Richard Strauss--a new name to conjure with in music! His banner is
borne by a band of enthusiasts like those who, many years ago, carried
the flag of Wagner to the front. "Did not Wagner put a full stop after
the word 'music'?" some will ask in surprise. "Did he not strike the
final note? Are the 'Ring,' 'Tristan' and 'Parsifal' not to be
succeeded by an eternal pause? Is there something still to be achieved
in music as in other arts and sciences?"
Something new certainly has been achieved by Richard Strauss. It forms
neither a continuation of Wagner nor an opposition to Wagner. It has
nothing to do with Wagner, beyond that Strauss appropriates whatever
in the progression of art the latest master has a right to take from
his predecessors. Strauss is, in fact, one of the most original and
individual of composers.
He has been a student, not a copyist, of Wagner. Thus, where others
who have sat at the feet of the Bayreuth master have written poor
imitations of Wagner, and have therefore failed even to continue the
school, giving only feeble echoes of its great master, Strauss has
struck out for himself. With a mastery of every technical resource,
acquired by deep and patient study, he has given wholly new value and
importance to a form of art entirely different from the music-drama.
The music of the average modern Wagner disciple sounds not like
Wagner, but like Wagner and water. Richard Strauss sounds like Richard
Strauss.
One reason for this is that his art work, like Wagner's, has an
independent intellectual reason for being. Let me not for one moment
be understood as belittling Wagner, in order to magnify Strauss.
Wagner is the one creator of an art-form who also seems destined to
remain its greatest exponent. Other creators of art-forms have been
mere pioneers, leaving to those who have come after them the
development and rounding out of what with them were experiments. The
story of the sonata form may be said to have begun with Philipp
Emanuel Bach and to have been "continued in our next" to Beethoven,
with "supplements" ever since. The music-drama had its tentative
beginnings in "The Flying Dutchman," its consummation in "Parsifal."
The years from 1843 to 1882 lay between, but the music-drama was
guided ever by the same hand, the master hand of Richard Wagner. No,
it would be self-defeating folly to make Wagner appear less in order
to have Strauss appear more.
Originator of the Tone Poem.
Nor does Richard Strauss require such tactics. He has made three
excursions into music-drama and he may make others. But his fame, at
present, rests mainly upon what he has accomplished as an instrumental
composer, and in the self-created realm of the Tone Poem. Tone poem
is a new term in music. It stands for something that outstrips the
symphonic poem of Liszt, something larger both in its boundaries and
in its intellectual and musical scope. Strauss does not limit himself
by the word symphonic. He leaves himself free to give full range to
his ideas. A composer of "program music," his works are so stupendous
in scope that the word symphonic would have hampered him. His "Also
Sprach Zarathustra" ("Thus Spake Zarathustra") and "Ein Heldenleben"
("A Hero's Life") are not symphonic poems, but tone poems of enormous
proportions. These, his last two instrumental productions, together
with the growing familiarity of the musical public with his beautiful
and eloquent songs, established his reputation in this country.
To-day, a Strauss work on a program means as much to the musically
elect as a Wagner work meant a quarter of a century ago. In fact, to
advanced musicians, to those who are not content to rest upon what has
been achieved, but are ready to welcome further serious effort,
Strauss's works form the latest great utterance in music. Let me
repeat verbatim a conversation that occurred on a recent rainy night,
the date of an important concert.