Strauss, Metamorphosen

Philosophy is now an essential part of a musicologist’s education; this is an age where philosophy has found its way into popular culture (movies and novels), an age where everyone questions everything, and it will be quite inappropriate if someone were to write about music without having asked questions about music. Yet there was a time when the rise of philosophy was still in its infancy, when the subcategory of musicologist was non-existent, but even then the musical scene was dominated by formidable intellectuals well versed in, amongst other subjects, philosophy; Arthur Friedheim (1859-1932) was one such example and it is said that when he meets his fellow piano virtuoso Moriz Rosenthal (1862-1846) they would challenge each other to a feat of mental athleticism and converse in six different languages.

Friedheim is an obsolete figure now and all that survived of his thoughts are a handful of piano roll recordings and an autobiography. In the case of Richard Strauss (1864-1949) we are more fortunate, for his thoughts are reflected in the music he left us. Unlike the Romantics who asked questions about the natural and the supernatural, or the modernists who proposed new answers for tonality and abstract musical form, Strauss was the one who explicitly engaged with the questions of life. He read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He feared for the future of German culture after the destruction of the Dresden, Munich and Vienna opera houses and also Goethe’s house in WWII. Can there such a thing as metamorphosis in life?

Metamorphosen was published as a piece for 23 solo strings. This performance will be using a version for 7 strings (2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and 1 double bass) reconstructed by Rudolf Leopold from an earlier draft. The music plays on the similarity between the two principal themes and there is a quotation of the Eroica Symphony at the end.

December 2012