reproach him for his crime, and to bring him before the Order, who will
judge him. In the original version of the poem Guntram complies, and
sacrifices his passion to his vow. But while Strauss had been travelling
in the East he had conceived a sudden horror for this Christian
annihilation of will, and Guntram revolts along with him, and refuses to
submit to the rules of his Order. He breaks his lute--a symbol of false
hope in the redemption of humanity through faith--and rouses himself
from the glorious dreams in which he used to believe, for he sees they
are shadows that are scattered by the light of real life. He does not
abjure his former vows; but he is not the same man he was when he made
them. While his experience was immature he was able to believe that a
man ought to submit himself to rules, and that life should be governed
by laws. A single hour has enlightened him. Now he is free and
alone--alone with his spirit. "I alone can lessen my suffering; I alone
can expiate my crime. Through myself alone God speaks to me; to me alone
God speaks. _Ewig einsam_." It is the proud awakening of individualism,
the powerful pessimism of the Super-man. Such an expression of feeling
gives the character of action to renouncement and even to negation
itself, for it is a strong affirmation of the will.
I have dwelt rather at length on this drama on account of the real value
of its thought and, above all, on account of what one may call its
autobiographical interest. It was at this time that Strauss's mind began
to take more definite form. His further experience will develop that
form still more, but without making any important change in it.
_Guntram_ was the cause of bitter disappointment to its author. He did
not succeed in getting it produced at Munich, for the orchestra and
singers declared that the music could not be performed. It is even said
that they got an eminent critic to draw up a formal document, which they
sent to Strauss, certifying that _Guntram_ was not meant to be sung. The
chief difficulty was the length of the principal part, which took up by
itself, in its musings and discourses, the equivalent of an act and a
half. Some of its monologues, like the song in the second act, last half
an hour on end. Nevertheless, _Guntram_ was performed at Weimar on 16
May, 1894. A little while afterwards Strauss married the singer who
played Freihild, Pauline de Ahna, who had also created Elizabeth in
_Tannhäuser_ at Bayreuth, and who has since devoted herself to the
interpretation of her husband's _Lieder_.
* * * * *
But the rancour of his failure at the theatre still remained with
Strauss, and he turned his attention again to the symphonic poem, in
which he showed more and more marked dramatic tendencies, and a soul
which grew daily prouder and more scornful. You should hear him speak in
cold disdain of the theatre-going public--"that collection of bankers
and tradespeople and miserable seekers after pleasure"--to know the sore
that this triumphant artist hides. For not only was the theatre long
closed to him, but, by an additional irony, he was obliged to conduct
musical rubbish at the opera in Berlin, on account of the poor taste in
music--really of Royal origin--that prevailed there.
The first great symphony of this new period was _Till Eulenspiegel's
lustige Streiche, nach alter Schelmenweise, in Rondeauform_ ("Till
Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, according to an old legend, in rondeau
form"), op. 28.[173] Here his disdain is as yet only expressed by witty
bantering, which scoffs at the world's conventions. This figure of Till,
this devil of a joker, the legendary hero of Germany and Flanders, is
little known with us in France. And so Strauss's music loses much of its
point, for it claims to recall a series of adventures which we know
nothing about--Till crossing the market place and smacking his whip at
the good women there; Till in priestly attire delivering a homely
sermon; Till making love to a young woman who rebuffs him; Till making a
fool of the pedants; Till tried and hung. Strauss's liking to present,
by musical pictures, sometimes a character, sometimes a dialogue, or a
situation, or a landscape, or an idea--that is to say, the most volatile
and varied impressions of his capricious spirit--is very marked here. It
is true that he falls back on several popular subjects, whose meaning
would be very easily grasped in Germany; and that he develops them, not
quite in the strict form of a rondeau, as he pretends, but still with a
certain method, so that apart from a few frolics, which are
unintelligible without a programme, the whole has real musical unity.
This symphony, which is a great favourite in Germany, seems to me less
original than some of his other compositions. It sounds rather like a
refined piece of Mendelssohn's, with curious harmonies and very
complicated instrumentation.
[Footnote 173: Composed in 1894-95, and played for the first time at
Cologne in 1895.]
