$Unique_ID{bob00090} $Pretitle{} $Title{Richard Strauss Chapter I: Life} $Subtitle{} $Author{Newman, Ernest} $Affiliation{} $Subject{strauss op first music work strauss's works given munich performance hear audio hear sound see pictures see figures } $Date{1908} $Log{Hear On His Father*54160015.aud Hear On His Teacher*54050012.aud See As A Boy*0009001.scf See Marquardtstein*0009002.scf } Title: Richard Strauss Author: Newman, Ernest Date: 1908 Chapter I: Life Richard Strauss has for so long been the subject of heated discussion in the musical circles of two continents that it is hard to realize that he has not yet attained his forty-fourth year. Thirteen years ago, at an age when Beethoven had got only as far as his unadventurous first symphony, and Wagner was merely laying the foundations of his style in "Rienzi" and "The Flying Dutchman," Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel and Also sprach Zarathustra had already marked him out as a revolutionary of the most daring type; and one needs only to recall the titles of some of his later works - Don Quixote, Ein Heldenleben, the Symphonia Domestica, and Salome - to be reminded that around each of them has raged a critical battle as furious as any that was fought about the maturer works of Wagner. He has often been as unfortunate in his friends as he has been fortunate in his enemies; he has been foolishly abused by critics of the type of the late Eduard Hanslick, whose condemnation of any piece of modern music could almost be taken as a certificate of its excellence, and he has been admired with equal foolishness by others, who were wilfully blind to some of the serious defects of his work, but who used him as a stick with which to beat a contrasted form of art which they disliked. All this commotion at least testifies to Strauss's significance in the history of music, for the whole musical world does not form itself into two armed camps, breathing fire and slaughter at each other, over any man of less than first-rate importance. And a rough measure of the effect he makes even on those who dislike him most may be had in the violence of the epithets they hurl at his head, some of which take us back to the good old days when the "Meistersinger" overture was called "an ugly riot of dissenance," and the opera itself "a boneless tone mollusc," and when "Parsifal" reminded delicate-souled German critics of "the howls of a dog undergoing vivisection." To the expert in the history of journalistic objurgation, epithets of this kind tell their own tale; if a bundle of them, relating to some one of whom he otherwise knew nothing, were brought to him, he could almost reconstruct the artist from them as a scientist can reconstruct the form of an animal from the evidence of a few scattered bones. When a certain dramatic critic, for example, called Ibsen "a muck-ferreting dog," the skilled in these matters, hearing the phrase and knowing the critical record of the author of it, could at once understand the ideals of Ibsen without the necessity of reading a line of him. And when we find Strauss being thrown into the same plague-pit with Ibsen and other moderns, and the same kind of burial service being imprecated over him, that in itself is enough to prove his main offence to be that he is a progressive, and so to arouse the sympathy of many people for him. No one has yet compiled a Straussean Schimpflexikon on the lines of the one that was compiled about Wagner, - an entertaining collection of all the terms of abuse that have been showered upon him; but when it is compiled it will make agreeable reading for posterity. Already we can smile at some of the earlier judgments upon Strauss. From a book published by a well-known American critic only four years ago I cull the following choice cauliflowers of rhetoric, all prompted, be it observed, by three of Strauss's early works that are now accepted in every concert room as blandly as the "Tannhauser" overture, Tod und Verklarung, Don Juan, and Till Eulenspiegel. The last-named, according to our critic, is "a study in musical depiction of wandering vulgarity, of jocular obscenity, a vast and coruscating jumble of instrumental cackles about things unfit to be mentioned. . . . With Ibsens, Maeterlincks, and Strausses," the indignant prophet goes on, writing with his foot on the loud pedal all the time, "plucking like soulless ghouls upon the snapping heartstrings of humanity, treating the heart as a monochord for the scientific measurement of intervals of pain, and finally poking with their skeleton fingers in the ashes of the tomb to see if they could not find a single smouldering ember of human agony, we had attained a rare state of morbidity in art. We felt that when art had turned for her inspiration to the asylum, the brothel, and the pest-house, it was time for a new renaissance." It is hinted that some of the material of Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel is "unfit for publication." Still beating the big drum in the interests of musical sanitation, much as the priests in the Middle Ages used to scare away evil spirits by ringing the church bells noisily, our author goes on to say that