The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wagner's Tristan und Isoldeby George Ainslie HightCopyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributingthis or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this ProjectGutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit theheader without written permission.Please read the "legal small print," and other information about theeBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included isimportant information about your specific rights and restrictions inhow the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make adonation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts****eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971*******These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****Title: Wagner's Tristan und IsoldeAuthor: George Ainslie HightRelease Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7834][This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]Edition: 10Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO Latin-1*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WAGNER'S TRISTAN UND ISOLDE ***Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo, Cam Venezuela, and the Online DistributedProofreading Team.WAGNER'S "TRISTAN UND ISOLDE"AN ESSAY ONTHE WAGNERIAN DRAMABY GEORGE AINSLIE HIGHT

Passing the visions, passing the night,Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrade's hands,Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song ofmy soul,Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying, ever-alteringsong,As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling,flooding the night,Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yetagain bursting with joy,Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses._Walt Whitman._PREFACEThe following pages contain little if anything that is new, or thatwould be likely to interest those who are already at home in Wagner'swork. They are intended for those who are beginning the study ofWagner. In spite of many books, I know of no Wagner literature inEnglish to which a beginner can turn who wishes to know what Wagnerwas aiming at, in what respect his works differ from those of theoperatic composers who preceded him. Some sort of Introduction appearsto me a necessary preliminary to the study of Wagner, not because hisworks are artificial or unnatural, but because our minds have becomeperverted by the highly artificial products of the Italian and Frenchopera, so that a work of Wagner at first appears to us very much as_Paradise Lost_ or a tragedy of Sophokles would appear to a person whohad never read anything but light French novels. He must entirely changethe attitude of his mind, and the change, although it be a return tonature and truth, is not easy to make.Those who wish fully to understand Wagner's aims must read his ownpublished works. I have not attempted to give his views in a condensedform, being convinced that any such attempt could only end in failure.Whenever it has been made, the result has been a caricature; youcannot separate a man's work from his personality. All that I could dowas to endeavour to lay some of the problems involved, as I conceivethem, before the reader in my own words.SAMER, PAS DE CALAIS, _May_, 1912.CONTENTSCHAPTERI. ON WAGNER CRITICISM

II. WAGNER AS MANIII. WAGNER'S THEORETICAL WRITINGSIV. THE ROOTS OF GERMAN MUSICV. THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA AND ITS ANTECEDENTSVI. THE EARLIER VERSIONS OF THE TRISTANMYTHVII. WAGNER'S CONCEPTION OF THE TRISTANMYTHOSVIII. ON CERTAIN OBJECTIONS TO THE WAGNERIANDRAMAIX. MUSIC AS AN ART OF EXPRESSIONX. SOME REMARKS ON THE MUSICAL DICTIONOF "TRISTAN UND ISOLDE"XI. OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSICXII. OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSICCONTINUEDXIII. OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSICCONTINUEDXIV. CONCLUSIONAPPENDIX[Greek: Theohus d' ephame eleountas aemas sugchoreutas te kahichoraegohus aemin dedoke'nai to'n te Ap'olloa kahi Mousas

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kahi dhae kahi tri'ton ephamen, ei' memnaemetha, Dionuson.]CHAPTER ION WAGNER CRITICISMA new work on Wagner requires some justification. It might be urgedthat, since the _Meister_ has been dead for some decades and theviolence of party feeling may be assumed to have somewhat abated, weare now in a position to form a sober estimate of his work, to reviewhis aims, and judge of his measure of success.Such, however, is not my purpose in the following pages. I conceivethat the endeavour to _estimate_ an artist's work involves amisconception of the nature of art. We can estimate products ofutility, things expressible in figures, the weight of evidence, a Bill