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Richard Strauss - Herbert Francis Peyser · Legends of the Saints

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  Speaker 1: Forward of Ricard Strauss. This is a LibriVox recording. While
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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  Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
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  Speaker 1: David Wales. Recard Strauss by Herbert F. Peaser Forward, the
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  Speaker 1: writer of a thumbnail biography of Ricard Strauss, finds himself
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  Speaker 1: confronted with a troublesome assignment. Strauss lived well beyond the
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  Speaker 1: scriptural age allotted the average man. He would have been
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  Speaker 1: eighty six had he reached his next birthday. There was
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  Speaker 1: nothing romantic or sensational about his passing, for he died
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  Speaker 1: of a complication of the illnesses of old age. There
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  Speaker 1: was not much truly spectacular about the course of his life,
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  Speaker 1: which was most happily free from the material troubles which
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  Speaker 1: bedeviled the existence of so many great masters. And he
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  Speaker 1: was not called upon to starve or to struggle to
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  Speaker 1: achieve the material rewards of his gifts. He had not
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  Speaker 1: to pass through the conflicts which embittered the lives of
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  Speaker 1: Wagner or Ballios, and he was never compelled to suffer
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  Speaker 1: like Mozart or Schubert. There is no record of his
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  Speaker 1: ever humiliating himself or performing degrading chores for publishers in
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  Speaker 1: return for a wretched pittance. He had wealth enough without
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  Speaker 1: compromising his art to keep the pot boiling, And for
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  Speaker 1: this one can only feel devoutly thankful. What if he
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  Speaker 1: was taxed with sensationalism? How many of the masters of
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  Speaker 1: music has not had, at one time or another to
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  Speaker 1: endure this reproach. If Salome and elektra Einheldenleben until Oilenchwagel
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  Speaker 1: were in their day scandalously sensational, did not the whirligig
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  Speaker 1: of time reveal them as incontestable products of genius, irrespective
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  Speaker 1: of inequalities and flaws. However, Ricard Strauss compares in the
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  Speaker 1: la last analysis with this or that master. He contributed
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  Speaker 1: to the language of music, idioms, procedures, and technical accomplishments
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  Speaker 1: typical of the confused years and conflicting ideals out of
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  Speaker 1: which they were born. His works are most decidedly of
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  Speaker 1: an age, whether or not they are for all time.
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  Speaker 1: In a way, he was almost as fortunate as Mendelssohn.
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  Speaker 1: Need anyone begrudge him? This HFP and a forward Part
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  Speaker 1: one of Recard Strauss by Herbert F. Peaser. This LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The late spring of
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  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four brought two events which, though seemingly unrelated,
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  Speaker 1: actually had a kind of mystic kinship and were to
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  Speaker 1: stir the surfaces of music. Early in May of that year,
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  Speaker 1: Ricard Wagner was summoned to Munich to be become the
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  Speaker 1: friend and protege of the young Bavarian Sovereign Ludvigni Second,
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  Speaker 1: whose real mission on earth was to save the composer
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  Speaker 1: for the world. Hardly more than a month later there
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  Speaker 1: was born in the same city a boy likewise named Ricod,
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  Speaker 1: who was destined, in the fullness of time to become
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  Speaker 1: an essense an air and continuator of the old Master,
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  Speaker 1: though by no means a vain copy of his artistic
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  Speaker 1: and spiritual lineaments, and long before the span of his
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  Speaker 1: days reached its end, he had taken an undisputed place
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  Speaker 1: in history as a seminal force in music, for all
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  Speaker 1: the disagreements and conflicts his art was to engender through
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  Speaker 1: a large part of his more than fourscore years. Richard
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  Speaker 1: Strauss first saw the light on June eleventh, eighteen sixty four,
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  Speaker 1: in a house on the Alzheimer Ech Munich, at the
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  Speaker 1: center of the town and a stone's throw from the
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  Speaker 1: twin steeples of the frauen Kirsche. The edifice in which
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  Speaker 1: the future composer of Salome Elektra and Der Rosencavalier was
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  Speaker 1: born forms part of a complex of buildings in which
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  Speaker 1: a number of larger and smaller beer halls and restaurants,
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  Speaker 1: separated by cobbled courtyards, housed the brewery of Gayorg Shore Senior,
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  Speaker 1: whose son Gayorg Shore Junior enlarged the establishment. Furthermore, he
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  Speaker 1: improved the quality of its products, until Shore Browber became
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  Speaker 1: it seemed to many, including the writer of these pages,
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  Speaker 1: the most incomparable refreshment this side of Heaven. Despite the
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  Speaker 1: close proximity of the Hofbrau House, the Leervembroi, the Augustiner
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  Speaker 1: Brow and the unnumbered other Munich breweries and affiliated Bersteuben.
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  Speaker 1: At this point, the writer ought logically to confess that
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  Speaker 1: he bases his present recollections on what he remembers from
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  Speaker 1: his wanderings in the Bavarian capital prior to the Second
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  Speaker 1: World War, since which time changes without number may well
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  Speaker 1: have changed the picture. But one thing is reasonably certain.
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  Speaker 1: If the old house at Alzheimer Echt number two still stands,
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  Speaker 1: it continues to have a fixed to its wall. The
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  Speaker 1: decorative inscription on eleven Uni eighteen sixty four Vodahir Richard
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  Speaker 1: Strauss geborn on June eleven, eighteen sixty four. Richard Strauss
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  Speaker 1: was born here. The Shores, apart from being excellent brewers,
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  Speaker 1: were excellent musicians. One of the four daughters, Josephine later
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  Speaker 1: Ricard's mother, a fairly accomplished pianist, taught her son piano.
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  Speaker 1: In his fifth year. A noted harpist, O gus Toombo,
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  Speaker 1: continued the lessons, and by the time the boy was
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  Speaker 1: seven he was administered violin instruction. Franz Strauss, Ricard's father,
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  Speaker 1: was an individual of a fur fiber as tough as
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  Speaker 1: Josephine Shore, who became his wife, was mild mannered and sensitive,
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  Speaker 1: but he was an amazingly fine horn player, for the
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  Speaker 1: sake of whose virtuosity and musicianship greater men than he
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  Speaker 1: put up with his ill manners and incredible tantrums a
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  Speaker 1: venomous reactionary. His particular detestation was Wagner, against whom he
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  Speaker 1: never hesitated to exhibit the meanest traits of which he
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  Speaker 1: was capable. Even when the author of Tristan expressed himself
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  Speaker 1: as overjoyed with the sound of the orchestra at a
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  Speaker 1: first rehearsal of his work in the Little Residence Deatre,
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  Speaker 1: Franztrauss retorted, that's not true. It sounded like an old
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  Speaker 1: tin kettle. He pronounced Wagner's horn parts unplayable, so that
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  Speaker 1: Wagner had to call upon Hans Richter to try out
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  Speaker 1: for him some passages and demeister Singer in order to
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  Speaker 1: demonstrate that they were anything but impossible. With the elder Strauss,
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  Speaker 1: Hans Banbulohu was repeatedly at loggerheads, and when he once
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  Speaker 1: attempted to thank Bulah for some favor the latter had
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  Speaker 1: shown young Recard, Strauss Buleeau exploded with the words, you
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  Speaker 1: have no right to thank me. I did your son
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  Speaker 1: a favor, not on your account, but only because I
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  Speaker 1: consider his talent deserves it. To the end of his days,
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  Speaker 1: Franz Strauss remained a cantankerous individual. Young Recard may not
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  Speaker 1: have exhibited the precocity of a Mozart or a Mendelssohn,
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  Speaker 1: but there could be no doubt that musical impulses stirred
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  Speaker 1: in the child. He piled up a considerable quantity of juvenilia.
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  Speaker 1: Beginning as a six year old in eighteen seventy one,
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  Speaker 1: he turned out a Schneider polka, a tailor's polka. There
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  Speaker 1: followed dance pieces for piano, wedding music for keyboard and
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  Speaker 1: children's instruments, some marches, and more miscellany of the soul.
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  Speaker 1: It was related by his naturally proud relations that the
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  Speaker 1: lad could write notes even before he had learned the alphabet.
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  Speaker 1: There would be no particular point in detailing these boyish accomplishments. Yet,
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  Speaker 1: when Ricard was twelve, an uncle paid for the publication
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  Speaker 1: by Braudkov Untreetol of a festival March, which gained the
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  Speaker 1: distinction of appearing as opus i. It need hardly be
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  Speaker 1: said that he participated in domestic performances of chamber music
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  Speaker 1: with regularity. All the same, his school work maintained a
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  Speaker 1: high level, even if it did not consume a needless
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  Speaker 1: amount of time. He also found leisure to jot in
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  Speaker 1: the pages of his mathematics copy book Whole Passages of
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  Speaker 1: a Violin Concerto, which appears to have been set down
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  Speaker 1: during his class room lessons. According to his biographer Villibruandel,
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  Speaker 1: the piece was written so rapidly that the student contrived
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  Speaker 1: a three line stap instead of the usual five line one.
