Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0009/00091.txt

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$Title{Richard Strauss
Chapter II: Early Instrumental Works}
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$Author{Newman, Ernest}
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$Subject{strauss
first
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$Date{1908}
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Title:       Richard Strauss
Author:      Newman, Ernest
Date:        1908

Chapter II: Early Instrumental Works

     It is generally agreed that the Strauss we know to-day dates from Aus
Italien (op. 16); and though all divisions of this kind are necessarily
somewhat arbitrary, it will be found convenient for purposes of criticism to
draw a line of demarcation there.  The year of composition of his first opus,
the Festmarsch, is apparently not definitely known, but assuming it to be
about 1880, the works to be considered in this chapter cover a period of about
five years, from 1880 to 1885, in which latter year Strauss would still be
only twenty-one.  They include thirteen songs - the consideration of which we
may reserve for the chapter on his songs as a whole - two Quartets, ten small
pieces for pianoforte, a Pianoforte Sonata, a Sonata for Violoncello and
Piano, a Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, a Concerto for the French Horn, a
large choral and orchestral work, a Serenade for wind instruments, a March for
Orchestra, and a Symphony.  The general impression one gets from all these
works is that of a head full to overflowing with music, a temperament that is
energetic and forthright rather than warm, a faculty - unusual in so young a
composer - of keeping the hearer's attention almost always engaged, and a
general lack not only of young-mannish sentimentality, but of sentiment. There
is often a good deal of ardour in the writing, but it is the ardour of the
intellect rather than of the emotions.  Though he is sometimes dry, he is
scarcely ever dull; the dryness is a personal tang; it suggests a sinewy young
athlete's joy in his own energizing and in his freedom from anything like
excess of feeling.  The work is the outcome of a definite personality, not the
mere music-making of a man who has nothing of his own to say.  It is this
youthful strength that makes the best of the earlier works still interesting
and enjoyable.  Even in the boyish Festmarsch (op. 1) there is a quite amazing
vigour of the bantam kind; and even in the Trio, with its amusingly
self-confident little melody, that reminds one of the "cheekiness" of some
healthy and irrepressible urchin, there is unexpected energy.  The first,
second, and fourth movements of the String Quartet (op. 2) have the same
breezy, healthy quality.  We see it again in Nos. 2, 4, and 5 of the Funf
Klavierstucke (op. 3), and in all the fast movements of the Piano Quartet (op.
13), the Violin Concerto (op. 8), the Violoncello Sonata (op. 6), the Piano
Sonata (op. 5), and the Symphony (op. 12).  The music here is generally, in
spite of its untiring energy of movement, a little hard and metallic; it
reminds us of arabesques traced on steel.  On the other hand, wherever the
youthful Strauss has to sing rather than declaim, when he has to be emotional
rather than intellectual, as in his slow movements, he almost invariably
fails.  At best, as in Nos. 1 and 3 of the Funf Klavierstucke, he manages to
echo the sentiment of some previous composer - Schumann in the first case,
Beethoven in the second.  Schumann's romanticism is written all over No. 1,
and the middle section in particular has come straight from the G minor
section of the "Humoreske"; while in No. 3 there is a rather conscious
imitation of the Beethoven funeral march manner.  There is Schumann again in
the andantino "Traumerei" of the Stimmungsbilder for pianoforte, as, indeed,
there is almost throughout the series, though it must be said that the music
is not weakly imitative.  It still has the peculiar firmness and confidence of
style that was so characteristic of Strauss from the outset; he was never in
the least danger of becoming one of the ordinary sentimental Schumannikins. In
the slow movements of the String Quartet, the Piano Sonata, the Violoncello
Sonata, the Violin Concerto, and the Symphony he is obviously ill at ease.  He
feels it hard to squeeze a tear out of his unclouded young eyes, to make those
taut, whip-cord young nerves of his quiver with emotion.  Sometimes he comes
near the commonplace, which is a rare thing for him; for however one may
dislike this or that phrase of Strauss one can rarely despise it.  In the
Violin Concerto and the Violoncello Sonata he wisely cuts the slow movement as
short as possible, and gets on to his finale or his rondo with an evident sigh
of relief; in the Piano Sonata he dovetails into the centre of the slow
movement a playful scherzo-like section.  In his rapid movements the rhythmic
interest is always well maintained, and the curve of the phrase, if not
sensuously beautiful or captivating, is at any rate lithe and muscular; but in
his andantes he usually falls into a rather obvious rhythmic swing, and he
shows more immaturity and less resource in his accompaniments here than
elsewhere, one noticeable mannerism being the syncopations that often underlie
the theme.

