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Stephen Johnson considers two works by Richard Strauss, his early tone poem "Death and Transfiguration" and the Four Last Songs with the soprano Katie Van Kooten and the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Juanjo Mena.

These two great works were composed at opposite ends of the composer's life, but both are occupied with philosophical ideas of death and the passing over to the next world. "Tod und Verklarung" - Death and Transfiguration - is a symphonic depiction of the subject and was a work that clearly came to mind when the Strauss composed his Four Last Songs in the final years of his life, as he quotes from the tone poem in the music.

Stephen Johnson considers Strauss's attitude to the subject as depicted at the begining and at the end of his life and unpicks both pieces, offering an insight in to their background and musical workings. Complete performances of both pieces were given before an audience at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall.


RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949): VIER LETZTE LIEDER (FOUR LAST SONGS)

In the sixty-odd years since their composition, the Four Last Songs have acquired in many people’s minds an unassailable status as simply the most beautiful music known to them, to be listened to in a dimly lit room and a state of rapt meditation, surrendering to the extraordinary spell of profound, other-worldly calm that they cast. This is not surprising. They were, indeed, the last things of any significance that Strauss wrote, between May and September 1948, at the age of eighty-four - though they were not performed for the first time until the year after his death, by the sterling combination of Kirsten Flagstad and Wilhelm Furtwängler. This performance stands at the head of a huge and growing discography.

Strauss was a very practical, worldly, even cynical person, with a well-documented dry sense of humour. On being told, for instance, that Kaiser Wilhelm II had remarked of his opera Salome that he liked Strauss, but thought that he ought not to have written the work and that it would do him a great deal of damage, the composer replied, ‘Well, I built my villa in Garmisch on the damage it did me.’ Nevertheless, it is hard not to believe that he intended these songs, or came to think of them, as his valedictory statement at the end of a long, productive and successful musical life as both composer and conductor.

The list of Strauss’s works is long and varied, including eighteen operas. In this field he was the successor to Wagner, whom he revered most throughout his life, and had no rival outside Italy in his time. In his ten tone-poems, written between 1886 and 1915, he developed a genre pioneered by Liszt, and several of them are standard pieces in the repertoire, such as Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Ein Heldenleben and Don Juan . Strauss’s works include many undisputed masterpieces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to which the Four Last Songs belong. They were written a year after he said, ‘I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.’ He cannot have meant this to be taken seriously.

Strauss did not indicate that he conceived these songs as a cycle, or specify an order for performance. It has been argued that he intended to set another poem, but had not done so by the time of his death a year after the completion of September, the last of the songs to be written. The sequence Frühling – September – Beim Schlafengehen – Im Abendrot has become pretty well established, and certainly it would be perverse to place Im Abendrot anywhere but last, though it was the first of the four to be composed. Strauss had been much taken, as we shall see, with Joseph von Eichendorff’s poem, whilst the other three texts are by Hermann Hesse.

In this sequence, the last three poems are all concerned with release and dissolution, most specifically into death in the very last sentence (Ist dies vielleicht der Tod? Is this perhaps Death?), while sleep and the soul’s liberation in the third song could very well be taken as metaphors for death. The first song is in this respect the exception, but again, it is not difficult to take the reappearance of spring as symbolic of rebirth, not only of the season, but also of the speaker, and musically, it inhabits the same world as the other three.

The Four Last Songs may represent a leave-taking and a retrospect in more ways than one: Strauss was returning to a genre, the orchestral song. He had already written many, often with his wife Pauline (a professional soprano), in mind, and the two people fading at the end into the sunset and perhaps death after accompanying each other through years of sadness and joy must surely be the composer and his wife. Moreover, immediately after those final words Ist dies vielleicht... Strauss quotes the theme associated with transfiguration from his tone-poem Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), written more than half a century earlier.

These four songs are the best example of a restrained, resigned elegiac idiom found in other late works of Strauss such as the Oboe Concerto and the Metamorphosen. They are as far removed as is conceivable from that of the operas Salome and Elektra, written around the turn of the century and which represent a path that the versatile Strauss once referred to as an experiment not to be repeated. Born a decade before the completion of Der Ring des Nibelungen, Strauss died four years after the Second World War. His final works are the last, refined utterances of the Romantic Period, made at a time when younger composers were doing very different things in very different ways. Strauss’s late idiom is often described as ‘autumnal’ or ‘mellow,’ and there is no music to which such adjectives apply better than to these songs.

As an orchestrator, from his earliest works, Strauss had no rival, and he learned from the other two unparalleled masters of the art, Berlioz and Wagner. In fact, he revised Berlioz’s Treatise on Orchestration and Instrumentation of 1844, and it is still considered a standard work on the subject, in the light of both mechanical improvements in instrument manufacture and of new instruments that had appeared since Berlioz’s time. The orchestra of the Four Last Songs is large, especially for Im Abendrot. But the dynamic level rises only, and then rarely, to forte, as the instruments are used with wonderful delicacy in myriad combinations to produce the most subtle and telling effects, often in direct response to the suggestions of the text.

There are a number of instrumental solos of varying length in the songs, the most prominent being for the violin and the horn. Like Wagner, Strauss loved this last instrument and wrote some of its greatest music, in his two horn concertos as well as in orchestral solos. Doubtless the fact that his father, Franz Joseph, was the outstanding first horn in the Munich Court Orchestra, had something to do with this. His son remembered he would ‘practise the difficult horn solos in the Beethoven symphonies...weeks in advance’ – though on the other hand, it is interesting to know that Strauss senior was to the end of his days implacably averse to Wagner’s music and to his son’s advocacy of it, which in turn raises the question of why he decided to call the latter ‘Richard’...

Franz Joseph oversaw and followed carefully Richard’s musical development. The young Strauss became rapidly acquainted with the classical repertoire, composing prodigiously from the age of six, learning the piano and violin and gaining vital experience as a conductor through the advocacy of the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow. Strauss senior also distinguished himself by refusing, alone in the orchestra, to stand as a mark of respect when the news of Wagner’s death reached Munich on 14 th February 1883. Wagner, though, who knew Franz Joseph from occasions when the former was either present at rehearsals of his works in Munich, or was himself taking a rehearsal, once said, ‘This Strauss is an impossible bloke, but when he plays, you can’t hold it against him,’ so fine were his renditions of Wagner’s horn solos.

There is an unforgettable, quite magical horn solo after the soloist’s last words in September, picking up a figure that has occurred previously in the orchestra and the vocal line, and transforming it into an elegiac epilogue with a ‘blue’ note that haunts the remaining bars to the end. To the violin Strauss in Beim Schlafengehen gives an extended solo preceding the words describing the flight of the soul released in sleep (or death.) The melody is taken up by the voice, which expands it in rising sequences through breathtaking modulations.

Unexpected key changes are a marked feature of all four songs, though never through tortuous or dissonant-sounding modulations: Strauss often steps from one key into another with miraculous ease, using chords that in isolation are unremarkable, not chromatically inflected, and enharmonic changes; for example, a G flat in one chord may be treated as an F sharp (sounding the same) in the next, but what is sometimes called the ‘tingle factor’, the sense of a new vista, a revelation, comes from its chameleon-like relationship with its new neighbours in the chord.

The last three chords of the last song could be analysed by a Grade Five Theory candidate: chords vi, V and I (submediant, dominant, tonic) in E flat major, all in root position. Yet it is pointless to try to convey in words any idea of their effect here. The magic lies both in the harmonic context, immediately following a chord of the flat submediant in second inversion, (Grade VII or VIII, admittedly), and in the orchestration, which exemplifies another characteristic of the songs, that of very wide spacing between the lowest and the highest notes. Here, high above the final rich, dark chord, there are scraps of woodwind trills, referring back to their first appearance at the mention of the two larks rising into the haze, an understated, wonderfully effective onomatopoeia. As far as our Grade Five question goes, we may note in passing that the same chord sequence closes the introduction to Strauss’s much earlier tone-poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (known to many people from ! the film 2001: A Space Odyssey) where, thundered out by full orchestra and organ, it speaks a very different language.

Amongst the many touches of colour from the orchestral palette should also be mentioned the entry of the celesta on the second syllable of gestirnte (star-studded) in Beim Schlafengehen, the magnificently restrained contribution of the timpani in the final song and the delicate, multi-layered textures in September.

Yet another unifying factor in these songs is Strauss’s treatment of the voice. Although it is clearly very desirable to know at least the import of what is being sung, it would be more difficult than usual for even a native speaker of German to understand a great deal of the text simply by listening to it, however good the singer’s diction. This is because Strauss often seems to think of the soprano as another solo instrument, giving her the same kind of long, soaring, wide-ranging melodic lines that appear in the orchestra, such as the expansive statement at the beginning of the last song. This treatment of the voice results in frequent melismata, the setting of a single syllable to a whole string of notes – a glorious sound, but not overly conducive to intelligibility. The compass of the vocal line is also very wide, ranging over the four songs between middle C and the B not quite two octaves above.

So deeply have the Four Last Songs penetrated into the collective psyche of musicians and music-lovers, so powerful is their spell, that it is all the more remarkable to think that many of those that have willingly succumbed to their unique fascination were born decades before they were written.

THE TEXTS

Frühling – Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) Spring
In dämmrigen Grüften
träumte ich lang
von deinen Bäumen und blauen Lüften,
von deinem Duft und Vogelsang.

In dim chasms
I dreamed long
of your trees and your blue breezes,
of your perfume and your birdsong.

Nun liegst du erschlossen
in Gleiß und Zier
von Licht übergossen
wie ein Wunder vor mir.

Now you lie revealed
gleaming and beautiful
suffused with light
like a miracle before me.

Du kennst mich wieder,
du lockst mich zart,
es zittert durch all meine Glieder
deine selige Gegenwart!

You recognize me once more,
you lure me gently,
all my limbs tremble
with your blessed presence!

September (Hesse) September
Der Garten trauert,
kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.
Der Sommer schauert
still seinem Ende entgegen.

The garden mourns,
the cool rain sinks into the flowers.
Summer shudders
quietly towards its end.

Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
nieder vom hohen Akazienbaum.
Sommer lächelt erstaunt und matt
in den sterbenden Gartentraum.

Leaf after golden leaf drops
down from the tall acacia.
Summer smiles astonished and exhausted
on the garden’s dying dream.

Lange noch bei den Rosen
bleibt er stehen, sehnt sich nach Ruh.
Langsam tut er
die müdgeword'nen Augen zu.

Near the roses long
it still lingers, yearning for rest.
Slowly it closes
its eyes that have grown tired.

Beim Schlafengehen (Hesse) Going to Sleep

Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.

Now the day has made me tired,
the starry night shall welcome and receive
my yearning and my longing
like a tired child.

Hände, laßt von allem Tun,
Stirn vergiß du alles Denken,
alle meine Sinne nun
wollen sich in Schlummer senken.

Hands, refrain from all action,
brow, forget all thought,
all my senses now
wish to sink into slumber.

Und die Seele unbewacht
will in freien Flügen schweben,
um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
tief und tausendfach zu leben.

And the soul, unguarded,
would soar in free flight,
to live a thousandfold, profoundly,
in Night’s enchanted sphere.

Im Abendrot – Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857) At Sunset

Wir sind durch Not und Freude
gegangen Hand in Hand;
vom Wandern ruhen wir
nun überm stillen Land.

Through troubles and joy
we have gone hand in hand;
from wandering we rest
now above the quiet countryside.

Rings sich die Täler neigen,
es dunkelt schon die Luft.
Zwei Lerchen nur noch steigen
nachträumend in den Duft.

All around, the valleys slope away,
the air is already growing dark.
Two larks only still climb
dreamily into the haze.

Tritt her und laß sie schwirren,
bald ist es Schlafenszeit;
daß wir uns nicht verirren
in dieser Einsamkeit.

Come to me and let them flutter,
soon it will be time to sleep;
let us not lose our way
in this solitude.

O weiter, stiller Friede!
So tief im Abendrot,
wie sind wir wandermüde –
ist dies etwa der Tod?

O far-spread, quiet peace!
So deep in the sunset,
how tired we are from wandering –
is this perhaps Death?



The Listening Notes are prepared by Keith Hannis. The views expressed are his and unless specifically stated are not those of the BBC.


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....the Four Last Songs have acquired in many people’s minds an unassailable status as simply the most beautiful music known to them, to be listened to in a dimly lit room and a state of rapt meditation, surrendering to the extraordinary spell of profound, other-worldly calm that they cast....