The Secret of Tristan and Isolde Bryan Magee

7/27/2019 The Secret of Tristan and Isolde Bryan Magee

1/8


2/8http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 26 Mar 2012 Username: glynndavies IP address: 109.156.192.54

the need to give rapturous expression to the frame of mindproduced by reading a philosopher, any philosopher, though in thiscase it happens to be Schopenhauer, be at the same time (2) asimple musical conceptionindeed, as Wagner says, the simplestmusical conception? Anyone familiar with Tristan and Isolde whoreads The World as Will and Representation will find theexplanation. But even the briefest summary of that explanationrequires that we consider two aspects of Schopenhauers thought:his doctrine of the Will, and his theory of how the Will is related tomusic.

Like most of the great philosophers, Schopenhauer regarded theoverall task of philosophy as being to understand the world, in sofar as it is amenable to rational understanding. We simply findourselves here in this world: it, and our existence in it, are mysteriesto us. In its most irreducible features it seems to consist of materialobjects in a container of space and time, the container having fourdimensions, three of space and one of time. The material objectsare very varied in their size, and of an unknownly vast number,though according to our present knowledge they seem to be madeall, ultimately, of the same material. Understanding thesefundamental features has always presented metaphysics with itsmost basic problems: the nature of time, the nature of space, thenature of material objects, the nature of existenceand how, if at

all, we can acquire the understanding itself.Like nearly all the greatest philosophers of the West, Schopen-hauer held science in very high regard because of the wealth of insight it gives us into all this, a body of knowledge so great that itis impossible to form a serious understanding of the world withoutit. However, he believed that to regard science as capable, even inprinciple, of carrying our understanding of the world as far as itcan possibly go is a mistake. This is because science has to be based,quite rightly, on our observations of things external to ourselves,observations that can be shared and repeated by others. Not only dothe so-called hard sciences rest on our observations of matter andits motions in space, the so-called human sciences rest likewise onour observations of human behaviour. But we have another way of knowing things tooand therefore to confine ourselves to that firstone is to put an unnecessary limitation on the possibilities of human understanding.

For the fact is that we ourselves are material objects. We may notbe only that, but we are at least that, and no one can deny it. If weare not only bodies then we certainly have bodies, we are embodied.And, of the body that each one of us has or is, he has a direct and

Bryan Magee

340
http://journals.cambridge.org/http://journals.cambridge.org/



immediate knowledge of a radically different kind from theknowledge he has of objects external to himself. First of all, thisknowledge is not mediated through the senses. Second, it is uniqueto the individual. Each one of us is a material object that knowsitself from inside, and is unique in the having of that knowledge.This is an awesome factI am tempted to say a mystical factbutstill, unquestionably, a fact. And because of it, it seemed clear toSchopenhauer that if we are to achieve the fullest possibleunderstanding of the world of material things we need to use to thefull not only scientific methodsbased on observations which areof things external to ourselves and therefore yield what might becalled knowledge from withoutbut also the knowledge of amaterial object from within which each of us uniquely has. Indeed,there seems at least a possibility that this direct knowledge of amaterial object from inside might put us on the path to anunderstanding of the inner nature of material objects as such , theinner nature of the empirical worldwhich is what has always, or atleast normally, been regarded as the Holy Grail of philosophy.

So Schopenhauer conducts an investigation into what, in the lastanalysis, we experience our own inner nature to be, the essential us.He quickly decides that it is not consciousness. This is lost, and wewant it to be lost, every night in sleep, without our ceasing to exist,and without our even regarding the continuity of our being as

disrupted. He comes to the conclusion that it is some kind of driveto existence that is independent of consciousnessnot just the willto live (which for most of us seems to be the ultimate awarenessthat we retain when we have lost all other) but a drive that isentirely without awareness, such as creates us in the womb, orwhich in all of us causes wounds to heal by themselves, and ourcirculatory, digestive, glandular and other highly sophisticatedsystems to operate, as they do, without consciousness. We see thesame force at work in animals and plants. The whole universeconsists, for the most part, of dead matter perpetually in motion.Schopenhauer comes to the conclusion that all material objects areliterally the objectification of a blind, directionless force that justdrives towards existence, you could say wills existence provided youremember that wills here is a metaphor. And existence is, if youlike, this drive made visible.

