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Charles Youmans. Richard Strausss Orchestral Music and the German Intellectual Tradition: e Philosophical Rootsof Musical Modernism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005. x + 294 pp. $39.95 (cloth),ISBN 978-0-253-34573-8.

Reviewed bySanna Pederson (University of Oklahoma School of Music)Published onH-German (April, 2006)

Connections between Philosophy and Music at the End of the Nineteenth Century

e titles promise of an account of the Germanintellectual tradition informing the output of Richard

Strausswith his masterpieces in both the symphonicand operatic repertoire appearing over the course ofover sixty years from the 1880s to aer World War IIisvaguely grand and raises expectations of a general cul-tural feast. Once beyond the title and into the prologue,however, musicologist Charles Youmans states his topicsomewhat differently: e thesis of the present book isthat Strausss coming of age was an intellectual as wellas a musical process, with the intellectual side of thingsdirectly affecting, in specific and sophisticated ways, allof his major works for orchestra (p. 16). at anyonewould need to prove that Strauss thought about his mu-sic in an intellectual way is partially due to the composer

himself, who at times cultivated the image of a philis-tine, an opportunistic money grubber without any ide-als about art. By examining primary documents, in par-ticular notebooks in which Strauss made comments onthe books he read, Youmans proves beyond a doubt thatStrauss was thoroughly familiar with Schopenhauer, Ni-etzsche and Goethe, and that he read those authors witha view toward understanding his place as a composerin theworld, the direction of his work and the mean-ing of music in general. A musicalWunderkind, Straussdropped out aer one semester at the University of Mu-nich to pursue a fast-developing career as a composerand conductor. However, Youmans emphasizes the im-

portance of the humanistic Gymnasium education thatformed Strauss into someone proud to call himself a Ger-man Greek (p. 21) who read and reread the completeworks of Goethe as a guide to life. How then would aperson with such pride in the German intellectual tradi-tion come to need a book to reestablish the connection?

is question points to the problem that continues tovex all scholarship on Strauss: the problem of determin-

ing who the real Strauss was. Because of his multiplecontradictory and ethically ambiguous actions over the

courseof his career, it has been very difficult to come toa conclusion about Strausss significance. Although hisplace in the canon of orchestral and operatic repertoireis secure, his role in the history of music is not. Was hereally an intellectual or a philistine with pretensions? Atrue radical or an opportunist? Does his music have pro-found depths or is it all dazzling surface?

Youmans addresses this unseled problem of what tomake of Strausss music and how to understand the wayit developed by arguing more specifically (as indicated bythe books subtitle) that Strausss path-breaking musicalmodernism can be traced to his rejection of metaphysics,

a term Youmans uses to refer to both a metaphysical con-ception of music that was prevalent in the late nineteenthcentury and also a more general metaphysical philoso-phy. In the first four chapters making up part 1, ePrivate Intellectual Context of Strausss Early Career,Youmans presents evidence for his thesis by discussingStrausss understanding of the writings of Schopenhauer,Nietzsche and Goethe. Because Strauss kept this con-text private, there has been some doubt as to his under-standing of these writers. e most famous case is thatof StrausssAlso sprach Zarathustrahis 1896 orchestralwork frei nach Nietzsche. e opening measures of thiswork are Strausss most instantly recognizable musica

bombastic succession of trumpet fanfares, pounding tim-pani and full orchestra with organ at maximum volume.How does this opening and the subsequent half hour ofmusic relate to Nietzsches text? From the beginning,there has been skepticism that any relationship was sig-nificant. However, Youmans uses Strausss diary and an-notated copy ofAlso sprach Zarathustrato argue that thework is deeply engaged with Nietzschean philosophy ingeneral and with this book in particular. e composi-tion and all subsequent tone poems, Youmans claims, em-

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body a Nietzschean oscillation between existential angstand affirmative overcoming, which reflects Strausss ownongoing philosophical crisis. InSinfonia domestica(1903)

andEine Alpensinfonie(1915), in which Strauss portrays,respectively, family life and nature, the composer cameto a solution he could live with (p. 113). is resolutionto his philosophical issues also brought the series of tonepoems to an end, Youmans claims. While his discussionofAlso sprach Zarathustrais convincing, Youmanss ar-gument that the other tone poems are all Nietzscheanis brief and general. Aer reading part 1 of this book, thequestion remains as to why Strauss would keep his philo-sophical preoccupations privatewhy be so provoca-tive as to give a piece of music the same title as a work ofphilosophy if he wanted to keep this aspect to himsel?

Part 2, Orchestral Composition as Philosophical Cri-

tique, departs from a focus on Strausss formation asa musical modernist in the 1880s and 1890s. Instead,Youmans makes analytical comments about Strausss or-chestral music from his first tone poem in 1887 to hislast instrumental composition in 1945. Youmans beginsthis section by addressing the problem that Strauss seemsto have experienced his musical breakthrough with hismodernism-defining early tone poems before his philo-sophical breakthrough. If it is true that the musicalbreakthrough preceded the philosophical one, the re-jection of metaphysical music cannot account for thetone poem Don Juan (1889), identified by the musicol-ogist Carl Dahlhaus and others as the beginning of mu-sical modernism. Youmans reconciles this discrepancyrather weakly by suggesting that once Strauss had hisphilosophical crisis, he sawhow hiscompositional strate-gies already lent themselves to a philosophical critiquein music. Another shaky moment in his argument oc-curs when Youmans asserts that sonata form was equatedwith metaphysical truth. e basis for this equation is setup in the prologue of the book with an overview of musicaesthetics by way of a summary of a 1929 book by FelixGatz. Youmans passes over, however, a distinction thatGatz makes between the categories of autonomous music(which includes sonata form) and absolute music (defined

by aspiration to metaphysical truth).[1] Gatz doesincludethe possibility of a theory of music that is both absoluteand autonomous, but he does not authorize Youmanssassumption that because music in general was widely un-derstood as metaphysical, sonata form was also under-stood as such.