     It is hard to say what would have become of Strauss had he chosen to
continue working in the abstract classical forms instead of the modern poetic
forms which he adopted after Aus Italien.  Sometimes, in the very early works,
he rather loses himself in the development portions, which of course are the
test of a composer's power of continuous and logical thinking; he is inclined
to swagger his way through a difficulty rather than to solve it.  At other
times he shows a faculty for compact weaving that makes us think that had he
cultivated the traditional symphonic form a few years longer he might have
achieved something notable in it.  Even in the first movement of the Piano
Sonata, written when he was only sixteen or seventeen, there is, in spite of
an obvious discontinuity of idea now and then, at times a quite surprising
strength and consistency of tissue. ^* Perhaps the extraordinary nervous force
of Strauss's later compositions and the audacity of their form makes us too
prone to underestimate the value of his earliest works.  When we try to look
impartially at things like the Symphony, the Piano Quartet, and the Burleske,
we recognize in them the possibility of a first-rate symphonist.  Nothing can
be further from the truth than the idea of Strauss - current in some quarters
- as a harum-scarum young man whose fancy runs away with him for want of
sufficient education in the principles or form to hold it in check.  As a
matter of fact, probably no young musician has ever had a more solid grounding
in the accepted musical forms, or has practised them more easily.  When he
left the Munich Gymnasium in 1882, at the age of eighteen, according to
Professor Giehrl every musician who knew him was "staggered" ("es sei fur alle
Musiker etwas geradezu Verbluffendes") at the ease and completeness of his
mastery of all the forms.  It is not lack of command of the classical manner
that has kept Strauss from working contentedly, like Brahms, within the frame
of the Beethoven symphony, but the recognition that for ideas like his the
classical manner is inappropriate.  And in the works of his early manhood,
written about 1884 and 1885, we can plainly see a contest going on within him
between the dutiful youth who believes what his masters had told him, and the
adventurous young man who is beginning to think for himself.  The Burleske is
an interesting example of this struggle.  A good deal of it is undeniably
Brahmsian in spirit, the beginning of the first theme for the piano being a
reminiscence indeed, of the theme of Brahms's D minor Ballade; and the
frequent cross-rhythms in the work have been openly bought at the Brahms
counter.  And yet the face of the Strauss we all know keeps peeping out of the
heavy Brahmsian hood like the face of Till Eulenspiegel from under the hood of
the monk.  Already we see he has the notion - which later on he will often
carry to an extreme - that music can be made almost as definite as words or
pictures.  He tells the pianist, for example, to play a certain phrase in the
Burleske "con umore," without at the same time telling him how to do it.  The
"humour," obviously exists only in the mind of the composer, and in that of
the pianist if he can persuade himself that he sees it.  The phrase in itself
is just mildly graceful, and it is safe to say that not a single person who
has heard the Burleske has ever dreamt that it was meant to be humorous.  It
is evident that if Strauss was bent on trying to suggest things of this kind
in instrumental music, the classical and abstract forms were not the place for
him; the sooner he jumped the wall and got into the field of programme music
the better for him and for us.  There were other signs that he was beginning
to strain at the classical leash.  Perhaps, indeed, some of the earliest works
are not so innocently abstract as we imagine.  Even in the Violin Concerto
(1882-3) he interpolates the second subject of the first movement in the
finale, thirty bars or so before the end, and marks it "molto con
espressione," as if it had some poetic significance in his mind.  In the
Symphony (1883-4) both the third and fourth movements contain frequent
reminiscences of the first, and one cannot doubt that the reappearances of the
earlier themes are in obedience to some poetic scheme.  It is thus probable
that even the good boy whom Meyer and Giehrl were patting on the back for his
touching filial devotion to the classical form was already hatching sinister
plans for turning the old lady out of doors.  Perhaps all that was needed to
divert Strauss into the new path at this time was some over-mastering emotion
which he would feel to be inexpressible in the older manner; and of the coming
of this there are signs in the works of the end of his first period.  In the
first and third movements of the Piano Quartet, in particular, there is a
quite new note.  There is all the old energy, but it is now touched and
quickened by an unaccustomed emotion.  The andante is the first slow movement
of Strauss of which the fount and origin is pure spontaneous feeling - not the
mask of feeling put on at the bidding of the intellect.  Not only does the
mood of this Piano Quartet often forecast that of Aus Italien, but the
thematic phrases begin to show one marked characteristic of the style of the
later Strauss - a super-abundant energy that sends the melodies sweeping far
up and down the scale, and a length of breath that enables them to run an
exceptionally long course.  Everything is ready for the re-birth of the real
Strauss.  He is an accomplished technician, he has complete mastery of his
ideas, he is acquiring fresh emotional energy without losing any of his old
intellectual energy; all that is needed now is to find some form that will
give the freest play to the best that is in him.  This form he ultimately
found in programme music.

[Footnote *: The little hammering figure of four notes that runs through the
greater part of the movement is obviously an echo of the "Fate" theme in
Beethoven's fifth symphony.  The vitality and freshness of Strauss's treatment
of it are really astonishing.]