with Strauss "the orchestra is transformed into a psychoscope, and the symphony is become a treatise on mental diseases and methods of conversing with the dead." "The modern ear," in fact, "is suffering from acute myringomycrosis, a cheerful affliction caused by the growth of fungi on the ear drum." We read of "the chortling barbarians of the Strauss phantasy," who are separated from other and more civilized beings by a "vast and impassable gulf of fetid inspiration." Strauss is leading music along a path that can only finish "in the corruption and rank odour of the morgue." And becoming a little incoherent, as prophets are apt to do when their rhetoric gets into their head, our author has a final fling at "Till Eulenspiegel, Gargantua of Germany, noisome, nasty, rollicking Till, with the whirligig scale of a yellow clarinet in his brain and the beer-house rhythm of a pint pot in his heart." And yet schoolgirls listen with enjoyment to these foul and pestilential works, and, what is worse, take their mothers to hear them! This wild and malodorous language, taken from an essay by a critic who can write sensibly enough on other topics, is quoted here not so much for its own sake as to give the reader an idea of the frenzy of opposition that Strauss raises in some worthy minds. As I have said, the very violence of the language is in itself an evidence of the disturbing effect he has had upon modern music and musicians; the pole must have gone very deep into the stagnant pond to bring so much mud as this to the surface. And the peculiar wording of the charges against Strauss indicates the new impulses he has brought into music. When dramatic critics of a certain type accuse a new author of immorality we may be sure that all he has really done is to be deeply moved by certain sad aspects of human nature and human life, and to try to communicate to his fellow-men his own sense of the pity that such evil should be. And when composers like Wagner and Strauss are accused of outraging humanity in their music, we may be sure that it is only because they have felt more of the sting or the sweetness or the humour of life than their forerunners did, and have tried to express it all in their music. We are not at present, be it noted, passing any judgment, favourable or unfavourable, upon the actual work of Strauss. That work must finally stand or fall in virtue of what it does, not in virtue of what it aims at doing; that is to say, if the expression itself is false or the architecture bad, the composer cannot fall back upon a plea of good intentions. It may be a desirable thing to bring music into closer touch with actual life than the great classical masters have done - that line of development, indeed, was one that music was bound to follow in our own day; but if the work is not beautifully conceived and strongly wrought it will not endure. The men who lead the multitude to a new Pisgah do not always enter the promised land themselves. They may live in history, as Liszt, for example, does, less for what they have achieved than for what they have made it possible, by flinging open the gates, for other people to achieve. The opinion of those who regard Strauss as merely a charlatan and a poseur, a self-conscious manufacturer of ugliness and eccentricity, may be put aside as not worth consideration. But those who are sympathetically interested in his work and in the musical development for which it stands may reasonably ask whether he is one of the great creators or only one of the great emancipators; whether his music will keep its interest for the ear and the soul of future generations, or will simply, like that of Monteverde or that of Philipp Emanuel Bach, be a historical link between two greater phases of musical thought. This question has, in fact, been asked by many thoughtful observers. In the following pages we shall try to see which way the evidence points. Strauss's father, Franz Strauss (born 26 February, 1822), was the first horn player in the Munich Court Orchestra, and the author of several studies for the instrument. He was an artist of exceptional ability, and specially famous for the beauty of his phrasing. "My father," Richard Strauss once said, "was, as regards beauty and volume of tone, perfection of phrasing, and technique, one of the most notable of horn players." In the light of the revolutionary tendencies exhibited by his son, it is interesting to learn that Franz Strauss was an orthodox conservative musician, who never got over his early anti-Wagnerian bias. Wagner himself was well aware of this bias, and once, it is said, after a performance of one of his operas, in which the hornist had played even more exquisitely than usual, remarked banteringly that Strauss could not have played the music so beautifully had he been a real anti-Wagnerian; to which Strauss merely replied doggedly that "that had nothing to do with it." He married Josephine, the daughter of Georg Pschorr, the well-known brewer of Munich beer. Their son Richard was born 11 June, 1864; a younger sister, Johanna, to whom some of the composer's works are dedicated, came into the world 9 June, 1867. [Hear On His Father] The first