Thread: Favorite Strauss Tone Poem

Originally Posted by StlukesguildOhio

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...Ultimately the majority of all art of any real merit is about something beyond the artist's personal lives.

That's a pretty sweeping statement and I'll leave it there not to go off topic. But briefly, many of my favourite composers, their music is strongly autobiographical. Eg. Berg, Janacek, Brahms, Shostakovich, to name only four. But whatever.

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...ultimately I don't even look to the tone poems as his most important works. I am far more enamored of the songs and the operas.

No surprises there, as he himself said that his instrumental works where basically fillers between one opera project and another. His passion was opera and vocal music. I think John Adams has said a similar thing. Some composers are more geared towards vocal music and the drama of opera. It's just their modus operandi or way of doing things.

I think that generally the late Romantic composers tendency for bigness does not go down well with me

What's ironic is that it is the Romantics who first put forth the notion of the work of art as primarily "self-expression".

...many of my favourite composers... music is strongly autobiographical. Eg. Berg, Janacek, Brahms, Shostakovich, to name only four. But whatever.

Oscar Wilde suggested:

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography...

All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

How, for example, is Brahms' music "autobiographical"? His music is purely abstract. It does not sound like anything other that music. When a work of art is thought to mirror the artist, quite often it is the spectator... the audience that it really mirrors. You interpret Wagner's music as conveying Teutonic Nationalism, Antisemitism, and even suggesting fascism and the Nazi's. This has nothing to do with the music, and everything to do with what you bring to it. Nothing that I hear in Shostakovitch suggests his issues with the Soviet State and censorship... Nothing that I hear in Berg's Lyric Suite in any way conveys anything about his affair with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. It is only when the listener approaches the music with a background knowledge of the artist's biography that one begins to interpret the work in an autobiographical manner.

^^AS I said, I won't continue this here, but I've made a number of threads on this already, incl. this one:
Music with a strong autobiographical element...

This is a very difficult thread for me, as a lover of austrian germanic tradition! But I chose Don quixote. First, beacause even if Zarathustra is absolutely incredible and makes you forget everything you've been doing, it's a little bit "messy", these short sections, and even if the orchestration is more than brilliant, it's not as philosophical as Nietzsche's masterpiece, so not very profound.
I didn't chose Don Juan, for a harsh reason, because Strauss was very young, and if this work is already in Strauss' real style, and also very impressive, it's also a little bit superficial - even if the end is terrific and the whole work is impregnated by a sincere and idealistic feeling -like in Lenau's poem.
I didn't chose Till Eulenspiegel simply because I don't think it was composed in order to be compared with Strauss' other tone poems. It's very humoristic, and is maybe Strauss' best achievement in the control of short forms. But not serious enough... Sorry "Richard II".
I didn't chose Alpensinfonie, and though was second on my list^^ . It's really impressive, well controlled in a very original from, very Nietzschean (and i like that!), and Strauss spend 10 years of his life to compose this last hommage to the post-wagerian orchestra. It's really a damn awesome composition!
Heldenleben is really too much, even if Strauss seems to make fun of himself, it's a little bit too cinematographic, a bit easy, and superficial. It was supposed to be the end of an entire chapter of Strauss' life (the tone poem one), but it seemed that the composer wrote it too easily.

Don Quixote is a hybrid form (concerto? Sinfonia concertante? variations?), so well orchestrated, and where anything is given for free, every note has its dramatic purpose, and there is a lot of different moods which can't left the auditor unsensible: humor (the second variation is a masterpiece!!), bliss (the wonderful vision of Dulcinea), and wisdom (Coming to his senses again, Death of Don Quixote). Don quixote is a very humanist and profound, and also "sympathic" work. I absolutely like it!!

My favorite is Don Quixote. I love Metamorphosen but I don't consider it a tone poem. My second favorite is Ein Heldenleben.

Why do people say that Also Sprach Zarathustra ends in 2 keys? The high woodwinds play a B major chord, then the double basses play C-G-C, but at the same time, some low brass play E and F sharp. And so on, alternating. So it really ends in B major (it begins in C major). Any other famous pieces that begin and end in different keys (not counting major vs. minor)? How about Moussorgsky's (sp?) Night on Bald Mountain?

Even though its not quite as lean as Don Juan or Til Eulenspiegel, nor deep and dark as Death and Transfiguration, Also Spracht Zarathrusta is my favorite to listen to all the way through. That one has just about everything in it, though it does verge on wandering at times.

Horn:
Da da da daaa dum,
Da da da daaa dum,
Da da da daah daah da da dee da dee dum.

No heckelphone fans to give Sinfonia Domestica even one vote :/ Also Sprach is my fav; one of those pieces I can whistle along the whole way with. #2 would be Don Quixote; dat ending E:

Originally Posted by RRod

No heckelphone fans to give Sinfonia Domestica even one vote :/ Also Sprach is my fav; one of those pieces I can whistle along the whole way with. #2 would be Don Quixote; dat ending E:

I voted for "Heldenleben" but am very surprised not to see more mention of "Till Eulenspiegel" it is so clever and witty.
The Toscanini version was the first Strauss tone poem I heard, I then saw "Heldenleben" at London's Festival Hall and got blown into the thames----amazing.

Originally Posted by RRod

No heckelphone fans to give Sinfonia Domestica even one vote :/ Also Sprach is my fav; one of those pieces I can whistle along the whole way with. #2 would be Don Quixote; dat ending E:

We have a heckelphone here it's called COAG.

Originally Posted by ComposerOfAvantGarde

Horn:
Da da da daaa dum,
Da da da daaa dum,
Da da da daah daah da da dee da dee dum.

It's an awesome moment, but I think you should have put more a's in there... and exclamation marks... and increased the font! Now it just sounds like too fast and too low-calorie conducting

Eine Alpensinfonie and I don't care whether it has Nietzschean philosophy behind it or not. For me it is a glorious musical picture of the grand mountains (and the Alps are one of the most beautiful things that exist on this planet!), nothing beyond that.

Alpine Symphony. The most evocative tone poem ever, I think. The stillness before the storm actually gives me chills. It takes you there.

I voted for Don Juan...it just sticks with me.