The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-03-06
Most Remarkable Living Composer
Richard hobbe.
Has Wagner Bette

sung in concert and string quartet by
him had been publicly performed.
+ + =
During all his school years he continued
his piano lessons, and in addition he had
instruction in violin playing and took
thorough course in composition. In 1882
while at the University of Munich he COM
posed a "Serenade' for wind instruments.
This attracted the attention of Won Bulow.
As result he was invited to Meiningen s
assistant conductor, and after Won Bulow
resigned became leader of the orchestra,
remaining in that position until the spring
of 1886. In August of that year he became
assistant at the Munich Opera, post
which he relinquished in the summerof 1889
for the conductorship at Weimer. After
almost fatal attack of pneumonia in 1892,
he made long tour through Greece, Egypt
and Sicily, during which he wrote and COM
posed his opera, ''Guntram," produced at
Weimar in May, 1894. The pretty romance
connected with this work, his engagement,
which was announced after the first per-
formance, and his subsequent marriage to
the singer of the heroine, Freihild, / al
ready have mentioned He relinquiShed the
conductorship at Weimar to accept a SINH
lar position in Munich. where he remained
until 1899 when he accepted the post he
still holds as one of the conductors of the
Royal Opera, Berlin.
What has made Richard Strauss new
force in music? His originality. An ad-
mirer, close student of Wagner he Is: but
not imitator. He has not given the
world Wagner diluted with water, but
Richard Strauss. His best-known compost
are closely allied to that form, which is
something of his own invention.
A tone poem may be said to be the freest
development CT the symphony yet at
tanned by any composer When List sought
to free himself from the shackles of the
rigid symphonic form he invented the SYM
phOnic poems.
Richard Strauss has. in the vernacuar,
seen him and gone him one better"
,i tone poem 9oen though not strictly
varied in its contents, allows of such a
multitude of changes in tempt and such
wonderful development of thematic ma
terial-such an Interviewing of melodies
of allied or contrasting character-that
although it is kept within certain form
limitations, its leading characteristic
classical formulas Although Thus
Spake Zarathustra" lasts thirty-three min
utes and "a Hero's Life forty-five, their
| length is not wearisome.
This is due to the fact that in his tone
poems Strauss tells a story, and a story
| which usually has intellectual pur-
pose. This story he treats with such in
| finite variety both as to leading motives
and instrumental combinations that all
sense of length disappears. Strauss
| astounding facility and his wizard-like
| intuition in producing novel orchestral eff
| fects are due to his intimate personal
knowledge OF the individuality of every
| Instrument, for he has taken lessons on
| them all. Therefore, while he has given
new technical difficulties 10 every instru-
| ment in the orchestra, of none has he
asked impossibility. He scores for in
| stance, for the whole string orchestra an
| octave higher than Beethoven dared TO
| go. But a modern orchestral virtuoso
| should be made 10 reach an octave higher
| on his stringed instrument than Beet
| hoven dared score.
Strauss has a modern message in mu-
sic to deliver, and in delivering it he has
stopped at nothing that he could make
his orchestra do. In his Don Quixote"
in the scene where Don Quixote has his
tilt with the windmill he has even dared
to go outside. the list of orchestral in
struments and has introduced a regular
| theatrical wind machine But what
| gives Strauss music its peculiar dis
| tinction is its intellectual stamp. II is
| expressive and emotional as music pure
and simple, but underlying il all is an
| intellectual motif. Ii is impossible with
| in the limits of this article to make even
| the slightest attempt at analyzing one OF
must point out that in seeking intellec-
| tual material for his musical Inspiration
| he has often gone TO contemporary liter
allure instead of TO the classics. When
! for instance. he wanted to depict i'm nlu-
! sic the yearning Of a soul TO solve the
| Goethe but TO Nietsche, ana, instead of
| composing another Faust symphony.
| he produced his tone poem. Thus Spake
ZarathuStra'
Strauss is fond of outdoor exercise.
and devotes much time to it when he is
at his pretty mountain cottage at Mark
| wartstein, in the Bavarian Alps Almost
| his only other recreation is the game of
| skat. He tries To steal some time every
| day to devote to il. When in Berlin he
| can be seen daily at the cafe of the
| kaiserhof. INDUCING with a few friends
| in a social encounter at his favorite game
| He is Il great worker Recently ne con-
| Quoted fourteen concerts in as many days,
| with rehearsal of from three TO five hours
! Tor each concert. AT one of these rehear-
sails. after conducting ''Heidenleben'' "a
| Heros Life, he told friend that he had
! spent a year and half on it's compost
| ton. and that the violin solo i'm IL was in
! tended for musical portrait Of his wife.