"At forty Strauss is the most commanding figure in the musical world of to-day. It will be an interesting disclosure for future years to make as to how much of his lifework he has already accomplished, and whether the salient characteristics are already fixed and contained in what he has done, or whether this is but a preparation. We may be reminded that on their fortieth birthdays Mozart and Schubert had put the final seal upon their work, Mozart five years before, Schubert nine. Beethoven had given to the world his first six symphonies, his 'Fidelio,' and the 'Leonore' overtures, the 'Coriolanus' overture, the 'Egmont' music, the five piano concertos and the violin concerto, nine string quartets, including those dedicated to Count Rasoumoffsky; the 'Kreutzer' and the earlier violin sonatas, the 'Waldstein' and the earlier piano sonatas. Wagner had written 'Rienzi,' 'The Flying Dutchman,' 'Tannhäuser,' 'Lohengrin,' 'Eine Faust Ouvertüre,' and had conceived and partly executed 'The Ring of the Nibelung.' And yet these two had not given the finest fruitage of their genius. What Strauss has done in his younger manhood will not, perhaps, be counted of greater worth. Whether, like these two at his age, he will go on to further development may also be curiously questioned, and whether he will turn aside from the path in which he has already started. On that path he seems already to have reached the furthest confines of the territory he has traversed."
X.
(Classification of Compositions.) Similar to the works of most composers who have a genuinely original message to give to the world, those of Strauss may be divided into distinct groups of differentiated creative periods. He has progressed step by step through various stages of development. Conforming at first to the conservative romanticism founded upon traditional forms of Mendelssohn and Schumann, he soon came to admire and emulate the doctrines of Brahms—an influence that has never been effaced from his subsequent writings even though his associations with von Bülow and Ritter caused him to lean more and more upon Wagner and Liszt for the dominating thought of his conceptions. With one stroke, however, "Macbeth" and "Don Juan" went far beyond the tenets of the Weimar coterie, though the succeeding productions "Tod und Verklärung" and "Guntram" suggest what has been called a reaction toward Liszt and Wagner. But with "Till Eulenspiegel" and "Also sprach Zarathustra" Strauss inaugurated a permanent and ever advancing method of procedure distinctively individualistic and unprecedented, that has so far culminated in the vast realistic tableaux of "Don Quixote" and "Ein Heldenleben."
(1st Period.) Reference has already been made to his youthful efforts. After the small choruses, the songs, the string quartet, op. 2, and the symphony in D minor, there appeared some interesting experiments in various fields of composition. The list includes a pianoforte sonata, op. 5; a sonata for violoncello and pianoforte, op. 6; the serenade, op. 7, for wind-instruments, patronized by von Bülow; a violin concerto, op. 8; "Stimmungsbilder" for pianoforte, op. 9; the French-horn concerto, op. 11, already referred to; a symphony in F minor, op. 12; a pianoforte quartet, op. 13; and "Wanderers Sturmlied," for six-part mixed chorus and orchestra, op. 14. This choral work has been called "a broadly flowing stream of polyphonic vocal harmony against an elaborate and independent orchestral accompaniment that was something quite unprecedented." The above compositions comprise what might be termed the first of Strauss' creative periods, having all been written before he was twenty. They present a conventional though rapid development of and graduation from the dominating influences of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, as suggested above, and gradually point more and more toward Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner.
(2d Period.) The symphony in F minor, written in 1883, may be looked upon not only as the culmination of these earliest attempts, but also as the first of Strauss' really significant orchestral compositions. Its maiden performance took place not in Germany but in this country, when, in 1884, Theodore Thomas produced it in New York with the Philharmonic Society.
Several years now elapsed before Strauss was ready to offer to the world the first of his great symphonic tone-poems: "Aus Italien"—sinfonische Phantasie, G-dur (op. 16, 1886). This was a marked advance upon the previous symphony, but though it reveals the subsequent path Strauss was to pursue, and embodies complex polyphony and increased command over the technics of orchestration, it is still dominated by Mendelssohn's and Schumann's subjective idea of program-music.
(3d Period.) Not until von Bülow and Ritter had fathomed the true depth of their young associate's latent powers did he proceed to evolve his conceptions in a language that has startled the entire musical world.
"Macbeth"—Tondichtung nach Shakespeare's Drama (op. 23, 1887), is the first of these vast color-pictures. Although "Don Juan" is to be recorded as opus 20, Friedrich Rösch, the authoritative reviewer of "Ein Heldenleben," places it after "Macbeth," although classifying it also as opus 20. He gives the date of its completion as 1888. Dr. Riemann's Dictionary of Music, which is the most accurate book of its kind in existence, seems for once to be at fault in stating the various dates at which Strauss penned his creations. "Macbeth," like its successors, at once displays a wealth of melodic utterance in all the principal orchestral voices, a prolific number of themes and sub-themes, and the most intimate acquaintance with the specific characteristics of the various instruments as well as with orchestral combinations and the resultant mixture of tonal tints thereby to be obtained. Like Berlioz, Strauss secures dramatic effects by means of vivid orchestration. The themes are arrayed in a kaleidoscopic sequence of instrumental color rather than being subjected to elaborate thematic treatment, and climaxes are reached by means of dynamic effects instead of by melodic evolution. An elaborately conceived program justifies the requisition for vast orchestral resources. There is further evidence of genuine inspiration, of a true gift for thematic development forming a marvellous filigree of contrapuntally interwoven leading motives, of intellectual power, philosophical reflection, poetic revery, and naïve humor. The following themes from "Macbeth" demonstrate the wide range of thematic conception Strauss possesses:[66]
