Among musicologists and serious lovers of music Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is generally considered the high point of orchestration in the musical tradition of 19th-century Europe. It shows in most successful form Wagner's unsurpassed gift for utilizing the instruments of the orchestra, and generations of stuttents have worked with it to learn its techniques.

Tristan und Isolde also has a remarkable historical position. It was the opera which most of the post-Wagnerians used to build upon, and it was also the opera which the anti-Wagnerians seized upon very frequently for their attacks and for their attempts to move musically away from Wagnerism. Accepted or rejected, it has been the work with which late 19th- and early 20th-century musicians had to come to terms, and much musical history of this period can be uuderstood through it.