Talk:Tristan chord

message: Alan Walker in his Liszt biography says that Wagner may have heard the Tristan chord in one of Liszt's songs.  The song was 'Ich mochte hingehn' and was composed 10 years before Wagner started to work on Tristan and Isolde.  Though Beethoven and Chopin may have used the chord before, the interesting thing about this example is that Liszt uses it in a way almost identical to Wagner, according to Walker.  If the music for this could be found, perhaps it would be an interesting addition to this page.--DStong [17:37, 27 April 2007]
:I don't know how old this request is, but in case anyone's curious, "Ich möchte hingeh'n" does indeed have a remarkably similar passage, but modern scholarship has revealed that while the song dates from 10 years before the opera, the passage was added to it after Tristan, and is effectively a quotation. Alan Walker was quoting out-of-date literature, and reviews of his Liszt biography have pointed this out. Junggai (talk) 11:10, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Liszt and the Tristan Chord

message: Can the MIDI file on this page be changed so at least it's at the correct tempo? It's too fast right now. Try eighth note equals 80 or quarter equals 40.
And what's the title and opus number of the Beethoven example?
Ryan
:Welcome. Currently the midi file can't be changed, as midi files can't currently be uploaded to Wikipedia, see Wikipedia talk:Sound. I will attempt to create an .MP3 (or even .ogg) file in a more correct tempo.
:If you clicked on the Beethoven example you would have been taken to a page which would tell you more about the picture. If you simply rest the mouse on the graphic text appears which reads, "Beethoven's Sonata Op. 31 No. 3". Hyacinth 21:54, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: MIDI file

message: While the Tristan chord is implied in Golliwogg's Cakewalk, it is not quoted note for note or even interval for interval.  The three chords that appear are an implied F major chord (From the bass up, A-A-F), A C7 chord (C-Bb-E), and an interesting chord, Ab Minor with an added 11 (Ab-Db-Cb-Eb).  The latter chord is a very intriguing.  Since the Db is added, it functions as a dominant in the key of Gb.  This is reinforced by the next phrase, which resolves to Gb major.  This chord, however, cannot be the Tristan chord as there is no tritone between any of these intervals.  So the quote here is more a quote of the opening of Tristan and Isolde, rather than the chord itself.  Am I interpreting this incorrectly?  Kntrabssi 17:54, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Golliwogg's Cakewalk 

message: I'm removing the Bach example. It's a perfectly ordinary subdominant (in the key of A minor) added sixth chord, resolving to a dominant seventh chord. While it does contain the pitches of a Tristan chord, they're spelled differently and, above all, stacked differently: If this example fits here, so should every other minor added sixth chord in the history of music, making for a great body of largely irrelevant examples of "the Tristan chord before Wagner". The issue of restacking also raises the question of whether the Chopin example belongs here—I think not, since it also is a largely different chord, but I will leave this open for comments for a while before taking action. EldKatt (Talk) 11:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bach example 

message: What I am about to write is OR on my part, but may be of interest to some editors here.
The "Tristan Chord" can almost be signed as a "chord of the second".  The (D#) aug 6 is the only interval that stands in the way.
"Tristan Chord" on F:  (D#) aug 6, (B) aug 4, (G#) aug 2
The "chord of the second" as codified by C. P. E. Bach in his Essay on the TRUE ART OF PLAYING KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS on pg. 256:
[The aspects that agree with the Tristan Chord are bold]
:3. The chord may contain the major or minor sixth, the augmented or perfect fourth, the major, minor, or augmented second.
In Wagner’s example, the bass (considered the dissonance of the “chord of the second”) even resolves down a half step!
--Roivas (talk) 18:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Analyzed from a Thorough Bass Perspective 

message: Why and how does the further reading section need cleanup? Hyacinth (talk) 00:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It possibly did in 2006 when the notice was put up. I have removed it. Smerus (talk) 05:45, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup: Further reading

message: I cannot find what this book is. Either it needs to be referenced or the whole statement of the subdominant interpretation should be deleted. More specifically, I would like to know so I can double check the image. I have a hard time believing that in the book it's published with parallel fifths. — Devin.chaloux (chat) 21:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: See :File:D'Indy Tristan chord IV6-V small.PNG. Hyacinth (talk) 22:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  d'Indy book (1903?) 

