Del Mar Richard Strauss

A Critical Commentary on His Life and Works (Volume I)
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ISBN: 978-0-571-30943-6
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 462 Seiten

Norman Del Mar (1919-1994) was universally recognised as a leading authority on the music of Richard Strauss, and his masterly three-volume study of his life and works remains a classic. Volume I deals with the years from the composer's birth (1864) to Der Rosenkavalier (1912), discussing the early orchestral and chamber music, the tone poems and the operas Guntram, Feuersnot, Salome and Elektra. 'Deploying a well-nigh encyclopaedic knowledge, Mr Del Mar acquits himself brilliantly of his task of disentangling and reassembling the numerous strands that make up the backcloth of poetry and philosophy which Strauss, while not always understanding every intricacy, yet needed as a constant reference map for his composing. The three volumes of this magnificent book should be studied by all lovers of the late-romantic music, amateurs and professionals alike...a monumental achievement.' Times Literary Supplement 'A brilliant and copiously analytical study ... a constant fascination.' Guardian

Norman Del Mar (1919-1994) was a distinguished British conductor, musicologist and biographer. He was recognised as a leading authority on Richard Strauss, and his major three-volume work on his life and music remains a classic. He is also remembered for his recordings of British music, in particular Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius and Britten.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Del Mar, Norman

Leseproben

BEGINNINGS

BRAHMS used to say with pride that he was ‘the last of the classical composers’. He certainly stood in direct line of succession to a series of great masters of symphonic composition which, as the nineteenth century drew to its close, appeared to be in danger of becoming extinct. The advent of Liszt and Wagner together with their hot-headed disciples seemed to proclaim the end of an era. Nevertheless, that day was still, if briefly, deferred and the role of ‘last’ destined to be reserved for later masters.

In the great German tradition two towering personalities stood at the fatal cross-roads—Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss—two creative minds which could scarcely have been more different, although they shared a common heritage and spoke a common musical language. Both contributed to the musical revolution which caused the final break in the tradition to which they owed so much; but unlike Strauss, Mahler died in 1911 at the peak of his career.

Despite his small output, consisting of little more than ten symphonies and a handful of songs, Mahler’s style had developed steadily until at the time of his death he was in the vanguard of advanced trends in contemporary music. His harmonic innovations, which were more daring with each successive work, had a profound effect on Schönberg and his disciples, and contributed to a large extent, together with his artistic Weltanschauung, to the evolution of what is now recognized as one of the most important and far-reaching developments in Western music, the new Viennese school of atonal composers.

Strauss also had an important influence on this movement, and had he died in 1909 immediately after the composition of Elektra it might have seemed as if he, too, would have continued on as adventurous a road as his more introspective colleague. Instead, however, he performed an abrupt volte-face and then proceeded to live on for a further forty years, writing prolifically in an increasingly mellifluous vein, opera after opera, work after work, whether the urge was upon him or not, until the very language in which he was writing had ceased to be current musical vernacular and he himself had turned into a legendary figure of a bygone age.

Richard Strauss was born in Munich on the 11th June 1864. He was the son of Franz Strauss, a well-known and highly respected horn player in the Munich Court Orchestra and professor of the Royal School of Music. Richard’s mother was Franz Strauss’s second wife, the whole of Franz’s first family having been wiped out by the cholera epidemic of 1853. Josephine Strauss was the well-to-do daughter of a prominent family of brewers named Pschorr. The marriage relieved Franz of any fear of financial embarrassment for the rest of his life, and enabled him to make several valuable gestures to their son Richard in establishing his career.

That a career was probably in the offing showed itself extremely early, since he eagerly began his musical studies with piano lessons at the age of four and a half, later passing on to the violin. His first attempts in composition began when he was only six. Strauss himself wrote that his actual first effort in this direction consisted of a Christmas Carol, followed by a Polka.1 Further pieces duly followed one another which we need not take seriously, though the boy Strauss clearly did, since an Introduction, Theme and Variations for horn and piano composed for his father in 1878 is labelled op. 17. This early system of enumeration actually reached op. 30, although it was repeatedly revised as more and more works were gradually considered to be unworthy of inclusion.2 The compositions completed during these early years are of extraordinary variety, including numerous songs, piano and chamber music. During this period began the first courses in theory under Meyer, a leading Munich musician. In 1876 the twelve-year-old schoolboy completed his first orchestral score, a Festmarsch (Festival March) in E flat which is still the first work of the composer to be known generally to the world at large. It is, of course, little more than a childhood attempt, the remarkable thing being, perhaps, that the boy had the tenacity, let alone the skill, to complete the full orchestral score. It would not even occupy the position at the head of Strauss’s acknowledged output had not Uncle George Pschorr taken it into his head five years later in 1881 to subsidize its publication. None but the best-known publishing house was good enough for the little prodigy, and the manuscript was duly sent off to Breitkopf & Härtel, accompanied by the following letter:

Most honoured Herr Breitkopf!

