Strauss has particularized his hero among the many that bear the name of Don Juan, from the old drama of Gabriel Tellez, the cloistered monk who wrote, under the name of “Tirso de Molina,” El Burlador de Sevilla y el Convidado de Piedra (first printed in 1634). Strauss’s hero is specifically the Don Juan of Lenau, not the rakehelly hero of legend and so many plays, who at the last is undone by the Statue invited by Juan to supper.
“TOD UND VERKLÄRUNG” (DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION) TONE POEM, OP. 24
“Death and Transfiguration” is now more old-fashioned than the G minor symphony of Mozart. The anguish of the dying man, who does not make the graceful and gracious apology of Charles II on his deathbed, no longer moves us. His recollections seem sentimental and vapid, while the trombone passages once considered as terrific, awe-inspiring, are not so significant as the single horn of Charon in Gluck’s Alceste. Don Juan, on the other hand, holds its own by its defiant spirit, expressing the arrogance of the Don on his triumphant way—by its dramatic translation into music of the words put by Lenau into his mouth:
Exhausted is the fuel;
And on the hearth, the cold is fiercely cruel.
The superb horn phrase should have accompanied the entrance of Lovelace into the ballroom, one of the most powerful scenes in Richardson’s long-winded romance.
This tone poem was composed at Munich in 1888-89.
Hans von Bülow wrote to his wife from Weimar, November 13, 1889: “Strauss is enormously beloved here. His Don Juan evening before last had a wholly unheard-of success. Yesterday morning Spitzweg and I were at his house to hear his new symphonic poem Tod und Verklärung—which has again inspired me with great confidence in his development. It is a very important work in spite of sundry poor passages, and it is also refreshing.”
The first performance was from manuscript, under the direction of the composer, at the fifth concert of the 27th Musicians’ Convention of the Allgemeine Deutscher Musikverein in the City Theater of Eisenach, June 21, 1890.