Visual figures of musical form between musicological examination and auditory perception based on Morgan’s analysis of the “Tristan” Prelude

Abstract

While Wagner and his music have been studied extensively from musicological and music-theoretical perspectives, recent scientific approaches shed light on perceptual processes implicated in the experience of Wagner’s music, yielding important insights into the (re)cognition of musical form. Since findings from such studies are mainly discussed within the realm of music psychology and rarely find their way (back) into musicological discourses, the starting point of the present study is a specific interpretation of form in the “Tristan” Prelude (Prelude to Tristan und Isolde) with a view to engaging in an exchange between music-theoretical and cognitive approaches (such as the theory of conceptual metaphor and image schema theory) to Wagner’s music. In his article “Circular form in the ‘Tristan’ Prelude”, Robert P. Morgan developed a new music-analytical approach to studying form in Wagner’s music, proposing that the musical form of the Prelude can be understood as a circle. Morgan provides an empirically-tractable hypothesis which was tested in a listening study with 45 participants to investigate the extent to which Morgan’s analytical shape is audibly perceived. Contrary to Morgan’s circular interpretation of form in the “Tristan” Prelude, the findings of our study suggest the primacy of a different visual figure, the spiral. However, recourse to the analytic discourse suggests that the spiral can be understood as a further development of Morgan’s figure of thought, synthesizing representations of the Prelude's repetition and development by capturing its unique coincidence of both linearity and circularity. This approach to understanding the “Tristan” Prelude demonstrates how applying music-theoretical and cognitive science approaches gives rise to a fruitful dialogue for both disciplines.