one hears the work one cannot help admiring the
composer's technical knowledge, skill in orchestration, and sense of
humour. And one is all the more surprised that he confines himself to
the illustration of texts[178] when he is so capable of creating comic
and dramatic matter without it. Although _Don Quixote_ is a marvel of
skill and a very wonderful work, in which Strauss has developed a
suppler and richer style, it marks, to my mind, a progress in his
technique and a backward step in his mind, for he seems to have adopted
the decadent conceptions of an art suited to playthings and trinkets to
please a frivolous and affected society.

[Footnote 177: Arthur Hahn, _Der Musikfuehrer: Don Quixote_, Frankfort.]

[Footnote 178: At the head of each variation Strauss has marked on the
score the chapter of "Don Quixote" that he is interpreting.]

In _Heldenleben_ ("The Life of a Hero"), op. 40,[179] he recovers
himself, and with a stroke of his wings reaches the summits. Here there
is no foreign text for the music to study or illustrate or transcribe.
Instead, there is lofty passion and an heroic will gradually developing
itself and breaking down all obstacles. Without doubt Strauss had a
programme in his mind, but he said to me himself: "You have no need to
read it. It is enough to know that the hero is there fighting against
his enemies." I do not know how far that is true, or if parts of the
symphony would not be rather obscure to anyone who followed it without
the text; but this speech seems to prove that he has understood the
dangers of the literary symphony, and that he is striving for pure
music.

[Footnote 179: Finished in December, 1898. Performed for the first time
at Frankfort-On-Main on 3 March, 1899. Published by Leuckart, Leipzig.]

_Heldenleben_ is divided into six chapters: The Hero, The Hero's
Adversaries, The Hero's Companion, The Field of Battle, The Peaceful
Labours of the Hero, The Hero's Retirement from the World, and the
Achievement of His Ideal. It is an extraordinary work, drunken with
heroism, colossal, half barbaric, trivial, and sublime. An Homeric hero
struggles among the sneers of a stupid crowd, a herd of brawling and
hobbling ninnies. A violin solo, in a sort of concerto, describes the
seductions, the coquetry, and the degraded wickedness of woman. Then
strident trumpet-blasts sound the attack; and it is beyond me to give an
idea of the terrible charge of cavalry that follows, which makes