Program Notes
Isoldens Liebestod aus Tristan und Isolde by FRANZ LISZT (1811-1886)
Franz Liszt—legendary pianist, composer, cultural icon—was also a brilliant transcriber for the piano. He possessed the uncanny ability to transfer the spirit of the original work (be it an opera, symphony, or lied) to the piano in a completely organic and persuasive fashion. The transcriptions are masterworks in their own right; they are pieces of unusual force and imagination.
Liszt’s operatic transcriptions are particularly outstanding. He wrote several transcriptions of compositions by his contemporary (and another influential 19th-century figure) Richard Wagner. In a letter to Franz Liszt dating from December 1854, Wagner professed: “Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams in which, from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find utter repletion. I have devised in my mind a Tristan und Isolde, the simplest, yet most fullblooded musical conception imaginable, and with the ‘black flag’ that waves at the end I shall cover myself over—to die.” Wagner would soon experience the passionate desire to which he had alluded; in 1856 he embarked on an illicit affair with Mathilde Wesendonk, the wife of his patron Otto Wesendonk, and it was during this liaison that Wagner composed Tristan und Isolde (1857–1859). Although the affair dissolved shortly thereafter, his involvement with Mathilde must have inspired the heated eroticism of the music.
What is more verifiable is the impact of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s worldview—specifically the ideas in The World as Will and Representation—on Wagner in the creation of this opera. As Wagner revealed in his autobiography, “It was certainly, in part, the serious mood into which Schopenhauer had transposed me and which was now pressing for an ecstatic expression of its structuring ideas, that inspired in me the conception of Tristan und Isolde.” Wagner was stirred by Schopenhauer’s concepts of phenomenon (the representation of the world) and noumenon (the will) as well as the philosopher’s recognition of the driving stimulus of love: “The ultimate aim of all love affairs…is more important than all other aims in man’s life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it."
Love as an overwhelming, all-consuming force is portrayed in Tristan und Isolde. Based on the tragic romance by the medieval German writer Gottfried von Strassburg (which was originally derived from the 12th-century legend Tristan and Iseult), the three-act, four-hour opera recounts the ill-fated love between the Irish princess Isolde and the Cornish knight Tristan. The desperation of their longing is embodied in the incessant harmonic suspensions, voluptuous orchestration, and prolonged sequences of unresolved cadences. This relentless musical tension illustrates the unyielding, unattainable nature of their desires; the long-anticipated harmonic resolution occurs only at the very end, in the Liebestod (literally meaning “love-death”).
The Liebestod is the final aria of the opera, wherein Isolde sings in a trancelike state over the wounded body of her lover. Her coexistent agony and rapture are encapsulated by the endless melody which soars over an unremitting series of cadences, eventually culminating in an ecstatic climax and finally expiring into a state of sublime transfiguration. Tristan and Isolde thus find ultimate consummation and release only in death.
Here is the English translation of Wagner’s libretto for the Liebestod:
“How softly and gently he smiles,
how sweetly his eyes open –
can you see, my friends,
do you not see it?
How he glows ever brighter,
raising himself high amidst the stars?
Do you not see it?
How his heart swells with courage,
gushing full and majestic in his breast?
How in tender bliss sweet breath
gently wafts from his lips –
Friends! Look!
Do you not feel and see it?
Do I alone hear this melody
so wondrously and gently
sounding from within him,
in bliss lamenting, all-expressing,
gently reconciling, piercing me, soaring aloft,
its sweet echoes resounding about me?
Are they gentle aerial waves
ringing out clearly, surging around me?
Are they billows of blissful fragrance?
As they seethe and roar about me,
shall I breathe, shall I give ear?
Shall I drink of them, plunge beneath them?
Breathe my life away in sweet scents?
In the heaving swell,
in the resounding echoes,
in the universal stream
of the world-breath –
to drown, to founder –
unconscious –
utmost rapture!”
In our current times the mythic, full-throttle essence of Tristan and Isolde’s passion may seem unrealistic and melodramatic. Yet even cynics would be compelled to admit that the metaphysical power of their love—and this music—leaves an impact that is utterly hypnotic, devastating, and transcendental.
©2007 Elizabeth Joy Roe. All rights reserved.