The first part shows you three people: a man, a woman, and a child. The man is represented by three themes: a motif full of spirit and humour, a thoughtful motif, and a motif expressing eager and enthusiastic action. The woman has only two themes: one expressing caprice, and the other love and tenderness. The child has a single motif, which is quiet, innocent, and not very defined in character; its real value is not shown until it is developed.... Which of the two parents is he like? The family sit round him and discuss him. "He is just like his father" (Ganz der Papa), say the aunts. "He is the image of his mother" (Ganz die Mama), say the uncles.
The second part of the symphony is a scherzo which represents the child at play; there are terribly noisy games, games of Herculean gaiety, and you can hear the parents talking all over the house. How far we seem from Schumann's good little children and their simple-hearted families! At last the child is put to bed; they rock him to sleep, and the clock strikes seven. Night comes. There are dreams and some uneasy sleep. Then a love scene.... The clock strikes seven in the morning. Everybody wakes up, and there is a merry discussion. We hear a double fugue in which the theme of the man and the theme of the woman contradict each other with exasperating and ludicrous obstinacy; and the man has the last word. Finally there is the apotheosis of the child and family life.
Such a programme serves rather to lead the listener astray than to guide him. It spoils the idea of the work by emphasising its anecdotal and rather comic side. For without doubt the comic side is there, and Strauss has warned us in vain that he did not wish to make an amusing picture of married life, but to praise the sacredness of marriage and parenthood; but he possesses such a strong vein of humour that it cannot help getting the better of him. There is nothing really grave or religious about the music, except when he is speaking of the child; and then the rough merriment of the man grows gentle, and the irritating coquetry of the woman becomes exquisitely tender. Otherwise Strauss's satire and love of jesting get the upper hand, and reach an almost epic gaiety and strength.
But one must forget this unwise programme, which borders on bad taste and at times on something even worse. When one has succeeded in forgetting it one discovers a well-proportioned symphony in four parts—Allegro, Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale in fugue form—and one of the finest works in contemporary music. It has the passionate exuberance of Strauss's preceding symphony, Heldenleben, but it is superior in artistic construction; one may even say that it is Strauss's most perfect work since Tod und Verklärung ("Death and Transfiguration"), with a richness of colouring and technical skill that Tod und Verklärung did not possess. One is dazzled by the beauty of an orchestration which is light and pliant, and capable of expressing delicate shades of feeling; and this struck me the more after the solid massiveness of Mahler's orchestration, which is like heavy unleavened bread. With Strauss everything is full of life and sinew, and there is nothing wasted. Possibly the first setting-out of his themes has rather too schematic a character; and perhaps the melodic utterance is rather restricted and not very lofty; but it is very personal, and one finds it impossible to disassociate his personality from these vigorous themes that burn with youthful ardour, and cut the air like arrows, and twist themselves in freakish arabesques. In the adagio depicting night, there is, though in very bad taste, much seriousness and reverie and stirring emotion. The fugue at the end is of astonishing sprightliness; and is a mixture of colossal jesting and heroic pastoral poetry worthy of Beethoven, whose style it recalls in the breadth of its development. The final apotheosis is filled with life; its joy makes the heart beat. The most extravagant harmonic effects and the most abominable discords are softened and almost disappear in the wonderful combination of timbres. It is the work of a strong and sensual artist, the true heir of the Wagner of the Meistersinger.
Upon the whole, these works make one see that, in spite of their apparent audacity, Strauss and Mahler are beginning to make a surreptitious retreat from their early standpoint, and are abandoning the symphony with a programme. Strauss's last work will lose nothing by calling itself quite simply Sinfonia Domestica, without adding any further information. It is a true symphony; and the same may be said of Mahler's composition. But Strauss and Mahler are already reforming themselves, and are coming back to the model of the classic symphony.
But there are more important conclusions to be drawn from a hearing of this kind. The first is that Strauss's talent is becoming more and more exceptional in the music of his country. With all his faults, which are considerable, Strauss stands alone in his warmth of imagination, in his unquenchable spontaneity and perpetual youth. And his knowledge and his art are growing every day in the midst of other German art which is growing old. German music in general is showing some grave symptoms. I will not dwell on its neurasthenia, for it is passing through a crisis which will teach it wisdom; but I fear, nevertheless, that this excessive nervous excitement will be followed by torpor. What is really disquieting is that, in spite of all the talent that still abounds, Germany is fast losing her chief musical endowments. Her melodic charm has nearly disappeared. One could search the music of Strauss, Mahler, or Hugo Wolf, without finding a melody of any real value, or of any true originality, outside its application to a text, or a literary idea, and its harmonic development. And besides that, German music is daily losing its intimate spirit; there are still traces of this spirit in Wolf, thanks to his exceptionally unhappy life; but there is very little of it in Mahler, in spite of all his efforts to concentrate his mind on himself; and there is hardly any at all in Strauss, although he is the most interesting of the three composers. German musicians have no longer any depth.
I have said that I attribute this fact to the detestable influence of the theatre, to which nearly all these artists are attached as Kapellmeister, or directors of opera. To this they owe the melodramatic character of their music, even though it is on the surface only—music written for show, and aiming chiefly at effect.
More baneful even than the influence of the theatre is the influence of success. These musicians have nowadays too many facilities for having their music played. A work is played almost before it is finished, and the musician has no time to live with his work in solitude and silence. Besides this, the works of the chief German musicians are supported by tremendous booming of some kind or another: by their Musikfeste, by their critics, their press, and their "Musical Guides" (Musikführer), which are apologetic explanations of their works, scattered abroad in millions to set the fashion for the sheep-like public. And with all this a musician grows soon contented with himself, and comes to believe any favourable opinion about his work. What a difference from Beethoven, who, all his life, was hammering out the same subjects, and putting his melodies on the anvil twenty times before they reached their final form. That is where Mahler is so lacking. His subjects are a rather vulgarised edition of some of Beethoven's ideas in their unfinished state. But Mahler gets no further than the rough sketch.
And, lastly, I want to speak of the greatest danger of all that menaces music in Germany; there is too much music in Germany. This is not a paradox. There is no worse misfortune for art than a super-abundance of it. The music is drowning the musicians. Festival succeeds festival: the day after the Strasburg festival there was to be a Bach festival at Eisenach; and then, at the end of the week, a Beethoven festival at Bonn. Such a plethora of concerts, theatres, choral societies, and chamber-music societies, absorbs the whole life of the musician. When has he time to be alone to listen to the music that sings within him? This senseless flood of music invades the sanctuaries of his soul, weakens its power, and destroys its sacred solitude and the treasures of its thought.