horn player in the Munich Court Orchestra. Richard's musical ability showed itself at a very early age. He had already begun to play the piano at four, his mother being his first tutor; at six he composed a "Schneider-polka" in the accommodating key of C major, - his tiny brain probably being unequal at the time to the strain of flats and sharps, - and a Christmas song. From 1870-1874 he attended an elementary school at Munich; here he worked hard at the technique of the piano and at that of the violin. In 1874 he entered at the Gymnasium, where he remained until 1882. From there he proceeded to the University of Munich, leaving this, however, in the following year. In the midst of his other studies he was receiving a careful musical education. From 1875 to 1880 he had a thorough grounding in harmony, counterpoint, and instrumentation from Hofkapellmeister F. W. Meyer, to whom later on he dedicated the Serenade for wind instruments that was published as opus 7. In the next compositions of his of which we hear, the pale domestic glories of the "Schneiderpolka" and the Christmas song are left far behind; we read of a chorus from the "Electra" of Sophocles and a "Festival Chorus" being performed at a "Prufungs-Konzert" at the Gymnasium. By the time he had reached his sixteenth year he had become something of a public character. In 1880 a singer at the Munich opera, Frau Meysenheim, sang three of his songs in public. On 16 March, 1881, the Benno Walter Quartet, at one of their concerts, played his String Quartet in A major (op. 2); while on the 30th of the same month Hermann Levi gave a performance of his Symphony in D minor, a work in four movements, that has hitherto remained unpublished. All this while his training, as any one, indeed, can see from his early compositions, had been on severely orthodox lines. Strauss himself has told us that until 1885, when he made the acquaintance of Alexander Ritter, he had been "brought up in a strictly classical way," on nothing but Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and that only after 1885 did he attain, via Mendelssohn, to Chopin and Schumann, and then to Brahms. The evidence of this is writ large on all his earlier works: the Funf Clavierstucke, op. 3 (1881); the Pianoforte Sonata, op. 5 (1881); the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, op. 6 (1882-3); the Serenade for wind instruments, op. 7 (1882-3); the Violin Concerto, op. 8 (1882-3); the "Stimmungsbilder" for piano, op. 9 (1882-3); and the Concerto for French horn, op. 11 (1883-4). [See As A Boy: Richard's musical ability showed itself at an early age.] After leaving the University Strauss spent the winter of 1883-4 in Berlin, where, as at Munich, he was unusually fortunate in getting his youthful works performed. A Concert Overture in C minor (still unpublished) was played by the Court Orchestra under Radecke. In Berlin he attracted the attention of Hans von Bulow, who conceived for the young man one of those sudden enthusiasms in which the career of Bulow was so prolific. He placed Strauss's Serenade on the programmes of his tour with the Meiningen Orchestra. Besides encouraging Strauss as a composer, he seems to have realized that he had a gift for conducting. In the spring of 1885, at Bulow's invitation, Strauss conducted, at a concert of the Meiningen Orchestra in Munich, a four-movement Suite of his own for wind instruments, that has not yet been published. ^* He gave it without any rehearsal, a fact which points to unusual confidence on Bulow's part, either in Strauss or, which is more probable, in the wind players of his orchestra. Bulow, however, had evidently a high opinion of the young man, for on 1 October of the same year he engaged him as assistant "Musikdirektor" under himself at Meiningen. Here Strauss played, under the conductorship of Bulow, the C minor Pianoforte Concerto of Mozart, and conducted his own Symphony in F minor (op. 12), which had been written in 1883-4, and of which the first performance had been given in New York on 13 December, 1884, by Theodore Thomas. His other compositions of this period include the Piano Quartet (op. 13), written in 1883-4 - with which he won the prize offered by the Berlin Tonkunstler-Verein - and the Wandrers Sturmlied (1884-5). [Footnote *: "This," says Mr. James Huneker in his article on Strauss in "Overtones," "must be the grand Suite in B flat, misleadingly numbered opus 14, the same opus number as the Sturmlied. It is scored for thirteen wind instruments, and has been heard in London. The introduction and entire fourth movement are said to be the best. It is early Strauss."] Although what we now regard as the real Strauss had not yet appeared in his music, the style of the young man of twenty, as shown in the Symphony in F minor, the Piano Quartet, and the Wandrers Sturmlied, had changed considerably from that of the composer of the still earlier works. In these three works, and more especially in the Wandrers Sturmlied, most people see the influence of Brahms, in whom Bulow had probably interested him. A still stronger influence was now to come into his life. According to Strauss himself the turning-point of his