There is much more grandeur and originality in his _Also sprach
Zarathustra, Tondichtung frei, nach Nietzsche_ ("Thus spake Zarathustra,
a free Tone-poem, after Nietzsche"), op. 30.[174] Its sentiments are
more broadly human, and the programme that Strauss has followed never
loses itself in picturesque or anecdotic details, but is planned on
expressive and noble lines. Strauss protests his own liberty in the face
of Nietzsche's. He wishes to represent the different stages of
development that a free spirit passes through in order to arrive at that
of Super-man. These ideas are purely personal, and are not part of some
system of philosophy. The sub-titles of the work are: _Von den
Hinterweltern_ ("Of Religious Ideas"), _Von der grossen Sehnsucht_ ("Of
Supreme Aspiration"), _Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften_ ("Of Joys and
Passions"), _Das Grablied_ ("The Grave Song"), _Von der Wissenschaft_
("Of Knowledge"), _Der Genesende_ ("The Convalescent"--the soul
delivered of its desires), _Das Tanzlied_ ("Dancing Song"), _Nachtlied_
("Night Song"). We are shown a man who, worn out by trying to solve the
riddle of the universe, seeks refuge in religion. Then he revolts
against ascetic ideas, and gives way madly to his passions. But he is
quickly sated and disgusted and, weary to death, he tries science, but
rejects it again, and succeeds in ridding himself of the uneasiness its
knowledge brings by laughter--the master of the universe--and the merry
dance, that dance of the universe where all the human sentiments enter
hand-in-hand--religious beliefs, unsatisfied desires, passions,
disgust, and joy. "Lift up your hearts on high, my brothers! Higher
still! And mind you don't forget your legs! I have canonised laughter.
You super-men, learn to laugh!"[175] And the dance dies away and is lost
in ethereal regions, and Zarathustra is lost to sight while dancing in
distant worlds. But if he has solved the riddle of the universe for
himself, he has not solved it for other men; and so, in contrast to the
confident knowledge which fills the music, we get the sad note of
interrogation at the end.
[Footnote 174: Composed in 1895-96, and performed for the first time at
Frankfort-On-Main in November, 1896.]
[Footnote 175: Nietzsche.]
There are few subjects that offer richer material for musical
expression. Strauss has treated it with power and dexterity; he has
preserved unity in this chaos of passions, by contrasting the
_Sehnsucht_ of man with the impassive strength of Nature. As for the
boldness of his conceptions, I need hardly remind those who heard the
poem at the Cirque d'été of the intricate "Fugue of Knowledge," the
trills of the wood wind and the trumpets that voice Zarathustra's laugh,
the dance of the universe, and the audacity of the conclusion which, in
the key of B major, finishes up with a note of interrogation, in C
natural, repeated three times.
I am far from thinking that the symphony is without a fault. The themes
are of unequal value: some are quite commonplace; and, in a general way,
the working up of the composition is superior to its underlying
thought. I shall come back later on to certain faults in Strauss's
music; here I only want to consider the overflowing life and feverish
joy that set these worlds spinning.
_Zarathustra_ shows the progress of scornful individualism in
Strauss--"the spirit that hates the dogs of the populace and all that
abortive and gloomy breed; the spirit of wild laughter that dances like
a tempest as gaily on marshes and sadness as it does in fields."[176]
That spirit laughs at itself and at its idealism in the _Don Quixote_ of
1897, _fantastische Variationen uber ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters_
("Don Quixote, fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character"),
op. 35; and that symphony marks, I think, the extreme point to which
programme music may be carried. In no other work does Strauss give
better proof of his prodigious cleverness, intelligence, and wit; and I
say sincerely that there is not a work where so much force is expended
with so great a loss for the sake of a game and a musical joke which
lasts forty-five minutes, and has given the author, the executants, and
the public a good deal of tiring work. These symphonic poems are most
difficult to play on account of the complexity, the independence, and
the fantastic caprices of the different parts. Judge for yourself what
the author expects to get out of the music by these few extracts from
the programme:--
[Footnote 176: Nietzsche, _Zarathustra_.]
