[1] _Richard Strauss, eine Charakterskizze_, 1896, Prague.]
[2] _R. Strauss, Essai critique et biologique_, 1898, Brussels.]
[3] _Der Musikfuehrer: Tod und Verklaerung_, Frankfort.]
Many German musicians think that Strauss has reached the highest point
of his work in _Tod und Verklaerung_. But I am far from agreeing with
them, and believe myself that his art has developed enormously as the
result of it. It is true it is the summit of one period of his life,
containing the essence of all that is best in it; but _Heldenleben_
marks the second period, and is its corner-stone. How the force and
fulness of his feeling has grown since that first period! But he has
never re-found the delicate and melodious purity of soul and youthful
grace of his earlier work, which still shines out in _Guntram_, and is
then effaced.
* * * * *
Strauss has directed Wagner's dramas at Weimar since 1889. While
breathing their atmosphere he turned his attention to the theatre, and
wrote the libretto of his opera _Guntram_. Illness interrupted his work,
and he was in Egypt when he took it up again. The music of the first act
was written between December, 1892, and February, 1893, while travelling
between Cairo and Luxor; the second act was finished in June, 1893, in
Sicily; and the third act early in September, 1893, in Bavaria.
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