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Updated: September 8, 2025
What draught was that?" she asks in consternation. Brangaene gives the desperate truth. "The love-draught!" Isolde's eyes widen with horror, and turning from Brangaene fix themselves upon Tristan.
Brangaene, she believes, is deceived by her over-great anxiety, deceived by the rustling of the leaves. "You," Brangaene retorts, "are deceived by the impetuosity of your desire! I hear the sound of the horns." Isolde again listens. "No!" she discourses in her over-running tender exhilaration, "the sound of horns was never so pleasing as that!
Wagner has remarked in one of his essays how Beethoven will sometimes break up his motives and, taking one fragment, often consisting of not more than two notes, develop it into something entirely new. It must here be noted how entirely Brangaene misunderstands the situation.
"Streaks of blue are rising up out of the West," Brangaene describes what she is watching, "softly and swiftly sails the ship; on a calm sea before evening we surely shall reach the land." "What land?" Isolde asks unexpectedly. "The verdant coast of Cornwall." "Nevermore!" bursts from the princess, "Not to-day! Not to-morrow!"
Brangaene and Isolde listen intently: Isolde thinks the horns are gone, and what they hear is only the murmuring of the stream and the rustling of the leaves. Then the horns are heard no more. Brangaene, who has been on the alert, suspects a trap behind this hunting-party, which has been arranged by Tristan's friend Melot, but she doubts his good faith.
A cantabile strain in the bass wood-wind continued in the violoncelli with a broken triplet accompaniment in the strings seems to tell of the expected meeting. It is a clear summer night; the horns of the hunting-party grow fainter in the distance. Brangaene, with anxiety in her expression, is listening attentively and waiting for them to cease when Isolde enters.
Reaching completely the state they describe, of forgetfulness of the world and the Day, each the whole world to the other, they sink back side by side, cheek to cheek, among the flowers. From the turret comes the lonely voice of Brangaene, warning the lovers to have a care, have a care, the night is nearly over! There is a leisurely moment. Isolde stirs: "Hark, beloved!"
Against Melot she warns her, Melot, who, when he came aboard the ship with King Mark to receive the bride, and the kindly King was engrossed by anxiety for the condition of the pale and fainting princess, with treacherous, suspicious eye, Brangaene had seen it, scrutinised the countenance of Tristan, to read in it what might thereafter serve his purpose.
While Brangaene is making her way through the sailors to where Tristan is standing at the helm, an interlude made of the sailors' song phrase is played on four horns and two bassoons over a pedal bass, the strings coming in in strongly marked rhythm on the last beat of each bar, marking the hauling of the ropes to clear the anchor.
Isolde flings her arms around Brangaene: "Farewell, Brangaene! Commend me to the world! Commend me to my father and mother!" "What is it?" the handmaid asks, not understanding, yet half frightened; "What are you meditating? Are you planning flight? Whither must I follow you?" "Nay, did you not hear? I shall remain where I am. I intend to await Tristan. Follow faithfully my command.
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