The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy by Bryan Magee

The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy Reviews

• 
  Paul Christensen

  Wagner, in Magee’s words, was ‘the only major composer who seriously engaged with philosophy’, so any book looking at the philosophers he read is bound to be interesting.
  
  And so it is - where Magee follows Wagner’s early interest in Feuerbach, his earth-shattering discovery of Schopenhauer, as well as the real reasons for Nietzsche’s break with the master (namely the fapping advice incident).
  
  However, the book has a major glaring omission - Arthur de Gobineau. Gobineau’s influence may have arrived too late to affect Wagner’s music and libretti, but Wagner’s fascination with his ideas was by all accounts a very strong one (although he rejected Gobineau’s pessimism, believing as he did in regeneration).
  
  So, it would have been interesting to read about Gobineau’s ideas and how they affected the great man, but Magee dismisses Gobineau in a sentence or two as ‘unimportant’, when by all accounts he was W’s greatest philosophical discovery after Schopenhauer himself.
  
  Magee seems to have written this book as a justification to his liberal friends as to why he likes Wagner so much, trying to make the latter seem philosophically ‘respectable’, but at the expense of truth. (To be fair, Magee lives in the UK, where it would be illegal to objectively discuss Gobineau’s ideas). So, while this book sheds valuable light on Wagner’s work, I can’t award it very high marks.
• 
  Graham

  This is a remarkable book. Bryan Magee is a philosophy professor who has a gift for explaining philosophy to the lay reader. He is also immensely knowledgeable of music, opera, drama, and in particular the works of Richard Wagner.
  
  Magee explains the life and works of Wagner in terms of Wagner's political, philosophical and artistic beliefs, and provides an introduction to the key German philosophers who would play a role in Wagner's life: Feuerbach, Kant, Nietzsche and above all Schopenhauer. As Magee explains, Wagner's depth of interest in philosophy is unique amongst all the great composers. It would not be possible to write a similar book about Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Bach or any the other musical greats.
  
  First he takes us through Wagner's earlier years, essentially up to the point where Wagner broke off from composition of the Ring cycle. Magee relates his interests in politics, socialism, anarchism, greek drama, opera, and his attempts to build a comprehensive theory of art that famously led to the concept of a Gesamtkunstwerk - a "complete art work" that would unify music and drama into a single art-form in which music, words and drama are equal.
  
  Magee then relates Wagner's mid-life crisis and discovery of Schopenhauer. The biggest surprise for me was that I expected to read about the philosophy of Schopenhauer and its influence on Wagner with a purely academic interest. Instead I found myself strongly attracted to the ideas of Schopenhauer and started to share something of Wagner's seduction by the power of those ideas. For Schopenhauer art like religion strives to understand something of the reality beyond the physical world that we see and feel. Schopenhauer regards art as above religion because it is not inhibited by the stories and beliefs that religion uses to express these deeper truths. Furthermore, Schopenhauer regards music as the greatest of the arts, because it is the most abstract art form and therefore it is the one best adapted to expressing and experiencing the spiritual dimension of life.
  
  Schopenhauer leads Wagner to reevaluate his work and allows him to resolve the bitterness of the loss in faith in his earlier political ideals. Wagner moves beyond the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk and instead elevates the role of music in his remaining works - Tristan, Meistersinger, Parsifal and the remaining parts of the Ring cycle. Magee shows how the 3 great operas Tristan, Meistersinger, and Parsifal are all deeply tied into the ideas of Schopenhauer.
  
  Schopenhauer and Wagner's political disillusionment posted a dilemma for the Ring cycle. The Ring cycle was originally meant to be the embodiment of the Gesamtkunstwerk and was also meant as socio-political allegory that would promote Wagner's socialist ideals. However, Magee shows that although on the surface the philosophy of Schopenhauer appeared to contradict Wagner's earlier beliefs, in actual fact many of these beliefs had been in Wagner's sub-conscious since a young man. Wagner was therefore able to eventually complete the Ring cycle without the need to change the earlier operas and with the ability to maintain a convincing musical and dramatic whole, nevertheless transforming the fundamental message of the work in the process:
  
  "He may, years before, have written the libretto believing it to be an optimistic work in which a world-order based on lovelessness, power, money and chicanery was seen to be overthrown and replaced by a new order based on love, but he was now quite sure that what his artistic intuitions had rightly done instead was to produce a pessimistic work in which one loveless order was replaced by another, thus showing violence and betrayal to be perennial in the world, and any abiding rule of love unattainable; a work in which all world-orders are seen to go down to irretrievable ruin. The optimist who was the younger Wagner had composed the work up to the point where a new era of hope is expected to dawn. Now the mature Wagner, a pessimist, would compose the rest, showing how this hope is betrayed and the new era goes down in the same destruction as the old."
  