career was his friendship with Alexander Ritter (1833-96), a man of many parts - violinist, composer, litterateur, and music-seller. One of Strauss's German biographers, Dr. Erich Urban, thinks that the part played by Ritter in the development of the composer has been exaggerated; at most, he thinks, Ritter could only have given the final impulse to tendencies that had long been slumbering in Strauss. Ritter, he says, was "ein verworrener Denker, ein unklarer Kopf" ("a confused thinker, an unclear intelligence"). He holds that it was more probably Bulow who applied the torch of modernity to Strauss's smouldering faculties; and he quotes a remark of the composer to the effect that in October, 1885, he attended daily the rehearsals of the Meiningen Orchestra, at which he was initiated by Bulow into the art of conducting "in his [Bulow's] sense and in that of Wagner." We may take it for granted that Bulow brought the young composer into closer touch with many of the main currents of modern music. At the same time we are bound to accept Strauss's own declaration of how much he owed to Ritter. He was, according to Strauss, a well-read man, particularly in philosophy. He had married a niece of Wagner, and was an ardent apostle of the ideas of Wagner and Liszt and the so-called "New German" school, with its ideal of "Musik als Ausdruck." "His influence," says Strauss, "was in the nature of the storm-wind. He urged me on to the development of the poetic, the expressive in music, as exemplified in the works of Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz. My symphonic fantasia, Aus Italien, is the connecting link between the old and the new methods." Erich Urban, however, doggedly declines to see any influence of Ritter in Aus Italien, the Burleske, the Violin Sonata (op. 18), or the six songs that form op. 19. [Hear On His Teacher] A well-read man, particularly in philosophy. When Bulow left Meiningen, in November, 1885, Strauss became his successor. He occupied this post until 1 April, 1886. The April and May of that year he spent mostly in Rome and Naples; it was from this Italian journey that Aus Italien (op. 16) sprang. The work was first performed at Munich, in the spring of 1887, under Strauss himself. On 1 August, 1886, he was appointed third Kapellmeister at the Munich Opera, under Levi and Fischer, a position he gave up on 31 July, 1889. On 1 October, 1889, he became assistant Kapellmeister at Weimar, under Lassen. By this time he had "found himself" as a composer, as the bare enumeration of the works written between 1885 and 1889 will show. Aus Italien was followed in 1886 by the six songs published as op. 17, the first of which - "Seitdem dein Aug' in meines schaute," with its more refined passion and its greater freedom of handling - has only to be compared with one of the earlier songs, such as the popular "Zueignung" of op. 10, for the difference between the Strauss of eighteen and the Strauss of twenty-two - the pre-Ritter and the post-Ritter Strauss - to be at once apparent. In 1887 came the vigorous Violin Sonata (op. 18), which, youthful as it still is in comparison with Strauss's later work, inhabits a different world from the Violin Concerto of 1882-3 (op. 8). Passing over the songs of op. 19 (1887), op. 21 (1888), and op. 22 (1886-7), it need only be mentioned that op. 20 was the tone-poem Don Juan (1888, first performance in Berlin under Bulow), op. 23, Macbeth, ^* and op. 24, Tod und Verklarung (1889, first performance Eisenach, 1890), for it to be quite evident that in the two or three years immediately succeeding 1885 Strauss had left far behind him the sober classical ideals of his boyhood, and was well on the way to becoming the audacious revolutionary who so startled the musical world between 1895 - the year of Till Eulenspiegel - and 1898 - the year of Ein Heldenleben. [Footnote *: Macbeth, though it bears a later opus number than Don Juan, is in reality Strauss's first tone-poem. It was written in the summer of 1887, and given under Bulow in Berlin, then revised, and published after Don Juan. It was first performed in Weimar in 1890 in its revised form.] On leaving Munich, in October, 1889, as we have seen, Strauss went to Weimar, where he remained as conductor until the beginning of June, 1894. Among the operas he produced there were two short works of his mentor, Alexander Ritter - "Der faule Hans" and "Wem die Krone?" - while as conductor of the Liszt Society at Leipzig he did a good deal for modern music. Meanwhile he had made his first experiment in opera. An inflammation of the lungs and a general breakdown through overwork had sent him, in the spring of 1892, on a year's tour to Greece, Egypt, and Sicily in search of health. At Cairo, on 29 December, 1892, he began the first act of Guntram, finishing it at Luxor on 27 February of the following year. The second act was completed at Villa Blandini, Ramacca, Sicily, on 4 June, 1893; and the third at Marquartstein, Upper Bavaria, on 5 September, 1893. Strauss himself conducted the first performance at Weimar, on 12 May 1894. Heinrich Zeller was the Guntram, and Pauline de Ahna - the daughter of the Bavarian general Adolf