At Odds with His Time
NEWLIN, DIKA
ON MUSIC By Dika Newlin At Odds With His Time "IF Richard, then better Wagner; if Strauss, then better Johann!" So quipped a critic at the time of the production of Richard Strauss' first...
...Strauss wrote the following about me in a letter to Mrs...
...It was indeed Mahler's frustrated desire to push Salome past the censors and get it performed at the Vienna Court Opera that became one of the immediate causes of his departure from the directorship there...
...I once quoted Mahler's statement that he and Strauss were like two miners who dig into a mountain from opposite sides—only to come out at the same place...
...Here is Strauss at his ripest, purged of the vulgarities which too often marred his earlier works, speaking for once without pose, from the heart...
...But, with him, they are symbolic, surreal...
...misunderstood...
...How hushed the twilight breath...
...That 1 am not too cowardly to do it, you must believe, for, to this end, I empower you to publish this letter at whatever time you see fit...
...I cannot deny that I, in my need to do honor, often had to 'help out' this misunderstanding energetically enough...
...That I had to take great pains to keep from recognizing, in the Heldenleben and Zarathustra themes, what the lyrical themes and the Mahler Foundation letters reveal nakedly...
...It is a pity that Pauline Strauss never published her side of the story...
...At the beginning of Schoenberg's career, Strauss had been deeply impressed by the younger man's work...
...Strauss and Mahler were friends, though not always completely harmonious friends...
...Strauss did help Mahler —in fact, the first performance of the three instrumental movements of Mahler's Second Symphony took place under Strauss' direction...
...This placed him at odds with his time—as witness his estrangement from Schoenberg...
...We came to the dance—it was missing...
...The game of "might-have-been" is fascinating yet frustrating...
...and we shall just begin to know who Arnold Schoenberg was...
...I shall close with my translation of Eichendorff's I in Abendrot, which Strauss—with haunting reminiscence of his own Death and Transfiguration—used as his valedictory to life...
...Much of the disharmony was doubtless caused by their wives, as Alma Mahler Werfel's catty memoirs make abundantly clear...
...Strauss' 'morals.' . . . Artistically, he does not interest me today at all, and what I might once have learned from him I (thank God...
...Isn't it rather risky,' Mahler remarked, 'simply leaving out the dance, and then writing it in later when you're not in the same mood?' Strauss laughed his light-hearted laugh: 'I'll soon get that right.'" One can scarcely imagine Mahler treating a key section of any of his scores in such cavalier fashion...
...A single work of Schoenberg's, the tone-poem Pelleas und Melisande, owes its inception to a suggestion of Strauss...
...Around us, in the valleys, The air grows still and dark...
...Mahler was charmed...
...He was instrumental in obtaining the Liszt Fellowship for him, and also in securing for him a professorship of composition at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin...
...If through the vagaries of time just one work of Strauss' could survive for future generations to enjoy, I should like it to be his Four Last Songs...
...Far from his thoughts are any suggestions of a crude realism...
...Another Strauss remark (at rehearsals for the première of Mahler's Sixth Symphony, concerning the great hammerblows in the Finale) is typical: "I can't understand why Mahler deprives himself of such a wonderful effect in the last movement—why, he wastes his greatest strength at the beginning and then becomes weaker and weaker...
...But the last thing he would have wanted would be tor the listener to visualize a herd of cows...
...Many anecdotes about the two men, however, illuminate the fundamental disparity between their philosophies...
...The last earthly sound which one hears in these higher regions is the tinkling of the cowbells of some wandering herd...
...I cannot fulfill this wish, for the German publication of the letter which I perforce use here is discreetly cut...
...One may question the esthetic validity of such illustration, but no one will deny that Strauss was the great master of it...
...In the slow movement of the Sixth Symphony, Mahler wishes to express feelings such as one has on a distant mountaintop, far from the hurly-burly of humanity...
...It is Schoenberg's only essay in the field of the large-scale symphonic poem, and a very successful one...
...As a young boy, Strauss wrote in a letter: "Ten years from now, nobody will know who Richard Wagner was...
...So we find Schoenberg replying, in 1914, to someone who had asked him to write a few words honoring Strauss' 50th birthday: "Unfortunately, I cannot comply with your request to write something for Richard Strauss' 50th birthday...
