The Death of Don Quixote. “Very peacefully,” D major, 4-4. The typical theme of the Knight takes a new form. The queer harmonies in a section of this theme are now conventional, commonplace. “They stood all gazing one upon another, wondering at Don Quixote’s sound reasons, although they made some doubt to believe them. One of the signs which induced them to conjecture that he was near unto death’s door was that with such facility he was from a stark fool become a wise man. For, to the words already alleged, he added many more so significant, so Christian-like, and so well couched, that without doubt they confidently believed that Don Quixote was become a right wise man.... These heavy news opened the sluices of the tears-ful and swollen-blubbering eyes of the maid, of the niece, and of his good Squire Sancho Panza; so that they showered forth whole fountains of tears and fetched from the very bottom of their aggrieved hearts a thousand groaning sighs. For in effect (as we have already declared elsewhere) whilst Don Quixote was simply the good Alonso Quixano, and likewise when he was Don Quixote de la Mancha, he was ever of a mild and affable disposition and of a kind and pleasing conversation: and therefore was he not only beloved of all his household, but also of all those that knew him.... He had no sooner ended his discourse and signed and sealed his will and testament, but a swooning and faintness surprising him, he stretched himself the full length of his bed. All the company were much distracted and moved thereat, and ran presently to help him; and during the space of three days, that he lived after he had made his will, he did swoon and fall into trances almost every hour. All the house was in a confusion and uproar; all which notwithstanding the niece ceased not to feed very devoutly: the maidservant to drink profoundly, and Sancho to live merrily. For, when a man is in hope to inherit anything, that hope doth deface or at least moderate in the mind of the inheritor the remembrance or feeling of the sorrow and grief which of reason he should have a feeling of the testator’s death. To conclude, the last day of Don Quixote came, after he had received all the sacraments; and had by many and godly reasons made demonstration to abhor all the books of errant chivalry. The notary was present at his death and reporteth how he had never read or found in any book of chivalry that any errant knight died in his bed so mildly, so quietly, and so Christianly as did Don Quixote. Amidst the wailful plaints and blubbering tears of the bystanders, he yielded up the ghost, that is to say, he died.”
“Tremolos in the strings indicate the first shiver of a deadly fever.” The Knight feels his end is near. Through the violoncello he speaks his last words. He remembers his fancies; he recalls the dreams and the ambitions; he realizes that they were all as smoke and vanity; he is, indeed, ready to die.
“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.”