Prelude and Liebestod from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

Tristan and Isolde – the story of the tragic lovers is ancient and known in many countries in Europe and the Orient. It has fascinated readers and listeners from different cultures because it gets to the heart of a universal theme: love as a fundamental force that cannot be restricted by law and morality.

In his adaptation of the material, Richard Wagner drew on Gottfried von Straßburg's verse novel, written around 1210, but radically reduced the overly rich external plot. Basically, the story now focuses solely on the emotional lives of the two main characters – on longing that remains unfulfilled and therefore turns into a longing for death. Composed between 1857 and 1859, the complete music drama Tristan und Isolde, lasting around four hours, was not premiered until 1865 in Munich. Wagner, however, presented the prelude to the public in Prague in March 1859. And at a concert in St Petersburg in February 1863, he established the tradition of coupling the prelude with the final scene: he conceived the prelude and Liebestod as parts of a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art that includes literary and scenic elements in addition to musical components. But as a distillation of the opera, the two movements are, in a sense, “programme music” – music that depicts non-musical elements using purely instrumental means. And Wagner did indeed provide programmatic explanations for them, probably to protect himself from misinterpretations of his revolutionary new sounds.

Thus, in Richard Wagner's words, we hear in the prelude "the insatiable desire swelling, from the shyest confession, the most tender attraction, through anxious sighs, hope and doubt, lamentation and desire, delight and torment, to the most powerful urge, to the most violent effort to find the breakthrough that opens the way for the boundlessly desirous heart into the sea of infinite love's delight. In vain! Powerless, the heart sinks back to languish in longing. Wagner's unresolved dissonances – among them the famous, harmonically extremely ambiguous ‘Tristan chord’ of the second bar – thus represent the drama of the two lovers, who are denied fulfilment in life.

These dissonances are contrasted in the final scene by ecstatic, yet harmonically more stable sounds. Wagner himself preferred to describe the so-called Liebestod as Isolde's transfiguration. He commented: "What fate separated now lives on transfigured in death; the gate of union is open. Over Tristan's corpse, the dying Isolde beholds the most blissful fulfilment of her ardent longing, eternal union in immeasurable spaces, without barriers, without bonds, inseparable!”

Final scene from Capriccio by Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss' musical language was undoubtedly based on that of Richard Wagner, but what distinguished Strauss' works from those of the Bayreuth master was not least a remarkable penchant for mockery, irony and self-reflection. This is particularly evident in Capriccio, completed in 1941: ‘No lyricism, no poetry, no sentimentality: intellectual theatre, brain food, dry wit!’ – this is how Strauss summarised his requirements for the libretto to the conductor Clemens Krauss.

Capriccio is set in 1775, during the late Rococo period, in a castle near Paris. The main characters are the composer Flamand and the poet Olivier, who are both courting the beautiful Countess Madeleine and at the same time fighting the age-old dispute over whether music or words should take precedence in opera. The poet Stefan Zweig brought this material to Strauss’s attention in 1934, and Clemens Krauss, who was also well versed in literature, wrote the libretto years later. On 28 October 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, the premiere of this cheerful “conversational piece for music” took place in Munich. 

On the concert stage, it was not only the string sextet that opened the opera that made an impression, but above all the final scene. It begins with the so-called “moonlight music” – a wonderfully soulful, highly romantic horn cantilena, which is hard to believe originated in something as prosaic as a legal dispute: In 1918, Strauss had sued the publisher Bote & Bock, lost the case and, in a fit of rage, wrote a cycle of twelve songs based on satirical poems by Alfred Kerr, in which contemporary music publishers were portrayed as profit-oriented “shopkeepers”. The template for “Moonlight Music” can be found in the piano prelude to the eighth song of Krämerspiegel, whose idyll is rudely interrupted by a section of text: “Art is threatened by merchants, there you have it. They bring death to music, transfiguration to themselves.” In Capriccio, on the other hand, the melody appears for the first time before the “Moonlight Music”, when Flamand speaks of the “deception of the theatre” and the Countess replies: “Not deception! The stage reveals to us the secret of reality. As in a magic mirror, we perceive ourselves. The theatre is the moving symbol of life.”

Separated from the main plot of the opera by the “moonlight music”, the final scene seems like an epilogue: the Countess sings a sonnet written by Olivier and set to music by Flamand, finding herself unable to choose between her two admirers and their art forms – after all, they are united in their love for her and in the combination of words and music in the work. The ending remains open – unless one interprets the coda with the two horn calls at the end as a wordless decision in favour of music.

