Welsh Journals

But it was not until the composition of Ein Helden- leben, composed in 1898, that the influence of Nietzsche became obviously bad. Hitherto, viewed from every aspect-artistic, popular approval, power, prosperity-Strauss's career had been one long triumph. At the age of thirty-four he was accepted by all the world as the finest living composer; he had never had to wait in the outer courts of music, knocking vainly at the door; his work was sought after and played the moment it was written. And all this happened in spite of the fact that he flouted all conventions and prejudices. But this very success inspired him with an overweening confidence. Critics had barked at and bitten him in vain never- theless, their jibes stung, and Ein Heldenleben was written in order that he might lampoon them within the meshes of its complicated score. He represented himself as a majestic hero striding the hill-tops with enormous arrogance but he painted the critics as venomous and stupid creatures ineffectively doing their utmost to injure him. Individual critics in Berlin and Vienna are selected and caricatured. It is very clever, very astonishing, and very entertaining but it is not music. Strauss himself has declared that this work is intended to present to the listener not a single poetic or historical figure, but rather a more general and free ideal of great and manly heroism." That explanation is all very well; but how does Strauss account for the dozens of quotations from his early works one hears in that section entitled The Hero's Work of Peace ? And how does he do away with the fact that, when rehearsing Ein Heldenleben, he has suggested to the orchestra the various types of critic the music lampooned ? No; there is quite enough internal proof to place it beyond a shadow of doubt that this work is a picture of himself overcoming all his bitter and jealous and ignorant enemies. It is one thing to write a piece of music on a vast scale depicting a hero triumphing over enormous and unimaginable difficulties, but it is quite another to compose music that heaps ridicule on a few personal enemies. In Ein Heldenleben Strauss has done both these things, with the result that this composition is a patch-work of greatness and littleness. For the first time in his career as a musical composer he fell from his high estate, and, instead of music, wrote ugly noise. His admirers accepted that ugly noise without demur, and, thus encouraged, Strauss went on from bad to worse. Five years after Ein Helden- leben came the Symphonia Domestica, another auto- biographical work it was written for a huge orchestra consisting of sixty-two strings, three flutes, two harps, a piccolo, two oboes, an oboe d'amore, a cor anglais, five clarinets, five bassoons, four saxophones, eight horns, four trumpets, three trombones, a bass tuba, four kettledrums, a triangle, a tambourine, a glocken- spiel, cymbals, and a big drum. Strauss might very well have been trusted to make a hideous noise with half that number of instruments, and there are many pages of the score that are either utterly meaningless or merely fatuous jesting. Having once been whimsical and heavily humorous in Ein Helden- leben he wishes to be still more whimsical and still more heavily humorous in the Symphonia Domestica. He succeeds admirably. He succeeds so well, indeed, that his humour becomes mere impertinence. Salome was composed in 1906, and since then we have had one extravagant work after another culmin- ating in The Legend of Joseph. In all these composi- tions we have failure of invention, the invention being substituted by disjointed chords and discon- nected snatches of melody built up on a foundation of ingenious but always sterile harmony. It is as though, in writing these passages, Strauss had had his tongue in his cheek it is as though he had said to himself: My public has accepted so much nonsense from me and so constantly praised in my work what was worthless, that I must really go a step further and see how much I can actually make them swallow." And he has made them swallow everything. Whether or not that has been his attitude of mind, I am of course unable to say if not, the existence of those hundreds of muddy and ugly pages in his latest works is all the more difficult to explain. In any case, his musical egoism, his gospel of superman, is at the bottom of it. It is incredible that he really sees beauty in work in which everyone else sees only ugliness. After all, there are definite standards by means of which music may be judged, and these pages of Strauss do not transcend those standards, but fall below them. Strauss's acceptance of the Nietzschean philosophy has, no doubt, been largely due simply to the structure of his brain he has, as it were, been predisposed towards it, just as a child may be predisposed towards measles. But his environment and circumstances have in no small measure also been responsible. He has always lived in luxury, and he has never hungered for any knowledge his mind has desired. He has not been compelled to compose among conditions of poverty and in an atmosphere of anxiety. His money has commanded almost everything. It has given him the opportunity and the means of bringing his genius to maturity at an early age. He has travelled, he has studied when and how he wished, and he has assimilated the culture of Europe. Such a career, it would appear, has developed his agressive- ness and Nietzschean confidence beyond reasonable bounds, and though he has thereby conquered the world, he has done it at considerable sacrifice to his genius.