Side One
TOD UND VERKLARUNG, Op. 24
(Death and Transfiguration)
Strauss was 81 when he penned his farewell to
the Good Old Days in Metamorphosen. Tod und
Verklarung, on the other hand, takes us back to
1889, when he was 25. It was his fourth symphonic
poem, and comes in order between Don Juan and
Till Eulenspiegel. The symphonic poems of Strauss
have their source in those of Liszt, and this one is
the most Lisztian of all, because it is more generalized
in content, less concerned with details of thought
and character. Strauss’s great friend and mentor Alex-
ander Ritter wrote a poem about the story of Death
and Transfiguration, and Strauss printed this at the
head of his score. But the music was written before
the poem, and our impressions of Death and Trans-
figuration are accordingly as valid at Ritter’s—so
long as we regard it from a sympathetic Straussian
viewpoint.
The tone poem is about a man who lies dying in
his room. The atmosphere of death hangs heavy
over the sick bed. A gentle woodwind tune suggests
that he is dreaming of far-off happy days. A spell of
agony tacks his body but his spirit is victorious over
death as over the world, because he is a man, and
has an immortal soul. He dreams again of his child-
hood and youth. The music becomes more impas-
sioned, and then we are back in the sickroom again.
He grows weaker, his pulse beats more and more
slowly; at last he sinks back and yields to death. But
out of darkness comes the real victory—release from
the world, transfiguration. The solemn theme of
transfiguring triumph, which is the spirit’s victory
over death, wells up gradually to a superb climax
from which it relaxes into eternal serenity.
Side Two
METAMORPHOSEN
(Study for 23 solo strings)
Strauss once said in his youth that he had begun
creative life as an iconoclast and would end it as an
old master. He was implying that the newfangled
fashions of today always become the dusty clichés
of the day after tomorrow; but he spoke more pro-
phetically than he knew, for the Richard Strauss
who broke impetuously through the sound barrier
in Elektra came back at the end of his life to the
classic style and idiom which he had learned to
handle in his apprentice years.
In 1941, when he put Finis to his last opera,
Capriccio, he firmly intended to retire from compo-
sition: “My next piece will be scored for harps,” he
wrote to his friend Clemens Krauss. But the Paradise
Philharmonic Orchestra was not ready to employ
him. For some years he amused himself, and left
posterity deeply grateful, with instrumental cham-
ber works mostly of concertante nature. These are
exquisitely uncommitted. But in the autumn of 1943
the Munich State Opera House was destroyed in an
air raid; this was the theatre where Strauss had
learned his trade, and it had been for him the symbol
of the old musical life in his native city. His grief
was intense, and at about this time he began to sketch
an Adagio for strings. As it grew, it became a dirge
for the old Munich of the early twentieth century;
a theme of specific mourning was removed and used
in the revised version of Strauss’s Munich Waltz.
Then the theme of the Adagio, beginning with four
repeated notes, acquired a distinctive dotted rhythm
for the drooping notes that followed, and Strauss
realized that it was akin to a phrase from the Funeral
March of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. So the
Adagio was diverted to become an essay in thematic
ttansfiguration, or metamorphosis, and the string
orchestra became defined as a body of 23 specified
string soloists (ten violins, five violas, five cellos,
and three double basses). In the spring of 1945 Paul
Sacher commissioned a work from Strauss for his
Zurich orchestra, called the Collegium Musicum;
this was the final incentive, and by April 12 the com-
pleted work was ready; it was performed by the
dedicatees in the following January.
It one analyzes Metamorphosen, it is found to be
based on four distinct thematic fragments some of
which sprout into new themes as the work pro-
gresses. It is probably most useful to summarize such
an analysis as follows: The theme due for meta-
morphosis is the one given out by two violas soon
after the start of the work; it begins with four G’s,
but before this the cellos and basses have suggested
a preludial theme, a quite short, ascending, question-
ing phrase. As the violas’ theme gradually turns into
the Eroica tune (ultimately revealed by cellos and
basses in the closing bars of the work) so the pre-
ludial idea and its fellow-travellers on this road ac-
company and encourage it in its growth. One of
these thematic companions may suggest King Mark
in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde; another seems
connected with Mandryka in Arabella, Strauss’s last
pre-Nazi opera. Metamorphosen is still the single
movement that Strauss first conceived, but Adagio
increases now to Agitato and then sinks back to
Adagio.
Notes ©1962 WILLIAM MANN
Catalog Card Numbers R 62-1413 (mono) and R 62-1414 (stereo) apply to this recording.
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