Youmans needs to be able to assume that sonata formwas equivalent to metaphysical truth in order to make hisclaim that in all of Strausss tone poems, the deforma-tion of sonata form signifies a rejection of metaphysics.

Expectations of sonata form are set up and then not met:[H]e invoked the form in order to make it fail, believingthat the clarity with which he announced the paradigm

would make its collapse easier to perceive (p. 177). Bymaking sonata form collapse, Strauss made metaphysicscollapse. e problem with this type of approach is thatit depends on being able to establish two things: first,what the specific formal expectations were exactly (whatan un-deformed sonata form would be), and secondly,how the composer could have assumed that his strategyof failing to meet those expectations would have beenun-derstood as intentional and meaningful and not simplyfailure. Youmans himself seems ambivalent about thisapproach in that he repeatedly emphasizes that sonataform is not the key to the tone poems. Indeed, one of thebooks most interesting topics is Strausss aempt to pro-

vide keys to understanding his tone poems. ere aretitles and other verbal information in the score (Zarathus-tra, for instance, contains a quotation as preface andchapter headings taken from the Nietzsche text demar-cating musical sections). Besides this, Strauss aemptedto shape the public perception of the intellectual con-tent of his works through a carefully delimited and con-trolled release of information about the works. Informa-tion was communicated in only two ways (p. 25). First,Strauss hired ghost writers to produce listener guides (Er-luterungen). Second, he planted his own remarks abouthis compositions in newspaper gossip columns. Suchstrategies seem to have been aimed at avoiding any di-

rect admission of his intentions while at the same timetrying to guide the listener. Nevertheless, Strauss oenexpressed frustration that listeners did not understandhim (p. 176). Strausss quandary concerning his audi-ence and his elaborate solutions illustrate vividly the sit-uation for modern composers, caught between popularand elite understanding of what constituted high art. Ifmusic was exalted as the highest of the arts, understoodby composers themselves and also by the general publicto have philosophical import, then composers were bur-dened with creating music that could be considered assuch both by themselves and their audience. is contextstarts to explain why Strauss would simultaneously keephis erudition private and put it on display, as in the caseofZarathustra, and perhaps starts to account for Strausssstrange formal procedures.

In the final chapter, Youmans treats the final two po-ems,Sinfonia domesticaandEine Alpensinfonie, which hehad earlier described as representing together a solutionto philosophical issues through a celebration of familyand nature. Youmans goes so far as to assert: e philo-sophical problem that Strauss faced in his Nietzschean

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compositionshow to move beyond pure criticism to thecreation of a positively defined worldviewwas the sameproblem that Nietzsche himself faced and failed to solve.

I would argue that Strauss found more success than Ni-etzsche, at least insofar as he found ways to conceptual-ize a life radically purged of metaphysics (p. 222). isbreathtaking claim is problematized by Youmans him-self in that he observes how Strausss credo of familyand nature is destabilized by his alienating treatment ofit through vulgarity, parody, intertextuality and generalexcess. Can it really be called arriving at a solution ifStrauss continued his practice of distancing himself fromany sign of sincere endorsement?

Youmans gives his characterization of Strausssmusical-philosophical solution a sudden, confusing twistin the final three paragraphs of the book. He brings up

Strausss final orchestral composition, theMetamorpho-sen (1945). is piece was discussed in chapter 4, andthe books concluding paragraphs make more sense aspart of that chapter. Youmans apparently leaves it for theend, however, because he claims this piece shows howStrauss, in the aermath of Germanys cultural collapseand his own impending death, discovered that liberationfrom metaphysics produced nihilism (p. 131). In his lastwords, Youmans makes the judgment that Strausss re-jection of metaphysics was a fatal error because it wasnihilistic. Since the issue of nihilism was never raised inthe discussion of any stage of Strausss outlook, this con-

clusion comes as quite a surprise and leaves the readerwondering what its implications are, not least for theassertion made earlier in the chapter that Strauss had

succeeded in finding a positive post-metaphysical world-view.

Despite the indication of the title, this is not a bookfor someone with a strong background in German in-tellectual history who would like to know more aboutRichard Strauss. It is a book for other Strauss special-ists. Biographical details are taken as given. e partof the book given over to musical analysis assumes athorough familiarity with recent secondary literature byother Strauss scholars, making it quite user-unfriendlyfor anyone else. For a concise account of Strausss lifeand times that addresses the problems raised by Straussand his music, including the question of the composers

relationship with the ird Reich, see the 1999 biogra-phy by Youmanss dissertation advisor, Bryan Gilliam.[2]With his thorough examination of primary documents,Youmans has provided significant information for con-sideration of a very complex topic; his work contributesto the evolving understanding of Richard Strauss.

Notes

[1]. Felix M. Gatz,Musik-sthetik in ihren Hauptrich-tungen(Stugart: Ferdinand Enke, 1929), pp. 48-50.

[2]. Bryan Gilliam,e Life of Richard Strauss(Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at:hp://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.

Citation: Sanna Pederson. Review of Youmans, Charles,Richard Strausss Orchestral Music and the German Intellec-tual Tradition: e Philosophical Roots of Musical Modernism. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 2006.URL:hp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11663

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