de Ahna, - who later on became the wife of the composer, was the Freihild. The work had no great success with the public, partly, no doubt, because of the palpable traces of Wagner in both the music and the libretto, which latter, by the way, is Strauss's own. From Weimar he returned in October, 1894, to Munich, this time as first Kapellmeister. During the winter of 1894-5 he also conducted the Berlin Philharmonic concerts in succession to Bulow, while in the summer of 1894 he had conducted the first performance of Tannhauser that had ever been given at Bayreuth. Pauline de Ahna, whom he married shortly afterwards, was the Elisabeth. The years that followed were busy ones for Strauss. In 1895 he conducted concerts in Budapest, Leipzig, and other towns; in 1896 and 1897 he conducted at Brussels, Moscow, etc., and at the Dusseldorf Festival; in 1897 he visited Amsterdam, London, Barcelona, Brussels, Hamburg, and Paris; and in 1898 Zurich and Madrid. In October, 1898, he left Munich to take up the post, which he yet holds, of conductor at the Berlin Royal Opera. His duties at Weimar, Munich, and Berlin necessarily brought him into contact with music of all schools, and it is satisfactory to note that he can conduct a trifle like the "Fledermaus" of the younger Johann Strauss with the same gusto as "Tristan" or Die Meistersinger" or "The Barber of Baghdad." The catholicity of his taste is further shown by the fact that he was one of the first to see the beauty of Humperdinck's "Hansel und Gretel," and the first to give that delightful work to the world, in December, 1893, during his Kapellmeistership at Weimar. As he was at that time thinking out his Also sprach Zarathustra, which, all things considered, is the most revolutionary work of our generation, it is evident that the most intense absorption in his own intellectual world is not incompatible with the warmest sympathy with musicians of radically different outlooks. [See Marquardtstein: Richard Strauss' Country Home.] In the midst of all the heavy work entailed by this conducting and travelling he found time to write that series of orchestral works which defined once for all his position in the history of the music of the nineteenth century. Till Eulenspiegel (op. 28) followed close upon the heels of Guntram; it was written in 1894, and received its first performance at Cologne, under Wullner, in 1895. From there it quickly made its way to almost every musical city in Germany - except his birthplace, Munich. Only two songs separate Till Eulenspiegel from Also sprach Zarathustra (op. 30), which was first performed under Strauss himself at Frankfort, on 27 November, 1895. Don Quixote (op. 35) followed in 1897, and Ein Heldenleben (op. 40) in 1898; and at the age of thirty-four Strauss was the most talked-of musician in the world. He had already carried the typical modern art-form, the symphonic poem, as far beyond anything of the kind that his predecessors had written, as Wagner in Tristan had swung himself beyond the ken of all earlier or contemporary composers of opera. His nine following opus numbers comprise nothing but songs and a few male-voice choruses. His next large work was the opera Feuersnoth (op. 50), produced at Dresden on 21 November, 1901. This was succeeded by "Das Tal" (op. 51), a song for bass voice and orchestra, and a choral work, Taillefer (op. 52); then, in 1904, came the much-discussed Symphonia Domestica (op. 53, first performance in New York, 21 March, 1904, under Strauss). One would have thought that the climax of excitement about him had been reached long ago, but the production of his third opera, Salome (op. 54), in Dresden, on 9 December, 1905, roused a fiercer storm of controversy than ever. Since Salome he has produced nothing on a large scale. Opus 55 is a Bardengesang (1906) for male-voice chorus and orchestra; op. 56 a set of six songs; and op. 57 two marches. A fourth opera, Electra, has not yet seen the light. Strauss's personal acquaintance with England dates from 1897. August Manns had already given his Till Eulenspiegel at the Crystal Palace on 21 March, 1896, and Also sprach Zarathustra on 6 March, 1897. On 7 December, 1897, at a Wagner concert given by Mr. Schulz-Curtius in the Queen's Hall, London, Strauss conducted his own Till Eulenspiegel and Tod and Verklarung, this being the first English performance of the latter work. His music, however, spread slowly here; even in November, 1902, the "Musical Times" could say, with unconscious irony, that "the name of Richard Strauss is gradually becoming known in England." On 1 February, 1902, the love-scene from Feuersnoth was given by Mr. Wood at Queen's Hall. Some months later, at the Lower Rhenish Festival, held at Dusseldorf in May, Strauss had made a remark that had unexpectedly wide-reaching consequences. Elgar's Gerontius had just received, under the baton of Julius Buths, a performance that made amends for the inadequate rendering it had had at the Birmingham Festival of 1900. After the official toasts had all been proposed Strauss surprised every one by spontaneously proposing another; "I raise my glass," he said, "to the welfare and success of the first