2.2 Chromaticism and Tristan

2.2 CHROMATICISM AND TRISTAN A problem Schönberg could not resolve was the famous beginning of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde.

Ex. 3 & œ. œ

J œ œ# ˙# . œ jœ jœ# .œn œ

? J œ ˙ ˙ . . #œ œ

akl II

V In German speaking countries these bars are still regarded as the birth of Schönberg’s atonal-chromatic music, although neither its analysis nor its sounding result bears any witness to this. True: as from the f in the first bar there is only one voice, which does not continue chromatically, but the harmony, not the melody, is leading. The chromaticism makes the chords flow into each other.

This chord sequence happens to be a literal quote from the middle part of the song Ich möchte hingehen, written by Franz Liszt in 1845. With Liszt it is an inconspicuous passage, awoken by Wagner into pure magic. There was quite a bit of consternation when this plagiarism was discovered. However, the passage is even older and appears in Der Alchymist (vocal score page 114, Berlin, 1831) by Ludwig Spohr. And that opera is from 1830!

Nowadays, this chord sequence has a logical, orally verifiable explanation as the French chord (II3/4) with a suspension note dominant with suspension. This explanation did not come about easily; Schönberg was not the only one to lose his way. There was something mysterious about the Tristan chord and in the whole of music history there is no other chord to be found that has been analysed in so many different ways. This can be explained: theorists and composers worked on the assumption that the most prominent chord carries the function in the cadence. The Tristan chord (suspension chord) is maintained five times as long as the resolution chord, in a slow tempo, without sounding dissonant. The A in which the chord finally resolves sounds like a continuous note. According to the general assumption that what is heard is also the structural information, the Tristan chord had to be the main chord. But alas, all explanations of the Tristan chord as part of the cadence only lead to analyses that have very little relationship with the perceived music. Many theories therefore eventually opted for the solution of a floating tonality without a clearly perceptible root tone and focused on the chromatic lines as the cause of the effect.

Schönberg analysed the Tristan chord twice.