I\u2019m feeling a little frustrated at my current blogging output- it is just that time of year when one has to answer emails or one doesn\u2019t work in the year to come\u2026.<\/p>\n
Oh yes, there is also music to learn\u2026.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve already shared a few thoughts about Brahms 1 in expectation of this week\u2019s Oregon East Symphony concert, but not much of anything about Strauss\u2019s Death and Transfiguration, a not-insignificant piece that is also on the program\u2026.<\/p>\n
In fact D&T is my favorite Strauss tone poem- solely on musical merit. Of course, I consider Alpine Symphony as a symphony, and Don Quioxte as a cello concerto for purposes of that list. Still, even if they were in contention, I think D&T might win out. I think that musically, it is the richest and most inspired of all the tone poems, and that it is also the most perfectly constructed. I can scarcely think of a piece of romantic music where the form more perfectly suits the meaning of the music.<\/p>\n
Strauss\u2019s famous dying joke(\u201cdying is just like I composed it in Tod und Verklarung\u201d), which I\u2019ve quoted often this week, as well as his refusal to behave as a \u201cserious artist\u201d throughout his life has, I think, led some musicians to overlook the musical seriousness of the piece. Fair enough, it works beautifully as a thrill ride, but I do think the piece has a certain honest spirituality that is powerfully apparent when\u00a0it \u00a0is well performed.<\/p>\n
In fact, as I get older, I tend to respect Strauss\u2019s tendency to express his deepest emotions through his music and not through his letters or through an angst-ridden public persona. Strauss seemed keen to puncture the accumulated grandiosity of romantic music- think of the nihilistic ending to Don Juan or the inherent ironic posture of Ein Heldenleben, and in doing so, he liberates the style to express real feeling more directly. Ein Heldenleben, simply by virtue of the title and the subject matter, comes into existence as an affront to romantic decency, and yet, much as we resent the egotism of his choice of \u201cthe composer\u201d as heroic figure, in the end, the piece is deeply moving- he dismantles the ironic pose and makes us believe in the viability of author as hero by the end.<\/p>\n
While Ein Heldenleben, Don Juan, Sinfonia Domestica and Till Eulenspiegel are largely ironic in their outlook,\u00a0 a piece like Death and Transfiguration (as well as Don Quioxte, which is both his most comic and most serious and least ironic piece) shows Strauss the composer revealing himself in a more vulnerable way. Where the hero of Heldenleben conquers all in his path before accepting death more or less on his own terms, in D&T, the protagonist is described as someone who, have spent all his life striving, is someone who has always been met with \u201cno.\u201d It is only in surrender to death that he finds that which he sought.\u00a0 This is an almost Mahlerian perspective.<\/p>\n
In this sense, it is less a study in ironic triumphalism than in hope, an emotion that Strauss always treated with the utmost respect and delicacy.<\/p>\n
In fact, you can look at the major tone poems as each connecting to one fundamental aspect of the human character- Heldenleben is a study in courage, Eulenspiegel in subversion through wit, Don Juan- nihilism, Also Sprach- will, and Quioxte a study\u00a0 in frailty and\u00a0compassion. Strauss\u2019s portrait of Quioxte as the demented Don is devastating in its realistic evocation of madness and dementia, and yet, for once, Strauss eschews all sense of superiority and condescention- Quioxte seems to have been the one protagonist\u00a0Strauss truly loved and empathised with.<\/p>\n
And then, in Tod und Verklarung, he abandons any pretense of superiority, writing of the protagonist \u201cWhat he has sought all this time with his heart\u2019s deepest longing, he still seeks while bathed in mortal sweat, seeks\u2014but alas cannot find it.\u201d In the end, Strauss recognizes the powerlessness of man– man cannot overcome all– and leaves us with hope:<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the last blow of death\u2019s iron hammer rings out, breaks the earthly body in two and covers his eyes with the night of death.\u2014But he hears mightily resounding from heaven that which he sought here longingly\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n c. 2008 Kenneth Woods<\/p>\n