English Progressivist, Meister Edward Elgar, and of the young progressive school of English composers." The remark gave great offence in some quarters in England, where several estimable composers, who were, however, neither progressive nor Meisters, felt that the compliment to Elgar was a backhander to themselves. But Strauss's generous words undoubtedly had much to do with the revival of Elgar's great work in this country. At the end of the same month and the beginning of June, Strauss gave some concerts in London in conjunction with Herrvon Possart, who recited Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," the composer at the piano accompanying with his own music (op. 38). Performances were also given, under Strauss, of Tod und Verklarung, Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, and the Violin Sonata. On 12 December, 1902, Mr. Wood gave the first English performance of Ein Heldenleben. The critics, where they were not dubious as to the value of the new work, were mostly rather hostile; but the public took to it, and Mr. Wood repeated it on 1 January and 28 March, 1903. In September, 1902, Tod und Verklarung was given at the Worcester Festival, this being the first performance of any work of his at an English festival. The Sturmlied was given at the Sheffield Festival in October of the same year. In June, 1903, an elaborate Strauss festival, lasting three days, was held in London. The fine Amsterdam Orchestra had been engaged; it had the reputation of playing Strauss's works with especial brilliancy, and Ein Heldenleben had been dedicated to its conductor, Wilhelm Mengelberg. Two performances were given of Also sprach Zarathustra, two of Till Eulenspiegel, two of Ein Heldenleben, one of Tod und Verklarung, one of Don Juan, one of Macbeth, and one of Don Quixote, Strauss and Mengelberg sharing the work of conducting. Two movements from Aus Italien were also given. Mr. Wilhelm Backhaus played the solo part in the Burleske, Mr. John Harrison sang excerpts from Guntram, and the composer's wife and Mr. Ffrangcon Davies sang a number of his songs. The Festival was not a financial success, but it was widely discussed, and did much to establish Strauss firmly in the English concert room. Since then his orchestral compositions have figured regularly on both London and provincial programmes, and his larger new works, with the exception, of course, of the operas, have been heard here fairly promptly. Taillefer was given at the Bristol Festival of October, 1905, and the Symphonia Domestica received its first English performance under Mr. Wood, on 25 February, 1905. Don Quixote, too, has been repeated in London, though not in the provinces; and Strauss himself has paid this country more than one visit since 1903. Salome, presumably, we shall never hear on the stage in England; but the dance from it was played by the New Symphony Orchestra, under Mr. Fritz Cassirer, at Queen's Hall on 22 November, 1907. At a concert to be given at Queen's Hall on 19 March of the present year it was intended that Strauss should conduct the dance and two long vocal excerpts from Salome, - the great scene between Salome and Jochanaan, and the final scene of the opera; but the concert fell through owing to a disagreement between the Queen's Hall authorities and the German "Genossenschaft" that manages the financial affairs of the composers belonging to it. It will be seen that Strauss's life, so far as external events are concerned, has been comparatively uneventful; it is mainly a record of strenuous labour as composer and conductor. When we survey the already enormous mass of his music we feel that this alone is enough work for one man to have done, and when we think of the further great strain upon his time and his strength involved in his constant conducting and his travelling - for he has toured the world from New York to Moscow - we wonder that he has not broken down long ago. Fortunately for him he keeps clear, for the most part, of the literary side of music. He has edited a German edition of Berlioz's "Treatise on Instrumentation," has written a magazine article or two, and is the editor of a little series of books - "Die Musik" is the general title of the series - most of which would be highly interesting if only the atrocious German typography of them permitted any one who respects his eyesight to read them. The latest volume of the series is upon Strauss's old friend, Alexander Ritter; the author is Siegmund von Hausegger. Of Strauss as a conductor only those who have heard him frequently, and in all kinds of music, have a right to speak. The readings he has given of his own works in England have been highly personal; in Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben, for example, he stresses the occasional freakishnesses of the music more than the majority of other conductors do. In his operatic conducting, however, he is said to pay less attention to detail and more to breadth of general effect; and it is claimed for him that he is both broad in his sympathies and conscientious in the discharge of his duties, giving the same care, for example, to an opera by Lortzing as he does to one by Wagner.