He has completely, in his fifty-sixth year, lost
the position of leadership, of eminence that once he had. Even before
the war his operas held the stage only with difficulty. And it is
possible that he will outlive his fame. One wonders whether he is not
one of the men whose inflated reputations the war has pricked, and that
a world will shortly wonder, before his two new operas, how it was
possible that it should have been held at all by the man. Had he been
the most idealistic, the most uncompromising of musicians he could not
be less respected. Perhaps his last chance lay in the "Alpensymphonie."
Here was a ceremony that could have made him priest once again. Europe
had reached a summit, humanity had had a vision. Before it lay a long
descent, a cloudburst, the sunset of a civilization, another night.
Could Strauss have once more girded himself, once more summoned the
faith, the energy, the fire that created those first grand pages that
won a world to him, he might have been saved. But it was impossible.
Something in him was dead forever. And so, to us, who should have been
his champions, his audiences, his work already seems old, part of the
past even at its best, unreal except for a few of the fine symphonic
works. To us, who once thought to see in him the man of the new time,
he seems only the brave, sonorous trumpet-call that heralded a king who
never put in his appearance, the glare that in the East lights the sky
for an instant and seems to promise a new day, but extinguishes again.
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