. As Roger North points out, Wagner himself was not above poking some apparent fun at his own leitmotif procedures: Tristan calls Kurvenal 'an idle gaper' to the 'glance' motif that had hitherto done duty for his own longing look at Isolde before the opera began.
When working through the book, it is essential to have vocal and orchestral scores to hand.2 Only then can one fully appreciate the intricacy of Wagner's achievement and the detail with which North has expounded it...3 Problems arise from the fact that Tristan's part is sometimes at sung pitch, sometimes an octave higher, so that Isolde and he may get their tails mixed. In Act 2 Isolde is given more than her fair share of the 'Sterbelied', as if already rehearsing her 'Transfiguration'4. Wrong bar numbers in Act 1 from 1798 to the end are an irritant, but ...5 I personally am grateful that in North's footsteps I have corrected a misprint or two in my Breitkopf vocal score, and above all have increased my admiration for Wagner's towering masterpiece.
1The allusion is to the Bellman's statement:
"What I say three times is true".
2 It was not the author's intention that
this should be necessary, although the music examples all have bar numbers
and page and bar numbers of the Breitkopf miniature score.
3 Here Anderson draws attention to a number
of errors in the music examples, which have however all been corrected
in the present edition.
4 Anderson appears not to have realised
that Isolde's Transfiguration part is quoted (boxed) alongside the Sterbelied
music for comparison, and to save requoting the identical orchestral music
when her Transfiguration is discussed later in the book.
5 Anderson again mentions the now corrected
errors. Author.
What an experience I have just had! Having been stricken to bed with with a debilitating "bug" I took with me the score of Tristan & Isolde, and Roger North's incredible and utterly compelling analytical study, No mean feat this as the score is 1025 pages long, and North's excellent book is a large volume of some 700 pages of detailed analysis and quotes on this wonderful score. All I had to do was get up and put the music on; my copy being the Karl Bohm 1966 Bayreuth Festival DGG set on an excellent vinyl!
This is I am sure the most detailed analysis of the work it is possible to obtain. Roger North almost, at times takes bar by bar into analysis. A word of warning is necessary; do make sure the score you follow with has actual bar numbers, or you will be in trouble*.
I spent the whole day, from morning till night with this volume, reading, following, reanalysing. It is beautifully written and so well laid out. There is a full analysis of each scene, at the end of which there is a detailed pull-out sheet summarising all that has gone before. The author also includes a separate section for each act as a whole, which were very illuminating. In conclusion there is a long character study, plus a view of the opera as a whole.
The book is an absolute essential purchase for any lover of Tristan & Isolde, provided they can understand the technical language of music. It will become required reading for any student of the works of Wagner, and should be in every music library in the world. Roger North has a tremendous knowledge of music, not just of this piece, and I particularly enjoyed his quotes from other works relevant to Tristan. I feel my day's sojourn with this masterpiece was not necessarily the way to enjoy it to the full, as it is primarily a work of reference, nevertheless I spent a most absorbing day; the research, scholarship, analysis and opinion must have taken years to acquire and write.
There is incredible detail, for example; the wonderful opening prelude alone is discussed within 22 sections, ranging from detail on the three basic motives, through to other composer sources and analysis of the instrumentation.
The writing and quotations on Act 2, Scene 2, Part 1 are particularly impressive, as is the analysis of the lsolde transfiguration at the end of act 3.
A wonderfully researched and written volume, always fully comprehensible and beautifully set out. I do not expect to see its like again. If Tristan is in your "bag" then buy the book.