It is not easy, even for those who were aware from the very first that
Strauss was not the spirit "pardlike, beautiful and swift" and that
there always were distinctly gross and insensitive particles in him, to
recognize in the slack and listless person who concocts "Joseph's
Legende" and the "Alpensymphonie," the young and fiery composer, genius
despite all the impurities of his style, who composed "Till
Eulenspiegel" and "Don Quixote"; not easy, even though the contours of
his idiom have not radically altered, and though in the sleepy facile
periods of his later style one catches sight at times of the broad,
simple diction of his earlier. For the later Strauss lacks pre-eminently
and signally just the traits that made of the earlier so brilliant and
engaging a figure. Behind the works of the earlier Strauss there was
visible an intensely fierily experiencing being, a man who had powerful
and poignant and beautiful sensations, and the gift of expressing them
richly. Behind the work of the latter there is all too apparent a man
who for a long while has felt nothing beautiful or strong or full, who
no longer possesses the power of feeling anything at all, and is
inwardly wasted and dull and spent. The one had a burning and wonderful
pressure of speech.
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