United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The death-motive will be noted at the words "fuer ungesuehnte Schuld." SCENE V. This is a scene of great pathos. Like Elektra when she recognizes Orestes, so Isolde, when left alone with the only friend who is true to her, throws aside all her haughty manner, forgets her wild thirst for revenge, and for a moment gives way to all the tenderness which is hidden under that fierce exterior.
Isolde thinks of her mother's spells with very different feelings; the music becomes more gloomy, and with the words, "Vengeance for treachery rest for my heart in its need," the death-motive, with its solemn trombone-chords, betrays the thought in her mind. She orders Brangaene to bring the casket. Brangaene obeys, and innocently recounts all the wonderful remedies which it contains: Br.
Of equal importance, though occurring less frequently, and only at important and decisive moments, is the death-motive . This motive is less varied than the last, recurring generally in the same key A flat passing into C minor and with similar instrumentation, the brass and drums entering pp on the second chord.
He was gone with those broken sentences ringing in his ears casual and yet haunting meaningless and yet more than pregnant creeping through the magic music of the afternoon, as a death-motive breathes in a love-chant. After a night of little sleep and much thinking he determined to listen to nothing but the love-chant.
It is akin to the death-motive proper, but the solemn harmonies are here torn asunder into a strain so discordant that without the dramatic context it would scarcely be bearable. It is the rending of the bond with this life and with the day.
Brangaene's entreaties are vain; again she cannot feel what Isolde feels notice the difference between her melody and the soaring freedom of Isolde's. At last she seizes the torch and hurls it to the ground to a terrific downward rush of the strings and the yell of the death-motive in the trumpets, the entire orchestra with drums being heard together for the first time.
For moments it seems as if all consciousness of earthly things were lost and the lovers were dissolved into dreamland: Wo des Trugs geahnter Wahn zerrinne. The modulation into the key of the death-motive, A flat, is effected through the chord of the augmented sixth. The whole passage is a vision of the death which they are awaiting, but without its bitterness, only as the portal of eternity.
Word Of The Day