Metamorphosen

The Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings are a composition by Richard Strauss, which he began on 13 March 1945 and ended in Garmisch -Partenkirchen on 12 April. The solo piece for string instruments is his last large orchestral work was premiered on 25 January 1946 in Zurich under the direction of the dedicatee Paul Sacher.

Shortly before the end of the Second World War and in the context of human and cultural devastation Strauss understood his composition as a farewell to his work and lying in ruins world. The corresponding sentiment is reflected in the deep serious and internalized work reflected on different levels. The sound in its final bars of the first theme of the funeral march of the third symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven, in whose tonality ( C minor ) it opens.

With the dense Lamento Strauss turned one last time as a passionate expression musician who was still able to enrich it with new elements, a late work.

Content and particularities

Starting from the actual idea of ​​metamorphosis ( gr μεταμόρφωσις Metamorphosis " Metamorphosis", "transformation" ), the work can be considered as a variation incessant chain, remember their melodic material and expressive musical language to the second movement of the Eroica. Using techniques of polyphony, dynamics and modulation Strauss developed the themes and designed the intense expression of his last " action song ".

The external form, the metamorphoses of three sections consist of three sections, which are subjected to continuous transformation and are linked together by these changing movement. Over several stages of development (some flowing, poco piu mosso ) follows the Adagio ma non troppo a passionately Flyout midsection Agitato from bar 213, which returns after an intensive dynamic and polyphonic compacted increase from bar 390 in the painful Adagio (tempo primo ) where the first theme is repeated fortissimo. In the past, with In Memoriam! overridden clocks will sound in the bass, the funeral march motif of Beethoven.

Like the Four Last Songs or the oboe concerto also come from the Metamorphoses without opus number.

Origin and background

In the fall of 1944, Strauss accepted, communicated through the Musicologist Willi Schuh, a commission of Paul Sacher and listed as a starting idea of ​​" mourning Munich " in his sketchbook, on which he fell back in 1945. Especially in 1943 destroyed National Theatre, his long years the home, Strauss had shaken. Had he first thought of a septet, he expanded the cast later on 10 violins, violas and cellos 5 and three double basses, so to differentiate the tone and intensify can.

Like the work, which he called impulsive under study, be externally also due to this reason, his real and personal source is the state of mind of the composer on the eve of the war's end. As only a few works reflect the metamorphoses his biographical situation and concern about the wartime destruction of Germany. So he wrote Joseph Gregor, he was desperate to " mood! The Goethe House, the world 's largest sanctuary, destroyed. My beautiful Dresden -Weimar- Munich, everything there! "

For Dieter Borchmeyer, the metamorphoses are a testimony to the Goethe- worship of the composer. This was contained in the sketchbooks, in which Strauss wrote down thoughts about Goethe's late spell seals. That the composer for the work the term metamorphosis chose instead forms, whether due to the fact that he had no assumptions initially fixed theme, but have chosen the C minor key ideas from the funeral march as not erkannbaren reference point " of his identity only after gradually revealed. "

Significance and reception

The Metamorphoses are an important work and at the same farewell to the late Romantic era. You are at the end of the free Tonale over ongoing development and combine melody and voices abundance in the virtually infinite development to the final bars together.

Strauss was celebrated after the epochal modern works Salome and Elektra by many first as a leader of the avant-garde, he had later for his conservative stance repeated criticism, sometimes suffered bitter polemics. Many supporters of the Viennese School, Arnold Schoenberg, whose music philosophical basis was mainly characterized by well most prominent critic of Strauss 's oeuvre Theodor W. Adorno, lamented the "betrayal", which had been announced with the Rosenkavalier.

About the In Memoriam! there were also differing interpretations, so the claim that it does not relate to Beethoven and the work is an elegy on the regime approaches, however, could not prevail.

So are the metamorphoses of Rainer Cadenbach alongside the other late works - as the last song or Oboe Concerto - tends private and chamber music products. Strauss was a tradition -preserving artist who lived in his own, better past. Although already show in the Rückert songs in the sunshine the melancholy tendency to look back idealizing; of a resignation was up to the last songs but nothing to feel. While in the late work of other significant composers such as Gustav Mahler much appears broken, toneless or " without expression ", is it at Strauss nothing to feel He put no expressivo ban on, . Their instrumentation and harmonies remained colorful and dazzling as before when he the orchestra as a sound body less virtuosic treat than before, reflecting his " chamber music Besetzungsaskese " show. Strauss have repeatedly demonstrated that discretion on the one hand and spiritualization and tonal richness on the other side would pose no unsolvable contradictions.