Strauss – Metamorphosen (1945)

As in Tim Ashley’s biography of Richard Strauss:

On the night of 13-14 February [1945] Dresden, the site of all his most important premières, was flattened, ‘I am in despair,’ he wrote to Josef Gregor [his librettist]. ‘My lovely Dresden – Weimar – Munich – all gone!’

By 8 March, the short score of the work, now entitled Metamorphosen (‘Metamorphoses’) was complete. The title derives from Goethe’s use of the word to describe a work in progress gradually emerging after a long period of gestation.’

(https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Richard_Strauss.html?id=ksIZAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y)

It would seem that the full score was started on 13 March 1945 following the destruction of the Vienna Opera House, as impetus to resume the work based on that 8 March short score and turn it into a work for 23 solo strings (ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses).

There are five ‘thematic elements’ that Strauss develops from small cells (he would’ve done well at GCSE composition):

1. The opening chords
2. Repetition of three short notes followed by a long note
3. Minor theme with triplets
4. Lyrical theme (often in the major)
5. Quote from bar 3 of the “Marcia funebre” from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’, under which Strauss writes at the end ‘IN MEMORIAM’

The work lasts around 25 minutes, and is a huge piece of contrapuntal organisation and development – typical of Strauss’s work, and was first performed on 25 January 1946 by Paul Sacher (who commissioned it) and the Collegium Musicum Zürich, with Strauss conducting the final rehearsal.

Score: