Aus Italien: Retracing Strauss's Journeys
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Aus Italien: Retracing Strauss’s Journeys David Larkin Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article/92/1-2/70/1104560 by guest on 02 October 2021 Introduction What is not a journey? As soon as one attributes an extended figurative meaning to the word ...the journey coincides with life, no more, no less .... The journey in space symbolizes the passing of time; physical movement symbolizes interior change.1 In the spring of 1886, directly after his first professional engagement at the Meiningen Court had come to an end, the young Richard Strauss visited Italy for the first time and spent five weeks touring various parts of the country. This trip would be no more than an incidental item in the composer’s biography were it not for the fact that it gave rise to a pivotal work in Strauss’s catalog: his symphonic fantasy, Aus Italien (From Italy; 1886). This musical depiction of four different locations he encountered during his travels was Strauss’s first programmatic orchestral composition and thus marks the emergence of the embryonic tone poet. However, despite its acknowledged importance in the development of the composer’s mature style, Aus Italien has largely been overlooked in scholarly writing to this day.2 The primary object of this article is to provide a detailed and long-overdue reassessment of this composition. Strauss’s Italian peregrinations will be a major focus of this inquiry, but of equal interest is the metaphorical “journey” that Strauss embarked upon with Aus Italien, a path that took him from absolute to program composition. The more obvious geographical aspects deserve consideration first of all, particularly since the issue of how travel and music relate to each other in general remains decidedly undertheorized.3 Bernard Se´ve has remarked that, “[o]f all artists, it is the musician who in principle has the least need to travel,” since music can be assimilated at a distance from the place of its composition, whereas visual artists and sculptors had in times past no option but to travel in order to view the art and architecture of other lands.4 In spite of this, travel has played a signifi- cant role in the lives of composers and musicians for at least the last doi:10.1093/musqtl/gdp008 92:70–117 Advance Access publication September 5, 2009. # The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Retracing Strauss’s Journeys 71 five hundred years, and individual journeys—for instance, Bach’s pil- grimage on foot to hear Buxtehude or Wagner’s flight from Riga to Paris to avoid his creditors—have attained legendary status. While some jour- neys are no more than picturesque biographical incidents, others have had a life-changing or art-changing impact on the participants. Such personal upheavals might result from specifically musical experiences (as was the case with Schu¨tz and Froberger in Italy, for example), or it Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article/92/1-2/70/1104560 by guest on 02 October 2021 might be the liberating effect of traveling itself and the experience of new places and cultures that released the creative juices.5 The relative scarcity of musical compositions that attempt to capture the essence of a location or the experience of a journey in comparison with the profusion of travelogues or paintings of foreign scenes has contributed to music’s marginalization in the recent upsurge of travel-related studies.6 In part this has to do with the nature of the musical medium, which is inher- ently more resistant to the inscription of nonmusical experiences (or more accurately, their external aspects) than are other media. However, souvenirs, or geographically inspired tone-pictures, become increasingly popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, the “Swiss” volume of Liszt’s Anne´es de pe`lerinage, and Holst’s Beni Mora Suite spring immediately to mind), so perhaps the time has come to redress this imbalance. Some of the most widespread assumptions about Aus Italien will be called into question in this article. As a musical record of his travels, Aus Italien is regarded as Strauss’s instinctive reaction to the sights of Italy, a view that finds corroborative evidence in the composer’s letters from the period. However, without denying that the composer derived inspiration from the ambience of specific locations, Strauss’s itinerary and his artistic responses were arguably also mediated by established tra- ditions of representing Italy. In the first section, Strauss’s journey is ana- lysed in the context of the experiences of other Italian travellers, in particular those of that most famous of German wanderers in Italy, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Given Strauss’s lifelong veneration for his compatriot, which as early as 1885 took the practical form of