Referring to melody and harmony, show how Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde provides an appropriate introduction to the drama that follows.

Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is one of the most significant works of the 19th century. It is particularly notable for a radical approach to melody and harmony. The appropriately named ‘prelude’, not ‘overture’, works as an effective introduction to the unfolding music drama, both by establishing the mood of the opera and by introducing the harmonic and melodic language that forms the opera. The overture introduces many of the leitmotifs that Wagner goes on to repeat and manipulate throughout the music drama. In the first bar we hear the ‘grief’ motif in the cellos, characterised by the ascending minor 6th that falls chromatically, in the second bar the oboe plays the ‘desire’ motif, characterised by an upwards chromatic line culminating in a rising semitone appoggiatura, and in bar 17 the cellos play the ‘glance’ motif, characterised by a rising melodic sequence finishing in a rising 7th, another musical characteristic of the work. The melody is extremely chromatic, and the melodys are very long, often feeling unending. Wagner uses these unending melodys to delay harmonic resolution for as long as possible, mirroring the longing and desire of the works titular characters. Harmonically, the work is highly chromatic and often very dissonant. There are very few perfect cadences and cadential points are often put off for as long as possible, an example of a perfect cadence in the prelude can be heard in bar 24. Wagner regularly replaces perfect cadences with interrupted cadences, famously in the opera in act 2 when King Marke sings ‘Rette dich Tristan!’. Here the interrupted cadence mirrors Marke’s interruption of the couple at a climactic moment. Far from using traditional harmony, Wagner’s score is instead dominated by the ‘Tristan chord’, a half-diminished chord that resolves upwards, first heard with the oboe, cor anglais, bassoon and clarinet entry in bar 2. Similarly, he often uses augmented and Neapolitan 6th chords (b. 38, b. 21) as well as the diminished 7th (b. 20). Finally, the prelude itself does not resolve, finishing on the dominant of the ambiguous tonic Cm, preparing for the beginning of the first act.