Originator of the Tone Poem.
Nor does Richard Strauss require such tactics. He has made three excursions into music-drama and he may make others. But his fame, at present, rests mainly upon what he has accomplished as an instrumental composer, 209 and in the self-created realm of the Tone Poem. Tone poem is a new term in music. It stands for something that outstrips the symphonic poem of Liszt, something larger both in its boundaries and in its intellectual and musical scope. Strauss does not limit himself by the word symphonic. He leaves himself free to give full range to his ideas. A composer of “program music,” his works are so stupendous in scope that the word symphonic would have hampered him. His “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (“Thus Spake Zarathustra”) and “Ein Heldenleben” (“A Hero’s Life”) are not symphonic poems, but tone poems of enormous proportions. These, his last two instrumental productions, together with the growing familiarity of the musical public with his beautiful and eloquent songs, established his reputation in this country. To-day, a Strauss work on a program means as much to the musically elect as a Wagner work meant a quarter of a century ago. In fact, to advanced musicians, to those who are not content to rest upon what has been achieved, but are ready to welcome further serious effort, Strauss’s works form the latest great utterance in music. Let me repeat verbatim a conversation that occurred on a recent rainy night, the date of an important concert.
He: “Are you going to the concert to-night?”
She: (Looking out and seeing that it still is raining hard) “Do they play anything by Richard Strauss?”
He: “Not to-night.”
She: “Then I’m not going.”
This woman could meet the most enthusiastic admirer of Beethoven or Wagner on his own ground. But when she heard “Ein Heldenleben” under Emil 210 Paur’s baton at a concert of the New York Philharmonic Society, she heard what she had been waiting twenty years for—something new in music that also was something great; something that was not merely an imitation of what she had heard a hundred times before, but something which pointed the way to untraveled paths. It always is woman who throws the first rose at the feet of genius.
Not a Juggler with the Orchestra.
One first looks at Richard Strauss in mere amazement at the size of what he has produced. “Thus Spake Zarathustra” lasts thirty-three minutes, “A Hero’s Life” forty-five—considerable lengths for orchestral works. This initial sense of “bigness,” as such, having worn off, one becomes aware of marvellous tone combinations and orchestral effects. Listening again, one discovers that these daring instrumental combinations have not been entered into merely for the sake of juggling with the orchestra, but because the composer, being a modern of moderns, has the most modern message in music to deliver, and, in order to deliver it, has developed the modern orchestra to a state of efficiency and versatility of tonal expression beyond any of his predecessors. Richard Strauss scores, in the most casual manner, an octave higher than Beethoven dared go with the violins. Except in the “Egmont” overture, Beethoven did not carry the violins higher than F above the staff. What should have been higher he wrote an octave lower. All the strings in the Richard Strauss orchestra are scored correspondingly 211 high. But this is not done as a mere fad. What Richard Strauss accomplishes with the strings is not merely queer or bizarre. What he seeks and obtains is genuine original musical effects. Often the highest register is used by him in a few of the strings only, because, for certain polyphonic effects—the weaving and interweaving of various themes—he divides and subdivides all the strings into numerous groups. For the same reason, he has regularly added four or five hitherto rarely used instruments to the woodwind and scores, regularly, for eight horns, besides employing from four to five trumpets.
While he has increased the technical difficulties of every instrument, what he requires of them is not impossible. He does, indeed, call for first-rate artists in his orchestra; but so did Wagner as compared with Beethoven. He knows every instrument thoroughly, for he has taken lessons on all; and, therefore, when he is striving for new instrumental effects he is not putting problems which cannot be legitimately solved. His “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” makes, possibly, the greatest demand of all his works on an orchestra. But, if properly played, it is one of the most bizarre and amusing scherzos in the repertoire. In his “Don Quixote,” he has gone outside the list of orchestral instruments; and in the scene where Don Quixote has his tilt with the windmill, he has introduced a regular theatrical wind-machine. And why not? The effect to be produced justifies the means. There is an à capella chorus by Strauss for sixteen voices. These are not divided into two double quartets, or into four quartets, but the composition actually 212 is scored in sixteen parts. He shrinks from no musical problem.