In Tristan und Isolde Wagner set the leitmotifs in counterpoint against one another. Similarly, in the Prelude to Act III of Siegfried, a motive known as the “Need of the Gods” is cast against one associated with the “Valkyries.”

The outcome was Tristan und Isolde (1857–59), of which the crystallizing agent was his hopeless love for Mathilde Wesendonk (the wife of a rich patron), which led to separation from his wife, Minna.

…from opera) was the sensuous Tristan und Isolde (1857–59; first performed 1865), with a libretto that reflects his obsession with his own real-life love affairs. The score’s advanced harmonic language was so chromatic (using pitches that are foreign to the established scale) that it fostered the destruction of orthodox concepts…

…study the title roles in Tristan und Isolde. The physical demands of the opera caused them some concern, but Wagner persuaded them to undertake it. The first performance of Tristan und Isolde occurred on June 10, 1865, in Munich after a particularly demanding rehearsal period. Schnorr developed a chill but…

…approach to a cadence in Tristan und Isolde or the Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy is more often than not thwarted by a quick and unprepared switch to a sharply contrasting key and a continuation of the music in that new area. For another, Wagner’s passion for complex chords subject to…

…string quartets—are direct outgrowths of Tristan’s chromaticism, masking but not obliterating the tonal basis. But by 1912 Schoenberg began actively to question tonality as a musical inevitability and to accept the broader implications of Wagner’s style. From then on the pileup of dissonance in Schoenberg’s music became so pronounced as…

…inspiration for Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (1859).

Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (first performed in 1865) was inspired by the German poem of Gottfried von Strassburg.