The first word that he considered using for this drive was notWille but Kraft , usually translated into English as force. But hedecided that the concept of force was already too closely associatedwith physics, whereas what he was talking about was metaphysics.So he opted for Wille as a less unsatisfactory alternative. But he

The Secret of Tristan and Isolde

341



appended a warning that his use of that term must be regarded ashaving no necessary connection with purpose or personality orconsciousness, or indeed with life at all. Every material object, theentire material world, is the embodiment of Wille in his sense. Weourselves are too, of course, but only because everything is. And wedo not apprehend it directly. The nearest we come to doing so is inthat ultimate awareness, which most of us experience in extremecircumstances, of a determination to go on existing whatever thecost. This will to live is the metaphysical will presenting itself to usunder the lightest of veils. That is why Schopenhauerbut only ashis second choice, and expressing doubts and warningsadopts theterm Wille for his purpose. In common with the Buddhists, hesees human life, as we consciously experience it, as consisting of ultimately unsatisfiable wanting and wishing, grasping, longing,yearning and craving; and this is so because willing is not justsomething we do, it is what we are, as is everything else. The onlyliberation from willing is non-existence.

When we turn to Schopenhauers theory of art we find that hehas, in effect, two theories of the arts, one for music and one for therest. All other arts he sees as being, in one way or another,representations of the empirical world, the world of ephemera.Music, uniquely, is not. What it is, he claims, is the direct voice inthis world of the metaphysical will. As such it is superior in

character to the other arts, a super-art that gives voice to the innernature of things.From the moment a melody is launched, it arouses desires in the

listener. We feel a powerful need for it to find resolution on the keynotenot only on the key note but also, at the same time, on astrong beat in the rhythm. If a phrase ends on the key note but on aweak beat, we demand that the music go on, even if this meansmoving away from the key note. Throughout its length a melodycreates longings in us, and stretches out these longings, frustratingthem over and over again, until the final moment of resolution: andat that point the music ceases to exist, it is no more, it is silence.This makes it, says Schopenhauer, an analogue of our innermoststates, our life, and lifes ending in death.

The same is true of harmony as of melody. From the moment achordal piece begins, the ear and the mind demand that it end onthe tonic chordnot only that but, again, on a strong beat. Untilthat happens, every movement in the harmony stretches us outfurther on the rack of our expectations and our demandsthe rackof our willing, in other wordsuntil the final resolution is reachedin the cessation of the musics being.

Bryan Magee

342



At this point in the discussion Schopenhauer writes:

The effect of suspension also deserves to be considered here. Itis a dissonance delaying the final consonance that is expectedwith certainty now. In this way the longing for it is strengthened,and its appearance affords the greater satisfaction. This is clearlyan analogue of the satisfaction of the will, which is enhancedthrough delay.

Reading this passage seems to have lit a beacon in Wagners head.Suspension, of course, was a long-familiar device in harmony,coming most often in the penultimate chord of a work, when wehave just heard what we thought was the penultimate chord and nowconfidently expect the music to come to a full close. Instead, itmoves to another unresolved chord; and we experience, as it were, amomentary intake of breath, a shock of surpriseand then theresolution comes, and we let our breath out. Reading this passagegave Wagner the idea of writing an entire work in this way, the wayin which suspension operates. This, in three words, is the simplemusical conception that reading Schopenhauer gave him. Theresult is what we have in Tristan and Isolde , a work in whichsuspension appears from the very first, and never stops.

