He commences composing "Der Rosenkavalier"
before having even seen the third act. The third act arrives; Strauss
finds it miserable. But it is too late. The work is half-finished, and
Strauss has to go through with it. Composition becomes more and more a
mechanical thing, the brilliant orchestration of sloppy, undistinguished
music, the polishing up of details, the play of superficial cleverness
which makes a score like "Der Rosenkavalier," feeble as it is,
interesting to many musicians.
And Richard Strauss, the one living musician who could with greatest
ease settle down to uninterrupted composition, gets to his writing table
in his apartment in Charlottenburg every evening at nine o'clock, that
is, whenever he is not on duty at the Berlin Opera.
And always the excuses: "Earning money for the support of wife and child
is not shameful," "I am going to accumulate a large enough fortune so
that I can give up conducting entirely and spend all my time composing."
But one can be sure that when Strauss soliloquizes, it is a different
defense that he makes. One can be sure, then, that he justifies himself
cynically, bitterly, grossly, tells himself that the game is not worth
the candle, that greatness is a matter of advertisement, that only the
values of the commercial world exist, that other success than the
procurement of applause and wealth and notoriety constitutes failure.
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