  The final two chapters of the book are devoted to Nietzsche and anti-semitism. Of the great philosophers covered in the book, Nietzsche is unique, because he was not a philosopher who greatly influenced Wagner, but instead he was himself hugely influenced by his relationship with Wagner.
  
  Magee does not regard anti-semitism as a valid school of philosophy, but he addresses it in the final chapter, because Magee feels that Wagner's anti-semitic reputation is so damaging that it over shadows the greatness of Wagner's work.
  
  
  
• 
  Bakunin

  Great introduction to the Weltanschauung of Wagner. It really manages to penetrate the depth of his psyche and give you a deeper understanding of his work as a whole. The only drawbacks is that the work at times can be quite panegyric but I would say that the strengths vastly outweigh its weaknesses.
• 
  Rod

  "The first chord of Tristan, known simply as 'the Tristan chord', remains the most famous single chord in the history of music. It contains within itself not one but two dissonances, thus creating within the listener a double desire, agonizing in its intensity, for resolution. The chord to which it then moves resolves one of these dissonances but not the other, thus providing resolution-yet-not-resolution. And so the music proceeds: in every chord-shift something is resolved but not everything; each discord is resolved in such a way that another is preserved or a new one created, so that in every moment the musical ear is being partially satisfied yet at the same time frustrated. And this carries on throughout a whole evening. Only at one point is all discord resolved, and that is on the final chord of the work; and that of course is the end of everything - the characters and our involvement with them, the work and our experience of it, everything. The rest is silence."
  
  Bryan Magee's The Tristan Chord is an interesting and insightful analysis of the philosophical influences that helped shape the work of one of the most gifted and controversial composers. I found the book to be comprehensive and yet accessible; intellectual without being overly pedantic; illuminating and absorbing; and at all times beautifully written.
• 
  Dfordoom

  This really is excellent, both on the revolutionary anarchist beliefs of the young Wagner and the Schopenhauerian beliefs of his later years. Magee is also fascinating on the subject of Wagner’s relationship with Nietzsche. A wonderful book, but indirectly I think it will end up costing me a great deal of money, since I now realise that I simply have to acquire Tristan und Isolde on DVD. And eventually I will also have to buy Parsifal.
• 
  Peter McKenzie-Brown

  
  The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy; Brian Magee, 2000, Macmillan
  
  A book review by Peter McKenzie-Brown
  
  Tristan und Isolde is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a libretto he wrote himself. I’m not sure how well you know Wagner. A lot of opera lovers, including my wife, find his operas difficult and only listen to them under duress. Personally, I love his work. Today, I want to talk about the evolution of a revolutionary chord in this opera. I’m not going to push your musical skills too far; my own are not up to the task, in any case.
  
  Wagner’s compositions stress musical themes, and his operas are quite long. Our version of Tristan is more than four hours in length. In effect, Wagner made the orchestra the prima donna in his opera, and this innovation affected other German composers.
  
  According to Bryan Magee, “because of the weight and seriousness of his work [Wagner] is widely supposed to have been someone of a ponderous and humourless disposition, but this is not so at all. For instance, we have this account of his behaviour during rehearsals for the first performance of Tristan: ‘if a difficult passage when particularly well he would spring up, embrace or kiss the singer warmly, or out of pure choice stand on his head on the sofa, creep under the piano, on to it, run into the garden and scramble joyously up the tree…’ Standing on his head was something he did quite often, usually as an expression of delight. So was climbing. Once, arriving at a friend’s house, the first thing he did was climb up the front of the house. On another occasion, visiting a friend for lunch, he immediately clambered to the top of the tallest tree in the garden – and this at the age of 57. He was always much given to sliding down the banisters – again well into middle age. It would be considered extraordinary if someone behaved in this way now, but it was a great deal more extraordinary in the middle of the 19th century. There was something not only of the theatre about Wagner but of the circus, something of the acrobat or clown….” (McGee, 236-237)
  
  Wagner wrote the opera (including its libretto) in the late 1850s; its first performance was in 1865. It is one of the great works of opera, and broke new ground in its use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension. In a letter to his lover – the wife of a businessman who had befriended the composer, and funded his work – Wagner wrote the following:
  “There is no country, no town, no village that I can call my own. Everything is alien to me and I often gaze around, yearning for a glimpse of the land of Nirvana. But Nirvana quickly turns back into ‘Tristan’; you know the Buddhist theory of the origin of the world. A breath clouds the clear expanse of heaven: it swells and grows denser, and finally the whole world stands before me again in all its impenetrable solidity.”
  
