Tristan chord - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Tristan chord is a chord

Chord (music)

A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...

made up of the note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

s F, B, D and G. More generally, it can be any chord that consists of these same interval

Interval (music)

In music theory, an interval is a combination of two notes, or the ratio between their frequencies. Two-note combinations are also called dyads...

s: augmented fourth, augmented sixth

Augmented sixth

In classical music from Western culture, an augmented sixth is an interval produced by widening a major sixth by a chromatic semitone. For instance, the interval from C to A is a major sixth, nine semitones wide, and both the intervals from C to A, and from C to A are augmented sixths, spanning...

, and augmented ninth

Augmented second

In classical music from Western culture, an augmented second is an interval produced by widening a major second by a chromatic semitone. For instance, the interval from C to D is a major second, two semitones wide, and both the intervals from C to D, and from C to D are augmented seconds, spanning...

above a root

Root (chord)

In music theory, the root of a chord is the note or pitch upon which a triadic chord is built. For example, the root of the major triad C-E-G is C....

. It is so named as it is heard in the opening phrase of Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

Tristan und Isolde

Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...

as part of the leitmotif

Leitmotif

A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...

relating to Tristan.

Background

The notes of the Tristan chord are not unusual; they could be re-spelled to form a conventional half-diminished seventh chord

Half-diminished seventh chord

In music theory, the half-diminished seventh chord is created by taking the root, minor third, diminished fifth and minor seventh of any major scale; for example, C half-diminished is . Its consecutive intervals are minor 3rd, minor 3rd, major 3rd...

. What distinguishes the chord is its unusual relationship to the implied key of its surroundings. At the time Tristan und Isolde was first heard (1865), the chord was considered innovative, disorienting, and daring. Musicians of the twentieth century often identify the chord as a starting point for the modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

disintegration of tonality

Tonality

Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...

Sound sample of these bars (MIDI file)
This motif

Motif (music)

In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....

also appears in measures 6, 10, and 12, several times later in the work and at the end of the last act. Much has been written about its possible harmonic functions or voice leading (melodic function), and the motif has been interpreted in various ways. For instance, Schering (1935) traces the development of the Tristan chord through ten intermediate steps, beginning with the Phrygian cadence (iv6-V). Vogel points out the "chord" in earlier works by Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....

, Carlo Gesualdo

Carlo Gesualdo

Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer....

, Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

, Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

, or Louis Spohr

Louis Spohr

Louis Spohr was a German composer, violinist and conductor. Born Ludewig Spohr, he is usually known by the French form of his name. Described by Dorothy Mayer as "The Forgotten Master", Spohr was once as famous as Beethoven. As a violinist, his virtuoso playing was admired by Queen Victoria...

, as in the following example from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18

Piano Sonata No. 18 (Beethoven)

The Piano Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3, is a sonata for solo piano by Ludwig van Beethoven, the third and last of his Op. 31 piano sonatas. The work dates from 1802...

, tempo allegro (see *):

What makes the Tristan motif different in the eyes of many analysts is its duration; in the Beethoven example the E resolves to D in approximately a quarter of the time it takes the G to "resolve" to the A in the Wagner. In Wagner, the resolution is used merely in passing to a further chromatic dissonance (the A# in the following measure) rather than as a resting point in itself. In Beethoven the simultaneity may be considered to consist partly of nonchord tones and is not a chord or harmonic entity in itself. The Tristan chord is often taken to be of great significance in the move away from traditional tonal

Tonality

harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

and even towards atonality

Atonality

Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...

; with this chord, Wagner actually provoked the sound

Sound

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

or structure of music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

al harmony

Harmony

to become more predominant than its function, a notion which was soon after to be explored by Debussy

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

and others. "The Tristan chord is," in the words of Robert Erickson

Robert Erickson

Robert Erickson was an American composer.He studied with Ernst Krenek from 1936-1947: "I had already studied—and abandoned—the twelve tone system before most other Americans had taken it up." He influenced notable students Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Paul Dresher...

, "among other things, an identifiable sound, an entity beyond its functional qualities in a tonal organization."

Analysis

Although at the same time enharmonically sound

Sound

ing like the half-diminished chord F-A-C-E, it can also be interpreted as the suspended altered subdominant

Subdominant

In music, the subdominant is the technical name for the fourth tonal degree of the diatonic scale. It is so called because it is the same distance "below" the tonic as the dominant is above the tonic - in other words, the tonic is the dominant of the subdominant. It is also the note immediately...

II: B-D-F-G (the G being the suspension in the key

Key (music)

In music theory, the term key is used in many different and sometimes contradictory ways. A common use is to speak of music as being "in" a specific key, such as in the key of C major or in the key of F-sharp. Sometimes the terms "major" or "minor" are appended, as in the key of A minor or in the...

of A minor).

Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Jean-Jacques Nattiez, CM, CQ, FRSC is a musical semiologist or semiotician and professor of Musicology at the Université de Montréal...

writes that musical analyses are determined by analytical situations especially in regard to the tripartition, plots, and transcendent principle

Transcendent principle

"A transcendent principle...dictates the choice of a theoretical framework, and according to a plot that orients the way the analysis unfolds."...

s. Regarding the Tristan chord, the situations discussed here include what the analyst believes happens with the chord later in Tristan and Isolde, and relate to the possible belief in only three harmonic functions, or in functional successions determined by the circle of fifths

Circle of fifths

In music theory, the circle of fifths shows the relationships among the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys...

Motif

According to J. Chailley (1963, p. 40), "it is rooted in a simple dominant chord of A minor [C major], which includes two appoggiaturas resolved in the normal way":

Thus in this view it is not a chord but an anticipation of the dominant chord in measure three. He explains (1963, p. 8): "Tristans chromaticism, grounded in appoggiaturas and passing notes, technically and spiritually represents an apogee of tension. I have never been able to understand how the preposterous idea that Tristan could be made the prototype of an atonality grounded in destruction of all tension could possibly have gained credence. This was an idea that was disseminated under the (hardly disinterested) authority of Schoenberg, to the point where Alban Berg could cite the Tristan Chord in the Lyric Suite, as a kind of homage to a precursor of atonality. This curious conception could not have been made except as the consequence of a destruction of normal analytical reflexes leading to an artificial isolation of an aggregate in part made up of foreign notes, and to consider it—an abstraction out of context—as an organic whole. After this, it becomes easy to convince naive readers that such an aggregation escapes classification in terms of harmony textbooks."

Functional analyses

Functional analyses include interpreting the chord's root as on:

the fourth scale degree (IV) of A minor (D, according to Arend "a modified minor seventh chord" F-B-D-G → F-C-E-A → F-B-D-A = D-F-A, according to Lorenz an augmented sixth chord
Augmented sixth chord
In music theory, an augmented sixth chord contains the interval of an augmented sixth above its "root" or bass tone . This chord has its origins in the Renaissance, further developed in the Baroque, and became a distinctive part of the musical style of the Classical and Romantic periods.-Resolution...

F-A-D) (Arend, Riemann, D'Indy, Lorenz, Deliège, Gut), based after Riemann on the transcendent principle
Transcendent principle
"A transcendent principle...dictates the choice of a theoretical framework, and according to a plot that orients the way the analysis unfolds."...

that there are only three functions, tonic, subdominant, and dominant (I, IV, and V);
the second degree (II) of A minor (B) (Piston, Walter
Walter Piston
Walter Hamor Piston Jr., , was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter....

1941, Goldman 1965) (Schoenberg, Arnold
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, 1954), as a French sixth (F-A-B-D), based on the transcendent principle of closeness on the circle of fifths
Circle of fifths
In music theory, the circle of fifths shows the relationships among the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys...

with IV being farther than II, with G seen as an accented passing tone, or
as a secondary dominant (V/V=B, five of five, A=I, V=E), and thus also with a root on B (Ergo 1921, Kurth 1920, Distler 1940), favoring the fifth motion B to E and seeing the chord as a seventh chord with lowered fifth (B-D(D)-F-A).
F or B in A: Considering the G as an appoggiatura, the chord can be interpreted as a type of augmented sixth, specifically the French sixth (F A B D# = F B D# (G#-)A).

D'Indy

Vincent d'Indy

Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...

(1903, p. 117), who analyses the chord as on IV after Riemann's transcendent principle (as phrased by Serge Gut: "the most classic succession in the world: Tonic, Subdominant, Dominant" (1981, p. 150)) and rejects the idea of an added "lowered seventh", eliminates, "all artificial, dissonant notes, arising solely from the melodic motion of the voices, and therefore foreign to the chord," finding that the Tristan chord is "no more than a subdominant in the key of A, collapsed in upon itself melodically, the harmonic progression represented thus:

This is the simplest in the world," just a sophisticated sixth chord.

Deliège, independently, sees the G as an appoggiatura to A, describing that

Nonfunctional analyses

Nonfunctional analyses are based on structure (rather than function), and are characterized as vertical characterizations or linear analyses. Vertical characterizations include interpreting the chord's root as on the

seventh degree (VII) (Ward 1970, Sadai 1980), of F minor (E) (Kistler 1879, Jadassohn 1899)

Linear analyses include that of Noske (1981: 116-17) and Schenker

Heinrich Schenker

Heinrich Schenker was a music theorist, best known for his approach to musical analysis, now usually called Schenkerian analysis....

was the first to analyse the motif entirely through melodic concerns. Schenker and later Mitchell compare the Tristan chord to a dissonant contrapuntal gesture from the E minor fugue of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I (cf. Schenker 1925-1930 II: 29).

William Mitchell, from a Schenkerian perspective, does not see the G as an appoggiatura because the melodic line (oboe: G-A-A-B) ascends to B, making the A a passing note. This ascent by minor third is mirrored by the descending line (cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

: F-E-D, English horn: D), a descent by minor third, making the D, like A, an appoggiatura. This makes the chord a diminished seventh

Diminished seventh chord

A diminished seventh chord is a four note chord that comprises a diminished triad plus the interval of a diminished seventh above the root. Thus it is , or enharmonically , of any major scale; for example, C diminished-seventh would be , or enharmonically...

