The Tristan Chord

[kishnevi]

What's the... gulp... other chord?!?!

The Isolde chord, naturally.

[Ten thumbs]

No. It is appropriately named after the epic pathbreaking world famous opera with which it is most associated with Tristan und Isolde. The fulcrum of the work

Appropriate, yes, for subsequent usage but how can we talk of them as Tristan chords in works that pre-date that opera?

[Ten thumbs]

You don't have to worry about it. Subsequent or even afterward .. doesn't matter, every serious music person today knows what the Tristan chord refers to thanks to Wagner.

Indeed we do, but then not all Neapolitan 6ths come from Naples.

[Karl Henning]

Return of the bot.

[Karl Henning]

Subsequent or even afterward is a hoot, and underscores the lack of thought behind the auto-repeat posts. See my prior or even earlier post.

[Ten thumbs]

The issue is not where it is coming from; this isn't rocket science here, its just music history 101 really  .. essentially all musicians use the same nuts & bolts & raw materials of music etc; it is how Wagner's genius uses that particular chord, in that particular epic masterpiece, that it became one of THE defining moments/monuments in the history of music & what followed .. thus the unavoidable association of that chord to that piece, and it's implications on the future path of harmony.

The significance of Tristan goes without question. Indeed Dieter de la Motte pays homage to this when he says of Fanny Hensel's String Quartet 'nowhere in music before Listz and Wagner (Fanny dies 9 years before Tristan & Isolde) have I found such creative questioning of Classical tonality'. This is only of interest because Hensel does occasionally use the Tristan chord, usually as part of her practise of piling up dissonances. She perhaps felt the freedom to do this because she was under a prohibition from publishing. More interesting is her possible influence on Listz, who visited her more than once – there are moments in his later piano works that could have come straight out of Das Jahr.

[San Antone]

Liszt was perhaps one of the most progressive musicians of the nineteenth Century, in some ways even more so than Wagner himself (who was heavily indebted to Berlioz and Meyerbeer though he refused to acknowledge this!).  I have read that even the "Tristan chord" occurs nearly note-for-note in one of Liszt's songs. Liszt's works also contain indeterminate tonality (the Etude sans Tonalité and probably some others) and even an extraordinary anticipation of twelve-tone serialism (the Faust Symphony's main theme).

Timewise, Liszt was born two years before Wagner and outlived him by three.

Yes, the song is Ich möchte hingehn, S.296.  However, that idea was a misunderstanding of the history of that song.  It is correct that Liszt wrote the song in 1845, more than a decade before Tristan, but he later revised it, inserting the Tristan quote in 1858 when his songs were being prepared for publication, clearly quoting Tristan after receiving the score of the first act.

This is the accepted view today, and is most promentently explained by Alexander Rehding (Professor of Music at Harvard University), in his Tristan: or the case of Liszt's Ich möchte hingehn, in item 58, pp. 75-97; see also Franz Liszt: A Research and Information Guide, p. 310.

Liszt can be credited with having influenced Wagner in other ways, and many others, Mahler, Messiaen, Schoenberg, to name a few.  But that pernicious idea about the Tristan chord still pops up from time to time.  Harold Schonberg still has it in the chapter on Liszt in his Lives of the Great Composers .

[Luke]

... Alexander Rehding (Professor of Music at Harvard University)...

oooh, my old analysis teacher!

[jochanaan]

Yes, the song is Ich möchte hingehn, S.296.  However, that idea was a misunderstanding of the history of that song.  It is correct that Liszt wrote the song in 1845, more than a decade before Tristan, but he later revised it, inserting the Tristan quote in 1858 when his songs were being prepared for publication, clearly quoting Tristan after receiving the score of the first act.

This is the accepted view today, and is most promentently explained by Alexander Rehding (Professor of Music at Harvard University), in his Tristan: or the case of Liszt's Ich möchte hingehn, in item 58, pp. 75-97; see also Franz Liszt: A Research and Information Guide, p. 310.

Liszt can be credited with having influenced Wagner in other ways, and many others, Mahler, Messiaen, Schoenberg, to name a few.  But that pernicious idea about the Tristan chord still pops up from time to time.  Harold Schonberg still has it in the chapter on Liszt in his Lives of the Great Composers .

Amazing!  Some hard facts supported by extended research in a dialogue about music!  Thanks for the history, sanantonio!

[Karl Henning]

veddy interesting

[Mirror Image]

Wasn't the 'Tristan chord' featured in Sibelius' 7th? I'd love to know where it exactly occurs.

[EigenUser]

Wasn't the 'Tristan chord' featured in Sibelius' 7th? I'd love to where exactly.

And Bartok's 3rd PC.