Scan 24
Musical Courier 1901-12-25: Vol 43 Iss 1135, 1901
30 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 25. See the scan on archive.org.
1avenue, at the end of which looms the gibbet, its mockery of custom, flaunting of the Philistine and the unrepentant death of Till make it a picture unparalleled in music literature. Scored brilliantly the rondo leaves in its trail a whiff of sulphur and violets. It is fantastic music, fantastically conceived, fantastically executed.
3"Don Quixote," op. 35, being a theme with variations on certain episodes in the life of Don Quixote de la Mancha, was first played in America by Theodore Thomas, January 6, 1899. It is yet to be heard here or in Boston. Arthur Mees has written a descriptive study of the work, and there is an analysis in German by Arthur Hahn. Strauss in character drawing, his profound powers of psychology are at their best in this extraordinary composition. In the introduction we hear the gallant knight, his brain fired by chivalric deeds of derring-do, reading from his beloved volumes of adventure. Fancy a muted tuba! By muting the brass in the conflict with the giants Strauss shows them to be the figments of the Don's imagination. His own "knightly" theme, caricatured in dissonances with a wild harp glissando, reveals his madness and also marks his entrance into the real world accompanied by the doughty Sancho Panza. Ten variations follow, beginning with the windmills, ending with his death. The knight and squire ride through the air on their wooden Pegasus, blindfolded, the wind whistling about their ears—chromatic flute passages, harp, kettle drum and a specially devised wind machine—only to realize later that their steed has never left the ground—this fact being impressed on the listeners by the continued trilling of the brasses throughout the movement. But I leave you to read Mr. Mees' admirable analysis. The poem is philosophic, humorous, ironic, genial and musical—do not forget that, with all his deviations from the normal, Strauss is always musical. His inventive skill, his feeling for the characteristic phrase, his characteristic harmonic hue are exhibited here in their happiest.
5Of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and its titanic profile I have nothing new to say. Readers of The Musical Courier, December, 1897, may remember the study made of this work. Thanks to Mr. Paur, we remember the Nature theme with its mighty transition from C major to C minor; the yearning motive, the Credo; the dwellers in the rear world and the sensuous thrilling sweep of the joys and passions. Science and its crawling fugue, the dance—O, most exacerbating of dances—the night song and the daring dissonances at the close, all these remain images of eternity. It is music the like of which has never before been heard on earth. That alone constitutes a claim for originality quite irrespective of liking or disliking it.
7"No mask! NO mask!" cries the terrified Camilla in "The King in Yellow." As we may remember, Robert W. Chambers relates the tale of a terrible play which poisons the minds of its readers. There are many to whom Richard Strauss' tone poem "Ein Heldenleben" proves as musically baneful. What many have thought and still think is not true. Strauss wears no mask. His own musical lineaments, convulsed in passion's grimace, exultant with grandiose dreams, or distorted by deadly rage, are the naked expression of his fantastic soul. And to the orthodox his contempt for clear tonalities, his mockery of the very harmonic foundations of the art, his juggling with bizarre rhythms—in a word, his avoidance of the normal, the decent, the facile, the smug and the unoriginal is as great a crime against ethics as the lucidly insane proclamations of the Master Immoralist, Friedrich Nietzsche.
9Yet further hearings convince one regarding Strauss' sincerity. He is working out his own artistic salvation on his premeditated own lines. He is the solitary soul of Hauptmann, and he is doomed to mockery until he is understood.
11It is impossible to escape the compelling magnetism of the man from Munich. He is still young, still in his storm and stress period. When the time for clarification comes Strauss in this final analysis will emerge a very big man. His "Hero's Life" has its ugly spots—critics and criticism are objectified in a cruelly sardonic fashion—and that battlefield will remain for this generation either sheer brutal noise or also the forefront of the higher aestheticism in music. One way or the other it matters little: the reputation of Strauss will not stand or fall by this poem. He has written others—"Also Sprach Zarathustra" and "Tod und Verklärung." The main thing to record is the overwhelming impression of power, anarchistic if you will, that informs "Ein Heldenleben." And all the more disquieting is the discovery that this Pied Piper of Dreams wears no antique musical mask—his own is tragic and significant enough.
13And let it be said here that for conventional program music Strauss has ever manifested a violent aversion. The only clue he gives to his work is the title. Highly imaginative commentators do the most mischief, for they read into this music every imaginable meaning. It is then as absolute music that "Ein Heldenleben" must be criticised, though the names of the various subdivisions give the hearer, if not a key, at least notion of the emotional trend of this composition. This is the way Richard Strauss has outlined the scheme of his E flat Symphony, op. 40, his "Eroica":
15I.—The Hero. II.—The Hero's Antagonists. III.—The Hero's Consort. IV.—The Hero's Battlefield. V.—The Hero's Works of Peace. VI.—The Hero's Retirement from Worldly Life and Strife and Ultimate Perfection.
