Death and Transfiguration

Strauss conducted the premiere on 21 June 1890 at the Eisenach Festival (on the same programme as the premiere of his Burleske in D minor for piano and orchestra). He also conducted this work for his first appearance in the United Kingdom, at the Wagner Concert with the Philharmonic Society on 15 June 1897 at the Queen's Hall in London.

English music critic Ernest Newman described this as music to which one would not want to die or awaken. "It is too spectacular, too brilliantly lit, too full of pageantry of a crowd; whereas this is a journey one must make very quietly, and alone."{{cite journal |last1=Newman |first1=Ernest |title=The Music of Death |journal=The Musical Times |date=1915 |volume=56 |page=399 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8yAlAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA399 |access-date=2 February 2022 |publisher=Novello |language=en}}{{rp|399}}

French critic Romain Rolland in his Musiciens d'aujourd'hui (1908) called the piece "one of the most moving works of Strauss, and that which is constructed with the noblest utility".Quoted in Mason, Daniel Gregory (1918), Contemporary Composers, p. 84.

There are four parts (with Ritter's poetic thoughts condensed):

{{ordered list|type=upper-roman

| Largo (The sick man, near death)

| Allegro molto agitato (The battle between life and death offers no respite to the man)

| Meno mosso (The dying man's life passes before him)

| Moderato (The sought-after transfiguration)

}}

A typical performance lasts about 25 minutes.

File:Orchesterwerke Romantik Themen.pdf

\relative c { \clef bass \key ees \major \time 4/4 r4^"Transfiguration theme" f,-. bes( c | d d' c2) }

{{col-begin}}

{{col-2}}

;Woodwinds

:3 flutes

:2 oboes

:1 English horn

:2 clarinets in B{{music|flat}}

:1 bass clarinet

:2 bassoons

:1 contrabassoon

;Brass

:4 horns in F

:3 trumpets in F and C

:3 trombones

:1 tuba

{{col-2}}

;Percussion

:timpani

:tam-tam

;Strings

:violins I, II

:violas

:celli

:double basses

:2 harps

{{col-2}}

{{col-end}}

In one of his last compositions, "Im Abendrot" from the Four Last Songs, Strauss poignantly quotes the "transfiguration theme" from his tone poem of 60 years earlier, during and after the soprano's final line, "Ist dies etwa der Tod?" (Is this perhaps death?).

{ \new PianoStaff << \new Staff \relative c { \clef bass \key ees \major \time 4/4 \partial 2*1 s2 | r4 a( d2~ | d4 e fis fis') | s1 | s1 | s1 | s1 } \new Staff \relative c' { \clef treble \key ees \major \time 4/4 fis2 | fis r | r a | a r | r bes | ces1~ | ces2 } \addlyrics { ist dies et- wa der Tod? } >> }

Just before his own death, he remarked that his music was absolutely correct, his feelings mirroring those of the artist depicted within; Strauss said to his daughter-in-law as he lay on his deathbed in 1949: "It's a funny thing, Alice, dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung."Derrick Puffett's comments on DG disc 447 762-2

{{more citations needed section|date=October 2021}}

{{Reflist}}

• Newman, Ernest. "The Music of Death" The Musical Times, July 1, 1915, pp. 398–399.
• "Herr Richard Strauss" The Musical Times, February 1, 1903, p. 115.

• {{YouTube|mu2M67IQ68Q}}, Symphony Orchestra of Flanders, conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig
• {{IMSLP|cname=Tod und Verklärung|work=Tod und Verklärung, Op.24 (Strauss, Richard)}}

{{Richard Strauss|state=collapsed}}

{{Death and mortality in art}}

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Category:Tone poems by Richard Strauss

Category:1889 compositions

Category:Death in music