The first chord of Tristan is probably the most famous chord inthe history of music, known universally as, simply, the Tristan

chord. There has never been agreement as to its analysis. It istypical of the situation that the New Grove Dictionary of Musicoffers two alternative analyses. What is certain is that the chordcontains not one dissonance but two. And when this first chordmoves to the second, one of the dissonances is resolved but not theother; indeed a new dissonance is created. When the second chordmoves to the third the same thing happens, and again when thethird chord moves to the fourth. And so it goes on all evening, formore than four hours of music. Our perpetual longing for theresolution of discord is at every moment partially satisfied butpartially frustrated. If a chord-shift resolves all existing discords itcreates at least one new one. Only at the very end, when Isoldefinally joins Tristan in death, does the stretched-out unsatisfiedlonging come permanently to a close; and that is because the workitself has come to an end: the two main characters are now bothdead, and the opera is finished.

Thus the entire opera is, at a musical level, an instantiation of Schopenhauers doctrine that existence is an inherently unsatisfi-able web of longings, willings and strivings from which the onlypermanent liberation is the cessation of being. It is unique in our


343



culture as the most consummate example of a great creative artistdirectly transubstantiating ideas and suggestionsincluding spe-cifically musical suggestionsfrom a great philosopher into a workof art. The process operates right down to the level of what I amtempted to call inaudible details. For example, in the last chord of the work, the one that brings the final resolution, every instrumentin the orchestra is sounding except for one, the cor anglais. Whenall the instruments of a colossal Wagnerian orchestra are playing atonce, I doubt whether there is anyone with such an ear that he canhear that one single instrument is not playing. Why, then, hasWagner done this?

Well, as people familiar with the work will know, the cor anglaisis the instrument which in Act III is uniquely associated withTristans longing. It is the instrument on which the Shepherdperpetually plays his wordless, infinitely sad song of waiting for theboat that seems never to come. In the final chord of the work, butonly in that final chord, Tristans longing is stilled.

Up to now I have spoken only of the music of this opera. In allWagners operas the music is where the heart of the work is,whatever his earlier theories to the contrary may have beenandanyway with Tristan he threw those theories to the winds. Of it hewrote: This work is more thoroughly musical than anything I havedone up to now. Even so, if we decide to turn our attention to the

libretto, we find that it is as saturated with Schopenhauer as themusic is. The key concept is Sehnen , longing, expressed sometimeswith extraordinary densityas in the third act, when Tristan,having been cheated of death for the third time, cries out:

Longing, longingeven in death still longingnot to die of longing.That which never dies,longing, now calls outfor the peace of death ...

and then:

No one now,not even sweet death,can ever free mefrom this agony of longing.Never, no nevershall I find rest.

Bryan Magee

344



At the climax of the love scene in Act II, when Tristan and Isoldeare expressing their longing for one another, what the words areactually stating a longing for is unity in death. The two voices cometogether, on orchestral music which is unmistakably orgastic, to thewords:

then I myself am the world:woven of sublime blisslife of holiest love,the marvellously aware

undeluded wishnever to waken again.

And the conception of death that Tristan has is specifically the onewhich Schopenhauer expressed by saying that when we die wereturn to the state that we were in before we were born. He says itexplicitly to Isolde at the end of Act II:

Where Tristan is going nowwill you, Isolde, follow him?The light of the sun does not illuminethe land that Tristan means:it is the darkland of nightout of whichmy mother sent me ...

In specific terms like this, passage after passage of the libretto isinformed by Schopenhauer. To some of the most beautiful musicever composed, Tristan and Isolde are singing metaphysics. Thewhole work is a fusion of metaphysics and music drama at a level of saturation which, speaking for myself, I would never have dreamtpossible were it not for the fact that it exists. Nietzsche was right tocall it, as he did in one of his Untimely Meditations , the actual opusmetaphysicum of all art. He never ceased to revere it, not even afterhis break with Wagner. Several years after Wagners death hedescribed it in a letter to a friend as of a fascination which has noparallel, not only in music but in all the arts. And in one of his lastbooks, Ecce Homo , he wrote:

All the strangenesses of Leonardo da Vinci lose their magic atthe first note of Tristan . This work is altogether Wagners non plus ultra ... I take it for a piece of good fortune of the first rank


345


8/8

The Secret of Tristan and Isolde Bryan Magee

Documents

Transcript of The Secret of Tristan and Isolde Bryan Magee