message: It appears we've stripped a lot of information out of the image of the chord. Hyacinth (talk) 01:55, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Image info

message: *Paul Lansky uses the Tristan chord and its inversions to make a chord progression for his piece "Mild und Leise". Radiohead would later go on to sample four chords of Lansky's progression for their song "Idioteque" off Kid A, released in 2000.
The above was removed as incorrect, the chord being a(n E) major seventh. Hyacinth (talk) 22:47, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed: Incorrect

message: "Classical" composers prior to the early 20th century wrote their music horizontally, and their musical ideas were based on polyphonic ideas. It is anachronistic to superimpose vertical structures on their music, and worse, to do so prevents a correct understanding of the composer's musical ideas. 
Wagner did not think in terms of chords as we understand them today when he wrote Tristan and Isolde. He thought in terms of passion and flow: of dissonance and resolution, and he purposely toyed with the music theory "rules" of his day in his interplay between "broken rules" and "correct" use of scales. Why do we try to superimpose a dumbed-down populist anachronistic vertical interpretation on his music, when the the music was not conceived in those terms? Wagner's music must be understood and appreciated on Wagner's terms. Not Nashville's terms.Wagner's music must be understood and appreciated on Wagner's terms. Not our own.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.124.149 (talk) 05:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion of chords is inappropriate when the author did not conceive of his work in those terms. 

message: I can't see a convincing reference to the Tristan chord in HMS Pinafore. (Sullivan's best known usage is at the beginning of Iolanthe.)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.18.64.201 (talk) 12:13, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  HMS Pinafore example 

message: This chord, in any meantone that can be considered a septimal meantone (i.e. where the aug 6th approximates 7/4), closely approximates the septimal chord 1/1 - 7/6 - 7/5 - 7/4. The specific root - 5th - 6th - 9th voicing is a fairly consonant voicing of this chord. Should this be mentioned in the article? Seems like it should, if this chord in this voicing was used during the meantone era. SeventhHarmonic (talk) 06:05, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just Intonation implications 

message: "Martin Vogel points out the "chord" in earlier works by Guillaume de Machaut, Carlo Gesualdo, J. S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Louis Spohr[1] as in the following...."
To say the Tristan Chord had been used previous to Tristan (as it ist stated here) would be equivalent to saying that the colour "blue" has been used before Ives Klein used it (inventor of the "International Klein Blue") . Klein used this kind of blue in a special way. simliarly, wagner used a then well known structure in a new context. It's about context. You can't just look for every half-diminished chord and yell: "Look! There's a tristan chord!" It AT LEAST has to be a half-diminsihed chord on the b6 scale degree (Although it is, technically speaking, not that easy. but to have at least the same SOUND, you would have to do THAT). It's not just about the structure, but about the context that structure appears in. For example: with Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18 the problem is that the excerpt is in Eb-minor. The "tristan-chord" here is on the second degree (Fm7b5), which is really nothing special. Had beethoven written that chord as Bm7b5, the real Tristan-Sound would have been evocated. (If you wanted to do it enharmonically correct, you also would have to speak of it as a appogiatura to a french sixt, not a half-diminished). 
It would be better to delete these examples or to anotate that all the predecessors are just the same structure, but not the right context. But then again: then the page should be called "the half-diminished chord appearing somewhere in some works". it would be ridiculous if you would do something equivalent on the page of the the major triad. 
About the Liszt-Chord: It's not even a Half-diminished structure, it's a diminished strucure in the beginning (the D!). At least the rest is identical, so it SOUNDS more like the beginning of Tristan. So did Wagner learn from Liszt? Of course, he admitted that. And he took the structure and made something great out of it.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.180.42.106 (talk) 10:55, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: If you want to dispute Martin Vogel's analysis and Jean-Jacques Nattiez' and others' apparent agreement, this is the wrong venue. IOW, that paragraph cites sources, and unless it can be shown that the article misrepresents them, that's all that counts. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Context