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  Speaker 1: At this period his musical tastes were colored by those
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  Speaker 1: of his father. Thus there is no reason for surprise
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  Speaker 1: that the compositions he turned out up to the end
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  Speaker 1: of his high school days were the customary platitudes of
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  Speaker 1: classical and Romantic models, especially Schumann and Mendelssohn, were rather
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  Speaker 1: colorlessly reflected in the products the youth fashion. Even considering
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  Speaker 1: his father's poisonous detestation of Wagner, it still remains hard
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  Speaker 1: to grasp how weak was the pressure the creator of
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  Speaker 1: Tristan un Meister Singer exercised on the sun precisely when
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  Speaker 1: the Wagnerian idiom was beginning to permeate the language of music.
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  Speaker 1: More than that, it took time for the boys Strauss
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  Speaker 1: to rid his system of the ludicrous prejudices. He parroted.
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  Speaker 1: For a while. To his friend, the composer Ludvig Twili,
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  Speaker 1: he confided the low and grip which he heard at
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  Speaker 1: fifteen was sweet and sickly in all but the action,
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  Speaker 1: and after his first exposure to seek freed, he lamented
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  Speaker 1: that he was more cruelly bored than I can tell. Then,
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  Speaker 1: he concluded, with this burst of prophecy, you can be
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  Speaker 1: assured that in ten years nobody will remember who Recard
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  Speaker 1: Wagner was. Young. Strauss was to outlive such heresies by
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  Speaker 1: the sensible process of steeping himself in Wagner's scores, rather
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  Speaker 1: than by viewing inadequate performances as truths of holy writ.
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  Speaker 1: It is hardly necessary to emphasize the dismay of Franz Strauss,
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  Speaker 1: as little by little he became aware of the turn
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  Speaker 1: things were taking. He, who had striven to bring up
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  Speaker 1: his son in his own philistine ways, was gradually brought
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  Speaker 1: face to face with the upsetting fact that the young
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  Speaker 1: man might be getting out of hand. Recard was no
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  Speaker 1: music school or conservatory pupil, and had presumably none too
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  Speaker 1: many academic precepts to unlearn. One advantage of this was
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  Speaker 1: that nothing tempted him to cut short other phases of
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  Speaker 1: his education, and in the autumn of eighteen eighty two
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  Speaker 1: he began to attend philosophical, literary, and other cultural lectures
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  Speaker 1: at the University of Munich, so that there were no
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  Speaker 1: serious gaps in his schooling. He continued to compose industriously.
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  Speaker 1: A chorus in the Electra of Sophocles was one of
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  Speaker 1: his creations in this period, but in after years he
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  Speaker 1: warned against rushing before the public with unripe efforts. Subsequently,
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  Speaker 1: he visited upon the works of his salad days this
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  Speaker 1: judgment and them I lost much real freshness and force,
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  Speaker 1: so much for those who question even today the soundness
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  Speaker 1: of this early verdict. One advantage he came early to
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  Speaker 1: enjoy the will of Hermann Levy, the Munich conductor, or
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  Speaker 1: let us give him his more imposing official title of
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  Speaker 1: General musik Director, who first presided in by Roight over
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  Speaker 1: Wagner's parsival. In eighteen eighty one, the outstanding chamber music
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  Speaker 1: Organization of the Bavarian capital performed a string quartet of
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  Speaker 1: young Strauss, and very shortly afterwards Levy sponsored the first
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  Speaker 1: public hearing of a rather more ambitious effort, a symphony
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  Speaker 1: in D minor, before a capacity audience. The noted conductor
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  Speaker 1: went so far as to congratulate the high school student.
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  Speaker 1: It should be set down to the credit of the
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  Speaker 1: scarcely seventeen year old composer, that he did not for
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  Speaker 1: a moment suffer the tribute to turn his head. Next morning,
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  Speaker 1: the student was back in his classroom, as unconcerned with
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  Speaker 1: his triumphs of the preceding evening, as if they had
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  Speaker 1: all been no more than an agreeable dream. The usually
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  Speaker 1: peppery father appears to have been somewhat less balanced than
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  Speaker 1: his son, and a little earlier took it upon himself
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  Speaker 1: to dispatch Ricard's Serenade for Wind Instruments Opus seven to
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  Speaker 1: Hans von Bulohu not a genius, but at the most
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  Speaker 1: a talent of the kind that grows on every bush,
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  Speaker 1: shot back the latter after a glimpse at the score
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  Speaker 1: of this adolescent production. But Bulah's irritable mood softened before long,
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  Speaker 1: and he was considerably more flattering about other of the
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  Speaker 1: composer's works which came to his attention. All the same,
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  Speaker 1: Bulau grew to like the Serenade well enough to make
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  Speaker 1: room for it on one of his programs. Meantime, on
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  Speaker 1: November twenty seven, eighteen eighty two, Franz Werner produced it
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  Speaker 1: in Dresden. It was a strange quirk of fate which
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  Speaker 1: made of this piece the unexpected vehicle for Ricard's first
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  Speaker 1: exploit as a conductor. It happened that Beulah eventually scheduled
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  Speaker 1: it eighteen eighty four for one of his concerts. At
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  Speaker 1: the eleventh hour, the older musician, suffering from an indisposition,
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  Speaker 1: appealed to his young friend to direct his own work.
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  Speaker 1: Trusting to luck, Ricard suffered a baton to be thrust
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  Speaker 1: into his hands, and, almost in a dream state, hardly
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  Speaker 1: knowing how things would turn out, piloted the players through
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  Speaker 1: the score. All that I realize, he afterwards said, is
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  Speaker 1: that I did not break down. Young Strauss was not idling.
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  Speaker 1: The products of his energetic young manhood, if they do
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  Speaker 1: not bulk large in his exploits, indicate clearly how carefully
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  Speaker 1: he was striving to learn his craft without at the
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  Speaker 1: same time seeking to blaze trails. One finds him turning
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  Speaker 1: out in eighteen eighty one. Five piano pieces, as well
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  Speaker 1: as the string quartet just mentioned, A piano sonata, a
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  Speaker 1: sonata for cello and piano, a concerto for violin and orchestra,
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  Speaker 1: mood pictures for piano, a concerto for horn, an orchestra
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  Speaker 1: and a symphony an F minor. This symphony, incidentally, was
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  Speaker 1: first produced by Theodor Thomas on December thirteenth, eighteen eighty four,
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  Speaker 1: had a concert of the New York Philharmonic Society. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: more important, however, were the song Strauss was writing at
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  Speaker 1: this stage, for they preserved a vitality which Strauss's instrumental
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: products of that early period have long since lost. It
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  Speaker 1: is not easy to grasp at this date that it
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  Speaker 1: was the early Strauss the world was to thank for
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  Speaker 1: such masterpieces of song literature as the incorrigibly popular one
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: might almost say, Hackneyed Leader as a Zueignung Denacht, di Georgina,
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  Speaker 1: gedouoled alerzelen Stenchen, and a number of other such lyric specimens,
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  Speaker 1: many of them in the truest tradition of the German
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  Speaker 1: art song. Indeed, the boldness, the diversity, declamatory rhythmic and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: melodic features of Strauss's achievements in this field might almost
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  Speaker 1: be said to have preceded the more sensational aspects of
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  Speaker 1: his orchestral work. The songs of Strauss, the earliest specimens
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  Speaker 1: of which date from eighteen eighty two and which span
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  Speaker 1: though in steadily diminishing numbers. The most fruitful years of
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  Speaker 1: his life aggregate something like one hundred and fifty. If
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the better known ones are with piano accompaniment, not a
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  Speaker 1: few are scored for an orchestral one. A large number
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  Speaker 1: long ago became musical household words along with the leader
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  Speaker 1: of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, though having a physiognomy quite
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  Speaker 1: their own. The woman who became his wife, Pauline de Agna,
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  Speaker 1: was an accomplished vocalist, and that circumstance goes far to
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  Speaker 1: account for the diversity of his efforts in this province.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: The joint recitals of the pair stimulated for a considerable
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  Speaker 1: period the composer's lyric imagination. If his inspiration eventually sought
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: expression in larger frames, it must be noted that the
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  Speaker 1: slant of his genius habitually ran to larger conceptions. In
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  Speaker 1: any event, the leader Abunda of Strauss, and his betrothed
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  Speaker 1: help explain the creative impulses which at this stage found
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  Speaker 1: so much of their outlet and songwriting. The composer was
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  Speaker 1: later to explain that a new song might be dashed
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  Speaker 1: off at any half way idle moment, might even be
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  Speaker 1: scribbled down in the twinkling of an eye, between the
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  Speaker 1: acts of an opera performance or during a concert intermission,
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  Speaker 1: and as spontaneously as Schubert Ricard, Strauss busied himself with
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  Speaker 1: poems of the most varied character. On the young man's
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  Speaker 1: twenty first birthday, Hans van Buloh recommended to Duke Georg
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  Speaker 1: of Meinegan, an uncommonly gifted musician, as substitute while he
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: himself went on a journey for his shattered health. Bulahu
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: referred to the suggested deputy as Recard three, since after
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Recard Wagner there could be no Recard two. Strauss arrived
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  Speaker 1: in Mininggen in October eighteen eighty five. The little ducal
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  Speaker 1: capital boasted a high artistic standing. Its theatrical company enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: international fame. The town, to be sure, had no opera,
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  Speaker 1: but the orchestra, though numbering only forty eight instrumentalists, had
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: been so trained by the suffering yet exigent Bulahu that
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: it was virtually unrivaled in Germany. The newcomer was encouraged
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  Speaker 1: to submit, under his mentor's eye, to an intensive training.
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  Speaker 1: Bulohs rehearsals ran from nine in the morning till one
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  Speaker 1: in the afternoon, and his disciple from Munich was invariably
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: on hand from the first to the last note. The
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: rest of the day was devoted to score reading and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: to every subtlety of conductor's technique. The young man was
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  Speaker 1: absolutely overwhelmed by the exhaustive manner in which Beulahu sought
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: out the ultimate poetic content of the scores of Beethoven
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and Bogner, and a favorite saying of the older musician
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: was never to be forgotten by his disciple from Munich.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: First learned to read the score of a Beethoven symphony
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  Speaker 1: with absolute correctness, and you will already have its interpretation.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Strauss made other friends and valuable connections in Minigan. One
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: of the most important and influential of these was an
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: impassioned devotee of Wagner, Alexander Ridder. Like so many apostles
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: of the creator of Parsival at that period, Ritter was
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: a violent opponent of Brahms. Besides, he was the composer
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: of a comic opera Der fau la Hans and of
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: a symphonic poem that once enjoyed a vogue in Germany.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Kaizer Rudolf rit zum Grabe It was Ritter's service to
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: familiarize Strauss with some of the deepest secrets of the
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: scores and writings of Wagner as well as of Liszt,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: and he understood how to fire his young friend with
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: soaring enthusiasm for his own ideals. He also did much
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: to inspire the budding conductor with a taste for the
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: writings of Schopenhauer, an inclination he himself had inherited from Wagner.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Ritter's influence, in short, was one of the luckiest developments
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: at this stage of Strauss's career. The first concert the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Youth from Munich conducted in Minigen took place on October eighteenth,
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five. It afforded him a chance to exploit
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: his talents as pianist and a batanist, as well as composer.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: What with a program that included beethoven S's Coriolanus Overture
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  Speaker 1: and Seventh Symphony, Mozart's C Minor Piano Concerto, and that
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: F Minor Symphony of his own, which Teodor Thomas had
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: conducted the previous year in New York, Strauss had every
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: reason to be pleased with the outcome. Buloh speaking of
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: his debut as pianist and conductor, had referred to it
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: as garadzu faerbluefind simply stunning. Even the hard shelled Brahms,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: who chanced to be on hand, had deigned to encourage
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: him with a cordial, very nice young man. When on
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  Speaker 1: December one of that year, Buloh gave up the orchestra's leadership,
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  Speaker 1: Strauss inherited the post, conducted all concerts and had to direct,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: sometimes on the spur of the moment, almost anything this
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: or that high priced personage might suddenly take a fancy
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  Speaker 1: to hear. With the courage of despair, he repeatedly attempted
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: compositions he hardly new or had not directed publicly. Yet
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: he never made a botch of the job inwardly, as
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: he may have quaked. To this period, belongs a composition
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  Speaker 1: which has survived and at intervals turns up on our
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: symphonic programs, the Curious Burlesque for piano and orchestra. The
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: piece is something of a problem, but it is one
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of the most yeasty and original products of its composer's youth.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: It possesses a type of wit and bold humor worthy
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: of the subsequent author of till Eulenspiegel, if it still
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: betrays Brahmsy and influences. Some of those dialogues between piano
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and Kettledrums depart sharply from the more flabby romantic effusions
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: of the youth, who still clung to the coketails of Schumann,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Mendelssohn and some lesser Romantics. Rightly or wrongly, the composer
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: always harbored a dislike for the burlesque, though when he
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: created it his original instinct led him up right, if
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: more or less unconsciously. Not till four years later did
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: the pianist Oigen Dalgert give it a public hearing in eisignoch.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: At that Strauss himself never brought himself to dignify the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: burlesque with an opus number, and insisted he would not
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: have consented to its publication but for his need of funds. Today,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: the saucy little Score seems more alive than certain other
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: early efforts, which were rather closer to their composer's heart.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Meinigan had been a sort of stepping stone, strongly against
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the advice of Hans ban Buloh, who detested Munich from
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: the depths of his being. Strauss nevertheless accepted a conductor's
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: post in his native city, where he had the advantage
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of continuing his stimulating contact with Alexander Ritter, who had
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: followed him to the Bavarian capital. Yet he did not
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: look forward to a Munich position with particular joy. Before
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: entering on his duties, he permitted himself a vacation in
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Naples and Sorrento. In Munich, he found the royal court
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: deeter bogged down in a morass of routine. The musical
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: direction of that establishment, though in the capable hands of
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: hermon Levi, was unfired by real enthusiasm, let alone true inspiration.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: The first of Strauss's official assignments was the direction of
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Boidieu's opera Comique Jean de Paris, and a quantity of
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: similar old and harmless pieces. One promised duty, which augured
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: well was a production of Wagner's boyhood opera Dethene. He
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: would probably never have been promised anything so rewarding had
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: not the conductor for whom it had been intended in
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the first place fallen ill. But even this unusual prize
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: was in the end snatched from his grasp. After he
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: had presided over the rehearsals. At the last moment, the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: direct section of the Wagner curio was assigned to a
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: certain fisher. There was a managerial conference concerning the matter,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: at which we are told Strauss was like a lioness
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: defending her young. But the intendant put a stop to
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the argument by announcing that he disliked conducting in the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Bulau style, and that moreover, Strauss was becoming intolerable because
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of his high pretensions for one of his youth and
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: lack of experience. Meanwhile, the composer made the most of
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: leisure he did not really want by occupying himself with
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: more or less creative work. One of his editorial feats
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of this period was a new stage version of Luke's
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: ifigenae on Taried, manifestly inspired by Wagner's treatment of the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: same master's iphigeny on olid. More important still was his
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: first really large scale work, Aus Italian, to which he
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: gave the subtitle Symphonic Fantasy for large orchestra. He had
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: completed the score in eighteen eighty six, and on March two,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven, he conducted it at the munich Odeon
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to his uncle Horberger. He wrote an amusing account of
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the first performance, at which it appears. Moderates applause followed
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the first three movements, and violent hissing competed with hand clappings.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: There has been much ado here over the performance of
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: my fantasy, Strauss wrote his uncle and general amazement and wrath,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: because I too have begun to go my own way.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: And his biographer Max Steinitzer, told that the composer's father,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: outraged by the hisses, hurried to the artist's room to
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: see his son and found him far from disturbed, sitting
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: on a table dangling his legs. One detail the composer
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: of this symphonic Italian excursion failed to notice, namely that,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: in utilizing the tune fin Finicula for the movement depicting
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the colorful life of Naples, he was quoting, not, as
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: he fancied, a genuine Neapolitan folk song, but an only
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: too familiar tune by Luigi Denza, who lived much of
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: his life in a London suburb. Be all this as
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: it may, Strauss had more to occupy his thoughts than
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the fortunes of his Italian impressions, to which he had
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: given musical shape. In eighteen eighty six, eighty seven, he composed,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: besides the Sonata in e flat for violin and piano,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: and a number of fine leader among them the lovely
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and uplifting of bright Uge mind Hautt. The tone poem
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Macbeth least known of them all. He revised it in
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety, and on October thirteen of that year conducted
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: it in vimer. But Macbeth has been completely overshadowed by
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the next poem of earlier opus number but later composition,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the glowing, romantic, vibrant Don Juan, which has a spontaneity
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and an indestructible freshness that give it a kind of
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: electrical vitality. None of the orchestral works of their composer's
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: early manhood quite rival unless we accept the masterpiece of
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Humor till eulench Biegel, itself a different proposition. It had
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: been the powerful impressions made on the composer by some
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: of the Shakespearean productions of the Dramatic Company in Minnigan,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: which gave the incentive for Macbeth. In the case of
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Don Juan, the moving impulse was the poem of Nicholas Lenau,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: whose real name was Nimbush von Stalinow, and who described
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the hero of his work as one longing to find
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: one who represented incarnate womanhood, in whom he could enjoy
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: all the women on earth whom he cannot as individuals
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: possess unable in the nature of things to achieve this
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: tall order. Lena's Don Juan falls prey to disgust, and
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: this disgust is the devil that fetches him. Strauss gave
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: no definite meanings to specific phases of his music, though
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: he was not to want for interpreters, and one of them,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Wilhelm Mauki, found it preferable to discard the model supplied
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: by Lenau and to discover in the tone poem the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: various women who inhabit. Mozart's Don Giovanni. Be this as
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: it may. The score delighted the first hearers when it
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: was played in Ymer. They tried to have it repeated
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: on the spot. Hans von Buloh wrote that his protege
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: had with Don Juan had an almost unheard of success,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: and the young composer might well have seen a good
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: augury in the notorious Edward Hanslick's outcries to the effect
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: that the score was chiefly a tumult of dazzling colored dabs,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and in his shrieks that Strauss had a great talent
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: for false music for the musically ugly. It cannot be
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: said that he was truly happy with his Munich experience,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: and the disappointments, which, if the truth were known, seemed
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: for the moment to dog his footsteps. He was, to
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: be sure adding to his accomplishments as a composer, and
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: plans for an opera began to stir in him. Moreover,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: he had more and more chances to accept guest engagements
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: as a conductor, and such opportunities were taking him on
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: more and more tours in Germany. He had striven to
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: do his best in the city of his birth. Yet
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: few seemed to be grateful for his efforts to clean
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: up drabic emulations of routine. Puloh realized from long and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: heart breaking experience what his friend was undergoing. Very few
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: thanked the idea dealist for his efforts to better the
