Written for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Not to be reprinted without permission.
Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) might be the most egotistical piece in the orchestral repertoire—a musical depiction of one Richard Strauss battling villainous music critics, romancing a lady, reminiscing over past triumphs, and finally growing wise and settling into a happy ending. Written between 1897–98, Strauss intended it as the “serious” counterpoint to his comic tone poem Don Quixote, written around the same time. While Quixote is a mock hero who fancies himself a chivalrous knight, the composer protagonist of Heldenleben is ostensibly the real deal. Still, Strauss was not oblivious to his monstrous act of grandiose autobiography—though the music is earnest, the story is best understood with a dose of winking humor.
Strauss conducted the premiere in Frankfurt on March 3, 1899, though he dedicated it to Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. His preference was to program it alongside Don Quixote; together they were his last tone poems (not counting the symphonically titled Alpine Symphony and Symphonia Domestica)—by the turn of the century, he turned mostly to opera, which he pursued until his semi-retirement in the early 1940s.
The tone poem as a genre originated with Franz Liszt in 1848, and its fusion of instrumental music with explicit storytelling was highly controversial for much of the 19th century. Though the so-called “War of the Romantics” between radical Wagnerians and conservative Brahmsians had cooled by the time Strauss joined Team Wagner the mid-1880s, it clearly left him with a heightened sense of stakes when it came to musical aesthetics, not to mention a raw sensitivity to criticism.
In Ein Heldenleben, Strauss was inspired by Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (originally dedicated to Napoleon) and his own lifelong interest in the romantic hero tradition. Wanting to distill the heroic archetype into a tone poem, he drew from his own experiences as a kind of compositional method acting. Strauss never fought a battle or wooed a princess, but he found modest parallels in his career struggles and marriage. With a little imagination and wit, he could take a leap and declare: “I do not see why I should not compose a symphony about myself; I find myself quite as interesting as Napoleon.” Well, why not?
The music unfolds in six continuous sections. The opening (Der Held) introduces the hero himself, in a leaping (and heroically difficult) line for horns and low strings, soon elaborated upon and driven forward in vivid color. The next section introduces the hero’s enemies (Des Helden Widersacher), hilariously sniveling music critics in flutes, oboes, and low brass. “They are jealous, they envy him, they sneer at his aims and endeavours, they are suspicious of his sincerity,” described the early commentator Philip Hale (“nor is there any music more maliciously, malevolently petty,” added an offended music critic).
The third section (Des Helden Gefährtin) introduces the hero’s companion, his love interest. Suddenly the piece turns into a little violin concerto, the soloist representing the leading lady, growing into a wild exploration lushly colored by two harps. Strauss later described:
It’s my real-life wife, Pauline, whom I wanted to portray. She is very complex, very much a woman, a little depraved, something of a flirt, never twice alike, every moment different from what she was the moment before. At the beginning, the hero follows her … but she always flies further away. Then at the end he says, “No, I’m staying here.” He stays in his thoughts … Then she comes to him.
With his companion by his side, the hero is ready for the battlefield (Des Helden Walstatt), where he vanquishes the critics with military drums and brass calls. The next section, Des Helden Friedenswerke (The Hero’s Deeds of Peace) revisits highlights from Strauss’s earlier tone poems, including Don Juan, Also sprach Zarathustra, Tod und Verklärung, and Don Quixote (“the only way I could express works of peace was through themes of my own,” Strauss said).
Now wise and fulfilled, the hero retreats from the world (Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung). In his sketchbook, Strauss jotted his plan for the ending: “[the hero] withdraws entirely into the idyll, in order to live only for his thoughts, his wishes, the unfolding of his own personality in quiet and contemplation. Autumnal forest—resignation at the side of the beloved—music dies away warm-heartedly.”
