"Tod und Verklärung."
October 17, 1902.
It is difficult to make out the prevalent state of mind in this country in regard to Richard Strauss—Richard II., as he is often called in Germany. Of course the upholders of a turnip-headed orthodoxy will not hear of him, any more than they would hear of Richard I. a quarter of a century ago, and he seems to have an irritating effect on all critics, except a certain very small minority in whose temperament there is something giving them the key to some part, at any rate, of Strauss's genius. What irritates the critics is simply the difficulty of finding a formula for Strauss. He has the annoying impertinence not to fit into any of their pigeon-holes. He is enigmatic, Sphinx-like, a complex personality not to be conveniently catalogued. That complex personality we are not here proposing to analyse, but on one point we venture to state a definite opinion. Those who assert that Strauss is a mere eccentric will sooner or later find themselves in the wrong. He has in a few cases played tricks on the public, but he is nevertheless a master-composer, in the full and simple sense of those words—a master-composer just as Mozart was. In "Tod und Verklärung" we find him in a mood of absolute seriousness. The theme is a death-bed scene, the phantasmagoria of a sick brain during the last moments of earthly consciousness, the final struggle with death, and then a wonderful suggestion of reawakening to immortality. The composition is thus, as a German critic has pointed out, the counterpart of Elgar's "Gerontius," so far as the subject is concerned; but in no other respect have the two works any similarity. The qualities with which Strauss's name is most commonly associated—audacious and grotesque realism, gorgeous, intoxicating orchestral figuration and colouring—are here completely in abeyance. In the mood of the opening section there is kinship with the third act of "Tristan"—the same hush and oppression of the sick man's lair,—but not in the musical treatment, which with Strauss has much more reference to external detail (e.g., the ticking of the clock) than with Wagner. The introductory notes are full of weird power, and they lead on to some exquisitely pathetic "Seelenmalerei." In the ensuing agitato section any listener acquainted with other Symphonic Poems by the same composer—earlier or later—is likely to be surprised at his comparative moderation and restraint in depicting the terrors of the struggle with death. It cannot be denied that Strauss is greatly preoccupied with such ideas. He has set the very article of death to music on at least four different occasions ("Tod und Verklärung," "Don Juan," "Till," and "Don Quixote"). The hanging of "Till" is inconceivably drastic in its realism, and the last sigh of Don Quixote is the most unearthly thing in all music. Don Juan's death is purely macabre; but in "Tod und Verklärung" a certain suggestion of the macabre gives way to something very different—the suggestion of the soul rising to immortality; and thus is initiated the final section, dominated by the noble and beautiful "transfiguration" theme. Those of the composer's admirers who "always thought he was a heathen Chinee" may here find matter for searchings of heart. For the thing is too well done not to have been sincerely felt.