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: musical standing of his hometown and of Part one, Part
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: two of Richard Strauss by Herbert F. Peaser. This LibriVox
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. At what might be
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: described as a truly psychological moment of his career. Strauss
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: was approached by Beulah's old friend, the former Liszt pupil
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Hans von Braunsart, with an invitation to transfer his activities
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: to Weimer. He had every reason to look with favor
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: on the project. Weimer was hallowed in his eyes by
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: its earlier literary and musical associations. It had harbored Gerta
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: and Schiller, and been sanctified in the young musician sight
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: by the labours of Liszt. His Munich friend, the tenor
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Heinrich Zeller, who had coached Wagner Rolls with him, had
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: settled there, and a young soprano, Pauline Dean, the daughter
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: of a Bavarian general with strong musical enthusiasms, soon followed him.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: In proper course, she was to become Richard Strauss's wife,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: A high spirited, outspoken lady, never disposed to mince words,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: a source of innumerable yarns and witticisms, and who saw
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: to it that her celebrated husband carefully towed the mark.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Pauline Strauss was in every way a chapter by herself,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and when not very long after his death, she followed
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: him to the grave. It seemed only a benign provision
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: of fate that she should not too long survive him.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Strauss almost instantly infused a new blood into the artistic
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: life of Weimer, where he settled in eighteen eighty nine
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and remained till eighteen ninety four. The worthy old court
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: capellmeister Edward Lawson was sensible enough to allow his energetic
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: new associate complete freedom of action. True the artistic means
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: means at his disposal were relatively modest, and at first
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: they might well have given the ambitious newcomer pause. The
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: orchestra then contained only six first violins, there was a
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: painfully superannuated little chorus, and most of the leading singers
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: had seen better days. But the conductor from Munich was
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: disturbed by none of these apparent handicaps. In by right,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: he had already learned the proper way of producing Wagner,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and even when the means were limited, he tolerated no concessions.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: All Wagner in performances had to be done without cuts,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: or at least with a minimum of curtailments. A wise
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: crack began to go the rounds. What is Richard Strauss
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: doing to which The reply was Strauss is opening cuts.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: The moldy old settings were replaced by new ones, and once,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: when there was insufficient funds to buy new stage appointments,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Strauss approached the Grand Duke with the plea that he
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: might lay out of his own pocket a thousand marks
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: to freshen the settings. To the credit of the ruler,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: it should be told that he refused the offer and
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: dispersed the sum himself. But Strauss's reforms were far from
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: ending there. He once confessed that in his comprehensive job,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: he was not only conductor, but coach, scene painter, stage manager,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: and taylor in short, a thorough going pooh bah. He
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: threw himself heart and soul into the job, so much
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: so that, in spite of a small stage and limited means,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: he produced, in the presence of none other than Cossima Wagner,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: a loengrin that deeply gripped her. He had symphonic concerts
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: as well as operas to occupy him. At one of
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the former, he transported his hearers with the world premiere
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: of his Don Juan. The date deserves to be noted
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: November eleventh, eighteen eighty nine. That same year he had
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: composed another tone poem, Death and Transfiguration, and on June
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: twenty one, eight eighteen eighty nine, he permitted an audience
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: in nearby Eisenach to hear it. The work is programmed
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: music if you will, but the idea that it originally
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: set out to illustrate the poem about the man dying
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: in a necessitous little room and after his death struggles
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: translated to supernal glories is wrong. Moreover, the long accepted
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: notion that the music is based on lines by Alexander
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Ritter is fallacious, for in the first place, the composer
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: did not aim to illustrate his friend's word picture, and
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: in the second, Ritter wrote the poem only after becoming
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: acquainted with a score. This is what explains a certain
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: incongruity between Ritter's verses and the tones, which in reality
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: were never conceived in slavish illustration of them. Hanzlik wrong
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: as usual, was to write misleadingly. Once again, a previously
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: printed poem makes it certain that the listener cannot go awry,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: for the music follows this poe poetic program step by step,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: quite as in a ballet scenario, and he spoke of
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: the score as a gruesome combat of dissonances, in which
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the wood wind howls in runs of chromatic thirds, while
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: the brass growls and all the strings rage. By this
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: time accustomed to such critical nonsense, the composer did not
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: suffer himself to be troubled. What disturbed him much more
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: was that his old champion, Vombulau, gave indications of no
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: longer seeing eye to eye with him. At Bulah suggests
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: jen Strauss had revised and newly instrumented Macbeth, but the
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: piece was to continue a step child. Soon he was
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: increasing his output of songs and enriching leader singers with
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: such treasures as Rua Minezela, cecili eimliche auf d'erung and Morgan,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: while only a few short years ahead lay traumdush di Demeroun,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Knacht Gizong and schlagende Hetson to delight nearly two generations
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: of recitalists. Strauss had always been blessed with a robust health.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Unlike Wagner, for instance, he never suffered from exacerbated nerves
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and violent extremes of unbalanced mood. But at the period
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: of which we speak he did experience one of his
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: rare periods of illness. What between his guest engagements is rehearsals,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: the strain of composing, attending to details of publication, and
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: myriad other obligations of a traveling conductor. In Virtuoso, he
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: came down in May eighteen ninety one with a menacing
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: grip which sent him to bed and threatened serious complications.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: He was resigned to anything. Even if he did confess
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: dying would not be in itself so bad. But first
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I should like to be able to conduct Tuistan. He
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: recovered and had his wish In eighteen ninety two. In
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the summer he was sick once more, this time with pneumonia.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Now it looked as if one lung were seriously threatened.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: He was granted the vacation he requested from November eighteen
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: ninety two to July of the succeeding year. Taking some
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: works and sketches, he started, on the advice of his physicians,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: for the South. The convalescent, with a finished opera libretto
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: in his baggage, went to repair his health in Italy, Greece,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: and Egypt. In Egypt he recovered completely. In the unhalted
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: railway station Berlin, he was to see for the last
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: time the mortally sick von Buloh, likewise journeying to Egypt
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: in a last effort to repair his shattered constitution. Poor
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Buloh was not to survive the trip. The wiry frame
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: of Strauss helped him over any threat of tuberculosis, and
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: not only defied any peril to his lungs, but seemed
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: actually to renew his creative life powers. The libretto which
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: occupied his attention was that of his opera Guntram, the
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: first and least known of his productions for the lyric stage.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Gutram is, without question a stief kint Among Richard Strauss's operas.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: The average Strauss enthusiast's acquaintance with its music may be
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: said to be confined to the brief phrase from it
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: cited in the section called the Hero's works of Peace
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: in the Tone Poem and held in Leiben. Nevertheless, the
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: opera cost the composer six long years of his time.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: It received a performance in Weimer July twelve, eighteen ninety four.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: On October twenty ninth, nineteen forty, it was to be
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: heard again and once more in Weimer. Trauss tells in
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: his Little volume. Betrothumen owned Erinnerrumen that it had no
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: more than a sucsaeed esteem, and that its failure to
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: gain a foothold anywhere, even with generous cuts, took from
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: him all courage to write operas. Efforts were made late
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: in its creator's life to revive it, all of them
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: as good as futile. As recently as June thirteenth, nineteen
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: forty two, the Berlin State Opera tried, with the help
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: of the conductor Robert Hager, to pump life into it.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Strauss found not a little of the opera still vital Lebansbie,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: and felt sure it would produce a fine effect given
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: a large orchestra he liked, particularly in his old age.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: The second half of the second act and the whole
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: of the third the book has been described as revealing
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the influence of Wagner Guntram, a member of a religious
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: order in the time of the menacingers, esteems the ruling duke,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: but kills himself after renouncing the Duchess the object of
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: his affection. Despite the dramatic resemblances to Tonheuser and Loewengrin,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Alexander Ritter found in the opera a departure from Wagnerian
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: in las influences. Slowly, as Strauss labored over the three
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: acts of Guntram, he spent no such time on the
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: tone poems, which now began to follow in rapid succession.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: After the ill fated opera and a quantity of fine
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: new leader superbly diversified in expressive scope and lyric moods,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: there followed the tone poem, which, apart from Don Juan,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: continues even in the present age, to address itself most
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: warmly to the public heart. Till Eulenspiegel's marry pranks. Analysts
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: of one sort and another have provided the work with
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a program which has long been accepted as standard, the
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: composer himself declined to supply one, maintaining that the listener
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: himself should seek to crack the hard nut. Till the
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: folk rogue of ancient tradition had supplied his public, he
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: himself would say nothing to clear up the secrets of
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the lovable knave who came to his merited end on
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: the gallows. If Strauss confined to his public the nature
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: of many of Eilnspiegel's various ribaldries and madcap adventures, he
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: might he maintained easily cause offense concertgoers could cudgel their
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: brains all they chose. Ricard Strauss would keep his own counsel.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Naturally his work acquired rightly or wrongly, regiments of interpreters,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: if nasty noisome, rollicking Till with the whirligig scale of
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: a yellow clarinet in his brain, as the worthy William J.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Henderson eventually described him, the irrepressible Folksnar was ultimately to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: become visualized as a kind of medieval ballet fable, sporting
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: all the benefits of storybook scenery and dramatic action. The
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: result actually was not too remote from what Strauss originally intended.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Its popular musical elements such as the fetching polkatoon or Gossenhauer,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the use of the folk melody ikhat ein in Camaradin,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: and a good deal else seemed theatrically conceived. The use