...From wandering we rest now, High o'er the quiet land...
...Strauss was to play over the score of Salome to Mahler —who, incidentally, had been violently opposed to his friend's choice of subject, not only on moral grounds but because of the fear that the work might be barred in Catholic countries...
...Passages in Mahler's later works—I am thinking, for instance, of the great viola recitative at the beginning of his "unfinished" Tenth Symphony—lead me to believe that he would have actively participated in the great movement toward the transcending of tonality which was to lead to the "method of composition with twelve tones...
...For the interpretation of another intriguing bit of illustration —the virile upward-leaping theme at the beginning of Rosenkavalier— consult Theodor Reik's Fragment of a Great Confession...
...I do not intend to impugn Mr...
...Mahler, of course, used sounds from real life also (birdsong, cowbells...
...Strauss' personality as a human being (for that is envy of a 'competitor') and as an artist (for that is as banal as a 'lyrical theme') is not suitable to be advertised to the world on the occasion of his 50th birthday...
...Thus, in a recent issue of High Fidelity, his late works are alternately praised for "sweetness, serenity, sentiment" and derided for "pose, pretense, pomposity...
...And, dreaming in the valleys, Lark rises after lark...
...He liked to say that he could depict, in tones, a pencil moving across a piece of paper in such a way that the listener would know what was meant without any verbal description...
...Finally, a run-through was arranged...
...Alma describes the event amusingly: "Strauss played and sang to perfection...
...Come here, heed not their whirring— Soon it is time to rest, That we may not be erring In this dark loneliness...
...We cannot help wondering whether Mahler—had he been granted a life as long as Strauss'—would have been influenced by Schoenberg's innovations (many of which he foreshadowed...
...Mahler (in connection with the Mahler Foundation): 'Only a specialist in mental illness can help poor Schoenberg any more...
...Take, for instance, their differing attitudes toward literal illustration in music...
...I have since wondered whether they were actually aiming for the same place or, indeed, whether they were even digging into the same mountain...
...Which evaluation shall we believe...
...And so Mahler used the cowbells for the first time in symphonic literature (he even had to invent his own notation for them...
...But I cannot leave it unmentioned that, since I have come to understand Mahler (and I do not comprehend how anyone else can feel differently) I have inwardly turned away from Strauss...
...What shall we say on his 100th...
...Today, as we consider his place in musical history on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, we find that in some respects he is still an object of controversy...
...How weary we of wandering— Can this . . . perhaps . . . be Death...
...He continued basically to refine and perfect the techniques of his earlier works...
...That I, who shall never be motivated by 'envy of a competitor,' have no reason to speak out openly against Strauss, you will easily understand...
...Characteristic is the tale which Alma has to tell concerning Salome's Dance...
...Through all life's joys and sorrows We wandered hand in hand...
...Mr...
...Thus Schoenberg on Strauss' 50th birthday...
...I think that Strauss' role in the music of the 20th century is best seen in connection with two of his great contemporaries: the older Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and the younger Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951...
...we shall continue to learn far better who Gustav Mahler was...
...Prime examples of his ability to do this are the bleating of the sheep in Don Quixote (woodwinds and muted brass, fluttertonguing) and the windmill episode in the same work, where Strauss even went to the trouble of introducing a wind machine...
...I think he would do better to shovel snow than to scribble on music paper...
...but then fully...
...Regrettably, it is not as often heard in the concert hall as are Strauss' most popular works in this genre, but an excellent recording directed by Robert Craft is available...
...So quipped a critic at the time of the production of Richard Strauss' first opera...
...Schoenberg began to explore paths where Strauss would not (or could not) follow...
...I think that, after such utterances, the opinion which not only I but also everybody else can form of Mr...
...not in excerpts...
...A breach between the two artists was to come all too soon, however...
...I think that, more than 10 years from now, we shall still know who Richard Strauss was...
...How wide, how still, how peaceful...
...I may not deny that, under other circumstances, I should gladly have remained in this state of misunderstanding and—unconsciously, instinctively doing my duty—should have declined to write about Strauss for another reason...
...Strauss was untouched by all this, or, rather, negatively influenced...
...Haven't got that done yet,' Strauss said, and played on to the end, leaving this yawning gap...
Vol. 47 • July 1964 • No. 64