The introduction represents Don Quixote buried in books of chivalrous
romance; and we have to see in the music, as we do in little Flemish and
Dutch pictures, not only Don Quixote's features, but the words of the
books he reads. Sometimes it is the story of a knight who is righting a
giant, sometimes the adventures of a knight-errant who has dedicated
himself to the services of a lady, sometimes it is a nobleman who has
given his life in fulfilment of a vow to atone for his sins. Don
Quixote's mind becomes confused (and our own with it) over all these
stories; he is quite distracted. He leaves home in company with his
squire. The two figures are drawn with great spirit; the one is an old
Spaniard, stiff, languishing, distrustful, a bit of a poet, rather
undecided in his opinions but obstinate when his mind is once made up;
the other is a fat, jovial peasant, a cunning fellow, given to repeating
himself in a waggish way and quoting droll proverbs--translated in the
music by short-winded phrases that always return to the point they
started from. The adventures begin. Here are the windmills (trills from
the violins and wood wind), and the bleating army of the grand emperor,
Alifanfaron (tremolos from the wood wind); and here, in the third
variation, is a dialogue between the knight and his squire, from which
we are to guess that Sancho questions his master on the advantages of a
chivalrous life, for they seem to him doubtful. Don Quixote talks to him
of glory and honour; but Sancho has no thought for it. In reply to these
grand words he urges the superiority of sure profits, fat meals, and
sounding money. Then the adventures begin again. The two companions fly
through the air on wooden horses; and the illusion of this giddy voyage
is given by chromatic passages on the flutes, harps, kettledrums, and a
"windmachine," while "the tremolo of the double basses on the key-note
shows that the horses have never left the earth."[177]
But I must stop. I have said enough to show the fun the author is
indulging in. When one hears the work one cannot help admiring the
composer's technical knowledge, skill in orchestration, and sense of
humour. And one is all the more surprised that he confines himself to
the illustration of texts[178] when he is so capable of creating comic
and dramatic matter without it. Although _Don Quixote_ is a marvel of
skill and a very wonderful work, in which Strauss has developed a
suppler and richer style, it marks, to my mind, a progress in his
technique and a backward step in his mind, for he seems to have adopted
the decadent conceptions of an art suited to playthings and trinkets to
please a frivolous and affected society.
[Footnote 177: Arthur Hahn, _Der Musikführer: Don Quixote_, Frankfort.]
[Footnote 178: At the head of each variation Strauss has marked on the
score the chapter of "Don Quixote" that he is interpreting.]
In _Heldenleben_ ("The Life of a Hero"), op. 40,[179] he recovers
himself, and with a stroke of his wings reaches the summits. Here there
is no foreign text for the music to study or illustrate or transcribe.
Instead, there is lofty passion and an heroic will gradually developing
itself and breaking down all obstacles. Without doubt Strauss had a
programme in his mind, but he said to me himself: "You have no need to
read it. It is enough to know that the hero is there fighting against
his enemies." I do not know how far that is true, or if parts of the
symphony would not be rather obscure to anyone who followed it without
the text; but this speech seems to prove that he has understood the
dangers of the literary symphony, and that he is striving for pure
music.
[Footnote 179: Finished in December, 1898. Performed for the first time
at Frankfort-On-Main on 3 March, 1899. Published by Leuckart, Leipzig.]
_Heldenleben_ is divided into six chapters: The Hero, The Hero's
Adversaries, The Hero's Companion, The Field of Battle, The Peaceful
Labours of the Hero, The Hero's Retirement from the World, and the
Achievement of His Ideal. It is an extraordinary work, drunken with
heroism, colossal, half barbaric, trivial, and sublime. An Homeric hero
struggles among the sneers of a stupid crowd, a herd of brawling and
hobbling ninnies. A violin solo, in a sort of concerto, describes the
seductions, the coquetry, and the degraded wickedness of woman. Then
strident trumpet-blasts sound the attack; and it is beyond me to give an
idea of the terrible charge of cavalry that follows, which makes the
earth tremble and our hearts leap; nor can I describe how an iron
determination leads to the storming of towns, and all the tumultuous din
and uproar of battle--the most splendid battle that has ever been
painted in music. At its first performance in Germany I saw people
tremble as they listened to it, and some rose up suddenly and made
violent gestures quite unconsciously. I myself had a strange feeling of
giddiness, as if an ocean had been upheaved, and I thought that for the
first time for thirty years Germany had found a poet of Victory.