  Elsewhere in that letter, Wagner cited a musical passage a young composer named Hans von Bülow had written, and offered a bit of constructive criticism. He did not criticize von Bülow for writing dissonances but for emphasizing them. Rather, he said, composers should conceal their dissonances.
  
  Wagner did not take his own advice, for soon he would be emphasizing a dissonance himself, using a chord that he possibly discovered first in the score of von Bülow’s opera Nirwana. Although it could with justification be called “the Nirwana chord,” it has become known as “the Tristan chord.”
  
  First, let’s get the story out of the way. Tristan is a nobleman from Breton, and the adopted heir of Marke, the king of Cornwall. Tristan’s job is to accompany Isolde, an Irish princess, to Cornwall to marry King Marke. With the aid of a love potion, Tristan and Isolde fall in love aboard ship. This causes a great deal of commotion in the story. By the end of Act III King Marke has shown himself to be an honourable man, but Tristan is dead.
  
  The Tristan chord includes the notes F, B, D♯, and G♯. It is the opening phrase of the opera, and is a leitmotif – a theme – relating to Tristan. I read somewhere that it “contains within itself not one but two dissonances, creating in the listener a double desire, agonizing in its intensity, for resolution. The chord to which it then moves resolves one of these dissonances but not the other, thus providing resolution-but-not-resolution. It is not until we reach the opera’s closing notes that the chord finds resolution.
  
  When it came to promoting his work, Wagner was an almost hyperkinetic genius. For example, he promoted and personally supervised the design and construction of a theatre in Bayreuth, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote as well as the composer’s particular vision about the staging of his works.
  
  It was there, in fact, that American humourist Mark Twain heard Tristan. “I know of some, and have heard of many, who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away,” he wrote after the production. “I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the one sane person in the community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.”
  
  Some years ago the Calgary Philharmonic Opera dealt with the Tristan chord in an extraordinary way. The philharmonic didn’t play the opera, obviously. Rather, it played a composition that began with the opera’s overture and travelled through its orchestral finale. This was an extraordinary way to hear the Tristan Chord, which gradually went from unresolved to full resolution.
  Note: I used many sources for this book besides Bryan Magee’s extraordinary book. A useful online source is available here.
  
• 
  Peter

  Bryan Magee does a wonderful job, making the link between several philosophers (mostly Schopenhauer) and the ideas and music of Richard Wagner.
  
  Even for readers who have no background in philosophy, but who want to get to know more about the ideas behind Wagner's masterpieces, this book is highly recommended.
  
  The ideas are stated clearly without referring to philosophical jargon. Moreover Bryan Magee is an excellent writer with a gift for making difficult ideas accessible to everyone.
  
  His admiration for Kant, Schopenhauer and Wagner clearly shows in the book; but it never becomes annoying.
  
  Certainly worth the read for anyone interested in Wagner's music.
• 
  Stefan

  The Tristan Chord was the first piece of music that actually gave me chills the first time I heard it. It still has the power to stop me in my tracks. No matter what I may be doing when I hear it, I am stunned into the 'romantic crisis' that Wagner penned. Those four little notes, just few seconds of air time, changed the world of music. The boldness of Wagner's music is mirrored in his philosophical pursuits. This book is an excellent study of the the development and influences of Wagner as composer, and Wagner as a brilliant, flawed man. One thing that has always fascinated about Wagner fans (myself included) is the 'Hitler connection'-that unease one gets about admiring a man that Hitler also admired. It is the first time that many people find themselves with a 'common bond' with Hitler. To me, that bond is the Tristan Chord in our lives; that sense of tension and caution (and maybe shame) that makes a beautiful composition a little uneasy to listen to.
• 
  Michael

  This book says everything I have ever wanted to say about why I love the works of Richard Wagner. Full stop.
  If anyone wants to know why some people are so passionate for these works, the thoughts and feelings they evoke, for the transcendence they inspire, look no further than here. There is nothing more I can expand upon that Bryan Magee has not already so precisely, thoughtfully, and movingly captured about these works, their history, their creator, and their impact on those of us who they have touched. Part history, part biography, part philosophy, part art criticism, but all passionate homage to the genius of this controversial nineteenth-century artist.
  An incredibly readable, all-encompassing, accessible book on what is usually one of the most difficult, inaccessible realms in art. I cannot recommend this enough, it will stay on my bookshelf and I will give it to only my closest of friends for years to come.
• 
  Jake

