Ein Heldenleben

his munich friend the tenor heinrich zeller who had coached wagner rolls with him had settled there and a young soprano pauline de anha the daughter of a bavarian general with strong musical enthusiasm soon followed him in proper course she was to become richard strauss's wife a high-spirited outspoken lady never disposed to mince words a source of innumerable yarns and witticisms and who saw to it that her celebrated husband carefully towed the mark pauline strauss was in every way a chapter by herself and when not very long after his death she followed him to the grave it seemed only a benign provision of fate that she should not too long survive him strauss almost instantly infused a new blood into the artistic life of weimar where he settled in eighteen eighty nine and remained till eighteen ninety four the worthy old court kapellmeister edward lassen was sensible enough to allow his energetic new associate complete freedom of action true the artistic means at his disposal were relatively modest and at first they might well have given the ambitious newcomer pause the orchestra then contained only six first violins there was a painfully superannuated little chorus and most of the leading singers had seen better days but the conductor from munich was disturbed by none of these apparent handicaps in bayreuth he had already learned the proper way of producing wagner and even when the means were limited he tolerated no concessions all wagnerian performances had to be done without cuts or at least with a minimum of curtailments a wisecrack began to go the rounds what is richard strauss doing to which the reply was strauss is opening cuts the mouldy old settings were replaced by new ones and once when there was insufficient funds to buy new stage appointments strauss approached the grand duke with the plea that he might lay out of his own pocket a thousand marks to freshen the settings to the credit of the ruler it should be told that he refused the offer and disbursed the sum himself but strauss's reforms were far from ending there he once confessed that in his comprehensive job he was not only conductor but coach scene painter stage manager and tailor in short a thorough-going he threw himself heart and soul into the job so much so that in spite of a small stage and limited means he produced in the presence of none other than cosima wagner a lohengrin that deeply gripped her he had symphonic concerts as well as operas to occupy him at one of the former he transported his hearers with the world premiere of his don juan the date deserves to be noted november eleventh eighteen eighty nine that same year he had composed another tone poem death and transfiguration and on june twenty one eighteen eighty nine he permitted an audience in nearby eisenach to hear it the work is programme music if you will but the idea that it originally set out to illustrate the poem about the man dying in a necessitous little room and after his death struggles translated to supernal glories is wrong moreover the long-accepted notion that the music is based on lines by alexander ritter is fallacious for in the first place the composer did not aim to illustrate his friend's word picture and in the second ritter wrote the poem only after becoming acquainted with the score this is what explains a certain incongruity between ritter's verses and the tones which in reality were never conceived in slavish illustration of them hanslick wrong as usual was to write misleadingly once again a previously printed poem makes it certain that the listener cannot go awry for the music follows this poetic programme step by step quite as in a ballet scenario and he spoke of the score as a gruesome combat of dissonances in which the wood-wind howls in runs of chromatic thirds while the brass growls and all the strings rage by this time accustomed to such critical nonsense the composer did not suffer himself to be troubled what disturbed him much more was that his old champion von beulau gave indications of no longer seeing eye to eye with him at beulau's suggestion strauss had revised and newly instrumented macbeth but the piece was to continue a step-child soon he was increasing his output of songs and enriching leader singers with such treasures as rua maenzela cecilie heimliche auforderung and morgan while only a few short years ahead lay traum durch die dämmerung nachtsgesang and schlagende herzen to delight nearly two generations of recitalists strauss had always been blessed with a robust health unlike wagner for instance he never suffered from exacerbated nerves and violent extremes of unbalanced mood but at the period of which we speak he did experience one of his rare periods of illness what between his guest engagements his rehearsals the strain of composing attending to details of publication and myriad other obligations of a travelling conductor and virtuoso he came down in may eighteen ninety one with a menacing grip which sent him to bed and threatened serious complications he was resigned to anything even if he did confess dying would not be in itself so bad but first i should like to be able to conduct he recovered and had his wish in eighteen ninety two but in the summer he was sick once more this time with pneumonia now it looked as if one lung were seriously threatened he was granted the vacation he requested from november eighteen ninety two to july of the succeeding year taking some works and sketches he started on the advice of his physicians for the south the convalescent with a finished opera libretto in his baggage went to repair his health in italy greece and egypt in egypt he recovered completely in the anhalter railway station berlin he was to see for the last time the mortally sick von bulow likewise journeying to egypt in a last effort to repair his shattered constitution poor bulow was not to survive the trip the wiry frame of strauss helped him over any threat of tuberculosis and not only defied any peril to his lungs but seemed actually to renew his creative powers the libretto which occupied his attention was that of his opera guntram the first and least known of his productions for the lyric stage Guthrum is without question a stiefkind among Richard Strauss's operas.

The average Strauss enthusiast's acquaintance with its music may be said to be confined to the brief phrase from it cited in the section called The Hero's Works of Peace in the tone poem Ein Heldenleben.

Nevertheless, the opera cost the composer six long years of his time.

