REAL FAUSTUS

90

Reblog

The notes of the Tristan chord are not unusual; they could be re-spelled to form a conventional half-diminished seventh chord. What distinguishes the chord is its unusual relationship to the implied key of its surroundings. At the time Tristan und Isolde was first heard (1865), the chord was considered innovative, disorienting, and daring. Musicians of the twentieth century often identify the chord as a starting point for the modernist disintegration of tonality.