“EIN HELDENLEBEN” (A HERO’S LIFE), TONE POEM, OP. 40
We doubt if Ein Heldenleben will be ranked among Strauss’s important works, though some of the sections, notably “The Hero’s Escape from the World, and Conclusion” are impressive, having emotional depth, being the baring of a soul. No man is perhaps a hero to his valet; but Strauss is evidently a hero to himself. He is autobiographical in this tone poem, as in his Domestic symphony. There is a certain presumption in asking one to hear musical descriptions of a composer’s struggles, his feelings at being adversely criticized by wretched Philistines, who do not appreciate him, his sulking and withdrawal, like Achilles to his tent. And why drag Frau Strauss into the musical story and typify her, capricious, coquettish, by whimsical measures for the violin? This tone poem, in spite of the sections just referred to, might be justly entitled “A Poseur’s Life,” and a blustering poseur at that.
Still, in Ein Heldenleben there is the peaceful, contemplative ending, pages that Strauss has seldom surpassed, only in the recognition scene of Elektra and the presentation of the rose by the cavalier.
Ein Heldenleben, a Tondichtung, was first performed at the eleventh concert of the Museumsgesellschaft, Frankfort-on-the-Main, March 3, 1899, when Strauss conducted from manuscript and Alfred Hess played the violin solo.
Strauss began the composition of this tone poem at Munich, August 2, 1898; he completed the score December 27, 1898, at Charlottenburg. The score and parts were published at Leipsic in March, 1899.
The score calls for these instruments: sixteen first and second violins, twelve violas, twelve violoncellos, eight double basses, two harps, a piccolo, three flutes, three or four oboes, an English horn, clarinet in E flat, two clarinets in B flat, bass clarinet, three bassoons, double bassoon, eight horns, five trumpets, three trombones, a tenor tuba, a bass tuba, kettledrums, bass drum, snare drum, side drum, cymbals. It is dedicated to Willem Mengelberg and his orchestra in Amsterdam. Strauss has said that he wrote A Hero’s Life as a companion work to his Don Quixote, Op. 35: “Having in this later work sketched the tragi-comic figure of the Spanish Knight whose vain search after heroism leads to insanity, he presents in A Hero’s Life not a single poetical or historical figure, but rather a more general and free ideal of great and manly heroism—not the heroism to which one can apply an everyday standard of valor, with its material and exterior rewards, but that heroism which describes the inward battle of life, and which aspires through effort and renouncement towards the elevation of the soul.”
There are many descriptions and explanations of Ein Heldenleben. One of the longest and deepest—and thickest—is by Friedrich Rösch. This pamphlet contains seventy thematical illustrations, as well as a descriptive poem by Eberhard König. Romain Rolland quotes Strauss as saying: “There is no need of a programme. It is enough to know there is a hero fighting his enemies.”
The work is in six sections: