SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Heldenleben
RICHARD STRAUSS
The composer of Heldenleben is no longer unknown to Parisians. Every year at Colonne’s or Chevillard’s we see his tall, thin silhouette reappear in the conductor’s desk. There he is with his abrupt and imperious gestures, his wan and anxious face, his wonderfully clear eyes, restless and penetrating at the same time, his mouth shaped like a child’s, a moustache so fair that it is nearly white, and curly hair growing like a crown above his high round forehead.
I should like to try to sketch here the strange and arresting personality of the man who in Germany is considered the inheritor of Wagner’s genius–the man who has had the audacity to write, after Beethoven, an Heroic Symphony, and to imagine himself the hero.
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Richard Strauss is thirty-four years old.[167] He was born in Munich on 11 June, 1864. His father, a well-known virtuoso, was first horn in the Royal orchestra, and his mother was a daughter of the brewer Pschorr. He was brought up among musical surroundings. At four years old he played the piano, and at six he composed little dances, Lieder, sonatas, and even overtures for the orchestra. Perhaps this extreme artistic precocity has had something to do with the feverish character of his talents, by keeping his nerves in a state of tension and unduly exciting his mind. At school he composed choruses for some of Sophocles’ tragedies. In 1881, Hermann Levi had one of the young collegian’s symphonies performed by his orchestra. At the University he spent his time in writing instrumental music. Then Bülow and Radecke made him play in Berlin; and Bülow, who became very fond of him, had him brought to Meiningen as Musikdirector. From 1886 to 1889 he held the same post at the Hoftheater in Munich. From 1889 to 1894 he was Kapellmeister at the Hoftheater in Weimar. He returned to Munich in 1894 as Hofkapellmeister, and in 1897 succeeded Hermann Levi. Finally, he left Munich for Berlin, where at present he conducts the orchestra of the Royal Opera.
[Footnote 167: This essay was written in 1899.]
Two things should be particularly noted in his life: the influence of Alexander Ritter–to whom he has shown much gratitude–and his travels in the south of Europe. He made Ritter’s acquaintance in 1885. This musician was a nephew of Wagner’s, and died some years ago. His music is practically unknown in France, though he wrote two well-known operas, Fauler Hans and Wem die Krone? and was the first composer, according to Strauss, to introduce Wagnerian methods into the Lied. He is often discussed in Bülow’s and Liszt’s letters. «Before I met him,» says Strauss, «I had been brought up on strictly classical lines; I had lived entirely on Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and had just been studying Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms. It is to Ritter alone I am indebted for my knowledge of Liszt and Wagner; it was he who showed me the importance of the writings and works of these two masters in the history of art. It was he who by years of lessons and kindly counsel made me a musician of the future (Zukunftsmusiker), and set my feet on a road where now I can walk unaided and alone. It was he also who initiated me in Schopenhauer’s philosophy.»
The second influence, that of the South, dates from April, 1886, and seems to have left an indelible impression upon Strauss. He visited Rome and Naples for the first time, and came back with a symphonic fantasia called Aus Italien. In the spring of 1892, after a sharp attack of pneumonia, he travelled for a year and a half in Greece, Egypt, and Sicily. The tranquillity of these favoured countries filled him with never-ending regret. The North has depressed him since then, «the eternal grey of the North and its phantom shadows without a sun.»[168] When I saw him at Charlottenburg, one chilly April day, he told me with a sigh that he could compose nothing in winter, and that he longed for the warmth and light of Italy. His music is infected by that longing; and it makes one feel how his spirit suffers in the gloom of Germany, and ever yearns for the colours, the laughter, and the joy of the South.
[Footnote 168: Nietzsche.]
this was: Heldenleben
go to next chapter: Nietzsche dreamed
