Don Quixote and Sancho Panza set out on their adventures.

By the time Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was composing his tone poems, during the last decade or so of the 19th century, the orchestra had reached its peak as a vehicle for musical expression. The orchestral ensemble of the 1890s reached both unprecedented size and technical capability with an expanded size, range, color and sheer volume. In exploiting such potentialities, Strauss brought the tone poem (a symphonic work based on an extramusical idea) to a level of expressivity, explicitness and musical power that remains unequaled. His immediate model was the "symphonic poem" of Franz Liszt, with its roots, in turn, in the programmatic symphonies of Hector Berlioz, such as the Symphonie fantastique (1830).

The idea of a symphonic work expressing meaning beyond pure musical form dates back at least to the days of Franz Joseph Haydn. Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony (1808) may have contained more abstract "feelings" of the Arcadian than literal "pictures," but its brilliantly evocative storm scene served as a model for many generations to come, including Walt Disney in his Fantasia (1940).

After Beethoven there grew a number of composers and music commentators who believed that symphonic form, as an abstract structure, had reached its end. The venerable musical forms of old had become, to their thinking, mere formulae, hampering artistic expression. Strauss confided to a mentor that he felt trapped in an escalating dichotomy between "random patterns" and poetic content.

"Music as Expression" became his new slogan, and in 1888 he stated his intent to compose "a correspondingly new form for every new subject." His first subject was his least successful, Macbeth (1888), but that was followed a year later by his most popular: Don Juan--irreverent, erotic, pictorial and downright funny. The ensuing tone poems--all based on male protagonists (heroic or antiheroic)--became increasingly graphic in their sonic depictions as Strauss's orchestra became increasingly virtuosic. Some might argue that Don Quixote (1897) represents the culmination of Strauss's musical pictorialism. One contemporary critic marveled that, with Don Quixote, Strauss advanced beyond all his contemporaries "in the art of letting the listener see, as it were, with his ears". There were moments in the score, according to this critic, where Strauss seemed to compete with Cervantes's grand novel rather than to interpret it.

Curiously, the idea of the antiheroic Don Quixote came to Strauss about the same time as he was thinking about composing Ein Heldenleben ("A Hero's Life"), for which Don Quixote served as the comic other side of the coin. It is fitting with Strauss's unpretentious artistic personality that he would first compose the tragicomic, the lampoon of heroism, before the lampooned. Strauss viewed them as a symphonic pair and ideally wanted them performed as a twosome, beginning with Don Quixote, a work not only connected to Ein Heldenleben but also the satirical world of Till Eulenspiegel.

The full title of Don Quixote is the longest of Strauss's symphonic works and suggests not so much a genre (i.e., the type of piece) as its formal layout: Don Quixote (Introduction, Theme and Variations, Finale): Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character for Large Orchestra. The issue of genre is, in fact, not straightforward at all, for the work--which features a solo cello along with solo viola and orchestra--seems to be a conglomeration of various generic models: tone poem, orchestral theme and variations, and concerto. At age 19 Strauss had written a miniature cello concerto of sorts, a delightful, single-movement Romanza for cello and orchestra, but Berlioz's Harold in Italy (1834) for solo viola and orchestra may have been the more important antecedent, and it may explain Strauss's decision to include solo viola as the hapless partner (Sancho Panza) for the noble, antiheroic cello (Don Quixote).

Don Quixote's battle with the sheep.

The broad layout of Don Quixote consists of an introduction, 10 variations, and an extended closing section. This triangular arrangement serves to present the main characters (prologue), 10 episodes (variations) taken from the legend, and the death of the Don (epilogue). As with his preceding work, Also sprach Zarathustra, Strauss severely edited a large literary work, choosing a relative handful of incidents contained therein; and in the tradition of Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote unfolds episodically. But with Strauss's treatment of Cervantes, the episodes are more self-contained: as each discrete sonic "chapter" unfolds, so does a new variation.

The theme and variations seem to incorporate the rondo principal (a recurring theme) as well, for the actual themes themselves are rarely varied; rather their musical contexts, a musical analogy of the "hero" and his hapless sidekick, Sancho Panza, in their different narrative contexts:
1. The Don's adventure with the windmills
2. His battle with the sheep
3. The conversation between the Don and his squire
4. The adventure with the procession of penitents
5. Don Quixote's nocturnal vigil over his armor
6. His meeting with the peasant girl
7. The ride through the air
8. The trip on the enchanted boat
9. The battle with the two priests on their mules
10. Don Quixote's combat with the knight of the shining moon.

In the epilogue, a defeated Don returns home, where he dies a peaceful death.

The work premiered under Franz Wüllner in Cologne on March 8, 1898, with the famed German cellist Friedrich Grützmacher as soloist. Strauss did not attend, hearing it for the first time when he conducted the Frankfurt performance 10 days later with another great German cellist, Hugo Becker. The work was well received, though the critics were divided as to its artistic merit. The detractors did not deny the brilliance of the work, nor did they deny Strauss's command of thematic material and orchestral color. What worried some was a growing gulf between industry and inspiration, between the head and the heart. Whatever the case, all critics seemed to agree that--with such evocative musical ability--his next step should be the stage. After A Hero's Life (1899), that, indeed, turned out to be the case.

Bryan Gilliam
Bryan Gilliam is Frances Fox Hill Professor in Humanities at Duke University, and the author of several books on Richard Strauss, including Richard Strauss and His World.

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