Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings
The Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings is a composition by Richard Strauss , which he began on March 13, 1945 and finished on April 12 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen . The roughly half-hour solo piece for string instruments is his last major orchestral work and was premiered on January 25, 1946 in Zurich under the direction of the dedicatee Paul Sacher .
Shortly before the end of the Second World War and against the background of the human and cultural devastation, Strauss saw his composition as a farewell to his work and the world lying in ruins. The corresponding basic mood is reflected in the deeply serious and internalized work on different levels. This is how the first theme from the funeral march of the Third Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven sounds in its last bars , in whose key ( C minor ) it ends.
With the dense lament , Strauss proved himself for the last time to be a passionate musician of expression who was able to enrich a late work with new elements.
Content and special features
Starting from the actual idea of metamorphosis ( Gr. Μεταμόρφωσις metamórphosis "transformation", "remodeling"), the work can be viewed as an unbroken chain of variations , whose melodic material and expressive tonal language are reminiscent of the second movement of the Eroica . Using techniques of polyphony , dynamics and modulation , Strauss develops the themes and thus creates the intense expression of his last “lament”.
In terms of their external form, the metamorphoses consist of three sections with three thematic groups, which are subjected to a continuous transformation and which are linked to one another through this changing movement. Over several stages of development ( somewhat more flowing , poco piu mosso ), the Adagio ma non troppo is followed by a passionately soaring middle section Agitato from bar 213, which, after an intense dynamic and polyphonic increase, from bar 390 returns to the painful Adagio ( tempo primo ), where the first topic is repeated fortissimo. In the last, with In Memoriam! Overwritten bars, Beethoven's funeral march can be heard in the bass.
Like the Four Last Songs or the Oboe Concerto , the Metamorphoses also have no opus number.
Origin and background
In autumn 1944, Strauss accepted a composition commission from Paul Sacher , brokered by the musicologist Willi Schuh , and noted “Mourning for Munich” as the initial idea in his sketchbook, which he used in 1945. He was particularly shocked by the destruction of the Munich National Theater , where he had worked for many years, from October 3rd to 4th, 1943. If he had initially thought of a septet , he later expanded the line- up to ten violins , five violas and cellos as well as three double basses in order to be able to further differentiate and intensify the timbres .
The work, which he understatedly called a study , may outwardly be traced back to this occasion, but its real and personal source is the composer's mental state on the eve of the end of the war. Like few works, the Metamorphoses reflect his biographical situation and his concern about the war-related destruction of Germany. He wrote to Joseph Gregor that he was “in a desperate mood! The Goethehaus, the world's largest sanctuary, destroyed. My beautiful Dresden-Weimar-Munich, all there! "
For Dieter Borchmeyer , the metamorphoses are a testament to the composer's admiration for Goethe. This can be seen in the sketchbooks in which Strauss wrote down thoughts on Goethe's late poems. The fact that the composer chose the term metamorphoses instead of variations for the work is due to the fact that he did not start from an initially fixed theme, but rather chose the main idea in C minor from the funeral march as an unrecognizable point of reference, "which only afterwards his identity and after being revealed. "
Meaning and reception
The Metamorphoses are an important work and at the same time swan song for the late Romantic era. They stand at the end of a development that transitions into a free tones and combine melodies and voices in an almost infinite development down to the last bars.
While Strauss was initially celebrated by many as a pioneer of the avant-garde after the epoch-making modern works Salome and Elektra , he later had to accept repeated criticism and sometimes bitter polemics for his conservative stance. Numerous supporters of the Viennese school around Arnold Schönberg , whose music-philosophical basis was mainly shaped by the most prominent critic of Strauss's oeuvre Theodor W. Adorno , lamented the "betrayal" that had been announced with the Rosenkavalier .
About the In Memoriam! there were also deviating interpretations, such as the assertion that it did not refer to Beethoven and that the work was an elegy on the regime , approaches which, however, could not prevail.
For Rainer Cadenbach, for example, the Metamorphoses, alongside the other early works - such as the last songs or the oboe concerto - tend to be private and chamber music products. Strauss is an artist who preserves tradition and who lived in his own better past. It is true that the Rückert song Im Sonnenschein already shows the melancholy tendency to look back transfigured; up to the last songs, however, there was no sign of resignation. While in the late works of other important composers such as Gustav Mahler many things appear broken, toneless or “without expression”, nothing of this can be felt in Strauss. He does not impose a ban on expressivo; his instrumentation and harmony remained colorful and shimmering as before, even if he treated the orchestra as a body less virtuoso than before, which shows his “chamber music asceticism”. Strauss has demonstrated time and again that discretion on the one hand and spirituality and tonal richness on the other do not have to represent insoluble opposites.
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Pfannkuch, Willi Schuh: Strauss, Richard Georg. In: Friedrich Blume (Hrsg.): The music in past and present (MGG). First edition, Volume 12 (Schoberlechner - Symphonic Poetry). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1965, DNB 550439609 , Sp. 1474–1499, here: Sp. 1495
- ^ Alfred Baumgartner: Propylaea world of music, The composers, a lexicon in 5 volumes. Volume 5. Propylaea, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-549-07835-8 , p. 250.
- ↑ tonkuenstler.at: Metamorphoses ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Quoted from: Alfred Baumgartner: Propylaea World of Music, The Composers, a lexicon in 5 volumes. Volume 5. Propylaea, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-549-07835-8 , p. 250.
- ↑ Dieter Borchmeyer: "The geniuses are just one big family ..." Goethe in compositions by Richard Strauss. In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 111 (1999) [2000], pp. 206–223 ( online in the Goethezeitportal, accessed on September 1, 2013).
- ^ Rainer Cadenbach: Strauss, Richard Georg . In: Horst Weber (Ed.): Composers Lexicon. Metzler, Stuttgart / Bärenreiter, Kassel 2003, ISBN 3-476-01966-7 , p. 613.
