Strauss, Richard (1864 - 1949)

[gurnemanz]

As so often the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra website has a helpful précis of the debate around the “inspiration” for this work. Like so much artistic work it is shrouded in convenient ambiguity. We are trying to pin down a butterfly …

https://www.sfsymphony.org/Data/Event-Data/Program-Notes/S/Strauss-Metamorphosen

I should add there is a very good musical analysis in Vol 3 of Del Mar’s Richard Strauss. He develops the Goethe connection outlined above.

This lecture coming up looks relevant and up my street.

The text of Goethe's poem Xenion (WoO131 set by Strauss in 1942) does seem pertinent:

Nichts vom Vergänglichen,
Wie’s auch geschah!
Uns zu verewigen,
Sind wir ja da.

Nothing of transitory things however they happened!
We are here to make ourselves eternal.

I suppose becoming eternal could refer to creating great art or dying (the final metamorphosis we undergo), but whatever we got right or wrong in our life fades into insignificance compared to that.

[teamsaint]

Metamorphosen must be due another outing on Building a Library soon. Last done in 2007 I think.

Any strong preferences out there ? Currently spinning the 1983 Karajan.

[gurnemanz]

I have three CDs, all good:

Kempe/Dresden Staatskapelle

Karajan/BPO

Neville Marriner/Academy of St Martin's - his own favourite among about 500 recordings with them: “We had been in the recording studio for a couple of hours, but we just weren’t getting anywhere. So we had a rather good dinner, came back full of beans, and played it straight out. It was very memorable.

[ChandlersFord]

How did the Strauss haters come up with the idea that Metamorphosen was supposedly intended as a ‘lament for Hitler’?

[smittims]

There's always someone ready to invent malicious gossip as a way of saying 'there you are; you din't know that, did you? I'm the master mind with the truth , ha,ha! please notice me , someone'. It never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

My favourite recording for years was the Klemperer (that portamento just before the recap!) but it was then eclipsed by the Furtwangler, a phenomenal performance of intense concentration, vindicating the unlikely idea of a 23-minute adagio for strings.

[Lordgeous]

I have three CDs, all good:

Kempe/Dresden Staatskapelle

Karajan/BPO

Neville Marriner/Academy of St Martin's - his own favourite among about 500 recordings with them: “We had been in the recording studio for a couple of hours, but we just weren’t getting anywhere. So we had a rather good dinner, came back full of beans, and played it straight out. It was very memorable.

I first heard the piece in Bath's Assembly Rooms played by Neville and the ASM in a Bath Festival concert. It made a huge impression, despite the concert including the premiere of a piece of mine!

[Serial_Apologist]

There's always someone ready to invent malicious gossip as a way of saying 'there you are; you din't know that, did you? I'm the master mind with the truth , ha,ha! please notice me , someone'. It never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

My favourite recording for years was the Klemperer (that portamento just before the recap!) but it was then eclipsed by the Furtwangler, a phenomenal performance of intense concentration, vindicating the unlikely idea of a 23-minute adagio for strings.

What I gleaned from comments apropos Metamorphosen was that it was composed in a spirit of grief for the passing of the great tradition of German Classical and Romantic music, as seen by Strauss, (and maybe others who clung to the Wagnerian legacy too) rather than the ending of the Third Reich.

[smittims]

Yes. The destruction of the Munich, Dresden and Vienna opera houses, where Strauss had often conducted , is usually mentioned. They must have had memeories for him.

[RichardB]

Yes. The destruction of the Munich, Dresden and Vienna opera houses, where Strauss had often conducted , is usually mentioned. They must have had memories for him.

That's right. But it is surely fair to point out that this could be seen as offensively self-centred or at least offensively German-centred, given that it was the regime he had long before reached an accommodation with which had unleashed death and violence all over Europe with the loss of millions of lives. He may not have meant the reference to the funeral march from the Eroica at the end to have anything to do with Hitler, but he really ought to have anticipated that others might make that connection (which indeed some have). Of course it would just be a beautiful and moving piece of music if viewed in isolation, but I for one don't find it possible to do that.

[ahinton]

That's right. But it is surely fair to point out that this could be seen as offensively self-centred or at least offensively German-centred, given that it was the regime he had long before reached an accommodation with which had unleashed death and violence all over Europe with the loss of millions of lives. He may not have meant the reference to the funeral march from the Eroica at the end to have anything to do with Hitler, but he really ought to have anticipated that others might make that connection (which indeed some have). Of course it would just be a beautiful and moving piece of music if viewed in isolation, but I for one don't find it possible to do that.

His tenure as President of the Reichsmusikkammer, to which he was not asked to agree, was very short-lived, he had a Jewish daughter-in law and Jewish grandchildren and apparently once wrote of Goebbels, whom he called a "pipsqueak", "I consider the Streicher–Goebbels Jew-baiting as a disgrace to German honour, as evidence of incompetence; the basest weapon of untalented, lazy mediocrity against a higher intelligence and greater talent!

That "accommodation" - a matter of self-preservational necessity not dissimilar, I think, to that reached from time to time by Shostakovich with the Soviet régime of the day - was thus quite limited, not least because he continued to conduct music by composers banned by the Third Reich, including Mahler and Debussy. Those who have sought to forge some kind of connection between the Eroica's Funeral March (which is implicit throughout Metamorphosen before being clarified near its end) and Hitler seem to me to be trying to create an association that bears no relation to fact, the destruction by that régime of those opera houses - Dresden in particular - being far closer to what motivated the work. Yes, it would indeed be a beautiful and moving piece if viewed in isolation, but not finding it possible to do so doesn't of itself preclude recognition of - and being moved by - what seems far more likely to have been behind it.

He also wrote to his Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig around the time of Die Schweigsame Frau's première
"Do you believe I am ever, in any of my actions, guided by the thought that I am 'German'? Do you suppose Mozart was consciously 'Aryan' when he composed? I recognise only two types of people: those who have talent and those who have none".
The letter was intercepted by the Gestapo and sent to Hitler, following which Strauss was dismissed from his post as Reichsmusikkammer President after some 18 months in post and the opera was banned by the régime after just three performances.

[TBuckley]

Dance of the Seven Veils - Ken Russell - BBC Monitor (1970)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA715299232E033A1

As far as I can see the film is complete with the original soundtrack.


There is also a well informed Wikipedia item on the film:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_of_the_Seven_Veils_(film)

[Ein Heldenleben]

Dance of the Seven Veils - Ken Russell - BBC Monitor (1970)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA715299232E033A1

As far as I can see the film is complete with the original soundtrack.


There is also a well informed Wikipedia item on the film:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_...n_Veils_(film)

Looks like a bootleg of a TC viewing copy - naughty. Shocking how the kodacolor (?) stock has badly faded.

[Flay]

Happy 160th birthday, Maestro!

“Our future lies in art, especially in music. In times when spiritual goods are rarer than material ones, and egotism, envy and hatred govern the world, music will do much to re-establish love among mankind.”

Wise words indeed

[gurnemanz]

Happy 160th birthday, Maestro!

“Our future lies in art, especially in music. In times when spiritual goods are rarer than material ones, and egotism, envy and hatred govern the world, music will do much to re-establish love among mankind.”

Wise words indeed

Indeed. Thanks for the nudge. I decided on Lieder with Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch, a disc I hadn't played for a while.