The Fall - The Coliseum

Perhaps the most intense and beautiful feeling of struggle comes about midway through. Isolde believes she hears a melody coming from Tristan, and sings, Are they waves of refreshing breezes? Are they billows of heavenly fragrances? As they swell and roar around me, shall I breathe them, shall I listen to them? Accompanying this, the violins begin a chromatic melody, a slow upward climb in tight half steps, struggling to reach something, which again and again falls back and then climbs higher. As it does, the chromatic line is often dissonant to the harmony below and to Isolde’s melody. Yet, because these dissonances by their very nature seek to resolve themselves, they push and pull the melody along. The opposition makes for the advance. Throughout, along with struggle, there is a feeling of unrelenting, inevitable progress, and it is thrilling and deeply satisfying.

What can this music teach us about love, especially in relation to difficulty and ease? I once thought love should be easy. I’d meet the right girl, we’d fall in love, and everything would be great, that is, I would be approved of completely, and there would be no questions. Not surprisingly, I had a lot of difficulty in love, and by my mid twenties, I felt despairing on the subject. The greatest good fortune of my life was meeting Aesthetic Realism, because I heard criticism of the thing that stopped me from caring truly for a person, my conceit.

Source: Difficulty and Ease in Richard Wagner’s "Liebestod" by Alan Shapiro

The Fall - The Coliseum

• Released on: The Light User Syndrome album
• Released in: 1996
• Duration: 8:08

"The band started in Manchester in 1976 after Mark E Smith, the lead vocalist, saw the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. Smith’s abstract lyrics resulted in a group both influential and infamous."

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