I am permitting myself to approach you by letter since I am burdening you on behalf of someone wholly unknown to you. My name is Richard Strauss and I was born on June 11th in the year ’64, the son of the chamber music player and professor at the local Conservatoire. I am at present at the Gymnasium in the Lower Sixth form, but have decided to dedicate myself wholly to music and moreover directly to composition. I have had instruction in Counterpoint from Herr Hofkapellmeister Fr. W. Meyer. Accompanying this letter is one of my compositions which I have dedicated to my uncle, Herr George Pschorr, the owner of the beer brewery, and he is most anxious that it should appear in print in the edition of one of the foremost music publishing firms. He would himself defray the printing costs. I am therefore turning to you with the request that you be so good as to take the Festmarsch into your edition in order that your famous name which has such influence in the world of music may help the name of a young aspiring musician to become known ….

This letter, if precocious, is by no means objectionable, and the piece duly appeared in the famous Breitkopf & Härtel orchestral library. It is clear that even as a boy the little Richard had an extremely fertile and energetic brain. Certainly, being an unusually musical child in the household of a professional musician, he was idolized and, from many accounts, unduly spoilt by his admiring parents and relations. Indeed, it stands much to his credit that he persevered so steadily at composition during this period. The Festmarsch, for all its obvious lack of originality and humdrum cadences, is assured in its manner, while the orchestral layout shows an accomplished hand, especially considering that it was the first he completed (a still earlier overture written in 1872–3 was only laid out in short score on two staves). Most commentators have picked on the exploitation of the familiar figure from the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, but it falls naturally into its new context as an integral part of the principal subject:

Ex. 1

The woodwind melody of the Trio is oddly static in the way it constantly comes back to the same note, but the cello countersubject is nicely invented, recalling many a euphonium solo in the military band. The most interesting features of the work are the return after the Trio section, and more particularly the chromatically extended cadence which leads to the climax of the coda, indicating that the young and self-satisfied composer was beginning to feel the need to experiment beyond accepted formula:

Ex. 2

The March was played shortly after its publication by the amateur orchestra ‘Wilde Gungl’, which, since it was conducted regularly by Strauss’s father, more than once tried out pieces by the boy Richard, apart from giving him the experience of playing the violin in the orchestra and even, it is said, of taking an occasional rehearsal.

2

After the Festmarsch of 1876 some further orchestral works began to appear, such as a Serenade, two Overtures, and a second Festmarsch. Already Strauss was nothing if not prolific, and the music he wrote during the next three or four years already shows an extraordinarily rapid development both in style and self-assurance.

The next work considered by the Strauss family as worthy of publication was a String Quartet composed three years later. Breitkopf was again approached, but without the bait of a subsidy as the Quartet was considered of sufficient merit no longer to need such cushioning. But under these circumstances the great publishing house showed themselves wholly uninterested. In their defence one might well say that they could not possibly tell that the composer of this conventional essay in traditional formulae would one day be the author of such masterpieces as Till Eulenspiegel and Der Rosenkavalier. It is indeed ironic that Breitkopf was never to publish a single important work of the composer’s, although oddly enough the English branch of that great firm later handled Strauss’s works in the United Kingdom. Yet these are the pitfalls of publishing, and it was all the more perspicacious of a certain Spitzweg of the firm of Jos. Aibl that he took the chance of accepting the A major Quartet on promise, and published it as op. 2.

As one might expect, the Quartet shows a considerable advance in making the most of its opportunities, even if the necessary invention did not readily spring to Strauss’s mind yet to justify the extra length. After a promising start, the development of the first movement follows exactly the same course of events as the exposition in virtually the same number of bars, a fact which makes one embark with misgivings on the third journey through the same scenery in the recapitulation. Indeed, this was a problem which Strauss always found troublesome, and may have been a strong influence in...