I have dwelt rather at length on this drama on account of the real value of its thought and, above all, on account of what one may call its autobiographical interest. It was at this time that Strauss's mind began to take more definite form. His further experience will develop that form still more, but without making any important change in it.
Guntram was the cause of bitter disappointment to its author. He did not succeed in getting it produced at Munich, for the orchestra and singers declared that the music could not be performed. It is even said that they got an eminent critic to draw up a formal document, which they sent to Strauss, certifying that Guntram was not meant to be sung. The chief difficulty was the length of the principal part, which took up by itself, in its musings and discourses, the equivalent of an act and a half. Some of its monologues, like the song in the second act, last half an hour on end. Nevertheless, Guntram was performed at Weimar on 16 May, 1894. A little while afterwards Strauss married the singer who played Freihild, Pauline de Ahna, who had also created Elizabeth in Tannhäuser at Bayreuth, and who has since devoted herself to the interpretation of her husband's Lieder.
But the rancour of his failure at the theatre still remained with Strauss, and he turned his attention again to the symphonic poem, in which he showed more and more marked dramatic tendencies, and a soul which grew daily prouder and more scornful. You should hear him speak in cold disdain of the theatre-going public—"that collection of bankers and tradespeople and miserable seekers after pleasure"—to know the sore that this triumphant artist hides. For not only was the theatre long closed to him, but, by an additional irony, he was obliged to conduct musical rubbish at the opera in Berlin, on account of the poor taste in music—really of Royal origin—that prevailed there.
The first great symphony of this new period was Till Eulenspiegel's lustige Streiche, nach alter Schelmenweise, in Rondeauform ("Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, according to an old legend, in rondeau form"), op. 28.[173] Here his disdain is as yet only expressed by witty bantering, which scoffs at the world's conventions. This figure of Till, this devil of a joker, the legendary hero of Germany and Flanders, is little known with us in France. And so Strauss's music loses much of its point, for it claims to recall a series of adventures which we know nothing about—Till crossing the market place and smacking his whip at the good women there; Till in priestly attire delivering a homely sermon; Till making love to a young woman who rebuffs him; Till making a fool of the pedants; Till tried and hung. Strauss's liking to present, by musical pictures, sometimes a character, sometimes a dialogue, or a situation, or a landscape, or an idea—that is to say, the most volatile and varied impressions of his capricious spirit—is very marked here. It is true that he falls back on several popular subjects, whose meaning would be very easily grasped in Germany; and that he develops them, not quite in the strict form of a rondeau, as he pretends, but still with a certain method, so that apart from a few frolics, which are unintelligible without a programme, the whole has real musical unity. This symphony, which is a great favourite in Germany, seems to me less original than some of his other compositions. It sounds rather like a refined piece of Mendelssohn's, with curious harmonies and very complicated instrumentation.
There is much more grandeur and originality in his Also sprach Zarathustra, Tondichtung frei, nach Nietzsche ("Thus spake Zarathustra, a free Tone-poem, after Nietzsche"), op. 30.[174] Its sentiments are more broadly human, and the programme that Strauss has followed never loses itself in picturesque or anecdotic details, but is planned on expressive and noble lines. Strauss protests his own liberty in the face of Nietzsche's. He wishes to represent the different stages of development that a free spirit passes through in order to arrive at that of Super-man. These ideas are purely personal, and are not part of some system of philosophy. The sub-titles of the work are: Von den Hinterweltern ("Of Religious Ideas"), Von der grossen Sehnsucht ("Of Supreme Aspiration"), Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften ("Of Joys and Passions"), Das Grablied ("The Grave Song"), Von der Wissenschaft ("Of Knowledge"), Der Genesende ("The Convalescent"—the soul delivered of its desires), Das Tanzlied ("Dancing Song"), Nachtlied ("Night Song"). We are shown a man who, worn out by trying to solve the riddle of the universe, seeks refuge in religion. Then he revolts against ascetic ideas, and gives way madly to his passions. But he is quickly sated and disgusted and, weary to death, he tries science, but rejects it again, and succeeds in ridding himself of the uneasiness its knowledge brings by laughter—the master of the universe—and the merry dance, that dance of the universe where all the human sentiments enter hand-in-hand—religious beliefs, unsatisfied desires, passions, disgust, and joy. "Lift up your hearts on high, my brothers! Higher still! And mind you don't forget your legs! I have canonised laughter. You super-men, learn to laugh!"[175] And the dance dies away and is lost in ethereal regions, and Zarathustra is lost to sight while dancing in distant worlds. But if he has solved the riddle of the universe for himself, he has not solved it for other men; and so, in contrast to the confident knowledge which fills the music, we get the sad note of interrogation at the end.
