The sweet, broad, diatonic idiom,
the humor, the sleepy Bavarian accent, the pert, naive, little
folk-tunes it employed, the tranquil, touching, childlike tones, the
close of "Tod und Verklaerung," with its wondrous unfolding of corolla
upon corolla, were refreshing indeed after all the burning chromaticism
of Wagner, the sultry air of Klingsor's wonder-garden.
And this music glittered with the sun. The pitch of Wagner's orchestra
had, after all, been predominantly sober and subdued. But in the
orchestra of Strauss, the color-gamut of the _plein-air_ painters got a
musical equivalent. Those high and brilliant tints, these shimmering,
biting tones, make one feel as though Strauss made music with the
paint-brush of a Monet or a Van Gogh. His trumpets are high and
brilliant and silvery, his violins scintillant and electric, at moments
winding a lazy, happy, smoke-blue thread through the sunburnt fabric of
the score. His horns glow with soft, fruity timbres. The new sweetness
of color which he attains in his songs, the pale gold of "Morgen," the
rose of the Serenade, the mild evening blue of "Traum durch die
Daemmerung," shimmers throughout his orchestra scores. Never have wind
instruments sounded more richly, dulcetly, than in that "Serenade fuer
dreizehn Blaeser.
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