Between them Wagner and his father-in-law, Liszt, pushed harmony – as least in the sense of being grounded in a key – as far as it would go.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this near keylessness occurs in the love music of Wagner’s music-drama Tristan and Isolde. From the very first chord (the ‘Tristan chord’) of the Prelude we’re made aware of the harmonic ambiguity that’s to dominate the music of the lovers:
It’s a dissonant chord of longing which only achieves full resolution nearly four hours later in the final chord of the opera, as you can hear in the two clips – the Prelude & Liebestod (Isolde’s final death-vision of the transfigured Tristan) – below:
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The Art of Listening 