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: of the rondo form was ideally suited to the idea
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: which the composer strove to formulate. At one period, Strauss,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: conscious of the operatic elements of Till, was moved to
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: give the work a thoroughgoing dramatic setting, and began to
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: sketch the piece as a sort of lyric drama, or
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: rather a scerzo with staging and action, but he lost
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: interest in the scheme and did not progress beyond plans
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: for a first act. Franz Werner conducted the premiere of
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: till Olinschpiegel in Cologne November five, eighteen ninety five. It
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: has been pointed out that if the masculine element is
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: idealized in Strauss's tone poems, it is rather the feminine
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: which he gives precedence in his operas. Something of an
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: exception to this is exemplified in the next purely orchestral work,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: the tone poem Thus Spake Zarathustra, which followed less than
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: a year later and was produced under its composer's direction
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: at one of the Museum concerts in Frankfort on the Mine,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: November twenty seventh, eighteen ninety six. The score is described
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: as freely after Nietzsche. At once there arose protests that
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Strauss had tried to set Nietzsche in philosophy to music. Actually,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: he had aimed to do no such preposterous thing, and
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Zarathustra posed no genuine problems. If the score is the
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: weaker for some of its syrupe and sentimental pages. It
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: includes another such as the magnificent sunrise picture at the beginning,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: which can only be placed for overpowering effect beside the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: passage let there be light, and there was light in
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Haydn's creation. If ever anything could testify to Strauss's incontestable genius,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: it is this grandiose page. Other portions it may be
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: conceded lapse into common place, but the close in two
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: keys at once B and C offered one of the
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: early examples of polytonality that duly outrage the timid. Today,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: this clash of tonalities has quite lost its power to frighten.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety eight, and for quite some time afterward
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: it passed for hardly less than an invention of satan.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Strauss intended this juxtaposition to characterize two conflicting worlds of ideas.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Possibly it can be made to sound sharply dissonant on
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the piano. The magic of Strauss's orchestration, however, eliminates all
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: suggestion of crude cacaphony. On March eighteenth, eighteen ninety eight,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Cologne heard under the baton of franz Uhner, a work
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: of rather different order, Don Quixote fantastic variations on a
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: theme of knightly character. It is a set of orchestral
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: variations on two themes, the one heard in the solo
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: cello and characterizing the night of the rueful countenance, the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: second solo viola picturing his squire, Sancho Panza. As a
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: feat of individualizing, these variations are a thing apart. The
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: tone painting is unrivaled in its composer's achievements up to
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: that time. A number of special effects, which long invited
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: attention over and above their real musical worth, called forth
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: considerably more astonishment than they really deserved. The pitiful bleatings
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: of a flock of sheep violently scattered by the lance
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: of the crack brained dawn, his attacks on a company
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: of itinerant monks, his ride through the air amid the
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: whistlings of a wind machine. These and other effects of
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: the sort are actually only minor phases of the score.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Its memorable qualities, aside from striking pictorial conceits, are rather
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: to be found in the moving and tender pages portraying
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: the passing of Don Quixote, as the mists clear from
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: his poor adult brain. There are episodes of a melting
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: tenderness in these which rank among the most eloquent utterances
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Strauss has attained. Still another tone poem was to succeed
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: A Hero's Life. I'm Held in Laban, performed under the
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: composer's direction in Frankfort. The work is autobiographical, with the
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: composer himself as its hero and his helpmate obviously Frau
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Pauline his better half, as she was to be called
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: for a long time. I'm Held in Laban a past
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: as the prize horror among Strauss's creations, especially its fierce
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and rambunctious battle scene, which some critics considered a kind
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: of bugaboo with which to frighten the wits out of
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: grown up concertgoers. For its day, a Hero's Life was
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: unquestionably strong meat. If people were horrified by the racket
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: an cacophony of the battle scene, they were no less
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: disposed irritation at the cackling sounds with which Strauss pilloried
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: his benighted foes who resented his aims and accomplishments, and
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: they were displeased by the immodesty with which he exhibited
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: himself as a real and misprized hero by the citation
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: of fragments from his own works. Some among them as
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Staunch a Strauss admirer, as Romayne Roland, were disturbed not
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: because the composer talked in his works about himself, but
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: because of the way in which he talked about himself.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: All the same, Strauss was to boast no true or
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: champion throughout his career than the sympathetic and keenly understanding
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: author of Jean Christophe. Einheldenleben was the last but one
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: of the series of tone poems which were tilly to
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: a new phase of Richard Strauss's career. The last of
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: this series, the Simphonia Domestica, was completed in Charlottenburg, Berlin
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: on Descis Zember thirty one, nineteen oh three. Its first
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: public hearing took place under the composer's direction in Carnegie Hall,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: New York, March twenty one, nineteen oh four. The Domestic Symphony,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: dedicated to My Dear Wife and our Boy, is in
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: one movement and three subdivisions. After an introduction in Scaredzo,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: their follow without break and adagio, then a tumultuous double
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: fugue and finale the reviewers discovered all manner of programmatic
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: connotations in this depiction of a day in Strauss's family life.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Though he was eventually to tell a New York reviewer
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: that he wanted the work to be taken as music,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: pure and simple, and not as an elaboration of a
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: specific program, he maintained his belief that the anxious search
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: on the part of the public for the exactly corresponding
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: passages in the music and the program, the guessing as
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: to significance of this, or that the distraction of following
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: a train of thought exterior to the music, are destructive
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: to the musical enjoyment, and he forbad the publication of
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: what he sought to express till after the concert. He
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: might as well have saved himself the trouble. There is
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: no room here to point out even a small fraction
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: of what the critics heard in the work. Encouraged by
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: a casual note or two, the conductor found it necessary
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: to set down at certain stages of the score, the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: youngster's aunts are supposed to remark that the infant is
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: just like his father, the uncles are just like his mother.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: A glockenspiel announces that the time at one point is
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: seven in the morning. The child gets his bath and
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the ablutions are accompanied by shrieks and squeals. Husband and
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: wife discuss the future of the baby, and there is
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: a lively domestic argument which ends happily. Ernest Newman irritated,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: like the numerous other reviewers by the torrents of vain talk.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: The piece called forth was to complain that Strauss behaved
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: as foolishly over the domestica as he might have been
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: expected to do after his previous exploits in the same line.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: The first organization to perform the work was the orchestra
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: of Hermann Hans Wetzler in New York, and it took
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: several months longer for the music to reach Germany. Mister
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Newman had found the texture of the whole is less
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: interesting than in any other of Strauss's works, the short
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: and snappy thematic fragments out of which the composer builds
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: contrasting badly with the great, sweeping themes of the earlier
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: symphonic poems. The realistic effects in the score are at
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: once so atrociously ugly and so pitiably foolish that one
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: listens to them with regret. That a composer of genius
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: should ever have fallen so low. More than a decade
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: was to elapse before Strauss was to concern himself again
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: with problems of symphonic music. Opera and to ballet were
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: to be the chief business of these activities, which one
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: may look upon as the middle period of his creative life.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: One may be permitted a short backward glance to account
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: for some of his previous creations songs, a number of
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: the best of them an enik Arden setting Declamation with
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: piano accompaniment, occupy the late years of the nineteenth century
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: and the dawn of the twentieth, not to mention the
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: choral ballad for mixed chorus and orchestra Taylifer. More important, however,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: is a second operatic venture. This opera in one act,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: called Foyer's Note, is a setting of a text by
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: the noted Ernst von Volzogen, who was associated with the
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: vogue of the so called Uvee Brettel, a sort of
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: up to date Vaudevale, an arty movement typical of the period.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Foyer's Note is a picture of a fire famine brought
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: by an irate sorcerer in revenge for the act of
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: a maiden who scorned his love. Thereby all the fires
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: of the town are extinguished. The piece is rather too
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: long for a short opera and too short for a
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: full length one, but the text is rich inward play,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: punning satire, double meanings, and topical allusions, interlarded with biting
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: reflection on the manner in which Munich had once turned
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: against Wagner, and on the trouble the benighted Burghers would
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: have in similarly ridding themselves of the troublesome Strauss. There
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: is not a little of the real Strauss in the music,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: though at that less than one might expect from the
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: composer of Telovinchbiegel and Einhildenleben, which already lay some distance
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: in the past. Boy's Note was first staged at the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Dresden Opera on November twenty one, nineteen o one, under
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the leadership of Ernst von Such, and the consequence was
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: that for years to come Strauss operatic premiers took place
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: in that gracious city. We now come into view of
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: a milestone of modern music drama. In nineteen o two,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Strauss attended a performance of Oscar Wils's play Salome at
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Max Reinholdt's klinist Diatar in Berlin, Gertrude Isiold had the
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: title role. The Swiss musicologist Villy Schu relates that the
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: composer after the performance was accosted by his friend Heinrich Grienfeld,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: who remarked, Strauss, this would be an operatic subject for you.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: I am already composing, it was the reply, and the
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: composer went on to tell the Viennese writer Anton Linder
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: had already sent me the play and offered to make