  Beautiful and enjoyable. Twas a very interesting social history stressing the relationship of Wagner's philosophical/intellectual adventures (Hint: he really loved schopenhauer), the many interesting relationships he had maintained, and his operas. The writing was smooth, and the topic fairly coherant. I did not find this book to be so impactful on much in my life, but sure was pretty interesting. Though, I will admit, the philosophy did not reach such immense depths, but it sure was a fun read.
  
  Recommended for those interested in :
  German intellectual history
  how artistic expression can be altered by knowledge
• 
  Szeee

  Wagner egy őrült zseni volt. Magee leírása alapján valószínűleg emberileg annyira nem kedveltem volna, de az operái és a mögöttük rejlő gondolatiság és filozófia egyedülálló a zenében. Wagnernek valójában nem is operái vannak, hanem zenedrámái, ahol a szöveg másodlagos, a dráma egyenesen a zenéből bontakozik ki. Műveinek mondanivalói pedig egyetemesek, az emberi természetre vonatkoznak - transzcendenciával átszőve. Érdemes egy kis időt szánni a zenéjére, valóban páratlan. A Tristan és Izolda Prelude-jét például még mindig nem tudom megemészteni, zseniális :)
  
  Számomra nagyon izgalmas, igazi szellemi kaland volt ez a könyv, azt hiszem beléptem egy újabb univerzumba általa.
• 
  Kristina

  I know, I'm still reading it and I already gave it 5 stars... but it's so fascinating!!! Some of this stuff I knew already, some of it is completely new to me.
  
  So far the only thing I don't like about it is his obvious idealization of Wager, which I feel influences his speculations a little too much sometimes (hello literary bias), but whatev. It's a small price to pay for a thoroughly interesting book
• 
  Jana Light

  Wagner AND philosophy!? Yeah. Pretty much one of the most awesome books ever. One of the best chapters explore the impulse towards oblivion in Tristan und Isolde. It absolutely transformed my experience of the opera as a whole, as well as the music and words on their own merit.
• 
  Dionysius the Areopagite

  In a sense I'm shocked this
  book isn't more well known,
  but as a friend once responded
  to another friend coming out
  of the proverbial, alchemical closet:
  "That's cool man, f' rill more ***** for me!"
• 
  Brian

  A must-read for any Wagnerite. Good writer. Meets anyone at any level.
• 
  Stanley Szelagowski

  Engaging and intellectual.Breathes and lives.Encompassing and succinct.
• 
  Ivan Raykov

  Quite illuminating.
• 
  James

  A hugely enjoyable and informative read, in which Magee explores the various philosophical beliefs that informed Wagner's work. The book emphasizes the enormous change that came about in Wagner's thinking when he abandoned a belief in progressive (indeed, revolutionary) political solutions and embraced Schopenhauer's ideas. The book is a lucid primer to the basic thinking of such philosophers as Schopenhauer himself, Kant and Feuerbach; it also deals extensively with the relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche, whom Magee successfully argues was not an influence on Wagner's thought but rather an acolyte of it (and Schopenhauer's) before Nietzsche broke away (the Oedipal implications of this are left implicit).
  Magee often puts himself into the book, and this is a less happy tendency, as it comes across as him getting in the way. He gets himself in a tangle by affirming strongly that Wagner, even in Parsifal, was a Christian, yet on occasions he comes close to saying that Wagner was saying what the Christian mystics say (which is of a type with Buddhist and Hindu mysticism). What Magee seems to have no concept that being a Christian mystic IS being a Christian (whether that Christian mysticism is also "literal belief" or not). It just comes across as Magee having a block to admitting that Wagner was to that degree aligned to mystical Christianity (and, in fact, Wagner did read and commend St. Paul, which Magee conveniently does not mention).
  Magee's writing becomes rather shrill when, in a long post-script, he deals with Wagner and anti-Semitism, and the question of whether it is embedded in the operas (there's no denying it's in the written work). Understandably he is frustrated by the commentary of ignorant or partisan commentators, but Magee becomes quite unseemly in his prose style, which is a fault he tends to on occasions otherwise, but here it reduces him to the standard of an unedited blogger. There's no faulting the lines of his argument, but much to fault in his prose.
  Nevertheless, a valuable and (if you are a Wagnerite) essential book.
• 
  Monica

