There is no music more plaintively stupid than that which in the same
work figures the "sheep" against which Don Quixote battles so valiantly.
Nor is there any music more maliciously, malevolently petty than that
which represents the adversaries in "Ein Heldenleben." So exceedingly
definite is the portrait of the Hero's Consort, for which Frau Richard
Strauss, without doubt, sat, that without even having seen a photograph
of the lady, one can aver that she is graced with a diatonic figure.
And, certainly the most amusing passage of "Sinfonia Domestica" is that
complex of Bavarian lustihood, Bavarian grossness, Bavarian dreaminess
and Bavarian good nature, the thematic group that serves as autoportrait
of the composer.
And just as there seemed few characters that Strauss could not paint, in
those days, so, too, there seemed few situations, few atmospheres, to
which he could not do justice. A couple of measures, the sinister
palpitation of the timpani and the violas, the brooding of the
wood-wind, the dull flickering of the flutes, the laboring breath of the
strings, and we are lying on the death-bed, exhausted and gasping for
air, weighed by the wrecks of hopes, awaiting the cruel blows on the
heart that will end everything. Horns and violins quaver and snarl,
flutes shrill, a brief figure descends in the oboes and clarinets, and
Till has shed his rascal-sweat and danced on the air.
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