May/June 2005

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Richard Wagner's lasting claim on our attention rests above all on his conception of the "total work of art" or Gesamtkunstwerk, in which music, poetry, dramatic action, and visual spectacle blend to create an overpowering experience. In description, Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk operas tantalize. One reads that in his later works such as Tristan and Isolde, Parsifal, and the Ring Cycle, Wagner eschewed arias designed to show off singers and provide passing delight. Instead he tightly yoked vocal lines, orchestral accompaniment, and visual setting to the purpose of conveying inner psychology, mythic ideals, and philosophical truths, in a quest for a quintessentially mature art form. One eagerly anticipates the magic.

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Why do these pieces occupy such an exalted place in the artistic canon? Addressing that question regarding Tristan and Isolde, Roger Scruton's Death-Devoted Heart is an elegant, erudite exploration attempting to make the operagoer "get" this piece and, by extension, Wagner's intent in all of his Gesamtkunstwerk ventures.

Scruton shows us that traditional dismissals of Tristan's brief plot as Wagner's self-therapy in the wake of a frustrated love affair miss the point. Wagner infused his version of the oft-told tale with insights from Schopenhauer's conception of life as a vile illusion and German Romantic poets' fascination with "night" and "death" as driving themes of existence. His Tristan, in particular, presents himself in a crucial passage as a creature of darkness bound to love only in death; here is his "heart devoted to death" (Todgeweihtes Herz) in Scruton's title. Tristan's mother died in childbirth, depriving him of the ability to find love in the harshness of light, and hence to truly be united with ...