Act II Tristan und Isolde

Act II of Tristan und Isolde takes place over a single night. And in that night, we witness an entire life-love relationship unfold as it works out deep emotional conflicts, contemplates the quest for transcendence beyond the contradictions of our existence, and arrives at a supreme state of bliss. Then of course, daybreak arrives and it all gets shattered.

But the music! How could Wagner sustain it so long? Its continuous love duets are an achievement without parallel. They comprise nearly 200 pages of score. And it’s not just the length. Repeatedly you feel the music can’t get more beautiful, and then Wagner discovers yet another idea that takes it to a higher emotional level.

This music from Act II has been quoted by most every major composer since Wagner wrote it. Not simply the music, but the emotional landscape Wagner envisioned. He found a way to translate harmony and counterpoint into a representation of bliss and transcendence that inspired major composers to imitate. And those imitations became some of their own deepest articulations. Consider these spiritual moments from Mahler’s symphonies: the slow movement and finale of the 4th symphony, the Adagietto of the 5th symphony, the Adagio of the 9th symphony, and most obviously, the final farewell in Das Lied von der Erde. All of these have Act II of Tristan as their spiritual guide and ancestor.

Act II Scene i
Magic begins right at the opening of the first scene in Act II with six horns offstage sounding the King’s hunt. The hunting horns play over a pedal tone with two onstage horns and timpani to produce an exquisite drone— an F major 9th and 11th chord. It’s a dreamy poetic suspension that sets up the romantic music that unfold later, all as Isolde waits in the garden of trees for her Tristan’s secret arrival.

In this longer excerpt, listen to the magic of the horn calls as background to Isolde’s romantic yearning for Tristan while Brangäne warns that this secret tryst with her lover is a setup for betrayal by Tristan’s friend Melot.

Isolde scolds Brangäne for suspecting Melot and sings about the powerful spirit of love. This voluptuous music clearly influenced Richard Strauss with his love music in Don Juan and many other of his Tone Poems.

Act II Scene ii
When Tristan arrives, the lovers express manic joy. Listen to the orchestra play rapid and agitated music that at the end of the opera will be greatly slowed down to become the transcendent Liebestod.

In recounting his previous inner struggle between the glory presenting Isolde to his King and the feelings for her stirring within him, Tristan modulates from the exuberance of day’s radiance to the deeper gleaming of night, love, and death that is the subject of this second act. Listen to this gorgeous passage.

Tristan and Isolde work out with each other complex emotional issues of betrayal, envy, and pride. Then begins their first sublime love duet. The Wesendock Lieder was Wagner’s “sketchpad” for Tristan und Isolde and this lullaby is from the last song of that cycle—Träume (Dreams). This is a long excerpt…because it’s just too beautiful.

The climax of this first duet goes deep:the lovers proclaim “then am I myself the world; floating in sublime bliss, life of love most sacred, the sweetly conscious undeluded wish never again to waken.” You’ll hear the Tristan progression/love potion at a key moment when the lovers together sing the word “World” (Welt).

It doesn’t seem like the music can get any more gorgeous, but then Brangäne speaks words of warning to the lovers. Wagner’s music, a postlude to this first duet, tells us clearly that the lovers are so wrapped into each other, they are unable to heed any warning.

As the dawn approaches, a new love aria/lullaby duet begins. Tristan and Isolde feel a perfect bliss together they never want to end— they express “let me die now.”

This second duet concludes with the tune of bliss that will become Isolde’s Liebestod at the end of Act III. Here Tristan sums: “Thus might we die, that together, ever one, without end, never waking, never fearing, namelessly enveloped in love, given up to each other, to live only for love!

Waves of emotion and bliss just keep building. A third duet makes a passionate dedication to the glory of this night of love and ecstasy. Throughout the scene, night, with its bliss and hint at depth of oblivion where love can exist without limit, is contrasted and celebrated over the harshness of day and its surface of radiance, falseness of daily life.

This third duet itself transforms to an even a greater wave of passion: the Liebestod tune as the lovers imagine themselves dissolving into one another. The musical love potion has now consumed them completely.

The second scene concludes with the climax of the Liebestod duet frantically approaching at long last a tonal resolution…only to be thwarted by the harsh arrival of the King, and his retinue with the betrayer Melot, discovering the illicit lovers.

Act II Scene iii
We were just jarred out of the longest love scene in music history. What can Wagner possibly have left? For one thing, one of the most powerful bass clarinet solos in the classical repertoire. The bass clarinet personifies King Marke and accompanies our discovery that Marke and Tristan were previously lovers. Marke feels the pain of betrayal and shame as deeply as Tristan has been feeling ecstasy with Isolde. His extended and vulnerable lament bare all.

After this affecting speech/song, Melot and Tristan fight. Tristan, in an impossible situation lets Melot strike him and the curtain falls. All the action in Tristan und Isolde is compressed deliberately to the very end of each act. Wagner makes it clear that the focus is not narrative, but the interior psychological/philosophical space questioning the most basic human questions of love, honor, and death. And it is to this plain that his music is so phenomenally sculpted.