Musical Criticisms

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hard Strauss became a disciple of the Wagner-Liszt school and adopted the Symphonic Poem as his principal medium of expression. His fine Sonata in E flat for pianoforte and violin marks the transition stage. In his later phase Strauss appears as a psychologist and an esprit fin. His study of Nietzsche's philosophy appears not only in his "Zarathustra," but in nearly all his "Symphonic Poems." The "Heldenleben" might quite well be labelled with the Nietzschian expression "Der Uebermensch." Strauss thus seems to stand to Nietzsche in something like the relation that Wagner bore to Schopenhauer, and it is a curious point that in each case the musician is found diverging somewhat violently from the taste of his philosophical master. These tw

nd follies. At last we get the theme in its complete form-a masterpiece of droll characterisation,-and immediately after it the prosaic jog-trot of Sancho Panza. In the first variation a musical element is introduced typifying Don Quixote's feminine ideal-Dulcinea of Toboso. It ends with the windmill incident. One hears the airy swing of the mill-sails, the furious approach of the knight, and his sudden overthrow. Variation No. 2 gives the meeting with the flock of sheep. In the third we have a colloquy between Don Quixote and Sancho, forming an elaborate movement. Next comes the quarrel with the pilgrims, and then the scene in the tavern where Don Quixote undergoes regular initiation into the order of knighthood by keeping guard over his armour all night. No. 6 represents the scene of the peasant woman mistaken for Dulcinea, and No. 7 the ride of the two companions on wooden horses at the fair. Nos. 8 and 9 are concerned with the enchanted boat an

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is between Don Juan and Faust. Both are rebellious spirits; but Faust is ruined by intellectual pride, Juan by sensual passion. As those two kinds of revolt belong to the persistent facts of life, neither Juan nor Faust can ever cease to be interesting. It is quite natural that each of them should be found as the subject of innumerable plays, poems, romances, operas, and ballets. The poetic scheme forming the basis of Richard Strauss's Symphonic Poem is remarkably simple. There is no incident of a definite kind. Don Juan is simply conceived as personifying the most direct and vivid affirmation of what Schopenhauer called the "Will to live." He is enamoured of no one particular woman, but of all the beauty and charm that are in womankind. He has a new kind of love for each kind of beauty. Defying the laws of gods and men with demonic recklessness, he rushes from one enjoyment to another, leaving the trail of weeping victims behind him, while he himself remains the incarnation

s the Don Juan story. But Mozart produced from the same subject the prize opera o

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a little longer, they would begin to discover that Strauss has nearly every gift that was ever in a composer-every gift, that is, except those of a very profound or very sublime order. His power of inventing thematic material to correspond exactly with some peculiar mood of feeling is almost as remarkable as Wagner's. The opening of the "Don Juan" Fantasia is characteristic of that excited condition of mind which is so frequent with the composer. A passage beginning with an upward rush for the strings shows us Juan launched upon his career. Presently a rapid passage, mainly in triplets, for wood, wind and afterwards strings, suggests the eager hunt after enjoyment. Next the impetuous Don is himself characterised. Of these elements a tone-picture of intoxicating gaiety

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rded as a kind of Scherzo, after the Andante of the Troubadours, Minnesingers, and other courtly poets-the inevitable reaction of the popular spirit against too much high-flown sentiment. The legendary figure of Till has appealed with the most extraordinary results to that composer who first brought into the domain of the musical art the specific qualities of the South German imagination, as represented, for example, by Holbein, Dürer, and Adam Krafft. Incisive, graphic, ornate, and with no less unheard-of power of characterisation is Richard Strauss in his music than those other masters in their graphic or plastic achievements. His "Till" reminds one of Dürer's woodcut illustrations to the Apocalypse, but, of course, with colour added. And what colour

ssed in any other way. The most wonderful quality of "Till" is its medi?valism. Listen to those triplets, in four-part chromatic harmony for five solo violins with sordini, expressing the agony of terror into which Till is thrown by his own wicked mockery of religion. By such dev

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ny unsophisticated love-song texts to music that betrays contempt of mere lyrism, or whether he genuinely misunderstands the trend of his own talent. Thus one might continue indefinitely; for it is the regular effect of Strauss's music to crook the listener's mind into one huge note of interrogation. One further and more important question must, however, be added. Is it Strauss's deliberate intention to abolish rhythm? Would he add to the well-known saying, "Am Anfang war der Rhy

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gigantic success. The stress and anguish of the first movement, the wonderful sweetness and charm of the Gretchen music, the almost incredible incisiveness and pregnancy of the characteristic music in the Mephistopheles section of the finale, and the unparalleled grandeur of the concluding idea, where the mask is torn from the face of the "spirit that denies" and the "chorus mysticus" enters with the final stanza, leading up to the crowning idea of the whole drama, "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan"-these beauties and splendours of the composition were revealed with the infallible touch of a master into whose flesh and blood it long ago passed: and the audience, including even the English visitors, felt it. The "Faust Symphonie" declares the composer to be, in his attitude towards art and life, akin to Hugo, Delacroix, and the other great French Romantics, and the result of that attitude seem

