CRYSTALLISING WAGNER: SYMMETRY AND SYMMETRY BREAKING IN WAGNER'S TRISTAN PRELUDE

While much has been written about the role of symmetry in music, symmetry breaking has received little attention from music theorists, and has never been dealt with in a systematic manner. Symmetry is invariance, or immunity to transformation. Symmetry breaking is associated with self-organisation, the appearance of information, the resolution of ambiguity and the emergence of self-organisation. In music, symmetry breaking is seen in the emergence of temporal hierarchies through periodic structures such as beat and meter, and in the establishment of tonal hierarchies. In the opening of Wagner's 'Tristan' Prelude, harmonic tension is created by the conflict between symmetrical, disorienting structures on one hand, and asymmetrical, orienting structures on the other. A complementary process is seen in Wagner's use of rhythm.