''Ein Heldenleben'' (''A Hero's Life''), Op. 40, is a

tone poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...

by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898. It was his eighth work in the genre, and exceeded any of its predecessors in its orchestral demands. Generally agreed to be autobiographical in nature despite contradictory statements on the matter by the composer, the work contains more than thirty quotations from Strauss's earlier works, including ''

Also sprach Zarathustra ', Op. 30 (, ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' or ''Thus Spake Zarathustra'') is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical 1883–1885 novel ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra''.''Till Eulenspiegel'', ''Don Quixote'', ''Don Juan'', and '' Death and Transfiguration''.

Background

Strauss began work on the piece while staying in a Bavarian mountain resort in July 1898. He proposed to write a heroic work in the mould of

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

's ''Eroica'' Symphony: "It is entitled 'A Hero's Life', and while it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism. Thanks to the healthy country air, my sketch has progressed well and I hope to finish by New Year's Day."Glass, Herbert
''Ein Heldenleben''
Los Angeles Philharmonic, accessed September 6, 2013 Strauss worked on ''Ein Heldenleben'' and another tone poem, ''

Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of West ...

'', during 1898. He regarded the two as complementary, saying they were conceived as "direct pendants" to one another. There was speculation before the premiere about the identity of the hero. Strauss was equivocal: he commented "I'm no hero: I'm not made for battle", Kennedy, Michael, ''Ein Heldenleben'', notes to Chandos CD Chan 8518 (1987) and in a programme note he wrote that subject of the piece was "not a single poetical or historical figure, but rather a more general and free ideal of great and manly heroism." Freed, Richard
"''Ein Heldenleben'', Op 40"
The Kennedy Center, accessed September 6, 2013 On the other hand, in the words of the critic Richard Freed:

Structure and analysis

The work, which lasts about fifty minutes, is

through-composed In music theory of musical form, through-composed music is a continuous, non- sectional, and non- repetitive piece of music. The term is typically used to describe songs, but can also apply to instrumental music. While most musical forms such as t ...

: performed without breaks, except for a dramatic grand pause at the end of the first movement. The movements are titled as follows (later editions of the score may not show these titles, owing to the composer's request that they be removed): # "Der Held" (The Hero) # "Des Helden Widersacher" (The Hero's Adversaries) # "Des Helden Gefährtin" (The Hero's Companion) # "Des Helden Walstatt" (The Hero at Battle) # "Des Helden Friedenswerke" (The Hero's Works of Peace) # "Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung" (The Hero's Retirement from this World and Completion) ''Ein Heldenleben'' employs the technique of leitmotif that Richard Wagner used, but almost always as elements of its enlarged sonata-rondo symphonic structure.

Instrumentation

The work is scored for a large orchestra consisting of piccolo, three

flutes The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

, three

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. ...

s, cor anglais (doubling fourth oboe), E clarinet, two

soprano clarinet A soprano clarinet is a clarinet that is higher in register than the basset horn or alto clarinet. The unmodified word ''clarinet'' usually refers to the B clarinet, which is by far the most common type. The term ''soprano'' also applies to t ...

s, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, eight

horns Horns or The Horns may refer to: * Plural of Horn (instrument), a group of musical instruments all with a horn-shaped bells * The Horns (Colorado), a summit on Cheyenne Mountain * ''Horns'' (novel), a dark fantasy novel written in 2010 by Joe Hill ...

in F, E and E, three

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

s in B (briefly used

offstage The terms offscreen, off camera, and offstage refer to fictional events in theatre, television, or film which are not seen on stage or in frame, but are merely heard by the audience, or described (or implied) by the characters or narrator. Offs ...

) and two

s in E, three

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...

s, tenor tuba in B,

tuba The tuba (; ) is the lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece. It first appeared in the mid-19th century, making it one of the ne ...

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...

, bass drum, two snare drums, cymbals,

tenor drum A tenor drum is a membranophone without a snare. There are several types of tenor drums. Early music Early music tenor drums, or long drums, are cylindrical membranophone without snare used in Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music. They consi ...

tam-tam A gongFrom Indonesian and ms, gong; jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ja, , dora; km, គង ; th, ฆ้อง ; vi, cồng chiêng; as, কাঁহ is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gongs ...

triangle A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, any three points, when non- colline ...