his setting the Wanderers Sturmlied for chorus and orchestra, he would certainly have been aware that by travelling south he was following in Goethe’s footsteps. While Aus Italien is clearly a turning point in Strauss’s career, the corollary that this work marks his embrace of Lisztian and Wagnerian principles also proves to be problematic on closer scrutiny. Bryan Gilliam has suggested caution in crediting Strauss’s claim to have been con- verted into a fully functioning musical progressive after his winter in Meiningen, and the examination of form and structure both across the 72 The Musical Quarterly composition in its entirety and in individual movements will bear this out.7 At every level, one can find a me´lange of forward-looking and conservative elements: aspects that foreshadow Strauss’s later development, as well as those which recall his earlier works. The impact of the New German agenda on Aus Italien is assessed further in the final part of this article, in which Strauss’s programmatic strategies are examined. Aus Italien betrays the influence of a number of composers Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article/92/1-2/70/1104560 by guest on 02 October 2021 besides the two most commonly associated with his development at this point in his career. By presenting a fuller picture of the historical antecedents for this composition, its genuinely new aspects will be cast into relief, and the work can begin to enjoy the recognition it deserves. Italy, the Land where Ideas Bloom After all, what am I, both in my life and my travels, but a precursor of those who shall come after me?8 When the twenty-one-year-old Strauss departed for Italy with the encouragement of Brahms, he did not expect to profit directly from musical encounters; rather, he was animated by the desire for general cultural betterment.9 Italy was an obvious choice of destination for his first trip beyond the German-speaking lands, as it had been recognized as the center of artistic civilization for centuries, a place of cultural as well as religious pilgrimage. What might be called Strauss’s Bildungsreise, his educational journey, can be seen in the light of an age-old tradition, a late-nineteenth-century offshoot of the Grand Tour, which drew people from across Northern Europe to the land beyond the Alps. Whereas in the seventeenth century such travels had largely been con- fined to the wealthy aristocracy, by Strauss’s time Italy had become fam- iliar terrain for the middle classes in search of sensuous and cultural experience.10 For the native German, a visit to Italy had acquired par- ticular cachet through Goethe’s celebrated travels there.11 This richly symbolic journey thus marks a watershed in Strauss’s early career, his opportunity to acquire spiritual edification through the contemplation of picturesque landscapes and celebrated works of art (both ancient and modern). Strauss’s itinerary took him to Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Sorrento, Capri, Pompeii, and Lake Como, among other places, and he only missed Venice because of a cholera outbreak there (details of his journey are given in Figure 1, and those places which later featured in Aus Italien are set in bold).12 Retracing Strauss’s Journeys 73 Whether Strauss is better classified as a “traveler” or a “tourist” depends on one’s standpoint: in comparison with Goethe, who spent the best part of two years living in the country, Strauss’s five-week immersion seems decidedly bourgeois.13 The Italian journey occurred at a critical juncture in the lives of both artists: in Strauss’s case, the visit marked his rite of passage into artistic adulthood, while the long-coveted opportunity to tour Italy enabled Goethe to overcome a midlife crisis Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article/92/1-2/70/1104560 by guest on 02 October 2021 and reorient himself artistically. Strauss’s father, the irascible hornist Franz, anticipated such a positive outcome for his son: “I firmly believe that this trip will be of influence on your future artistic production, and that you will make a massive stride in conceiving new things.”14 It was indeed not long after his arrival that Strauss junior found himself coming under the influence of the genius loci, a development which rather took him aback, if we can credit his statement to Bu¨low: “I have Figure 1. Strauss’s trip to Italy and the composition of Aus Italien. 74 The Musical Quarterly never really believed in inspiration through the beauty of Nature, but in the Roman ruins I learnt better, for there ideas just came flying to me.”15 That Rome, of all cities, should have marked the first stirrings of his programmatic bent is hardly surprising in view of the unique me´lange of cultural riches it offered the traveler at the end of the nineteenth century, ranging from the ancient ruins to the treasures of Christian and Renaissance art.