Then resounds in the heavens the promise
of that happiness which he had vainly sought for on earth--Redemption
and Transfiguration.
Richard Strauss's friends protested vigorously against this orthodox
ending; and Seidl,[1] Jorisenne,[2] and Wilhelm Mauke[3] pretended that
the subject was something loftier, that it was the eternal struggle of
the soul against its lower self and its deliverance by means of art. I
shall not enter into that discussion, though I think that such a cold
and commonplace symbolism is much less interesting than the struggle
with death, which one feels in every note of the composition. It is a
classical work, comparatively speaking; broad and majestic and almost
like Beethoven in style. The realism of the subject in the
hallucinations of the dying man, the shiverings of fever, the throbbing
of the veins, and the despairing agony, is transfigured by the purity of
the form in which it is cast. It is realism after the manner of the
symphony in C minor, where Beethoven argues with Destiny. If all
suggestion of a programme is taken away, the symphony still remains
intelligible and impressive by its harmonious expression of feeling.
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