_Heldenleben_ would be in every way one of the masterpieces of musical
composition if a literary error had not suddenly cut short the soaring
flight of its most impassioned pages, at the supreme point of interest
in the movement, in order to follow the programme; though, besides this,
a certain coldness, perhaps weariness, creeps in towards the end. The
victorious hero perceives that he has conquered in vain: the baseness
and stupidity of men have remained unaltered. He stifles his anger, and
scornfully accepts the situation. Then he seeks refuge in the peace of
Nature. The creative force within him flows out in imaginative works;
and here Richard Strauss, with a daring warranted only by his genius,
represents these works by reminiscences of his own compositions, and
_Don Juan, Macbeth, Tod und Verklärung, Till, Zarathustra, Don Quixote,
Guntram_, and even his _Lieder_, associate themselves with the hero
whose story he is telling. At times a storm will remind this hero of his
combats; but he also remembers his moments of love and happiness, and
his soul is quieted. Then the music unfolds itself serenely, and rises
with calm strength to the closing chord of triumph, which is placed like
a crown of glory on the hero's head.
There is no doubt that Beethoven's ideas have often inspired,
stimulated, and guided Strauss's own ideas. One feels an indescribable
reflection of the first _Heroic_ and of the _Ode to Joy_ in the key of
the first part (E flat); and the last part recalls, even more forcibly,
certain of Beethoven's _Lieder_. But the heroes of the two composers are
very different: Beethoven's hero is more classical and more rebellious;
and Strauss's hero is more concerned with the exterior world and his
enemies, his conquests are achieved with greater difficulty, and his
triumph is wilder in consequence. If that good Oulibicheff pretends to
see the burning of Moscow in a discord in the first _Heroic_, what would
he find here? What scenes of burning towns, what battlefields! Besides
that there is cutting scorn and a mischievous laughter in _Heldenleben_
that is never heard in Beethoven. There is, in fact, little kindness in
Strauss's work; it is the work of a disdainful hero.
* * * * *
In considering Strauss's music as a whole, one is at first struck by the
diversity of his style. The North and the South mingle; and in his
melodies one feels the attraction of the sun. Something Italian had
crept into _Tristan_; but how much more of Italy there is in the work of
this disciple of Nietzsche. The phrases are often Italian and their
harmonies ultra-Germanic. Perhaps one of the greatest charms of
Strauss's art is that we are able to watch the rent in the dark clouds
of German polyphony, and see shining through it the smiling line of an
Italian coast and the gay dancers on its shore. This is not merely a
vague analogy. It would be easy, if idle, to notice unmistakable
reminiscences of France and Italy even in Strauss's most advanced works,
such as _Zarathustra_ and _Heldenleben_. Mendelssohn, Gounod, Wagner,
Rossini, and Mascagni elbow one another strangely. But these disparate
elements have a softer outline when the work is taken as a whole, for
they have been absorbed and controlled by the composer's imagination.
His orchestra is not less composite. It is not a compact and serried
mass like Wagner's Macedonian phalanxes; it is parcelled out and as
divided as possible. Each part aims at independence and works as it
thinks best, without apparently troubling about the other parts.
Sometimes it seems, as it did when reading Berlioz, that the execution
must result in incoherence, and weaken the effect. But somehow the
result is very satisfying. "Now doesn't that sound well?" said Strauss
to me with a smile, just after he had finished conducting
_Heldenleben_.[180]
[Footnote 180: The composition of the orchestra in Strauss's later works
is as follows: In _Zarathustra_: one piccolo, three flutes, three oboes,
one English horn, one clarinet in E flat, two clarinets in B, one
bass-clarinet in B, three bassoons, one double-bassoon, six horns in F,
four trumpets in C, three trombones, three bass-tuba, kettledrums, big
drum, cymbals, triangle, chime of bells, bell in E, organ, two harps,
and strings. In _Heldenleben_: eight horns instead of six, five trumpets
instead of four (two in E flat, three in B); and, in addition, military
drums.]
