SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Strauss had a programme
In Heldenleben («The Life of a Hero»), op. 40,[179] he recovers himself, and with a stroke of his wings reaches the summits. Here there is no foreign text for the music to study or illustrate or transcribe. Instead, there is lofty passion and an heroic will gradually developing itself and breaking down all obstacles. Without doubt Strauss had a programme in his mind, but he said to me himself: «You have no need to read it. It is enough to know that the hero is there fighting against his enemies.» I do not know how far that is true, or if parts of the symphony would not be rather obscure to anyone who followed it without the text; but this speech seems to prove that he has understood the dangers of the literary symphony, and that he is striving for pure music.
[Footnote 179: Finished in December, 1898. Performed for the first time at Frankfort-On-Main on 3 March, 1899. Published by Leuckart, Leipzig.]
Heldenleben is divided into six chapters: The Hero, The Hero’s Adversaries, The Hero’s Companion, The Field of Battle, The Peaceful Labours of the Hero, The Hero’s Retirement from the World, and the Achievement of His Ideal. It is an extraordinary work, drunken with heroism, colossal, half barbaric, trivial, and sublime. An Homeric hero struggles among the sneers of a stupid crowd, a herd of brawling and hobbling ninnies. A violin solo, in a sort of concerto, describes the seductions, the coquetry, and the degraded wickedness of woman. Then strident trumpet-blasts sound the attack; and it is beyond me to give an idea of the terrible charge of cavalry that follows, which makes the earth tremble and our hearts leap; nor can I describe how an iron determination leads to the storming of towns, and all the tumultuous din and uproar of battle–the most splendid battle that has ever been painted in music. At its first performance in Germany I saw people tremble as they listened to it, and some rose up suddenly and made violent gestures quite unconsciously. I myself had a strange feeling of giddiness, as if an ocean had been upheaved, and I thought that for the first time for thirty years Germany had found a poet of Victory.
Heldenleben would be in every way one of the masterpieces of musical composition if a literary error had not suddenly cut short the soaring flight of its most impassioned pages, at the supreme point of interest in the movement, in order to follow the programme; though, besides this, a certain coldness, perhaps weariness, creeps in towards the end. The victorious hero perceives that he has conquered in vain: the baseness and stupidity of men have remained unaltered. He stifles his anger, and scornfully accepts the situation. Then he seeks refuge in the peace of Nature. The creative force within him flows out in imaginative works; and here Richard Strauss, with a daring warranted only by his genius, represents these works by reminiscences of his own compositions, and Don Juan, Macbeth, Tod und Verklärung, Till, Zarathustra, Don Quixote, Guntram, and even his Lieder, associate themselves with the hero whose story he is telling. At times a storm will remind this hero of his combats; but he also remembers his moments of love and happiness, and his soul is quieted. Then the music unfolds itself serenely, and rises with calm strength to the closing chord of triumph, which is placed like a crown of glory on the hero’s head.
There is no doubt that Beethoven’s ideas have often inspired, stimulated, and guided Strauss’s own ideas. One feels an indescribable reflection of the first Heroic and of the Ode to Joy in the key of the first part (E flat); and the last part recalls, even more forcibly, certain of Beethoven’s Lieder. But the heroes of the two composers are very different: Beethoven’s hero is more classical and more rebellious; and Strauss’s hero is more concerned with the exterior world and his enemies, his conquests are achieved with greater difficulty, and his triumph is wilder in consequence. If that good Oulibicheff pretends to see the burning of Moscow in a discord in the first Heroic, what would he find here? What scenes of burning towns, what battlefields! Besides that there is cutting scorn and a mischievous laughter in Heldenleben that is never heard in Beethoven. There is, in fact, little kindness in Strauss’s work; it is the work of a disdainful hero.
this was: Strauss Had A Programme
go to next chapter: Strauss’s music as a whole
