Richard Strauss
“Eine Alpensinfonie” (An Alpine Symphony), op. 64

With the Symphonia domestica, Richard Strauss appeared to bid farewell to the genre of the tone poem in 1903. By the time Der Rosenkavalier premiered in 1911, he had established himself as the most successful German-speaking opera composer of his era; there is no evidence of doubt in Strauss’ mind that musical theatre was now to become the focus of his creative work. The Alpine Symphony, published in 1915, does not reflect a change of heart. Rather, its completion followed an unusually complex and protracted genesis.

The history of the work began around the turn of the century with the concept of recounting an artist’s tragedy in symphonic form. Strauss, an avid mountaineer, was inspired by the life story of the painter Karl Stauffer. Stauffer, also a nature enthusiast, had – against his family’s wishes – embarked on a successful career as a portraitist. A love affair with the wife of one of his patrons sparked a scandal, which ultimately led the artist to take his own life. From this, Strauss developed the idea for a work entitled Der Antichrist, eine Alpensinfonie. It was to consist of four movements, the first of which was to depict the stages of a mountain ascent. The title Der Antichrist referred to Friedrich Nietzsche’s work of the same name, whose ideas Strauss found compelling. In the end, however, the composer completed only the first section, portraying a day in the mountains, and dropped the reference to Nietzsche. As the section headings indicate, the ascent begins as the night ends, continues with the rising of the sun, and leads through forests and alpine meadows to the summit. This is followed by a descent accompanied by a storm, until night falls once more.

In the Alpine Symphony, Strauss exploited the full potential of the symphony orchestra – from chamber-like delicacy to monumental sonic power – in an unparalleled way. Alongside direct quotations from the natural world – the ringing of cowbells, the storm evoked by thunder sheet and wind machine – are intricately orchestrated imitations of bird calls, the glittering droplets of the waterfall, the brooding nocturnal atmosphere that opens and closes the work, and the majestic summit theme. Nature imagery and the feelings it stirs in the observer are artfully intertwined. A theme in dotted rhythm, which will prove to be a leitmotif throughout the tone poem, signals determination at the outset. During the descent, the wanderer is jolted from melancholic reflection by the approach of the thunderstorm. And when previously heard themes return in the closing section, Ausklang, one cannot help but associate them with someone revisiting the impressions of the day.

The connection between the completed work and the figures of Nietzsche and Stauffer remains contested to this day. Still, both men loved the Alps, and the philosopher considered solitude and mountain air the ideal conditions for thinking. In Strauss’s view, both Nietzsche and Stauffer had perished as a result of the constraints of bourgeois society. Strauss shared Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity: its emphasis on humility and guilt, he believed, hindered the individual from realising their creative potential. The tone poem’s implicit programme might be understood as follows: in turning away from society and religion, the artist finds inspiration for his work in direct encounters with nature. Claude Debussy, too, was convinced of the inner kinship between nature and music. His orchestral study La Mer may be seen as a maritime counterpart to Strauss’s almost contemporaneous symphonic mountain ascent. The musician, Debussy wrote, has the “privilege of grasping all the poetry of night and day …, of recreating their atmosphere and pouring out their mighty heartbeat in rhythm.”