It received a performance in Weimar July 12, 1894.

franz wurner conducted the premiere of tillo in spiegel in cologne november five eighteen ninety five it has been pointed out that if the masculine element is idealized in strauss's tone poems it is rather the feminine which he gives precedence in his operas something of an exception to this is exemplified in the next purely orchestral work the tone poem thus spake zarathustra which followed less than a year later and was produced under its composer's direction at one of the museum concerts in frankfort on the mine november twenty seventh eighteen ninety six the score is described as freely after nietzsche at once there arose protests that strauss had tried to set nietzschean philosophy to music actually he had aimed to do no such preposterous thing and zarathustra posed no genuine problems if the score is the weaker for some of its syrupy and sentimental pages it includes another such as the magnificent sunrise picture at the beginning which can only be placed for overpowering effect beside the passage let there be light and there was light in haydn's creation if ever anything could testify to strauss's incontestable genius it is this grandiose page other portions it may be conceded lapse into commonplace but the close in two keys at once b and c offered one of the early examples of polytonality that duly outraged the timid today this clash of tonalities has quite lost its power to frighten in eighteen ninety eight and for quite some time afterward it passed for hardly less than an invention of satan strauss intended this juxtaposition to characterize two conflicting worlds of ideas possibly it can be made to sound sharply dissonant on the piano the magic of strauss's orchestration however eliminates all suggestion of crude cacophony on march eighteenth eighteen ninety eight cologne heard under the baton of franz wurner a work of rather different order don quixote fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character it is a set of orchestral variations on two themes the one heard in the solo cello and characterizing the night of the rueful countenance the second solo viola picturing his squire sancho panza as a feat of individualizing these variations are a thing apart the tone painting is unrivalled in its composer's achievements up to that time a number of special effects which long invited attention over and above their real musical worth called forth considerably more astonishment than they really deserved the pitiful bleatings of a flock of sheep violently scattered by the lance of the crack brained don his attacks on a company of itinerant monks his ride through the air amid the whistlings of a wind machine these and other effects of the sort are actually only minor phases of the score its memorable qualities aside from striking pictorial conceits are rather to be found in the moving and tender pages portraying the passing of don quixote as the mists clear from his poor addled brain There are episodes of a melting tenderness in these which rank among the most eloquent utterances Strauss has attained.

Still another tone poem was to succeed, A Hero's Life, Ein Held in Leben, performed under the composer's direction in Frankfurt.

The work is autobiographical, with the composer himself as its hero and his helpmate, obviously Frau Pauline, his better half, as she was to be called, for a long time ein heldenleben passed as the prize horror among strauss's creations especially its fierce and rambunctious battle scene which some critics considered a kind of bugaboo with which to frighten the wits out of grown-up concert-goers for its day a hero's life was unquestionably strong meat if people were horrified by the racket and cacophony of the battle scene they were no less disposed to irritation at the cackling sounds with which strauss pilloried his benighted foes who resented his aims and accomplishments and they were displeased by the immodesty with which he exhibited himself as a real and misprized hero by the citation of fragments from his own works some among them as staunch a strauss admirer as romain rolland were disturbed not because the composer talked in his works about himself but because of the way in which he talked about himself all the same strauss was to boast no truer champion throughout his career than the sympathetic and keenly understanding author of jean christophe ein heldenleben was the last but one of the series of tone poems which were to lead to a new phase of richard strauss's career the last of this series the symphonia domestica was completed in charlottenburg berlin on december thirty one nineteen o three its first public hearing took place under the composer's direction in carnegie hall new york march twenty one nineteen o four the domestic symphony dedicated to my dear wife and our boy is in one movement and three subdivisions after an introduction and scherzo there follow without break an adagio then a tumultuous double fugue and finale the reviewers discovered all manner of programmatic connotations in this depiction of a day in strauss's family life though he was eventually to tell a new york reviewer that he wanted the work to be taken as music pure and simple and not as an elaboration of a specific program he maintained his belief that the anxious search on the part of the public for the exactly corresponding passages in the music and the programme the guessing as to the significance of this or that the distraction of following a train of thought exterior to the music are destructive to the musical enjoyment he forbade the publication of what he sought to express till after the concert he might as well have saved himself the trouble there is no room here to point out even a small fraction of what the critics heard in the work encouraged by a casual note or two the conductor found it necessary to set down at certain stages of the score the youngsters aunts are supposed to remark that the infant is just like his father the uncles just like his mother a glockenspiel announces that the time at one point is seven in the morning the child gets his bath and the ablutions are accompanied by shrieks and squeals husband and wife discuss the future of the baby and there is a lively domestic argument which ends happily ernest newman irritated like the numerous other reviewers by the torrents of vain talk the piece called forth was to complain that strauss behaved as foolishly over the domestica as he might have been expected to do after his previous exploits in the same line the first organization to perform the work was the orchestra of hermann hans wetzler in new york and it took several months longer for the music to reach germany mr newman had found the texture of the whole is less interesting than in any other of strauss's works the short and snappy thematic fragments out of which the composer builds contrasting badly with the great sweeping themes of the earlier symphonic poems the realistic effects in the score are at once so atrociously ugly and so pitiably foolish that one listens to them with regret that a composer of genius should ever have fallen so low more than a decade was to elapse before strauss was to concern himself again with problems of symphonic music opera and ballet were to be the chief business of these activities which one may look upon as the middle period of his creative life one may be permitted a short backward glance to account for some of his previous creations songs a number of the best of them an enoch arden setting declamation with piano accompaniment occupy the late years of the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth not to mention the choral ballad for mixed chorus and orchestra More important, however, is a second operatic venture.

This opera in one act, called Feuer's Not, is a setting of a text by the noted Ernst von Wolzogen, who was associated with the vogue of the so-called Überbrätel, a sort of up-to-date vaudeville and arty movement typical of the period.