There are few subjects that offer richer material for musical expression. Strauss has treated it with power and dexterity; he has preserved unity in this chaos of passions, by contrasting the Sehnsucht of man with the impassive strength of Nature. As for the boldness of his conceptions, I need hardly remind those who heard the poem at the Cirque d'été of the intricate "Fugue of Knowledge," the trills of the wood wind and the trumpets that voice Zarathustra's laugh, the dance of the universe, and the audacity of the conclusion which, in the key of B major, finishes up with a note of interrogation, in C natural, repeated three times.
I am far from thinking that the symphony is without a fault. The themes are of unequal value: some are quite commonplace; and, in a general way, the working up of the composition is superior to its underlying thought. I shall come back later on to certain faults in Strauss's music; here I only want to consider the overflowing life and feverish joy that set these worlds spinning.
Zarathustra shows the progress of scornful individualism in Strauss—"the spirit that hates the dogs of the populace and all that abortive and gloomy breed; the spirit of wild laughter that dances like a tempest as gaily on marshes and sadness as it does in fields."[176] That spirit laughs at itself and at its idealism in the Don Quixote of 1897, fantastische Variationen uber ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters ("Don Quixote, fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character"), op. 35; and that symphony marks, I think, the extreme point to which programme music may be carried. In no other work does Strauss give better proof of his prodigious cleverness, intelligence, and wit; and I say sincerely that there is not a work where so much force is expended with so great a loss for the sake of a game and a musical joke which lasts forty-five minutes, and has given the author, the executants, and the public a good deal of tiring work. These symphonic poems are most difficult to play on account of the complexity, the independence, and the fantastic caprices of the different parts. Judge for yourself what the author expects to get out of the music by these few extracts from the programme:—
The introduction represents Don Quixote buried in books of chivalrous romance; and we have to see in the music, as we do in little Flemish and Dutch pictures, not only Don Quixote's features, but the words of the books he reads. Sometimes it is the story of a knight who is righting a giant, sometimes the adventures of a knight-errant who has dedicated himself to the services of a lady, sometimes it is a nobleman who has given his life in fulfilment of a vow to atone for his sins. Don Quixote's mind becomes confused (and our own with it) over all these stories; he is quite distracted. He leaves home in company with his squire. The two figures are drawn with great spirit; the one is an old Spaniard, stiff, languishing, distrustful, a bit of a poet, rather undecided in his opinions but obstinate when his mind is once made up; the other is a fat, jovial peasant, a cunning fellow, given to repeating himself in a waggish way and quoting droll proverbs—translated in the music by short-winded phrases that always return to the point they started from. The adventures begin. Here are the windmills (trills from the violins and wood wind), and the bleating army of the grand emperor, Alifanfaron (tremolos from the wood wind); and here, in the third variation, is a dialogue between the knight and his squire, from which we are to guess that Sancho questions his master on the advantages of a chivalrous life, for they seem to him doubtful. Don Quixote talks to him of glory and honour; but Sancho has no thought for it. In reply to these grand words he urges the superiority of sure profits, fat meals, and sounding money.Then the adventures begin again. The two companions fly through the air on wooden horses; and the illusion of this giddy voyage is given by chromatic passages on the flutes, harps, kettledrums, and a "windmachine," while "the tremolo of the double basses on the key-note shows that the horses have never left the earth."[177]