Metamorphosen (1944-5)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Metamorphosen (1944-5)

for seven solo strings

Nobody knows why Strauss made a reduced version of Metamorphosen, his “study for 23 solo strings” as it was subtitled when first performed by the Collegium Musicum Zurich under its director Paul Sacher in 1946. It is not unlikely, however, that it was a characteristically profesional move on the part of a composer who knew only too well that, in a Europe destroyed by the recent war, few orchestras had the resources available to Sacher’s well endowed ensemble in neutral Switzerland.

In this seven-part version Metamorphosen is virtually a chamber piece, which inevitably deprives it of much of its textural complexity but at the same time clarifies the progress of its four main themes through a vast single-movement span - an extended Adagio introduction leading to a gradually accelerating middle section and a similarly extended Adagio closing section. Whatever Strauss meant by the title of the work, the concept of metamorphosis can usefully be applied to a score that takes an echo of the Marcia funebre from Beethoven’s Eroica, leads it with its thematic companions through an inexhautible variety of harmonic and textural situations and, in the closing bars, allows it to emerge in its true form as a direct quotation of Beethoven’s funeral theme. “In memoriam” the score is marked at this culminating point - in memory, that is, of a German civilisation the composer had seen systematically and comprehensively devastated.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Metamorphosen

a study for 23 solo strings

The first inspiration of Metamorphosen seems to have been the destruction of Munich in 1943, since it was at that time that Strauss sketched a Mourning for Munich with a theme bearing a strong resemblance to a phrase in the Funeral March of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. It was not, however, until 1945, after the devastation of Dresden, that Strauss was moved to make full use of the theme in his Metamorphosen, “a study for 23 solo strings.”

The extraordinarily rich texture of Metamorphosen is determind by the freedom given to each member of the Collegium Musicum Zurich, to whom the work is dedicated and who gave the first performance under the direction of Paul Sacher in Zurich in Janary 1946. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYtRPKWpStw&feature=related

Against this background, two main themes undergo constant repetition and transformation (or metamorphosis). The first is the chorale-like meldy on the cellos in the opening bars. The other is the Eroica-like theme introduced by two violas and immediately transformed by two other violas, wich retain the three repeated notes but convert the rest of the theme into a more lyrical form with syncopations and legato triplet figuration. With the entry of the violins the chorale melody is varied too. Numerous other transformation occur during the course of the work, but the two main theme and their first two variants supply most of the material for the remarkably elaborate multi-voiced counterpoint which Strauss so masterfully and so effortlessly sustains for thirty minutes or so.

On the very last page, where the composer has written the words IN MEMORIAM, three cello and three basses introduce a direct quotation from the Beethoven funeral march below the two main themes combined in the rest of the orchestra.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Metamorphosen (1944-5)

When Paul Sacher approached Richard Strauss with a commission for the Collegium Musicum Zurich in August 1944 he found a composer depressed by the knowledge that German cultural life was collapsing into ruins. His creastivity, however, remained intact. Only a few months before their meeting the Munich Staatstheater had been bombed to destruction, an event which grieved Strauss deeply. At the same time, however, it inspired a 24-bar sketch Trauer um München (Lament for Munich) which, although he was apparently unware of it until later, quotes a phrase from the Marcia funebre of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

Before he had completed the Sacher commision, the situation in Germany was far worse. “I am in despair,” he wrote in March 1945: “The Goethe house, the most sacred place on earth, destroyed! My lovely Dresden, Weimar, Munich, all gone!” A few days later, however, he was able to start writing out a fair copy of the new work – a 30-minute development of the idea originally sketched in Trauer um München – which was completed three weeks before the end of the War. Although he did not attend the first performance of Metamorphosen, conducted by Sacher in Zurich on 25 January 1946, he did direct the rehearsals.

In its authentic and most familiar form Metamorphosen is, as Strauss described it, a “study for 23 solo strings” – ten violins, five each of violas and cellos, three basses. While it is capable of an extraordinarily rich sonority, this essentially chamber-music texture, multiplied though it is to an orchestral scale, illuminates the progress of its four main themes through a vast single-movement span: an extended Adagio introduction leads to a gradually accelerating middle section and a similarly extended Adagio closing section.

Whatever Strauss meant by the Metamorphosen title – it has been implausibly suggested that it has nothing to do with the musical process – the concept of metamorphosis can usefully be applied, whether derived from Goethe’s theories or not, to the way the work develops. Taking an echo of the Marcia funebre from Beethoven’s Eroica, Strauss takes it with its thematic companions through an inexhautible variety of harmonic and textural situations and, in the closing bars, allows it to emerge in its true form as a direct quotation of Beethoven’s funeral theme. “In memoriam” the score is marked at this culminating point – in memory, that is, of a German civilisation the composer had seen systematically and comprehensively devastated.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Metamorphosen (1944-5)

for seven solo strings

When Paul Sacher approached Richard Strauss with a commission for the Collegium Musicum Zurich in August 1944 he found a composer depressed by the knowledge that German cultural life was collapsing into ruins. His creastivity, however, remained intact. Only a few months before their meeting the Munich Staatstheater had been bombed to destruction, an event which grieved Strauss deeply. At the same time, however, it inspired a 24-bar sketch Trauer um München (Lament for Munich) which, although he was apparently unware of it until later, quotes a phrase from the Marcia funebre of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

Before he had completed the Sacher commision, the situation in Germany was far worse. “I am in despair,” he wrote in March 1945: “The Goethe house, the most sacred place on earth, destroyed! My lovely Dresden, Weimar, Munich, all gone!” A few days later, however, he was able to start writing out a fair copy of the new work – a 30-minute development of the idea originally sketched in Trauer um München – which was completed three weeks before the end of the War. Although he did not attend the first performance of Metamorphosen, conducted by Sacher in Zurich on 25 January 1946, he did direct the rehearsals.

In its authentic and most familiar form Metamorphosen is, as Strauss described it, a “study for 23 solo strings” – ten violins, five each of violas and cellos, three basses. The present version for two each of violins, violas and cellos and one double bass (discovered in Switzerland in 1990) is the short score from which he elaborated the finished work. As a septet Metamorphosen is inevitably deprived of something of its characteristic sonority. At the same time, however, the chamber-music textures clarify the progress of its four main themes through the vast single-movement span – an extended Adagio introduction leading to a gradually accelerating middle section and a similarly extended Adagio closing section.

Whatever Strauss meant by the title of the work – it has been implausibly suggested that it has nothing to do with the musical process – the concept of metamorphosis can usefully be applied, whether derived from Goethe’s theories or not, to the way the work develops. Taking an echo of the Marcia funebre from Beethoven’s Eroica, Strauss leads it with its thematic companions through an inexhautible variety of harmonic and textural situations and, in the closing bars, allows it to emerge in its true form as a direct quotation of Beethoven’s funeral theme. “In memoriam” the score is marked at this culminating point – in memory, that is, of a German civilisation the composer had seen systematically and comprehensively devastated.