4/30/20

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Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

As a horn player, it was required that I was exposed to the music of Richard Strauss by the time I had any sort of reasonable range. His Horn Concerto No. 1 is standard repertoire, not to mention several works written by his father, Franz Strauss, who was also a composer as well as a virtuosic horn player. Richard Strauss would become a much more famous composer than his father, however, defining German music alongside his contemporaries (such as the one and only Gustav Mahler) in the wake of the ever-famous trailblazers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, and Johannes Brahms. Living past both world wars, Strauss accumulated an incredible volume of compositions, with his most famous works being his orchestral tone poems and operas. Today’s piece, Eine Alpensinfonie (or “An Alpine Symphony”) is one of his tone poems, and serves as perhaps the largest scale piece (aside from his operas), calling for over 100 performers (including 12 horns, 2 trumpets, and 2 trombones offstage) and lasting 50-60 minutes. Its scope is not ill-justified, with Strauss often quoting this piece as perhaps the most personal and significant of his tone poems. The piece was completed in 1915, only four years after the death of Gustav Mahler, who also served as a close friend to Strauss.

Inspired from a mountainous adventure Strauss had when he was young, the piece aims to tell a single day’s story. The piece is completely continuous, starting at the beginning of a day, before the sun has risen, and ending after nightfall. At the beginning of the day, he depicts traveling through the forest, approaching a stream and waterfall, and then through a meadow and pasture. Throughout this part of the piece, Strauss very carefully introduces and develops certain motifs, which return later (sometimes as a recurring element and sometimes as a memory). Perhaps the more significant of these motifs include the sun (the descending major scale first heard during the sunrise), the adventurous ascent theme (first heard in the low strings), the fanfares, and perhaps the most significant: the summit theme. Following the time in pasture, the piece takes a turn (a wrong one) and showcases a brief moment of lingering fear and danger before arriving at the summit. This moment, first announced by low brass, features a delicate oboe solo that eventually leads to the overall climax of the piece. Here, Strauss displays the full glory of the summit theme, emerging from the low brass and the brilliance of the trumpet chords. With six horns in unison and the entire string section in counterpoint, the listener gets clear view of the entire journey before while also certainly giving Jennifer Higdon’s All Things Majestic a run for its money.

From there, the piece descends slowly, giving time to the listener to understand the magnitude of the day’s journey. The second half of the piece is not without struggle, however, as the sun becomes obscured and a storm rolls into view. The arrival of the storm is perhaps the most turbulent moment of the piece, chaotically moving through key centers and throwing around motifs (several of which now in the minor mode) in a much darker tone. Through the whirlwind of woodwinds and strings, the storm eventually fades and eases into the sunset. In this moment, Richard Strauss clearly echoes the beginning of the piece, definitively signaling the end of day. I personally find that while the summit serves as the true climax of the piece, final settling which happens 8-10 minutes out from the end serves as a significant emotional climax for the piece. In these final moments, Strauss returns to so many of the earlier themes, as if to acknowledge the end and remember the beauty from earlier. The summit theme is now set in a much more somber tone, heard by the principal horn and trumpet against the woodwinds and organ. Finally, it is night again and the day’s adventure finally comes to a close.

A piece like this certainly speaks for itself, but I would like comment on why the piece speaks so much to me. At the beginning of this series of posts, I mentioned how Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie was the work of a lifetime, showcasing beauty, terror, and triumph in the span of ten movements. I believe that in many ways, Eine Alpensinonie is just as gratifying and symbolic. Richard Strauss was a composer that saw well past the end of the Romantic era, and past the time of his own aesthetic. As a remarkably sentimental person, he never lost sight of his own style, and breathed life into every piece he wrote. Eine Alpensinfonie was a labor of love for him, conveying his own admiration of nature (sound like someone?) as well as the journey of a lifetime. There is a great logic to Strauss’ writing, one that extends beyond traditional form and into the world of pure, eloquent story-telling. Even though I may have a long way to go in my own compositions, I certainly aspire to Strauss’ style and effortless romanticism. Below I have linked a score video with a performance by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Hopefully you will find the journey as gratifying as I do - as you listen, I urge you to think back to the last time you had a perfect day. Not perfect in the sense that everything went right, but perfect in the sense that there’s no other way you would have had it happen. That, after all, is what Eine Alpensinfonie is all about.