MAHLER AND STRAUSS Notes on the composers and the pieces |
Richard Strauss Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was the son of Franz Strauss, the principal horn of the Munich Court Orchestra. He took up piano and violin at a young age, attended rehearsals of his father’s orchestra, joined the orchestra at age 13, and studied music with colleagues instead of attending a conservatory. Many of his early works were performed during his younger days (he began composing at age 6), but it was the Serenade in E-Flat that caught the ear of Hans von Bülow. The venerated conductor programmed it and other Strauss works, including the Second Symphony. He also gave the young man a job as assistant conductor with his Meiningen orchestra and promoted him for a conducting position in Munich. (Their friendship faded later after Strauss criticized von Bülow’s performance of Don Juan.) It was Don Juan that thrust the 23-year-old Strauss onto the world’s stage in 1889. He had just come through an affair with Dora Wihan and was passionately courting his wife-to-be, Pauline de Ahna. Ardor from both relationships probably entered the score, helping the composer create one of the most sensuous pieces of music known at the time. The orchestra is huge, and yet Strauss’s masterful scoring is transparent. The music is full of drama and sweeping, soaring melody. Fain would I run the magic circle, immeasurably wide, of beautiful women’s manifold charms, in full tempest of enjoyment, to die of a kiss at the mouth of the last one. O my friend, would that I could fly through every place where beauty blossoms, fall on my knees before each one, and, were it but for a moment, conquer…[translations, Del Mar] Diego responds that if Juan continues on his path, he will end up a beggar. Juan replies: I shun satiety and the exhaustion of pleasure; I keep myself fresh in the service of beauty; and in offending the individual I rave for my devotion to her kind. The breath of a woman that is as the odor of spring today, may perhaps tomorrow oppress me like the air of a dungeon. When, in my changes, I travel with my love in the wide circle of beautiful women, my love is a different thing for each one; I build no temple out of ruins. Indeed, passion is always and only the new passion; it cannot be carried from this one to that; it must die here and spring anew there; and, when it knows itself, then it knows nothing of repentance. As each beauty stands alone in the world, so stands the love which it prefers. Forth and away, then, to triumphs ever new, so long as youth’s fiery pulses race! After an opening surge, which is a collection of motifs treated later on, the main Don theme soars in the violins. A more feminine idea follows, complete with “furtive glance” figures in the violins and answering grace notes in the woodwinds. The encounter itself begins with a celestial passage with a sweet violin solo. Passion increases as the lovers unite. Stirrings of the Don theme indicate his growing restlessness, and two-beat triplets end the relationship. The Don motif signals another adventure. This time courtship begins with the wooing lower strings and a hesitant solo flute. What follows is the famous solo oboe passage, whose length and beauty suggest the most serious of the Don’s affairs. It was a beautiful storm that urged me on; it has spent its rage, and silence now remains. A trance is upon every wish, every hope. Perhaps a thunderbolt from the heights which I condemned, struck fatally at my power of love, and suddenly my world became a desert and darkened. And perhaps not; the fuel is all consumed and the hearth is cold and dark. —Roger Hecht Roger Hecht plays trombone in the Mercury Orchestra, Lowell House Opera, Dudley House Orchestra, and Bay Colony Brass (where he is also the Operations/Personnel Manager), and is a local freelancer. He is a regular reviewer for American Record Guide, contributed to Classical Music: Listener's Companion, and has written articles on music for the Elgar Society Journal and Positive Feedback magazine. He is a former member of the Syracuse Symphony, Lake George Opera, New Bedford Symphony, and Cape Ann Symphony.
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