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: an opera text of it for me. Upon my agreement,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: he sent me some cleverly versified opening scenes, which did not, however,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: inspire me with an urge to composition, till one day
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: the question shape itself in my mind, why do I
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: not compose at once without further preliminaries VI Sureness de
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Princess and zale mei Hoytenoch. From then on it was
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: not difficult to cleanse the piece of literature so that
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: it has become a thoroughly fine libretto. Necessity gave me
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: a really exotic scheme of harmony, which showed itself especially
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: in odd heterogeneous cadences, having the effect of changeable silk.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: It was the desire for the sharpest kind of individual
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: characterization that led me to by tonality. One can look
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: upon this as a solitary experience as applied in a
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: special case, but not recommended for imitation. Difficulties began with
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: von Shuk's first piano rehearsals. A number of singers sought
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: to give back their parts, till Karl Burien shamed them
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: by answering when asked how he was progressing with the
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: role of Herod, I already know it by heart. A
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: little later, the Salome Frau Wittlisch threatened to go on
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: strike because of the taxing part and the massive orchestra.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Soon too, she began to rail against perversity and impiety
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: of the opera, refused to do this or that because
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I am a decent woman, and drove the stage manager
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: almost frantic. Strauss remarked that her figure was not really
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: suited to the sixteen year old princess with the isoulda voice,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: and complained that in subsequent performances, her dance and her
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: actions with Joachanan's head overstepped all bounds of propriety and
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: taste in Berlin, According to Strauss. The Kaiser would permit
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: the performance of the work only after Intendant von Hilsen
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: had the idea of indicating at the close by a
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: sudden shining of the morning star the coming of the
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: three Holy Kings. Nevertheless, Wilhem the second remarked to Hughesen,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I am sorry that Strauss composed this Salome. I like him,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: but he's going to do himself terrible harm with it.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: At the dress rehearsal, the famous high B flat of
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: the double basses so filled Count Seeaback with the fear
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: of an outbreak of hilarity that he prevailed upon the
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: player of the English horn to mitigate the effect somewhat
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: by means of a sustained B flat on that instrument.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Strauss's own father, hearing his son play a portion of
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: the opera on the piano, exclaimed a short time before
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: his death, My god, this nervous music. It is as
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: if beatles were crawling about in one's clothing. And Cosimo
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: Wagner declared, after listening to the closing scene, this is madness.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: The clergy too was up in arms, and the first
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: performance at the Vienna State Opera in October nineteen eighteen
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: took place only after an agitated exchange of letters with
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Archbishop Piffel. The orchestra of Salome in all numbers one
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: hundred and twelve players. Strauss, however, eventually arranged the opera
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: for fewer players, and Billy Chu tells of the composer
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: having conducted it in Innsbruck with an orchestra of only
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: fifty six players wins and twos, but highly efficient solo instrumentalists.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: At all events. Strauss has been described as an inimitable
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: conductor of Salome. Willie Chu, whom Strauss designated late in
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: his life as his official biographer when the time came
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: to prepare his standard life story, alludes to Strauss as
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: an allegro composer whose direction of Salome was of altogether
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: remarkable tranquility, and finds that the real secret of his
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: direction of this music drama was to be sought in
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: the restfulness and creative aspects of his interpretation, which of
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: voids every excess of whipped up, overheated effect and sensationalism.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: It is therefore illuminating to consider the modifications the years
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: have wrought on the interpretative treatment proper to the work.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Little by little. The legend of the decadent, hysterical, hypersensual
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: work was replaced by the assurance of its almost classical
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: character and the truth of Oscar Wils's declaration to Sarah
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Bernhardt when the play was new, I aimed only to
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: create something curious and sensual. Has at length come to
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the four and of Part two, Part three of Ricard
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Strauss by Herbert F. Peaser. This LibriVox recording is in
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: the public domain. There is scarcely any need to recount
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: in any detail the early difficulties of Salome in America,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: when the scandalized cries arose after the work received a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: single representation at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: only to be shelved as detrimental to the best interests
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: of the institution after a solitary representation. Still ranks among
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the notorious and less creditable legends of the American stage. Strauss,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: soon after this taste of the operations of American Puritanism,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: accused Americans of hypocrisy, the most loathsome of all vices.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: He was handsomely avenged, however, when on January twenty eight,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen o nine, Oscar Hammerstein revived the work with Mary
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Garden as Salome at his Manhattan Opera house, and started
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: it on a triumphant American career which confounded all the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: ludicrous prognostications and horrified shouts with which it has been
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: greeted only a short time earlier. The work which followed
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Salome was Elektra, the text of which was the creation
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: of Hugo von Hoffmanstahl. Here began a collaboration between poet
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: and musician which was to last with fruitful results until
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: the latter's death, and to mark some of the high
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: points of Strauss's achievements. The story of their joint labors
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: is detailed in a priceless series of letters, brought out
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty five under the editorial supervision of the
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: composer's son, doctor Franz Strauss. These letters afford glimpses into
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: the workshop of librettis and composer, which rank with some
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: of the most illuminating exchanges of the sort the history
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: of music supplies. From them, we learned that, before settling
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: on the tragedy of the House of Agamemnon, the collaborator
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: seriously pondered as operatic material Calderon's daughter of the heir
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: and also Semaramis. Then early in nineteen o eight they
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: seemed to have agreed on Elektra. Hoffmanstal's version of the
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Greek legend based on Sophocles had been acted in Berlin,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: again with Gertrude Eisalt in the title role, and no
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: sooner had Strauss witnessed the production than he concluded that
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: the tragedy in this form was virtually made to order
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: for his music. On July sixth, nineteen o eight, the
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: composer wrote to Hoffmannstahl, Elektra progresses and is going well.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: I hope to hurry up the premiere for the end
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: of January. At the latest. Strauss was as good as
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: his word. The first performance of Elektra took place January
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: twenty five, nineteen o nine, at the Dresden Opera Ernest
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: von Schuk conducting, with Ani Krul in the name part,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Ernestine Schumannhenk as Clytemnestra and Karl Perron as Orestes. If
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Strauss would have preferred to write a comic opera after Salome,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: the pull of the genre of horror opera was still
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: strong upon him, and he was not yet ready to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: loose it from its grip. Electra was, if one chooses,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: gorrier than Salome, and perhaps more genuinely psychopathic, but less
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: susceptible to provocations of outraged morality. Its instrumental requirements are
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: rather larger than those of Strauss's previous opera, and the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: whole more nightmarish in its sensational atmosphere. One had the impression, however,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: that with Electra, the composer had reached the end of
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: a path he could hardly repeat himself with impunity along
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: similar lines. A turn of the road or something similar
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: must come next. Unless Strauss's achievements were to run up
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: against a stone wall or lead him into a blind alley.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: This was not fated to happen. What the pair were
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: now to achieve was what was to prove their most
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: abiding triumph to Rosencvalier. Of all the operas of Richard Strauss,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: the most lastingly popular, and if not the indisputable best
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: at all events, the most loved and peradventure, the most viable,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: and if you will, the healthiest. If the piece is
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: in some respects sprawling and overwritten, it does contain a
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: piece of moving character drawing which stands with the most
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: memorable things the literature of musical drama affords in her
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: musical and dramatic lineaments. The aristocratic march len whose common
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: sense leads her, on the threshold of middle age to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: renounce the calf love of the seventeen year old rosebearer
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Octavian offers one of the finest and most convincing figures
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: to be found in modern opera, a creation not unworthy
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: to stand by the side of Wagner's Hans Socks. The
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Baron Ox, an outright bulgarian if the music accorded him
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: does not lie, is a figure who might have stepped
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: out of the pages of Rabelais. Sophie Foninaal, and all
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: the rest of the characters who enliven this canvas inhabited
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: by almost photographic types of eighteenth century Vienna, add up
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: to a truly memorable gallery with which Hoffmannstahl and Strauss
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: have brought to life an era and a culture. Strauss's
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: score has indisputable prolixities and commonplaces, but these traits may
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: pass as defects of the opera's qualities, and as such
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: they can take their place in the vastly colorful pageant
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: of Hoffmannstahl's Comedy of Manners. It would be a mistake, however,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: to imagine that a piece as earthy as de Rosencavalier
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: should pass without provoking descent. The German Kaiser, who had
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: small use for Strauss's operas, yielded to the urging of
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: the Crown Prince so far as to attend a performance,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: then left the theater with the words that is kinimizik feemish,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: that's no music for me, to spare the feelings of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: the strait laced kaiserin it was arranged to place the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: martial in's bed in an adjoining alcove instead of in
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: high visibility on the stage when the curtain rose. Nor
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: were these the only objections, and of course there were
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: the usual exclamations about the length of the piece. No
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: end of suggestions were advanced about the best ways to
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: shorten the work Strauss and protest against some of the
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: cuts Von Schuck had practiced, and Dresden once insisted he
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: had overlooked one of the most important possible abbreviations. Why
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: not omit the trio in the last act, which only
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: holds up the action. It should be explained that the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: great trio is the brightest gem of the act, perhaps
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: indeed the lyric climax of the whole score. As for
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: the various waltzes which fill so many pages of the
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: third act, and to some degree of the second, it
