Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-03

Even today the story goes that when Strauss
retreats from the world to his Summer home
a great rambling country estate not far from
his original birthplace. he gives parties for all
the peasants round about, drops his grand airs
and audience ceremonies and turns from his
posturing acolytes to welcome the rude frank
ness and native candor of men, If this is true
it illustrates strikingly a certain nostalgia for
the soil which has given Strauss his note of
sturdy originality and preference for instru-
ments that touch real nature closely /. like
the waldhorn, for which he has composed
whole concerto
Primitive urges lie close in under the ac-
quired sophistication of Stauss' thought Ills
Electra" is the frenzy of savage torture and
despair. His "Salome" is an abandonment
from straining ascetism to lust. He has put
madness, patbos, monumental sadness into
music. Delirium Is his chief note-la danse
macabrei It is to the dance that both his
greatest operas mount to a climax.
Yet Strauss also has tried to express IN
abstract sound the philosophy of Nietzsche's
Thus Spake Zarathustra." He has caught
the humor of Cervantes in his tone-poem, Don
Quixote." Such a man, at once passional and
intellectual, must, like AnteuS, return for his
arts sustenance to the earth which has formed
him. This is why Strauss Is most himself in
his garden, where, shut off from the noises of
Vienna by high stone walls and by the great
encircling expanse of Belvedere Park he can
give ear to native sounds and think his native
thoughts In real SecIuSlon.
Here only can Strauss be trusted to be as
unselfcenscious as when he is directing his
operas or leading a concert lost in music. His
garden is small part Of the man. 1t is his
only contact while he is in the city, with his
original Bavaria. Its fine old frs and black
spruce thickets, its low banks dark with humus
and broken by dwarf pine brambles, its shad-
owed, unexpected, hidden pools where leaves lie
on the water and shy fish dart about, are We nj
nscent Of his callower youth and retra the
motifs of his inspirations.
ut is in the movements of great horizo tai
boughs and then in the smarter swayings OF
their branches and finally in the f1uttering ca
the ultimate leaves that the musician gets h. S
original concept of rhythm. 1t is in the WINS
whisperings and the birds songs that he heals
his first melody"
STRAUSS walks among his trees and past
~ his little lakes, an old man, gray, yet ex-
traordinarily tall. One has failed to appreciate
his height in the conductors box of the Vienna
opera for 1t has been sunk below the floor
level of the auditorium. Here, on the same
level path with one he suddenly appears tower
ing. His thin topcoat says in perpendicular
lines TO accommodate the hands which he
has thrust deep into side pockets. His Shout
ders stoop together and he seems cadaverously,
1lusively lean The heavy head, square and
shaggy as a mastif's, comes as surprise. 1t
Is in proportion with his height. yet not in
proportion with the frame which has sunken
and narrowed with the years. Dressed all in
black, Strauss in his garden never fails to
produce a weird impression as he moves slowly
along, sauntering down the rows like some