# Liebestod und Verklarung - Tristan und Isolde



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Liebestod und Verklarung is what Wagner himself
called this music.
Doesn't this hint at being more than death?
Why was it changed?
:tiphat:


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Itullian said:


> Liebestod und Verklarung is what Wagner himself
> called this music.
> So why was it changed?
> :tiphat:


Wagner meant liebestod to refer to the prelude setting the scence of mutiple deaths including Tristan, but the song of Isolde "mild un liese" is the Verklarung = transfiguration of Isolde.......over time we have conflated the two into just liebestod

The metaphysical transfiguration of Isolde, the glorious rapture of the universal spiritual realm is told both in words and more importantly thematically in music that swirls and builds to powerful crescendo and when transformed is taken away with joyous peaceful calm.......there is no sorrow or pain here it is pure eternall beauty!










Mildly and gently,
how he smiles,
how the eye
he opens sweetly ---
Do you see it, friends?
Don't you see it?
Brighter and brighter
how he shines,
illuminated by stars
rises high?
Don't you see it?
How his heart
boldly swells,
fully and nobly
wells in his breast?
How from his lips
delightfully, mildly,
sweet breath
softly wafts ---
Friends! Look!
Don't you feel and see it?
Do I alone hear this melody,
which wonderfully and softly,
lamenting delight,
telling it all,
mildly reconciling
sounds out of him,
invades me,
swings upwards,
sweetly resonating
rings around me?
Sounding more clearly,
wafting around me ---
Are these waves
of soft airs?
Are these billows
of delightful fragrances?
How they swell,
how they sough around me,
shall I breathe,
Shall I listen?
Shall I drink,
immerse?
Sweetly in fragrances
melt away?
In the billowing torrent,
in the resonating sound,
in the wafting Universe of the World-Breath ---
drown,
be engulfed ---
unconscious ---


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The custom of performing the beginning and ending of _Tristan_ as a concert piece began in Wagner's own day, and he referred to them as "love death and transfiguration." Liszt was responsible for transferring the title "love death" to Isolde's final aria when he published his piano transcription of it. I'm not aware that Wagner objected, but his original choices were more poetic.


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

So it seems then that Wagner was suggesting something other than just death.
Right?


----------



## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

I do not care how it's called, but I am sure it has to be experienced as a part of the whole. Very difficult and very rewarding experience.


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

> The exhausted heart sinks back, to pine away in a longing that can never attain its end, since each attainment brings in its wake only renewed desire, till in final exhaustion the breaking eye catches a glimpse of the attainment of the highest bliss-the bliss of dying, of ceasing to be, of final redemption into that wondrous realm from which we only stray the further the more we struggle to enter it by force. Shall we call it Death? Or is it not the wonder-world of Night, whence, as the story tells, an ivy and a vine spring of old in inseparable embrace from the graves of Tristan and Isolde?


Wagner's own program note from later orchestral program including liebestod......affirming the transfiguration (verklarung) aspect of Isolde's final aria and its connection to Act 2 garden love scence at night, the mystery of the tristan chord finally resolved in peaceful bliss with aria/opera last notes.....


----------

