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The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the notes F, B, D♯ and G♯. More generally, it can be any...

The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the notes F, B, D♯ and G♯. More generally, it can be any chord that consists of these same intervals: augmented fourth, augmented sixth, and augmented second above a root. It is so named as it is the very first chord heard in Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. At the time Tristan und Isolde was first heard, this chord was considered innovative and daring: This motif also appears in measures 6, 10, and 12, several times later in the work and at the end of the last act. Much has been written about its possible harmonic functions or voice leading (melodic function), and the motif has been interpreted in various ways. For instance, Vogel (1962, p. 12) points out the "chord" in earlier works by Guillaume de Machaut, Carlo Gesualdo, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Louis Spohr (Vogel 1962: 12), as in the following example from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18, tempo allegro (see *): What makes the Tristan motif different in the eyes of many analysts is its duration; in the Beethoven example the E♭ resolves to D in approximately a quarter of the time it takes the G♯ to "resolve" to the A in the Wagner. In Beethoven the simultaneity may be