Musical Analysis, Modernity and Ambiguity: The Case of Wagner and the Tristan Chord

Studies of measurement and commensuration within sociology usually consider formal rankings and quantification. This paper broadens out the frame of reference to consider the more general problem of classification and calibration by experts and expert knowledge. The music of composer Richard Wagner, with its its shifting tonal ambiguities and propensity for deferred resolution, has been seen as both a revolutionary milestone on the road towards musical modernity and as a dead end of Victorian romanticism. The paper traces how broader moral-philosophical and musicological discourses diversely locate Wagner on the path to modernity. It also explores this issue at the capillary level in the astoundingly diverse range of deeply technical analyses of the four notes of The Tristan Chord.