{"id":1095,"date":"2019-02-23T14:43:05","date_gmt":"2019-02-23T21:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/?page_id=1095"},"modified":"2020-03-13T04:55:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T11:55:53","slug":"strauss-richard-metamorphosen-trv-290","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/?page_id=1095","title":{"rendered":"Strauss, Richard: Metamorphosen, TrV 290"},"content":{"rendered":"
Strauss gives the 13th of March, 1945 as the day on which he started the score for \u2018Metamorphosen\u2019, but it isn\u2019t right. The piece was commissioned one year before, and Strauss had in fact been working on a piece for 11 stringed instruments even before that commission. However, on the 12th of March \u2014 one day before the date given above \u2014 the Vienna Opera was destroyed in a bombing raid. Upon hearing this, Strauss renewed his efforts on Metamorphosen<\/em>, and \u00a0marked the 13th of March as its new beginning.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The pairing of \u2018Ode to Napoleon\u2019 (1942, Los Angeles) with \u2018Metamorphosen\u2019 (1944-45, Munich) raises many questions, some awful and historic, some aesthetic and scholarly, and all rather important in their way. One of the first questions, curiously, is about the meaning and role of Ludwig van Beethoven.\u00a0 Both Schoenberg\u2019s Ode<\/i> and Strauss\u2019 Metamorphosen<\/i> refer to both the 3rd and <\/i>5th symphonies of Beethoven. (Eroica<\/em> was famously dedicated to Napoleon as \u2018hero\u2019 and had its dedication violently scratched out when Beethoven heard that Napoleon had taken the title of \u2018Emporor\u2019.) Schoenberg maintains that the E-flat Major triad at the end of the \u2018Ode to Napoleon\u2019 can refer to the key of \u2018Eroica\u2019, and that he subconsciously mixed the \u2018Marseillaise\u2019 and Beethoven\u2019s Fifth Symphony to set the words \u2018the earthquake voice of victory\u2019.\u00a0 And of course Beethoven was \u00a0a source of great pride for Germany and Austria.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Beethoven\u2019s third symphony is at the heart of \u2018Metamorphosen\u2019.\u00a0 It comes, however, as a quotation from the second movement – \u00a0marcia funebre –\u00a0<\/i>and with no sense of heroism. A funeral march\u2026 for whom, for what? For the opera house? For soldiers? For civilians? For Germany? For the century itself? A few days after finishing Metamorphosen, Strauss wrote in his diary:<\/span><\/div>\n
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The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany’s 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
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In a way, there\u2019s no need to select a concrete subject for the march motive. There were so many funerals, and there was so much loss. And \u2018Germany’s 2000 years of cultural evolution\u2019?\u00a0 Such an idea might once have seemed current and generative… in some ways, his own biography is also traced… ‘ambiguous’ only begins to begins to describe it. \u00a0Things change. \u00a0There are many themes and yet only one theme. \u00a0There are hints of\u00a0Siegfried<\/em> Idyll, but only hints. \u00a0And there is a hint of acceleration to catastrophe. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Strauss was living in Garmisch, south of Munich at the base of the alps, at the end of the war. He was visited in April 1945 by the principal oboist of the Pittsburgh Symphony (then a corporal, working to secure the area), who asked him if he would consider writing an oboe concerto.\u00a0 Strauss said, simply, \u2018no\u2019. He evidently reconsidered, though, and completed an oboe concerto a few months after. In this way things seem to move forward, despite everything.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strauss gives the 13th of March, 1945 as the day on which he started the score for \u2018Metamorphosen\u2019, but it isn\u2019t right. The piece was commissioned one year before, and Strauss had in fact been working on a piece for 11 stringed instruments even before that commission. However, on the 12th of March \u2014 one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":21,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1095"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1232,"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1095\/revisions\/1232"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}