CHAPTER IX.
RICHARD STRAUSS AND ANTON BRUCKNER.
Position with regard to classical form — Strauss’s chamber music — Bruckner’s character and individuality — Bruckner’s symphonies — String quintett in F major — Hanslick on Bruckner’s works — Krehbiel on Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony — Weingartner’s opinion.
Position with regard to Classical Form
Richard Strauss, born at Munich in 1864, is without doubt one of the most distinguished of living musicians, and although his recent works are written in a very advanced style, it cannot be said that he has arrived at this condition without due deliberation, for his earlier compositions are all in classical form, and his present position is therefore due to growth rather than to a wanton setting aside of the established forms in which the great masters wrought. It is only when we come to the symphonic poem “Don Juan,” op. 20, that we find him embracing the programme music ideal, and all the seven large works which have since appeared are fashioned after this kind.
That Strauss displays an enormous talent for orchestral effect, and a breadth and vigour of style which carries all before it, no one acquainted with his works will dispute, but whatever abiding hold he may have gained on the musical thought of the world will be found not to be primarily due to qualities of this kind, influential as they no doubt are, but to his being endowed with the power to write true and convincing tunes. For example, one may regard programme music and the hurly-burly of works like Till Eulenspiegel as entirely obnoxious and subversive of true art, but all the same it is idle to ignore the character and charm of such tunes as these:—
Till Eulenspiegel.
R. Strauss.