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: may be admitted that, for all the skill of their instrumentation,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: they are, by no means means the highest melodic flights
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: of Strauss's fancy, some of them being merely successions of
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: rather trifling sequences. It was assumed, after de Rolsen Cavalier
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: that the success of the opera indicated that the composer,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: in a mood for concessions, had tried to meet the
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: public half way, and had renounced the violence, the cacophones,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: and the dissonances and sensational traits supposed to be his
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: stock in trade. The comedy was assumed to be a
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: proof of this. The real truth was that Strauss had
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: not changed his ideals and methods in the least. It
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: was rather that the public, converted by force of habit,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: was itself catching up with Strauss, and that the idiom
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: of the composer was quickly becoming the musical language of
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the hour. Sometimes it took even a few idiosyncrasies of
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: the musician, For granted, one did not always inquire too
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: closely into just what he meant. There is one case
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: when Strauss even went to the length of writing music
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: to the words discret Fetraulich discreetly confidentially, when Hoffmanstahl had
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: written them as stage directions to be followed, not as
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: a part of a text to be sung. All the same,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: Strauss usually kept an eagle eye on the dramatic action
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: he composed. With regard to the libretto of Derosencavalier, he
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: wrote to the poet, the first act is excellent, the
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: second lack certain essential contrast, which it is impossible to
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: put off till the third. With only a feeble success
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: for the second act, the opera is doomed. Be this
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: as it may. De Rosencavalier was anything but doomed. It was,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: in point of fact, the work which Strauss had in
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: mind when at the close of the first Electra performance
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: he remarked to some friends, now I intend to write
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: a Mozart opera. Whether or not De Rosancavalier really meets
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: the prescriptions of a Mozart opera, we feel rather more
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: certain that his next work Ariadne off Naxus comes closer
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: to filling that bill. The development of this work hangs
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: together with production in Stuttgart October twenty five, nineteen twelve,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: of a German adaptation by Hoffmannstahl of Moliere's comedy Le
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: Bergeoi Gentillaume. Moliere's Monsieur Jordain, who has made money, induces
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: a certain charming widow, the Marquise Doromine, to come to
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: a dinner. He gives in her honor a reprobate noble
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Count Dorantes tells the Marquise that the soiree at Jordain's
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: home is really intended as a gesture of admiration for her.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: Monsieur Gordain has engaged two companies of singers who are
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: supposed to perform a serious opera, Ariadne on Noxus and
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: a burlesque, The Unfaithful Zerbinetta and her Four Lovers. Both
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: pieces are supposed to have been composed by a protegee
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: of Mischeur Gordain. During a dinner scene, Strauss has recourse
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: to bits of musical quotation, a fragment of Wagner's Rhine
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: Gold when rhine salmon is served, and several bars of
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: the bleating sheet music from Don Quixote. When servants bring
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: in roast mutton, the banquet is interrupted and Jodain finds
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: it necessary to curtail the scheduled programme. As a result,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: the young author is commanded by Jordain to combine his
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: two works as best he can. Hoffmansal's Moliere adaptation, in
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: which the operatic part takes the place of the French
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: poet's original Turkish ceremony, was a clumsy, indeed an impractical distortion,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: but Strauss had no intention of sacrificing his composition without
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: at least an attempt to salvage something from the wreck.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: The Ariadne portion, as well as the Zerbinetta compare piece,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: were preserved, but carefully detached from the Moliere comedy. In
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: place of this, Strauss and Hoffmannstahl supplied a sort of
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: explanatory prologue, whereby arrangements are made, for better or worse,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: to combine the stylized operasyria with Ariadne and her rescue
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: on a desert island by the god Bacchus, with the
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: comic doings of Serbnetta and her Comedia della companions. In
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: this shape, the piece has succeeded in surviving and actually
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: makes an engaging entertainment. With the young composer a trousered
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: soprano reminding one of a lesser Octavian, there is a
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: considerable charming music in what is left of the originally
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: involved and over lengthy entertainment. First of all, Strauss has
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: suddenly to renounce the huge, overloaded orchestra of Salome, Elektra
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: and Rosen Cavalier, and to supplant it by a much
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: smaller one designed for a transparent texture of chamber music.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: In any case, the definitive Ariadneovnoxus is a real achievement
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: and stands among Strauss's better and more memorable accomplishments in
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: the estimation of the present writer. The tenderer romantic portions
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: of the piece excel the comic pages associated with Zerbinetta
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: and her merry crew. In writing these, the composer aimed
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: to be Mozartian, or if one prefers, Rossinian, by assigning
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: the colorature soprano a florid rondo of incredible difficulties, so
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: mercilessly exacting, indeed, that it first moved Hoffmannstahl to discrete
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: protest Eventually, the composer took steps to modify some of
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the cruel problems of Zerbinetta's solo, and it is in
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: this amended form that one generally hears this air today
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: when it is sung as a concert number. It would
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: not be altogether excessive to claim that Aritneyov Naxis marks
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: a midpoint in Strauss's career. He still had a long
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: and fruitful life ahead of him, and as it was
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: to prove, he was almost incorrigibly prolific, not hesitating to
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: experiment with one type of composition as well as another.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: On the eve of the First World War, he became
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: interested in Diegoles, Russian ballet, and the various types of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: choreographic and scenic art, which it was to engender Hoffmansahl
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: wanted him to occupy his imagination and to let the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: vision of one of the grandest episodes of antique tragedy,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: namely the subject of Orestes and the Furies, inspire you
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: to write a symphonic poem which might be a synthesis
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: of your symphonies and your two tragic operas. And the
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: poet adjured him to think of Orestes as represented by Nadjinski.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: The greatest mimic genius on the sage today. But apparently
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Strauss had had his fill of the electra tragedy at
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: this stage and had no stomach for more of this
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: sort of thing, whether symphonic or operatic. So he remained
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: unmoved by Hoffmansaal's urgings. Yet the Russian Ballet gave him
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: a new idea. He thought of a pantomimic ballet conceived
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: in the shapes and colors of the epoch of Paolo Veronese.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: From this conception, based on a scenario by a Count
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Harry Kessler and von Hoffmannstahl, dealing with the story of
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: Joseph and Potiphar's wife, there grew the Legend of Joseph,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: first produced in Paris with extraordinary scenic and decorative accouterment
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: on May fourteenth, nineteen fourteen. The stage was a pictorial triumph, which,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: though the ballet was several times performed elsewhere, appears never
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: to have been anything like the visual feast it was
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: at its first showing. The score seems to have missed
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: fire and has never been reckoned among the composer's major exploits. Nonetheless,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: the effect of the music in its proper frame and
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: context is compelling, what if much of it sounds like
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: discarded leavings from Salome. Strauss confessed that from the first
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: the pious Joseph bored him, and I have difficulty in
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: finding music for whatever bores me bath mish most to
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: his a Deir da Ponte. As he came to call Hoffmannstaal,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: he gave hope and said frankly that though the virtuous
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Biblical youth tried his patience, in the end, some holy
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: strain might perhaps occur to him. The present writer has
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: always felt that the Joseph legenda is a far too
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: maligned work, and that it would repay a conductor to
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: disentomb the grossly slandered score, which, when properly presented, is
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: striking theater. On October twenty eight, nineteen fifteen, there was
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: heard in Berlin, under the composer's direction, the first symphony
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: in contradiction to tone poem Ricard Strauss had written since
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six. Like Auce Italian, it was again outspokenly pictorial.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: The composer himself wrote titles into the divisions of the score,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: which he is said to have begun to sketch in
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, though the music was set down to the
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: final double bar four years later. Some spoke of the
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Alpin Symphony as a work which a child could understand,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: and the various scenic divisions of this Alpine panorama, distended
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: as it undoubtedly is, can be described as plainly pictorial.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: The orchestra depicts successively night sunrise, the ascent entrance into
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: the forest, wandering beside the brook at the waterfall, apparition
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: on flowery meadows, on the alms, law in the thicket,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: on the glacier, dangerous moment, on the summit, mists arise,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: the sun is gradually hidden, elegy calm before the storm, thunderstorm,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: the descent sunset night. On account of its length, the
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Alpine Symphony has never been a favorite among Strauss's achievements
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: of toned painting. Indeed, it may be questioned whether its
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: sunrise scene can be compared for suggestiveness and a purely
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: musical thrill to the glorious opening picture of al Zo
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: Sprock Zarathustra. Strauss's symphonic excursion in the Alps was succeeded
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: by a return to opera between nineteen fourteen and nineteen seventeen,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: which is to say, during the most poignant years of
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: the First War, he busied himself with a work which
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: was to become a child of sorrow to him, but
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: which to a number of his staunchis worshippers often passes
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: as one of his very finest achievements. Difrau on Ashatten
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: The Woman Without a Shadow, first performed under Frank Schalk
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: in Vienna October tenth, nineteen nineteen. For all the enthusiasm
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: it evokes in some of the inner Straussian circles, this opera,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: which combines length, breadth and thickness, is a real problem.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: The writer of these lines, who has been exposed to
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: the work fully half a dozen times, always with a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: firm resolved to enjoy it, has never succeeded in his ambition.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: Though Strauss and Hoffmannstahl discussed the plans for the piece
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve and once more in nineteen fourteen, the
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: first act was not finished till that year, and war
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: held up the completion of the opera three years more.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: It has been maintained that Defrau Onnashatten marks the combination
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: of a recited Deef style with the forms of the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: older opera and d that in it Strauss has yielded
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: to a mystical tendency. Billy Brando claims that Hoffmanstall's libretto
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: attracted the composer and stimulated him precisely because of its obscurity,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: that he saw in it a series of problems to