  Realmente muy fácil de leer, nos da un vistazo sobre la intensa relación de Wagner con la filosofía. Schopenhauer y Nietzsche son, por supuesto, los filósofos principales. Se agradece que se incluya una breve y muy comprensible explicación del sistema filosófico tanto de los ya mencionados Schopenhauer y Nietzche como de Kant y los anarquistas rusos y alemanes del siglo XIX. De especial interés es el último capítulo, que trata de una manera muy sensible en anti-semitismo y la incómoda y un tanto infundada asociación de Wagner con el nazismo.
  Muy recomendable para entender mejor a Wagner y sus óperas.
• 
  Dirk

  Magee is a great writer, he writes in a very approachable style. His insight and arguments are persuasive. He debunks many myths.
  
  The book could have been a shorter, maybe the structure is also a bit odd, but it's a very good book.
• 
  Brett Linsley

  Outstanding. Sets Wagner, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer at the center of many of today’s greatest cultural challenges. The book stays true to its limited purpose of exploring politics in Wagner’s art. The treatment of Wagner and Nietszche’s relationship is particularly good.
• 
  Salvatore

  An absolutely fascinating, well-written, entertaining, and informative look at Richard Wagner and his relationship to philosophy and philosophers. Bryan Magee, who had a BBC television programme back in the 70s all about explaining great thinkers'/philosophers' work - you should catch it on YouTube!, handles his sources with care, looking at Wagner's deep resonances with Feuerbach and, more importantly, Schopenhauer, and his effects on Nietzsche and the current discussions of anti-semitism. He goes into the radical liberalism of Wagner and how those political theories move into a more aesthetic view of the world, showcasing the parallel evolution of the operas - how the libretti and, moreover, the music echo and form the philosophical beliefs Wagner was trying to uphold in his life and art. There are no broad brushstrokes here, and yet everything feels so accessible, a feat when it comes to many of the continental philosophers, who enjoyed being particularly difficult to read, solely to make it seem that their ideas were particularly deep (we're looking at you Kant).
  
  Wagner has created such fanboys in the literary world, and the more I read about him, the easier it is to see why - not only is the music emotive and expressive, perhaps more so than any words can be (although sometimes one just doesn't want such a swell and can understand why minimalist/modern music has evolved to where it is today). Wagner also wrote all his libretti - being an omnipresent creator of his universe. Thus, literarily, he creates the philosophical drama, the performance of philosophy, without it feeling too didactic or forced, especially when it comes from the unconscious - naturally and unknown to the creator at times - yet he still sees characters as characters, as human, and as those who uphold philosophical ideals about humanity; all of this I'm sure a novelist would be pretty pleased with if he had such an outcome.
• 
  James Henderson

  Recently reread this as background for the novel The Schopenhauer Cure. Magee begins with a sketch of Wagner's ideological trajectory: "He is a classic example of someone who, when young, is a passionately committed and active left-wing revolutionary, but then becomes disillusioned with politics and turns away from it altogether in middle age." There is, according to Magee, a corresponding transition in Wagner's philosophical affiliations, namely he starts in the tradition of Feuerbach and ends as much under the influence of Schopenhauer. The liebestod itself can be traced back to Schopenhauer and this influence, once amplified by Wagner's music, was to have reverberations through literature and art well into the twentieth century. Thomas Mann, one of my favorites is a prime example, but there are many others including musical responses to the Tristan and Isolde legend, epics of the repertoire, all the way up to Messaien's Liebestod. Magee's philosophical precis may be problematic and his writing is never as eloquent as, say, Schopenhauer (whose is?, but for the classical music lover this is an invigorating speculation of both musical and philosophical analysis.
• 
  Heather Denigan

  Magee's defense of Wagner got to be a bit sickening by the last chapter. The most major problem with the book is that it feels like an academic treatment of Wagner's musical philosophy but the tone doesn't stay academic. Magee inserts himself into the flow of thought a great deal. He could have made a better case if he had left his feelings out of it.
• 
  Carol

  Am re-reading this one because I just listened to the Barenboim recording of TRISTAN & ISOLDE in anticipation of his conducting it at the MET this fall. Really good (though politically somewhat unreliable) intro to Wagner and the philosophers who influenced him.
• 
  Veleniki

  A great read while exploring the ring cycle.