Under his touch the symphony, that most rigid
and abstract and venerable of forms, was actually displaying some of the
novel's narrative and analytical power, its literalness and concreteness
of detail. It was describing the developments of a character, was
psychologizing as it had hitherto done only in conjunction with poetry
or the theater. Strauss made it represent the inflammations of the sex
illusion, comment upon Nietzsche and Cervantes, recount the adventures,
somersaults and end of a legendary rascal, portray a hero of our time.
He made all these intellectual concepts plastic in a music of a
brilliance and a sprightliness and mordancy that not overmany classic
symphonies can rival. Other and former composers, no doubt, had dreamt
of making the orchestra more concretely expressive, more precisely
narrative and descriptive. The "Pastoral" symphony is by no means the
first piece of deliberately, confessedly programmatic music. And before
Strauss, both Berlioz and Liszt had experimented with the narrative,
descriptive, analytical symphony. But it was only with Strauss that the
symphonic novel was finally realized.
Neither Berlioz nor Liszt had really embodied their programs in living
music. Liszt invariably sacrificed program to sanctioned musical form.
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