17It must be remembered that this is a purely arbitrary arrangement, for in the formal sense the ground plan of the symphony would be thus: The first three sections contain the thematic statements; the next two—parts four and five—are devoted to the exposition or free fantasia; the last is a highly elaborate summing up or Coda. Here is the symphonic form in an attenuated shape, the chief novelty being the introduction in part five—or second division of the working-out section—of new thematic material, modest quotations from the Strauss earlier symphonic works.
19There can then be no doubt as to the identity of the protagonist of this drama-symphony—it is the glorified image of Richard Strauss. This latter exploitation of personality need not distress us unnecessarily; Strauss but follows in the footsteps of Walt Whitman and of his own contemporaries—Rodin, the sculptor; Gabriel d'Annunzio, in "Il Fuoco"; Nietzsche, in "Zarathustra"; Tolstoy, in all his confessions—despite their inverted humility; Wagner, in "Meistersinger"; Franz Stuck, the Munich painter, whose portrait of his own eccentric self is not the least of his powerful work. Strauss might appreciatively quote Walt Whitman: "Am I of mighty Manhattan the son?" as a justification of what paradoxically could be called his objective egotism. But the composer not only deifies the normal man, he shadows forth Nietzsche's super-normal humanity. He is a very Victor Hugo in his colossal egotism, yet he names it the ego of mankind. So, putting aside all this welter of philosophy and aesthetics, one is forced to return to the music as absolute music.
21The Hero theme is Beethovenian in its majesty—the entire section has a Beethoven color, despite its dissonantal interruptions—while the second section, an amiable picture of the composer's adversaries, suggests in a trictruated manner the irony, caricature and burlesque spirit of "Till Eulenspiegel." His critical adversaries are represented as a snarling, sorry crew, with acid and acrimonious souls, duly set forth by the woodwind instruments, chiefly the oboe; there is also a horrid sounding phrase, empty fifths for tenor and bass tuba. Then the hero's wife is pictured by the solo violin, and it must be confessed that her theme is banal. It mounts in passion and interest after the duologue. After that—chaos! It is but the developing of the foregoing motives. And such an exposition, it is safe to say, has never been heard since saurians roared in the steaming marshes of the young planet, or when prehistoric man met in multitudinous and shrieking combat. Yet the web is polyphonically spun—spun magnificently.
23It is all too intricate to grasp at several hearings, though it may become child's play for the next generation. Richard Wagner's case must not be forgotten at this point. So complex is the counterpoint of Strauss that one of his commentators recommends the all but impossible feat of listening to it horizontally and vertically. In the fifth part we hear themes from the composer's "Don Juan," "Macbeth," "Death and Transfiguration," "Till Eulenspiegel," "Zarathustra," "Don Quixote," "Guntram" and his lovely song, "Traum durch die Dämmerung." With the Coda, after some sinister retrospection of an agitated life, comes peace, pastoral, soul renewing.
25There is some repellent music in the score, but then the neo-realist insist on truth, not on the pursuit of vague and decorative beauty. It is the characteristic versus the ornamental; and who shall dare predict its future success or extinction? One thing must be insisted upon—the absolute abandonment of the old musical rubric, else Strauss and his tendencies go by the board. The well sounding, the poetic—in the romantic sense—are thrown to the winds in this monstrous orgie—an organized orgie in the Balzac meaning of the phrase—for Strauss is only mad north-northwest, and can always tell a harmonic hawk from a hernshaw. In his most delirious moments he remembers his orchestral palette. And what a gorgeous, horrible color scheme is his! He has a taste for sour progressions, and every voice in his orchestral family is forced to sing impossible and wicked things. He owes much to Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner—the Wagner of "Tristan" and "Parsifal"—and at times he compasses both beauty and grandeur.
27And he is one of the greatest masters of his art by virtue of his profound science, fantasy, heaven-scaling audacity and tremendous musical temperament.
29Of "The Famine of Fire," Carl Söhle writes in Musikalische Wochenblatt. And he is by no means a Straussian: "The eagerly awaited one act opera 'Feuersnoth,' by Richard Strauss, was brought out by von Schuch with all the brilliancy of a Dresden première, but unfortunately achieved only a succès d'estime. Is 'Feuersnoth' better adapted for the stage than 'Guntram'? Despite the fact that in the former Strauss steps merrily in the footprints of the 'Meistersinger,' the public in its 'compact majority' drew a long face when the curtain fell. Of course this is no criterion; one knows the reception usually accorded works which break away from the conventional order of things—yet 'Feuersnoth' does not seem to be a revolutionary work in any particular—Strauss does not show any new phase of himself in it. One would imagine that, given an acquaintance with Strauss' originality in music, this new work should not be difficult to comprehend, and that his orchestral compositions are growing
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