(G-B-D-F).

Serge Gut (1981, p. 150), argues that, "if one focuses essentially on melodic motion, one sees how its dynamic force creates a sense of an appoggiatura each time, that is, at the beginning of each measure, creating a mood both feverish and tense ... thus in the soprano motif, the G and the A are heard as appoggiaturas, as the F and D in the initial motif." The chord is thus a minor chord with added sixth (D-F-A-B) on the fourth degree (IV), though it is engendered by melodic waves.

Allen Forte, who (1988, p. 328) identifies the chord as an atonal set, 4-27 (half-diminished seventh chord) but then "elect[s] to place that consideration in a secondary, even tertiary position compared to the most dynamic aspect of the opening music, which is clearly the large-scale ascending motion that develops in the upper voice, in its entirety a linear projection of the Tristan Chord transposed to level three, g'-b'-d"-f"."

Schoenberg (1911, p. 284) describes it as a "wandering chord [vagierender Akkord]... it can come from anywhere."

Mayrberger's opinion

After summarizing the above analyses Nattiez asserts that the context of the Tristan chord is A minor, and that analyses which say the key is E or E are "wrong". He privileges analyses of the chord as on the second degree (II). He then supplies a Wagner-approved analysis, that of Czech professor K. Mayrberger (1878), who "places the chord on the second degree, and interprets the G as an appoggiatura. But above all, Mayrberger considers the attraction between the E and the real bass F to be paramount, and calls the Tristan chord a Zwitterakkord (a bisexual or androgynous chord), whose F is controlled by the key of A minor, and D by the key of E minor." According to Hans von Wolzogen

Hans von Wolzogen

Baron Hans Paul von Wolzogen , was a German man of letters, editor and publisher. He is best known for his connection with Richard Wagner.-Childhood:...

, Wagner, "with considerable delight believed he had found in this heretofore unknown man from faraway Hungary the theorist he had long been waiting for."

Responses and influences

The chord and the figure surrounding it is well enough known to have been parodied and quoted by a number of later musicians. Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

also quotes it in his Lyric Suite

Lyric Suite (Berg)

Lyric Suite is a six-movement work for string quartet written by Alban Berg between 1925 and 1926 using methods derived from Schoenberg's twelve tone technique. Though publicly dedicated to Alexander von Zemlinsky , the work has recently been revealed to possess a 'secret dedication' and outline a...

for string quartet, deriving the figure from his twelve-tone compositional material. Arthur Sullivan uses the chord (re-spelling it as a chord of F seventh with a flattened fifth) during a recitative in his operetta H.M.S. Pinafore

H.M.S. Pinafore

H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...

, and Debussy includes the chord in a setting of the phrase 'je suis triste' in his opera Pelléas et Mélisande

Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)

Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...

. Debussy also jokily quotes the opening bars of Wagner's opera several times in "Golliwogg's Cakewalk" from his piano suite Children's Corner

Children's Corner

Children's Corner is a six-movement suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was published by Durand in 1908, and was given its world première in Paris by Harold Bauer on December 18 of that year...

. Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

slyly invokes it at the moment in Albert Herring

Albert Herring

Albert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten.Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera The Rape of Lucretia...

when Sid and Nancy spike Albert's lemonade and then again when he drinks it. More recently, American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

composer and humorist Peter Schickele

Peter Schickele

Johann Peter Schickele is an American composer, musical educator, and parodist. He is best known for his comedy music albums featuring his music that he presents as music written by the fictional composer P. D. Q...

crafted a tango around this same figure, a chamber work for four bassoon

Bassoon

The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...

s entitled Last Tango in Bayreuth.

The Brazilian conductor and composer Flavio Chamis

Flavio Chamis

Flavio Chamis is a Brazilian composer and conductor. His CD "Especiaria" was released in Brazil by the Biscoito Fino label. The CD was nominated for a 2007 Latin Grammy Awards, and one of its songs "Deuses do Ceu" is a prize winner of the 2007 John Lennon Songwriting Contest...

wrote Tristan Blues, a composition based on the Tristan chord. The work, for harmonica and piano was recorded on the CD "Especiaria" http://www.biscoitofino.com.br/en/cat_produto_cada.php?id=246, released in Brazil by the Biscoito Fino label. Flavio Chamis found an intriguing relation between the Tristan chord/resolution and the blues scale - much used in jazz - in which all have practically the same notes.

In 1993, the opening theme was used in the film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is an award-winning 1993 film about the piano prodigy Glenn Gould played by Colm Feore. The film's screenplay was written by François Girard and Don McKellar....

in the scene on Lake Simcoe as performed by the NBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini

Arturo Toscanini

Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...

(recorded 1952). Gould had been a fan of Wagner and adapted some of his music to piano, one of Gould's rare recordings from the Romantic Period.

Weblinks

Some occurrences of the Tristan chord in the scores of Petrucci Music Library

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