Richard Strauss
{1864-1949)
Ein Heldenleben;
Macbeth
The German composer and conductor Richard Strauss represents a
remarkable extension of the work of Liszt and Wagner in the symphonic poems of
his early career and in his operas shows au equally remarkable use of late
romantic orchestral idiom, often within an almost Mozartian framework. Born in
Munich, the son of a distinguished horn-player and his second wife, a member of
a rich brewing family, he had a sound general education at the Ludwigsgymnasium
in Munich, while studying music under teachers of obvious distinction. Before
he left school in 1882 he had already enjoyed some success as a composer,
continued during his brief period at Munich University with the composition of
concertos for violin and for French horn and a sonata for cello and piano. By
the age of twenty-one he had been appointed assistant conductor to the
well-known orchestra at Meiningen under Hans von Bülow, whom he succeeded in
the following year.
In 1886 Strauss resigned from Meiningen and began the series of
tone-poems that seemed to extend to the utmost limit the extra-musical content
of the form. The first of these works, Aus Italien (‘From Italy’), was
followed by Macbeth, Dan Juan, Tod und Verklärung (‘Death and
Transfiguration’) and, after a gap of a few years, Till Eulenspiegel, Also
sprach Zarathustra (‘Thus spoke Zarathustra’), Don Quixote and Ein
Heldenleben (‘A Hero's Life’). Meanwhile Strauss was establishing his
reputation as a conductor, directing the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for a
season and taking appointments in Munich and then at the opera in Berlin, where
he later became Court Composer.
The new century brought a renewed attention to opera, a medium in which
he had initially enjoyed no great success. Salome, performed in Dresden
in 1905, was followed in 1909 by Elektra, with a libretto by the writer with
whom he was to collaborate over the next twenty years, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal. Der
Rosen-kavalier (‘The Knight of the Rose’), a romantic opera set in the
Vienna of Mozart, was staged at the Court Opera in Dresden in 1911, followed by
ten further operas, ending only with Capriccio, mounted at the
Staatsoper in Munich in 1942.
It was unfortunate that, in the eyes of many, Strauss was compromised by
his seeming acquiescence under the National Socialist Government that came to
power in 1933, taking over from conductors threatened by the régime or from
those, like Toscanini, who refused engagements under the prevailing
circumstances. In particular his acceptance in 1933 of the position of
President of the new Reichsmusikkammer established by Joseph Goebbels,
with Fürtwängler as Vice-President, brought later criticism and hostility,
although his actions may be seen as defending his Jewish daughter-in-law and
his own grandchildren from the obvious dangers that the Third Reich presented.
After 1945 he withdrew for a time to Switzerland, returning to his own house at
Garmisch only four months before his death in 1949.
Strauss completed his tone-poem for large orchestra, Ein Heldenleben,
in 1898 and conducted the first performance on 3rd March 1899 at a Museum
Concert in Frankfurt. The work, which was dedicated to Willem Mengelberg and
the Concertgebouw Orchestra, had a varied reception as it was introduced to
audiences. Critics in Berlin took matters personally and Hanslick in Vienna,
who had never had anything good to say about symphonic poems, found pleasing
respite from musical battle only in the singing of the composer's wife, Pauline
de Ahna, clearly his better half. The daughter of General de Ahna, she had
married Strauss in 1894 and something of her character is reflected in the new
tone-poem. Ein Heldenleben, however unheroically Strauss may have
regarded himself, is autobiographical. Its six movements, intricately interwoven,
provide what is essentially a single symphonic movement, incorporating a slow
movement and a scherzo. The titles, later omitted by the composer, start
with the introduction of the hero, whose strong theme starts the work. A
love-theme is introduced, with a theme of hope and courage, leading to a third
element, a stirring, martial theme, a first subject group. These are developed,
with the final return of the principal theme. There follows a caricature of the
hero's enemies, with the cackling scherzo-like passage of wind
instruments. The hero's theme returns, now down-hearted, in a minor key and
lacking its earlier exuberance, until a theme of victory quells the critical
intervention. This transition leads to the second subject depicting the hero's companion.
This is introduced by a solo violin, capricious and varied in what it has to
offer, before joining the hero in a song of love, with critics now defeated and
disappearing into the distance. Off-stage trumpets call the hero to battle in
the equivalent of a development, and in the tumult the hero and love triumph
over the enemies, their theme heard from the trumpet, to be banished in heroic
victory. The hero's works of peace are heard in references to Strauss's earlier
compositions, including themes from Don Juan, Also sprach Zarathustra, Tod
und Verklärung, Don Quixote, the opera Guntram whose failure had
brought him enemies, Macbeth and the song Traum durch die Dämmerung (‘Dream
in the twilight’), a comprehensive recapitulation. The last section, a final
coda, depicts the hero's withdrawal from the world and fulfillment, with
battles over, not in the pastoral simplicity that Don Quixote had
attempted, as the cor anglais suggests, but now comforted by the love of his
wife.
Strauss completed the first version of his symphonic poem Macbeth in
1888, revising it in the following years, to give its first performance with
the Weimar Hofkapelle in October 1890, after the first performances of Don
Juan and Tod und Verklärung. He himself later preferred the title Ton-Dichtung
(tone-poem) for compositions of this kind, although they remain
fundamentally symphonic. Macbeth is in the form of a symphonic movement
and opens with a fanfare-like motif of kingship, followed by the theme
representing Macbeth himself, soaring in its ambition and combined with a
secondary element heard from the horns and bass trumpet. A further motif is
introduced in the lower wind and string registers, suggesting Macbeth's
mounting ambition. The theme for Lady Macbeth carries the words in the score:
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue,
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal.
It is introduced by flutes and clarinets, over a sustained horn note,
but is followed by a further motif that suggests her inner turmoil.
The principal material now introduced, there is an episode in which
Macbeth and his wife converse in dialogue that rises in intensity, as she
attempts to screw his courage to the sticking-place. The music mounts to a
climax and the kingly motif is heard three times. King Duncan, whose murder the
Macbeths have now planned, draws near, to their agitation, as the strings
provide a scurrying introduction to a second episode, based on material
associated with Lady Macbeth. Now Duncan is heard, in royal procession,
announced by the kingly motif and greeted by Lady Macbeth. In the development
earlier themes return, with the Macbeth theme first heard. It is in this
section that Duncan is murdered and that the guilty pair hear knocking at the
castle gate. Macbeth is even now haunted by his conscience:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking,
I would thou could' st.
The fairly short recapitulation follows the final self-destruction of
Lady Macbeth, whose music becomes fragmented. Macbeth himself faces defeat, as
the distant drums and fanfares of the approach of Malcolm and Macduff are
heard.
Keith Anderson
