Prelude: Tristan und Isolde - Wagner
Overview of the main points of the piece.
MDH - Melody Dominated Homophony
- Created by: ashtonfrancesca
- Created on: 13-01-14 11:31
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- Prelude to Tristan und Isolde - Wagner
- Background
- Opera: tragic love story, ends in death
- Late Romantic
- Tonality
- C major (bar7)
- Tonal ambiguity
- E major (bar11) dominant chord
- Opens in A minor (no A minor chord)
- A major (climax section bar 61-73) double bass has a dominant pedal
- Resources
- Large Orchestra (see score)
- Rarely has whole orchestra playing at same time (except bar38) creates textural colour
- Structure
- No formal structure -some say ternary form
- CODA from bar84 recalls opening
- Melodic sequence (opening in cellos) creates a sort of structure
- Loads of imitation & repetition (bar36&42-violin&oboes)
- Bar8-13 note subtraction between parts
- Harmony
- Cadences
- Very few perfect cadences (Except bar24-25)
- Interrupted cadence (bar16-17)
- Appoggiaturas are v. important: cause dissonance & chromaticism
- Loads of 7th chords - tend to be unresolved
- Tristan Chord (bar106) caused controversy
- Above root made up of:
- augmented 6th
- augmented 4th - tritone - devil's interval
- augmented 9th above the root
- Above root made up of:
- Unusual chords: IIb7, Neapolitan 6th, augmented 6th chords
- Diminished 7ths (bar 29)
- Cadences
- Metre
- 6/8 simple duple compound
- Rhythm
- Repetitive
- Many rests: silence is used effectively (bars10-11)
- Rhythm deliberately obscures any sense of metre: partly as it's v. slow
- Cello (bar17) 3 note rhythm repeated a lot
- Variety of note lengths: demisemiquaver triplets to dotted minims
- Like an appoggiatura figure (bar3)
- Texture
- Cello starts monophonic
- Homorhythmic, single line in 8ves (bar14-15)
- Fairly contrapuntal (bar63-about 83)
- Broken chords in strings (bar 69) quite a romantic & classical feature
- MDH (bar12) in woodwind & underlying parts below flute are fairly homophonic
- 4-part writing (quartet feel-bar11-12) occurs often in woodwind part
- Melody
- Built up of leitmotif - recurring theme associated with character or mood (appears throughout opera)
- Grief Motif: chromatic & descending minor 6th (cello: bar1-2)
- Desire Motif: ascends chromatically (oboe: bar2)
- Glance Motif: ascending, quite sequential, contains wide leaps eg.bar20 minor 7th leap (cello: bar17-22)
- Love potion Motif: slightly similar to glance motif (bar45-47)
- Built up of leitmotif - recurring theme associated with character or mood (appears throughout opera)
- Background
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