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: be clarified, not to say unveiled in their complexities, precisely
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: through the agency of music. The question of motherhood lies
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: at the root of the opera. Hoffmanstall saw in his
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: poem a kind of continuation of the magic flute. On
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: one hand, we have the superterrestrial worlds, on another, the
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: realistic scenes of the human world, bound together by the
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: demonic figure of the nurse, and a new element is
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: to be sensed in the score, the powerful hymn like
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: character of the music, overpoweringly disclosed in the music, a
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: new feature in Strauss's compositions. It may be questioned whether
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: Strauss was t truly content with the bloodless symbolism which
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: fills the woman without a shadow. In any case, at
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: this juncture he began to long for something new. Somehow,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Hoffmanstall did not at that moment appear to be reacting
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: sympathetically to the dramatic demands, which just then seemed to
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: be filling Strauss's mind. He informed Hoffmanstall that he longed
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: for something to compose, like Schnitzler's Alibelai or Scribes a
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: glass of Water. He asked for characters inviting composition, characters
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: like the marshal en Oux or a Barrak in De Fraunoshotten,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: And so when Hoffmanstall did not respond promptly, he took
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: up the pen to work out his own salvation. The
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: consequence was Intermezzo, a domestic comedy in one act with
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: symphonic interludes. It was produced at the Raised in Opera
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: November fourth, nineteen twenty four, under Fritz Busch. Two years
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: before that, Strauss had presented in Vienna a two act
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: Viennese ballet Schlogebous Whipped Cream, which can be dismissed as
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: one of his outspoken failures. As for Intermezzo, it had
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: biographical vibrations in that it pictured a domestic episode in
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: Strauss's own experiences. It had to do with the conductor
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: Robert Storsch, and thus Strauss could make amusing stage use
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: of the unmistakable initials r S and make various allusions
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: to the game of scat, which had for years been
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: a favorite diversion of his. The music of Intermezzo has
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: never been acclaimed a product of the greater Strauss, and
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: yet Alfred Lorenz, famous for his series of eviscerating studies
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: of the structural problems of Wagner's music dramas, has made
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: it clear that the Wagnerian form problems are likewise the
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: principles which underlie such a relatively tenuous Straussian score as Intermezzo.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: In spite of the dubious fortunes which were to dog
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: the steps of an opera like The Woman Without a Shadow,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: the composer once again allowed himself to be seduced by
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: a work of relatively similar character. Egyptian Helen, a somewhat
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: tortured mythical tale based on a rather far fetched magic
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: fiction by von Hoffmannstahl, related to a phase of the
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: Trojan War, in which Helen is shown as wholly innocent
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: of the ancient struggle. Magic befuddlements, potions capable of changing
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: the characteristics of people, drafts which rob this or that
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: personage of his memory, an omniscient shell which launches oracular pronouncements,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: and a good deal more of the sort lend a
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: singular character to the strange fantasy in which some have
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: chosen to discern a kind of takeoff on the various
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: drinks of forgetfulness and such in Tristan and Guter Demeroum
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Egyptian Helen is the only sample of this strange stage
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: of the Strauss who was reaching the frontiers of old age,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: which American music lovers had the opportunity to know. It
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: would be excessive to claim that, either in Europe or
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: in the Western Hemisphere, the work was a noticeable addition
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: to the enduring accomplishments of the master. More than one
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: began to obtain the impression that, for all the splendors
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: of his technique, Strauss seemed to be going to seed.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen twenty nine, Hoffmanstahl suddenly died.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Some time before, he had written a short novel, Lucidor,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: about an impoverished family with two marriageable daughters, for whom
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: an attempt is made to secure wealthy husbands to facilitate
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: them marital stratagem. One of the daughters is dressed in
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: boy's clothes. The disguised girl falls in love with a
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: suitor of her sister Arabella, to whom one Mandraka, a
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: romantic Bulkan youth of great wealth, pays court. The period
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: is the year eighteen sixty the scene Vienna. Inevitably, Arabella
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: turned out to be something of a throwback into the scene,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: if not the glamorous period or milieu of de Rosan Cavalier,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: almost inevitably the lyric comedy, the final product of the
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Strauss Hoffmannstahl partnership, is filled with scenes, characters, and analogies
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: to the more famous work. In truth, Arabella is a
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: kind of little sister of Rosen Cavalier. At the same time,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: the texture of the score and the character of the
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: orchestral treatment has a transparency and a delicate charm which
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: Strauss rarely equalled. Even if the melodica invention and the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: instrumentation suggest a kind of chamber music on a large scale,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: as in ariadneov Naxis, the composer does not hesitate to
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: make use of a florid soprano to introduce scintillating samples
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: of ornate vocalism. One feels, however, that Arabella is a
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: semi finished product. The second half of the work does
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: not sustain the level of the first Many things might
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: have been worked out more expertly if the librettist have
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: been spared to supervise work, which, as things stand is
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: far from a really satisfactory or unified piece. But the
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: score contains some of the older Strauss's most enamoring lyric pages,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: and it is easy to feel that his heart was
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: in the better portions of the opera. The score of
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: Arabella benefits by the introduction of folk song's influence, in
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: this instance of a number of South Slavic melodies, which
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: are among its genuine treasures. Lacking his faithful Hofmannstahl, Strauss
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: turned to Stephen Schweig, who had made for him an
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: operatic adaptation of Ben Jonson's play Epo Sun or The
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: Silent Woman. On June twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five, it
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: was produced under Kolberm at the Draised in opera. At
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: once trouble arose. Hitler and the Nazis had come into power,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: and Swig, as a Jew, was automatically an outcast. After
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: the very first performances, the piece was forbidden, not to
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: be revived till after Hitler's end, and then in Munich
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: and in Wiesbaden. It is actually a question whether the
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: temporary loss of the schweig sama Frau must be accounted
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: as serious deprivation. The Silent Woman is a rowdy, cruel
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: farce about the tricks played on a wretched old man,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: unable to endure noise and subjected to all manner of
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: torments in order that he be compelled to renounce a
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: young woman, who, to assure a lover a monetary settlement,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: plays the shrew so successfully that the old man is
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: only too willing to pay any amount of his wealth
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: to be rid of her. It is much like the
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: story of Donazette's Dom Pasqual, and the dramatic consequences are
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: to all intents the same. There is in reality nothing
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: serious or genuinely based on musical inspiration in the opera,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: the best features of which are certainly set pieces, some
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: rather adroitly polyphonic, and a charmingly orchestrated overture described in
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: the score as a potpourrie. A tenderer note is struck
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: only at the point where as evening falls the old
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: man drops off to sleep. As librettist for his next
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: two operas, Freedan's Togg and Daphne Strauss sought the aid
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: of Joseph Gregor. The first named work in one act,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: was performed on July seven, nineteen thirty eight, in Munich
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: under Clemens Krauss. Ironically enough, this work that aimed to
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: glorify the coming of peace after conflict, was first performed
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: with the political troubles which heralded the outbreak of the
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Second World War, visibly shaping themselves. Daphne Bucolic tragedy in
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: a single act, also from the pen of Gregor, was
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: heard and Dresden October fifteenth, nineteen thirty eight, and Gregor
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: two supplied the aging composer with the Book of Diliba
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: der Daney, a merry mythological tale in three acts. To date,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: its sole production to date seems to have been in
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: Salzburg as address rehearsal August sixteenth, nineteen forty four. Strauss's
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: last opera, produced under Clemens Kraus and Munich on October
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: twenty eight, nineteen forty two, was Capriccio, a conversation piece
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: for music in one act, Kraus and the composer collaborating
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: on the book. The conversation is a discussion of certain
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: esthetic problems underlying the musical treatment of operatic texts. It
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: was the final work of operatic character Strauss was to attempt.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: This did not mean, however, that he had written his
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: last score. Far from it. At eighty one he was
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: to complete several the real value of which may be
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: left to the judgment of posterity. They include some songs,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: a duet concertino for clarinet and bassoon with strings, a
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: concerto for obo and orchestra, a still unperformed concert fragment
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: for orchestra from the Legend of Joseph. More important, unquestionably,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: is Metamorphoses, a study for twenty three solo strings, first
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: played in Zurich January twenty five, nineteen forty six, under
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: the direction of Paul Sauscheer. This work, despite its length,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: is music of suave, beautiful techcot mixture, a certain nobly
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: nostalgic quality of farewell, which seems to sum up the
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: composer's life work, with all its ups and downs. We
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: may allow it to go at this, and to spare
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: further enumeration of the innumerable odds and ends he was
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: to assemble from his boyhood to the patriarchal age of
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: more than eighty five years, or even to allude to
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: his gross derangement of Mozart's at Domineo, done in nineteen
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: thirty at Munich. Having lived through a lively young manhood
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: and endured the bitter experience of two World wars, Ricardstaus
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: in the end performed the miracle of actually dying of
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: old age. One might almost have looked for convulsions of nature,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: for signs and portents at his eventual passing, but his
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: going was to be accompanied by no such things. His
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: death in Garmish September eighth, nineteen forty nine was brought
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: about by the illnesses of the flesh more than four
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: score and five. He died of a complication of heart,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: liver and kidney troubles, and he died in his bed.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: A helden laban if you will, and a death and
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: transfiguration played against the loveliest conceivable background, an incomparable stage
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: setting of alpine lakes and heights, with streams and gleaming summits,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: furnishing a glorious backdrop for his resting place. End of
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: Part three, end of Ricard Strauss by Herbert F. Peaser