Richard Wagner's musical "palette": explain his harmonic resolutions, and musical logic, anyone?

Question

If you are able, please elaborate on these, in "laymen's" terms.

What I find endlessly fascinating about Wagner's music, is how one "phrase", one segment, flows inextricably from out of one, into another.

And recall having read someplace, that from the opening chord(s) of "Das Rheingold", to the very last of "Die Gotterdammerung", the harmonic resolution(s)are technically a "whole"(if that makes sense; having great difficulty in expressing what I mean).

His "phrasing": the end of one, seems to provide the genesis for the next; and each, represents a "perfect" musical logic.

Have often heard, that he devised a new(for him)harmonic palette for "Tristan und Isolde": can anyone validate this?

What for you, are the most interesting aspects, of his compositional modality?

Thanks,

Alberich

Answer 1

While trying to stay with layman terms as much as possible, let's first consider the "Prelude to Lohengrin." Built on a carefully prepared progression in the key of E, it chromatically wanders through C# and F# before returning to the home key. The thing that sets it apart is the pace, the speed at which Wagner moves from one note and one chord to the next. As one writer put it, "Each chord is an event in itself." We, in essence, only perceive the progress of the music chord by chord.



Being in every sense a true symphonist, Wagner uses orchestration, intervallic spacing, chromatics, and instrumental coloring to hold each chord as long as possible before moving to the next, making the relationship to each other as exciting as possible. By the use of short melodic fragments and orchestral coloring to emphasize impotant notes of a passage he kept the harmonic progressions moving forward.



With "Tristan und Isolde" Wagner carried his "system" to the point that the drama was conceived in order to utilize the lush harmonies and ever-morphing progressions - the vocals and action, as it were, carried along on the surface of the music. The use of complex chromatic alterations, telescoping resolutions, suspensions, and anticipations results in a rather ambiguous tonality. Wagner's "secret" is his moments of resolution, established not directly but indirectly, not the obvious but unexpected resolutions carrying with them the full force of the preceding extended harmonic progression and modulation and most often arriving at a new key. It is this sense of "arrival" that is the focus of Wagner's harmonic technique and at the heart of his harmonic palette - not new but an extension of all he had done before based on his admiration of Beethoven's 9th and the harmonic language of Liszt.



Musician, composer, teacher.

Answer 2

I would agree with your assessment regarding Wagner's ability to stretch a single musical idea for literally hours at a time. It is this ability I find the most fascinating in his music. To accomplish this he did not invent a new tonal system, per se, but, rather, twisted the system in to which he was born. He turned traditional harmony on its head while still using its fundamental principles of tension and release. Harmonically we usually expect one chord to be followed by another. Wagner is able to stretch a single idea for as long as he does by following chords with distantly related harmonies. This prolongation of what is expected allows Wagner to keep the listener engaged and expectant. The most notable example of this can be found in his opera "Tristan und Isolde." In the second act the two lovers, Tristan and Isolde, are singing a love duet that eventually leads to what we expect to be the penultimate chord of a traditional resolution. Instead, when the lovers are caught in the act, so to speak, Wagner throws in a totally unexpected harmony, thereby allowing the dramatic content to continue to flow. When Isolde reprises the duet at the end of the third act (the "Liebestod"), the long awaited resolution finally arrives and the listener's need for resolution is sated. Basically, to be a bit crass, Wagner is like a withholding lover that makes you wait for as long as possible for release.



-Cliff

Answer 3

I just took a semester-long seminar on the analysis of highly-chromatic 19th century music - it was extremely interesting (and intense... whew!), and we spent an entire week on "Tristan."



"Tristan" seemed shockingly chromatic at first since the public had not yet heard the Ring cycle, where Wagner developed many of his chromatic techniques. The "Tristan chord" has been hotly debated ever since the premiere, with many different theories on if the actual chord contains any non-harmonic tones or if it's just a half-diminished seventh chord.



The thing that makes the Tristan chord so slippery is the multitude of resolutions that sound nearly tonal to our ears, yet Wagner provides non-functional resolutions. As you said in your question, Wagner is known for planning out large-scale key relationships and this occurs in Tristan as well - the Tristan chord is often arpeggiated ("Liebestraum") and occurs in key areas of certain sections [F -> B -> D# -> A]. The most interesting aspect of this chord is the complete neutrality of the sound - it could resolve to nearly any other chord and sound "correct." I believe this is why Wagner was obsessed with it while writing "Tristan" and praised one of the early analyses for understanding exactly his writing process.



As for "laymans terms" this is pretty difficult without explaining Neo-Riemannian theory. Ordinarily we could analyze tonal music with Roman numerals, even taking into account chromatic inflections of secondary dominants or borrowed chords. Wagner's music is non-functional in that not every chord relates clearly to the key area - if there is one. Neo-Riemannian analysis provides us with a way to analyze triadic progressions with three basic transformations - P, L, and R - to get from one chord to the next.



For example, the Tarnhelm motive [G#m - Em] is fairly easy to analyze in Roman numerals (G#m: i - bvi) but G#m is not expanded on as a tonal tonic in the section. It makes more sense (once you know the N.R. analytical process, that is) to label the Tarnhelm progression as LR. Instead of relating triads back to a tonal center, Neo-Riemannian analysis looks at how the composer gets from one triad to the next in the least amount of transformations.



To sum it up without lecturing on PLR transformations, Wagner's chromaticism relies on smooth voice leading between triads and deceptive resolutions of expected melodic lines. Take the kiss motive from "Parsifal" - simply a chromatic scale moving through all twelve pitches. Instead of harmonizing this chromatic scale in the traditional way (I-V-I or some version of this progression with secondary dominants), Wagner inserts other non-functional resolutions of each pitch. Where we could not make sense of these triad movements in relation to a key center, Neo-Riemannian analysis would simply reduce them down to 1-3 transformations.



EDIT - forgot to add two incredible resources on the analysis of chromatic tonal music, including many Wagner examples:

Daniel Harrison - Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music

Richard Cohn - many articles in the Journal of Music Theory

Answer 4

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