ord in the first _Heroic_, what would
he find here? What scenes of burning towns, what battlefields! Besides
that there is cutting scorn and a mischievous laughter in _Heldenleben_
that is never heard in Beethoven. There is, in fact, little kindness in
Strauss's work; it is the work of a disdainful hero.

* * * * *

In considering Strauss's music as a whole, one is at first struck by the
diversity of his style. The North and the South mingle; and in his
melodies one feels the attraction of the sun. Something Italian had
crept into _Tristan_; but how much more of Italy there is in the work of
this disciple of Nietzsche. The phrases are often Italian and their
harmonies ultra-Germanic. Perhaps one of the greatest charms of
Strauss's art is that we are able to watch the rent in the dark clouds
of German polyphony, and see shining through it the smiling line of an
Italian coast and the gay dancers on its shore. This is not merely a
vague analogy. It would be easy, if idle, to notice unmistakable
reminiscences of France and Italy even in Strauss's most advanced works,
such as _Zarathustra_ and _Heldenleben_. Mendelssohn, Gounod, Wagner,
Rossini, and Mascagni elbow one another strangely. But these disparate
elements have a softer outline when the work is taken as a whole, for
they have been absorbed and controlled by the composer's imagination.

His orchestra is not less composite. It is not a compact and serried
mass like Wagner's Macedonian phalanxes; it is parcelled out and as
divided as possible. Each part aims at independence and works as it
thinks best, without apparently troubling about the other parts.
Sometimes it seems, as it did when reading Berlioz, that the execution
must result in incoherence, and weaken the effect. But somehow the
result is very satisfying. "Now doesn't that sound well?" said Strauss
to me with a smile, just after he had finished conducting
_Heldenleben_.[180]

[Footnote 180: The composition of the orchestra in Strauss's later works
is as follows: In _Zarathustra_: one piccolo, three flutes, three oboes,
one English horn, one clarinet in E flat, two clarinets in B, one
bass-clarinet in B, three bassoons, one double-bassoon, six horns in F,
four trumpets in C, three trombones, three bass-tuba, kettledrums, big
drum, cymbals, triangle, chime of bells, bell in E, organ, two harps,
and strings. In _Heldenleben_: eight horns instead of six, five trumpets
instead of