Wagner

While I don't mean to limit my audience base, I feel like a few moments of Wagner is warranted. I took a moment this afternoon to listen to Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde. This incredible piece of music that concludes Wagner's marvelous opera is indeed transcending in sound as well as subject matter for Isolde passes at the end to be with her lover Tristan. She was not ill, wounded, or in poor health at all. She was not grieving in the typical sense and she was not in any kind of desperate emotional condition necessarily. She simply desired to be with her Tristan in death since life did not allow her to be with him. Her feelings and connection to Tristan were so captivating and engrossing that she could not live any longer in the present condition of life. Furthermore, her need to be at one with Tristan resulted in a dramatic, psychological transformation of the physical condition in an effort to join with Tristan and to become one with him in death rather than in life.

It is both the greatest and worst example of love at its finest and at its most terrible. But this essay is not about the love of Tristan and Isolde but rather about the amazing sense of harmonic and melodic balance through tension and rhythm that Wagner achieves.

I came to my love of the music of Wagner rather late as a musician. My college theory teacher did not like Wagner so without any kind of evaluation, I adopted the same philosophy. Yet over the years as a professional musician, I found myself becoming curious about the music of Wagner and finally entered the "Wagner" world and became entranced by its magic.

Harmonic rhythm is used to describe how often harmony in a piece of music changes. In the case of Wagner, his music has an incredibly fast harmonic rhythm during the development stage but very slow harmonic rhythm near the end of the piece. His music also contains mathematical proportions without sacrificing any expressive and emotional qualities. Liebestod has all the elements of great music from harmonic and melodic anticipations to dramatic buildup to one of the grandest most exciting musical climaxes in the repertoire. It makes the music completely mesmerizing and intoxicating.

Liebestod was originally an instrumental work only with the transcendence occurring at the end without text. But Wagner added a soprano obligato part that gives the music a textual significance in addition to its profound musical substance. All in all, the entire opera is one of the greatest of his works and certainly has a musical and psychological depth rarely found in the opera world. However, it is rather long and involved. If you simply want to experience a portion of the entire work, the beginning titled Prelude and the ending called Liebestod, stand alone as some of the most beautiful music in all of Wagner.