 Ayanna Witter-Johnsons Bacchanale

Ayanna Witter-Johnson contrasts Wagner's artful sublimation of desire and Strauss's ironic, nostalgic retrospective with music that is entirely down-to-earth and physical. Witter-Johnson first became known as a performer of her own songs, which she herself classifies stylistically as a blend of soul, hip-hop and reggae, accompanying herself on stage with the cello. However, the British composer of Jamaican origin is also a qualified composer, trained at renowned universities in London and New York. She moves between worlds, as the note on her new orchestral piece also mentions: "Bacchanale is a rousing celebration of the Caribbean carnival spirit – a musical ode to joy, movement and community.

The title references the word “bacchanal”, which in Caribbean culture stands for exuberant celebrations, dancing and togetherness. Here, this feeling of liberation and collective energy forms the heartbeat of the piece. Led by a radiant, rhythmically charged trumpet line, the work captures the electrifying energy of a carnival parade – its pulsating rhythms, explosions of colour and infectious dynamism. Throughout the orchestra, percussion and brass drive the groove forward, while strings and woodwinds add warmth and brilliance, evoking the swirling costumes and syncopated swaying of the crowd. Bacchanale shares the rhythmic vitality and intercultural spirit of some of my chamber music works, but expands on them with the full symphonic sound spectrum, making the orchestra itself dance. The piece embodies my ongoing journey to weave classical tradition with the sounds and sensations of my Caribbean heritage – a tribute to the convergence, interplay and mutual enrichment of these worlds. At its core, Bacchanale is a musical invitation: to celebrate, to move and to enjoy life in all its sonic richness.

Richard Strauss's tone poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In 1896, almost half a century before Capriccio, Strauss told his wife Pauline about the rehearsals for the premiere of his new tone poem: “Zarathustra is magnificent – by far the most significant, most perfect in form, richest in content and most distinctive of my pieces. The beginning is magnificent, all the many string quartet passages have turned out splendidly; the passion theme is thrilling, the fugue is gruesome and the dance song is simply delightful. The crescendos are powerful and instrumentally perfect!!! Impeccably orchestrated. In short, I am a real man after all and once again feel a little pleased with myself.”

What prompted Strauss to turn Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical and cultural critique Thus Spoke Zarathustra into a piece of music? On the one hand, like many of his colleagues, the composer was fascinated by Nietzsche's almost musical eloquence. On the other hand, he could also identify with the content of Zarathustra, with the doctrine of the free human being who knows his abilities and his personal responsibility. The quote about the ‘real man’ suggests that, despite his professed self-irony, the young, successful conductor and composer seriously considered himself a Bavarian ‘superman.’ He was attracted by the spirit of optimism, the intoxicating attitude to life, the radical nature of Nietzsche's ideas, which stood in contrast to the ‘philistinism’ of the wealthy bourgeoisie and the restrictive atmosphere at Strauss's own places of work in Munich and Weimar.

Strauss prefixed his score with the opening words of Zarathustra, and with reference to them, the work begins with the most famous sunrise in music history: above a dull thumping, one hears the ascending natural tone fanfare C – G – C of the trumpets – an initially neutral, third-less sound that flows via C minor into a radiant C major. The following sections are assigned chapter headings from Nietzsche's work, which can be understood in the sense of a programme. Romain Rolland summarised it as follows: "One sees in it the man who, at first, shaken by the mystery of nature, seeks refuge in faith. Then he rebels against ascetic ideas and throws himself wildly into passions. But soon he is satiated, disgusted, weary of life; he tries science, rejects it again and finally frees himself from his restlessness for knowledge by finding liberation in laughter. Laughter is the master of the world, the blissful dance, the round dance of the universe, where all human emotions play a part. [...] Then the dance recedes, losing itself in supernatural regions. Zarathustra disappears dancing beyond the worlds – but he has not solved the riddle of the world for other people.

Strauss therefore sought to create a religious mood in the section “Von den Hinterweltlern” (Of the Underworlders), which is already indicated in the score by the performance marking “mit Andacht” (with devotion). The next sections are characterised by the so-called ‘longing motif’ (ascending broken triads) and the “joy” motif (upward tenth leap), before the oboe strikes up a plaintive melody in the ‘Grablied’ (Funeral Song). Strauss composed the section “Von der Wissenschaft” (On Science) as a parodic fugue, and under the heading “Der Genesende” (The Convalescent), the music builds to a dramatic full stop, which can be interpreted as Zarathustra’s collapse. After that, his healing takes its course, culminating in the “Tanzlied” (Dance Song), a lively waltz with violin solo. The “Nachtwandlerlied” (Sleepwalker Song) is a kind of epilogue in which the intensity subsides. The bold bitonal ending of the work, in which high B major chords contrast with the bass notes C – G – C, became famous. In the end, their contradiction, symbolic of that between humanity and the universe, remains unresolved.

Jürgen Ostmann

Jürgen Ostmann studied musicology and orchestral music (cello). He lives in Cologne as a freelance music journalist and dramaturge and works for concert halls, radio stations, orchestras, music festivals and CD labels.