We are met together on the eve of his eighty-fifth birthday to do honour to the Master whom Munich proudly and joyfully calls her own, but whom we must also designate as an European, no, a World Musician, for the world recognizes Richard Strauss as a classic writer. Between his birth in 1864—a time so long ago that it is almost legendary (the first performance of Wagner's Tristan only took place in the following year)—and the uncheerful present of 1949 is stretched the arc of a smooth life of immense achievement. Eighty-five years! The intellectual position of the Master, who, looking back on eighty-five years of favoured existence and seventy years of rich creativity, may regard himself as concluding a musical epoch that embraces centuries, is only to be compared with that of Goethe in 1830. Both men, living in periods profoundly disturbed by new ideas and tendencies, are to be seen as superior beings commanding the deep and general respect of the world at large, standing high above all the misunderstandings and envy that invariably accompany fame. Judged and condemned as ‘revolutionaries’ in their youth, decried as ‘reactionaries’ for the classicism of their maturity, both of them obeying their ‘daemon,’ have passed through and left behind various phases of public approval, in order, pursuing their own way, to create work after work on an ever higher level and leave to the world after them the exploration of their spiritual heritage.

It has given me great joy to accept the invitation to contribute to the Summer issue of TEMPO which is entirely devoted to Richard Strauss, on the occasion of the great Master's 85th birthday.

On the 11th January, 1889, Don Juan was performed for the first time. It was in Weimar and the twenty-five year old Strauss, then Court Kappellmeister in Goethe's city, conducted himself. More than eight years had gone by since Hermann Levi, the conductor of the original Parsifal performance, had given Strauss's first orchestral work (the unpublished Symphony in D minor) and a number of scores had been completed since, the Violin Concerto Op. 8, the Horn Concerto Op. 11, the Symphony in F minor Op. 12, From Italy Op. 16 and a few which remained unpublished. Since October, 1885, Strauss had been conducting, in Meiningen first and then in Munich, both opera and concerts, and had acquainted himself with all the problems of orchestral technique and sonority. Moreover, his father, first horn in the Munich Court Orchestra, was a musician of thorough knowledge and a man of hard principles who saw to it that his son was not carried away by his amazing facility and wild temperament, but that he acquired the craftsmanship which in the last instance divides the genius from the gifted amateur. And this Richard Strauss did, with the same facility and unerring sureness with which he threw his music on to paper: in a clean and careful handwriting without corrections, without hesitation, quick but unhurried, strangely reminiscent of Mozart's implacable manuscripts.

TEN GOLDEN RULES

Written in the scrapbook of a young conductor (Ca. 1925)

1. Remember that you do not make music for your own amusement, but for the pleasure of your audience.

2. Do not perspire when conducting; only the public ought to get warm.

3. Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were by Mendelssohn; fairy-music.

4. Never look at the brass encouragingly; except with a quick glance for an important lead-in.

5. On the contrary, never let the horns and woodwind out of your sight; if you hear them at all they are already too loud.

6. If you think the brass is not strong enough, tone them down two points further.

7. It is not enough yourself to hear every word of the singer—which you know by heart anyway; the public also must be able to follow it without effort. If they don't understand what is happening they fall asleep.

8. Always accompany the singer so as to enable him to sing without exertion.

9. If you think you have reached the utmost Prestissimo, take the tempo as fast again.

10. If you remember all this sympathetically, your rich talents and great knowledge will always be the unimpaired delight of your audience.

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Goethe's birth, we call to mind a little known Goethe song by Richard Strauss that does not appear in any of the Master's song collections. It is based on a poem from the Westöstlicher Divan. Goethe's homage in a Persian disguise to the Grand Duke Karl August, which was written in the early months of the year 1815, and was published under the title Schach Sedschan and His Equals in the Buch der Betrachtungen, was set to music by Richard Strauss on the 11th June, 1925—that is to say, on his 61st birthday. He intended this hymn-like canto for the presentation to Romain Rolland which Maxim Gorki, Georges Duhamel and Stefan Zweig were preparing and which as Liber Amicorum Romain Rolland under the editorship of Emile Roniger (Rotapfel-Verlag, Erlenbach-Zürich), appeared on the 60th birthday of the poet on 29th January, 1926. The song appeared in facsimile in that volume, but has never been otherwise published.

Almost exactly 350 years have passed since the invention of that marriage-of-the-arts which we call Opera. How frequently during this time has its impending collapse been prophesied; how often has it been pronounced dead! Yet again and again, like a woman who never ages, it has rejuvenated itself, kept alive, assumed a different shape, changed, its face and appeared in some new guise. And today once more, after a long period of stagnation, we find ourselves in the presence of a regeneration of the musical theatre with new goals and new tendencies both as regards creation and presentation.

By the range, the diversity, the burning vitality of his work, which embraces every type, Richard Strauss is not only beyond doubt the most famous musician in his own country, but is one of the greatest of his epoch. He has always been an admirer of France and France has always accorded him a warm welcome.