"DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION," TONE-POEM: Op. 24
Prefaced to the published score of Tod und Verklärung (composed in 1889) is a poem by the German musician Alexander Ritter,[145] which was written after the author had become acquainted with Strauss's music, and under its inspiration. That the verses were included by Strauss in the printed score is sufficient evidence that he regards them as an adequate interpretation of the emotional plan underlying his music.
The subject of this tone-poem is the human soul at grip with death, fronting imminent dissolution, and reviewing feverishly the memorable phases of its past—childhood, youth, love, conflict, strife, aspiration, despair—interrupted by desperate struggles with the Destroyer. At the moment of death there is the beginning of triumph—"deliverance from the world, transfiguration...."
Ritter's poem, translated into English prose by Mr. W. F. Apthorp, is as follows:
"In the necessitous little room, dimly lighted by only a candle-end, lies the sick man on his bed. But just now he has wrestled despairingly with Death. Now he has sunk exhausted into sleep, and thou hearest only the soft ticking of the clock on the wall in the room, whose awful silence gives a foreboding of the nearness of death. Over the sick man's pale features plays a sad smile. Dreams he, on the boundary of life, of the golden time of childhood?
"But Death does not long grant sleep and dreams to his victim. Cruelly he shakes him awake, and the fight begins afresh. Will to live and power of Death! What frightful wrestling! Neither bears off the victory, and all is silent once more!
"Sunk back tired of battle, sleepless, as in fever-frenzy the sick man now sees his life pass before his inner eye, trait by trait and scene by scene. First the morning red of childhood, shining bright in pure innocence! Then the youth's saucier play-exerting and trying his strength—till he ripens to the man's fight, and now burns with hot lust after the higher prizes of life. The one high purpose that has led him through life was to shape all he saw transfigured into a still more transfigured form. Cold and sneering, the world sets barrier upon barrier in the way of his achievement. If he thinks himself near his goal, a 'Halt!' thunders in his ear. 'Make the barrier thy stirrup! Ever higher and onward go!' And so he pushes forward, so he climbs, desists not from his sacred purpose. What he has ever sought with his heart's deepest yearning, he still seeks in his death-sweat. Seeks—alas! and finds it never. Whether he comprehends it more clearly or that it grows upon him gradually, he can yet never exhaust it, cannot complete it in his spirit. Then clangs the last stroke of Death's iron hammer, breaks the earthly body in twain, covers the eye with the night of death.
"But from the heavenly spaces sounds mightily to greet him what he yearningly sought for here: deliverance from the world, transfiguration of the world."
The music, for purposes of elucidation, may be divided into five (connected) sections:
We see the sick man lying exhausted upon his bed in the little candle-lit room; he has just wrestled wildly with Death. He smiles faintly, dreaming of his youth.
Abruptly, Death renews the attack, and the dreadful struggle is resumed. There is gradual exhaustion, and once more a respite comes to the sufferer.
Now he is visited by dreams and hallucinations—memories of youth, of young manhood and its vicissitudes, of lusty conflict and passionate endeavor, with illusory glimpses of future triumph.
But again Death attacks his victim. There is a short and furious struggle, a sudden subsidence, a mysterious and sinister gong-stroke; a portentous silence signifies the final stilling of the heart.
Then begins, gradually and gravely, the Transfiguration; and through shimmering harps and sonorous chantings of the brass is suggested the final triumphant attainment of the soul released.