But it is especially in Strauss's subjects that caprice and a disordered
imagination, the enemy of all reason, seem to reign. We have seen that
these poems try to express in turn, or even simultaneously, literary
texts, pictures, anecdotes, philosophical ideas, and the personal
sentiments of the composer. What unity is there in the adventures of Don
Quixote or Till Eulenspiegel? And yet unity is there, not in the
subjects, but in the mind that deals with them. And these descriptive
symphonies with their very diffuse literary life are vindicated by their
musical life, which is much more logical and concentrated. The caprices
of the poet are held in rein by the musician. The whimsical Till
disports himself "after the old form of rondeau," and the folly of Don
Quixote is told in "ten variations on a chivalrous theme, with an
introduction and finale." In this way, Strauss's art, one of the most
literary and descriptive in existence, is strongly distinguished from
others of the same kind by the solidarity of its musical fabric, in
which one feels the true musician--a musician brought up on the great
masters, and a classic in spite of everything.
And so throughout that music a strong unity is felt among the unruly and
often incongruous elements. It is the reflection, so it seems to me, of
the soul of the composer. Its unity is not a matter of what he feels,
but a matter of what he wishes. His emotion is much less interesting to
him than his will, and it is less intense, and often quite devoid of any
personal character. His restlessness seems to come from Schumann, his
religious feeling from Mendelssohn, his voluptuousness from Gounod or
the Italian masters, his passion from Wagner.[181] But his will is
heroic, dominating, eager, and powerful to a sublime degree. And that is
why Richard Strauss is noble and, at present, quite unique. One feels in
him a force that has dominion over men.
[Footnote 181: In _Guntram_ one could even believe that he had made up
his mind to use a phrase in _Tristan_, as if he could not find anything
better to express passionate desire.]
* * * * *
It is through this heroic side that he may be considered as an inheritor
of some of Beethoven's and Wagner's thought. It is this heroic side
which makes him a poet--one of the greatest perhaps in modern Germany,
who sees herself reflected in him and in his hero. Let us consider this
hero.
He is an idealist with unbounded faith in the power of the mind and the
liberating virtue of art. This idealism is at first religious, as in
_Tod und Verklärung_, and tender and compassionate as a woman, and full
of youthful illusions, as in _Guntram_. Then it becomes vexed and
indignant with the baseness of the world and the difficulties it
encounters. Its scorn increases, and becomes sarcastic _(Till
Eulenspiegel)_; it is exasperated with years of conflict, and, in
increasing bitterness, develops into a contemptuous heroism. How
Strauss's laugh whips and stings us in _Zarathustra_! How his will
bruises and cuts us in _Heldenleben_! Now that he has proved his power
by victory, his pride knows no limit; he is elated and is unable to see
that his lofty visions have become realities. But the people whose
spirit he reflects see it. There are germs of morbidity in Germany
to-day, a frenzy of pride, a belief in self, and a scorn for others that
recalls France in the seventeenth century. "_Dem Deutschen gehört die
Welt_" ("Germany possesses the world") calmly say the prints displayed
in the shop windows in Berlin. But when one arrives at this point the
mind becomes delirious. All genius is raving mad if it comes to that;
but Beethoven's madness concentrated itself in himself, and imagined
things for his own enjoyment. The genius of many contemporary German
artists is an aggressive thing, and is characterised by its destructive
antagonism. The idealist who "possesses the world" is liable to
dizziness. He was made to rule over an interior world. The splendour of
the exterior images that he is called upon to govern dazzles him; and,
like Caesar, he goes astray. Germany had hardly attained the position of
empire of the world when she found Nietzsche's voice and that of the
deluded artists of the _Deutsches Theater_ and the _Secession_. Now
there is the grandiose music of Richard Strauss.
What is all this fury leading to? What does this heroism aspire to? This
force of will, bitter and strained, grows faint when it has reached its
goal, or even before that. It does not know what to do with its victory.
It disdains it, does not believe in it, or grows tired of it.[182]
[Footnote 182: "The German spirit, which but a little while back had the
will to dominate Europe, the force to govern Europe, has finally made up
its mind to abandon it."--Nietzsche.]
Like Michelangelo's _Victory_, it has set its knee on the captive's
back, and seems ready to despatch him. But suddenly it stops, hesitates,
and looks about with uncertain eyes, and its expression is one of
languid disgust, as though weariness had seized it.