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I am trying to find a source of musical analysis of Tristan und Isolde as I am not clear on why the unresolved chord in the Prelude remains unesolved for 4 hours. (33 measures before Act II scene 3, for example). It seems to me the composer abandoned the unresolution for most of the work and moved on to other things. Put another way, if the first 18 measures didn't exist, how would the rest of the 3 hours and 59 minutes be any different?

I think every book on harmony and musical analysis devotes at least a couple of pages on Wagner and on the Tristan prelude in particular - but the notion that "the unresolved chord in the Prelude remains unresolved for 4 hours" is quite new to me. It appears to stem from a poetical analysis of the piece, rather than a practical and theoretically sound one.
To me it's clear that Wagner chose the special "longing" sound of the first chord and the chromatic motion in the upper voice to express the core theme of the work, the forbidden love of the two protagonists. After all, Wagner's use of the theme is in line with his practice of using descriptive "Leitmotive" to illustrate characters, events and emotions throughout his operas. I doubt that the composer really thought of the main body of his composition to be just "other things that happen" between the first and last measures of the piece.

For basic analysis, take a look at the Norton Critical Score of the Tristan Prelude, which also includes the full score to Wagner's concert ending of the prelude. There are several analytical essays in the volume.

http://www.amazon.com/Prelude-Transfigu ... ical+score

If you really want to get down and dirty with the entire opera a good -- but tough, even for somebody comfortable with musical close-reading and analysis -- place to go would be Eric Chafe's book on Tristan.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Tragic-Ecstat ... eric+chafe

Hope this helps.

--Sixtus

tjh212 wrote: Put another way, if the first 18 measures didn't exist, how would the rest of the 3 hours and 59 minutes be any different?

The first 18 measure contain some of the most fundamental melodic motives of the opera, regardless of the harmonies. Take away all the motives contained in the opening measures and a good portion of the rest of the opera would vanish as well. The cumulative impact of the nearly continual avoidance of hinted-at harmonic repose creates an extraordinary tension throughout the opera and makes the final Liebestod (which Wagner actually referred to as a Transfiguration) a TREMENDOUS musical-emotional climax. You have to sit through the WHOLE opera to find out how extremely powerful this can be. You can't blithely skip from the Prelude to the Liebestod, as popular as that combination might be in concerts and recordings. It helps if the soprano is still in good shape at that point in the evening.

--Sixtus

Lost sleep reading Chafe. Thank you for the recommendation. Though I confess I did not absorb all the pitch analyses, the one aspect that fascinated me the most was the inter-relatedness of the phrases in the opera - almost "ohne end" - particarly the openings of the Prelude and the Liebestod - so familiar yet never realized the relationships.

The first couple of chapters were beyond my immediate scope, but once when the music examples started, it was like riding a speed train.

It was interesting the author used many engineering-like terms: schematic, scalar motion, periodicity, chromatic logic, transpose, (cadential and tonal) potential, and of course harmonic, distortion, modulation, etc.

Apparently Chafe couldn't pass the name of one singer without mention - Kirsten Flagstadt. I also thought his critique on Alfred Lorenz was a bit superfluous.

Describing an opera in terms of "movements" was also interesting.

One thing I didn't find in the chapter on the Prelude was that the "honor" music also appears there. Also, there are many phrases in Tristan that appears elsewhere in Wagner but the author didn't mention.

I believe my original resolution question did get resolved. Quite subtle for a novice like me, who thought it would have been more transparent since, like Chafe says, it is the most famous cadence in all music and much ink has been spilled. At first I thought it was the penultimate note of the opera (before the curtain note), when the "desire" music concludes, which I think is still a point. But repeated listening to the transfiguration cadence as it appears in the end of Act II scene ii, and in the earlier part of the Liebestod (both of which I thought resolved), I think I can hear (because of the brass in those 2 places) that it is really on the word "welt" that makes the difference.