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ose words-a master-composer just as Mozart was. In "Tod und Verkl?rung" we find him in a mood of absolute seriousness. The theme is a death-bed scene, the phantasmagoria of a sick brain during the last moments of earthly consciousness, the final struggle with death, and then a wonderful suggestion of reawakening to immortality. The composition is thus, as a German critic has pointed out, the counterpart of Elgar's "Gerontius," so far as the subject is concerned; but in no other respect have the two works any similarity. The qualities with which Strauss's name is most commonly associated-audacious and grotesque realism, gorgeous, intoxicating orchestral figuration and colouring-are here completely in abeyance. In the mood of the opening section there is kinship with the third act of "Tristan"-the same hush and oppression of the sick man's lair,-but not in the musical treatment, which with Strauss has much more reference to external detail (e.g., the ticking of the clock) than with Wagner. The introductory notes are full of weird power, and they lead on to some exquisitely patheti

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d by the Scottish Orchestra, where "Tod und Verkl?rung" has before now been chosen for performance at a plébiscite concert. This seems very natural, for "Tod und Verkl?rung" is the clearest, simplest, and least heterodox of Strauss's orchestral works, and much easier to understand at a first hearing than Beethoven's C minor Symphony. It has, in fact, been recognised as a classic nearly everywhere, though here it still lies under suspicion of being a mere piece of eccentricity. We can only hope that after hearing "Zarathustra"-which certainly is rather a large order-some of our conscientious objectors may reconsider their position. The extraordinary thing is that it was better received than the far more generally comprehensible "Tod und Verkl?rung." This was no doubt, in part, due to sheer astonishment, but also, we believe, to the perception that whatever else there may be in the work there is a certain grandeur of perception. It is scarcely possible to listen in a state of complete indifference to the opening tone-picture of sunrise, with its great booming nature ground-tone, that recalls the Introduction to Wagner's "Rheingold," and the ringing trumpet harmonies following the three notes of the soulless nature theme. The plan of the tone-poem that gradually unfolds is one of the clearest. It is on the same plan as the discourse of St. Francis on "La Joie Parfaite," quoted by Sabatier from the "Fioretti," where the holy man, the better to impress upon Brother Leo wherein perfect joy consists, first enumerates a series of things in which it does not consist, and then, having disposed of the erroneous opinions corresponding to various stages of the upward path towards true wisdom, tells us at last what perfect joy is. The wisdom of Zarathustra is, of course, very different from the wisdom of St. Francis, but his method of inculcating it is the same. He, too, has mortified the f

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e art back into the paths of true progress. This indicates the sense in which Strauss is called a reformer. It is the usual fate of reformers to overshoot the mark; Mr. Weingartner thinks that Strauss has done so very seriously in his last three Symphonic Poems-"Zarathustra," "Don Quixote," and "Heldenleben,"-and I am constrained to give in my adherence to Mr. Weingartner's view. In each of the three works named there is much that only genius could have produced, but also something that is alien to genius. The perpetration of deliberate cacophony for a symbolical purpose we first encounter in "Zarathustra," where it is done in a tentative and restrained manner and on a very small scale. In "Don Quixote" the same procedure is used on a larger scale and with m

in Mr. Newman's programme. But one must testify according to one's convictions, and I confess that I cannot be reconciled to section 4 of "Heldenleben," and find in section 5 a considerable element of merely curious mystific

ugh throughout the section specially devoted to him one is conscious of the gigantic rather than the heroic. Most of the thematic invention is telling-perhaps more so than in "Zarathustra,"-and the "Seelenmalerei" in the love music and afterwards in the renunciation music is all very finely done. Even the drastic musical satire of the "Adversaries" is acceptable enough in its earlier phases. It is the polyphony in the sections of storm and stress that goes wrong. The subject of the work as a whole has the merit of general intelligibleness. But the composer identifies t

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-music as belonging to a fledgeling state of his talent. As it is not open to the Brahmsians to say that those early works prove Strauss's incompetence as a composer of the orthodox kind, the only thing left for them to say is that the chamber-music is much the best of his whole output. Sooner or later we shall doubtless begin to hear that, and in the meantime those who like the early works can play them or listen to them with the comforting assurance that the composer would not object, inasmuch as he has himself quite recently taken part in public performances of them. The Quartet-which Dr. Brodsky and his usual associates, assisted by Mr. Isidor Cohn, played yesterday-might rank as the mature work of anyone but Strauss. It is youthful, relatively to the composer, in the emotional basis of the music; but not in the workmanship, and least of all in the invention, which has all the pith and weight commonly telling of ripe experience. In short, it is an extremely good Quartet of the orthodox kind-one may even say, one of the best existing works for pianoforte and three bow instruments. The Andante is not quite such a marvel as the slow movement of the violin Sonata, but it is very nearly as good in invention and quite as good in its adaptation to the medium-that is, to the particular group