Метаморфозы Рихарда Штрауса: История создания и анализ

Composition by Richard Strauss

Metamorphosen, study for 23 solo strings (TrV 290, AV 142) is a composition by Richard Strauss for ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses, typically lasting 25 to 30 minutes. It was composed during the closing months of the Second World War, from August 1944 to March 1945. The piece was commissioned by Paul Sacher, the founder and director of the Basler Kammerorchester and Collegium Musicum Zürich, to whom Strauss dedicated it. It was first performed on 25 January 1946 by Sacher and the Collegium Musicum Zürich, with Strauss conducting the final rehearsal.

By 1944, Strauss was in poor health and needed to visit the Swiss spa at Baden near Zürich. But he was unable to get the Nazi government's permission to travel abroad. Karl Böhm, Paul Sacher and Willi Schuh came up with a plan to get the travel permit: a commission from Sacher and invitation to the premiere in Zurich. The commission was made in a letter by Böhm on August 28, 1944, for a "suite for strings". Strauss replied that he had been working for some time on an adagio for 11 strings. In fact, his early work on Metamorphosen was for a septet (2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and a bass). The starting date for the score is given as 13 March 1945, which suggests that the destruction of the Vienna opera house the previous day gave Strauss the impetus to finish the work and draw together his previous sketches in just one month (finished on 12 April 1945). As with his other late works, Strauss builds the music from a series of small melodic ideas "which are the point of departure for the development of the entire composition." In this unfolding of ideas "Strauss applies here all of the rhetorical means developed over the centuries to express pain." But he also alternates passages in a major key expressing hope and optimism with passages of sadness, as in the finales of both Gustav Mahler's 6th Symphony and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. The overall structure of the piece is "a slow introduction, a quick central section, and a return to the initial slower tempo", which echoes the structure of Death and Transfiguration. There are five basic thematic elements in Metamorphosen. First, there are the opening chords. Second, there is the repetition of three short notes followed by a fourth long note. Third, there is the direct quote from bar 3 of the "Marcia funebre" from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Fourth, there is a minor theme with triplets. Fifth, there is the lyrical theme "that becomes the source of much of the contrasting music in major, sunnier keys." The second theme does not stand on its own, but precedes the third and fourth themes. Its most obvious source is Beethoven's 5th Symphony, for example the short short short long repetition of G played by the horns in the third movement. But it has other progenitors: the Finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony (a personal favorite of Strauss as a conductor) and the Fugue from Bach's Solo Violin Sonata in G minor BWV 1001. Strauss also used it in the Oboe Concerto, written only a few months after Metamorphosen, displaying "a remarkable example of the thematic links between the last instrumental works". He had also used this motif over 60 years before in his 1881 Piano Sonata. At the end of Metamorphosen, Strauss quotes the first four bars of the Eroicas "Marcia funebre" with the annotation "IN MEMORIAM!" at the bottom. Metamorphosen exhibits the complex counterpoint for which Strauss showed a predilection throughout his life.

One of the pieces Strauss had been working on before Metamorphosen was the orchestral movement Munich Memorial Waltz, sketches of which appear in the same notebook in which Strauss began sketches for Metamorphosen. The Munich Memorial Waltz has a different time signature (Metamorphosen is in 4/4) and is based on different thematic material, including a waltz and other themes from the opera Feuersnot relating to fire. In fact the Munich Waltz is mainly based on music Strauss wrote for a 1939 film about Munich, which has been called a Gelegenheitswalzer ("Occasional Waltz") and premiered on 24 May 1939. In late 1944 and 1945 Strauss sketched some music in waltz time described in his sketchbook as Trauer um München ("Mourning for Munich"). This music was eventually combined with the 1939 piece as a middle section, headed "Minore – In Memoriam". The new piece was finished on 24 February 1945, and the subtitle Gelegenheitswaltzer was replaced with Gedächtniswalzer ("Memorial Waltz"). The Munich Memorial Waltz (TrV 274a and AV 140) lasts about 9 minutes, and was first published and performed in 1951. Timothy L. Jackson believes that scholars who interpret the early sketches of München as the origin of Metamorphosen have a weak, even untenable case.

The main themes of Metamorphosen are given here at the pitch they first occur. The first four themes occur in the first 20 bars. The fifth theme occurs at bar 82, with the tempo marking "etwas fließender" (slightly flowing).

An arrangement for string septet by Rudolf Leopold was published in 1996.