, two harps, and strings, including an extensive solo violin part.

Dedication and performances

Strauss dedicated the piece to the 27-year-old

Willem Mengelberg Joseph Wilhelm Mengelberg (28 March 1871 – 21 March 1951) was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest s ...

and the

Concertgebouw Orchestra The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra ( nl, Koninklĳk Concertgebouworkest, ) is a Dutch symphony orchestra, based at the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw (concert hall). Considered one of the world's leading orchestras, Queen Beatrix conferred the "R ...

. However, it was premiered by the

Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester The Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester ''(Frankfurt Opera House and Museum's Orchestra)'' is the resident orchestra of the Oper Frankfurt. Its somewhat peculiar name is derived from the series of "Museum Concerts", organized by the Frankfurte ...

on March 3, 1899 in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

, with the composer conducting. The first American performance was a year later, performed by the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Theodore Thomas. The work did not reach England until December 6th 1902, when the composer conducted

Henry Wood Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 186919 August 1944) was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the The Proms, Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introd ...

Queen's Hall The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. Fro ...

Orchestra. Béla Bartók wrote a

piano reduction In music, a reduction is an arrangement or transcription of an existing score or composition in which complexity is lessened to make analysis, performance, or practice easier or clearer; the number of parts may be reduced or rhythm may be ...

of the piece in 1902, performing it on January 23, 1903, in Vienna.Chalmers, Kenneth. Liner notes to Philips CD 456575 (1999) The conductor Joolz Gale was more recently given permission to arrange the work for chamber orchestra, which was commissioned and premiered by ensemble mini on October 16, 2014, in Berlin.

Reception

The German critics responded to Strauss's caricatures of them. One of them called the piece "as revolting a picture of this revolting man as one might ever encounter". Otto Floersheim wrote a damning review in the ''Musical Courier'' (April 19, 1899), calling the "alleged symphony ... revolutionary in every sense of the word". He continued, " e climax of everything that is ugly, cacophonous, blatant and erratic, the most perverse music I ever heard in all my life, is reached in the chapter 'The Hero's Battlefield'. The man who wrote this outrageously hideous noise, no longer deserving of the word music, is either a lunatic, or he is rapidly approaching idiocy." The critic in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' after the New York premiere in 1900 was more circumspect. He admitted that posterity might well mock his response to the piece, but that although "there are passages of true, glorious, overwhelming beauty ... one is often thrown into astonishment and confusion". Henry Wood, with whose orchestra Strauss gave the British premiere, thought the piece "wonderfully beautiful". In modern times, the work still divides critical opinion. According to Bryan Gilliam in the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', this is "mainly because its surface elements have been overemphasized."Bryan Gilliam
"Strauss, Richard, §7: Instrumental works"
Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed September 6, 2013 In Gilliam's view: Whatever the critics might have thought, the work rapidly became a standard part of the orchestral repertoire. It has been performed 41 times at the BBC Proms since its premiere there in 1903.Proms performances of Ein Heldenleben
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Recordings

There are many recordings of ''Ein Heldenleben'', with three conducted by the composer himself. Important recordings include the following:

Notes

References

* * *

External links

* *, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by

Andrés Orozco-Estrada Andrés Orozco-Estrada (born 14 December 1977) is a Colombian violinist and conductor, with dual nationality in Colombia and Austria. Early life Born in Medellín, Orozco-Estrada studied music at the Instituto Musical Diego Echavarría and lea ...

. Recorded at the

Alte Oper Alte Oper (Old Opera) is a concert hall in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany. It is located in the inner city, Innenstadt, within the banking district Bankenviertel. Today's Alte Oper was built in 1880 as the city's opera house, which was destr ...

Frankfurt, December 11, 2015
Strauss' ''Ein Heldenleben'': Beyond Autobiography
by Timothy Judd, September 11, 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Heldenleben, Ein Tone poems by Richard Strauss 1898 compositions Music dedicated to ensembles or performers