Death and Transfiguration by Richard Strauss

Death was foreign to him. How could it be otherwise? After all, Richard Strauss was still a young man, just 24 years old, in perfect health, wealthy and full of energy when he composed Death and Transfiguration. He confessed that he had never been seriously ill until 1888, when he began work on the piece, and had certainly never “witnessed a person’s death”.

Existential concern therefore played no part in the choice of subject for Strauss’s third symphonic poem. But what then? When rumours later arose that the composer had processed his own experience of serious illness in the work, Strauss immediately denied this: “Death and Transfiguration is a pure product of fantasy. An idea like any other, probably ultimately the musical need to write a piece that begins in C minor and ends in C major! Qui le sait?”

A symphonic poem is, as the term suggests, a hybrid: half symphony, half poem; on the one hand committed to an extra-musical programme, but on the other hand also obeying its own purely musical laws. In the best case, such a piece can be heard in both ways equally. The fact that one can follow death and transfiguration as if it were the soundtrack to an imaginary film, but that one can also simply enjoy the music as an immensely colourful, imaginative sonata movement that leads from C minor to C major – this is what makes the piece a stroke of genius by the young composer.

Detailed programme
Strauss wanted to depict the death of an artist in this piece and had devised a detailed programme for it: in the extended slow introduction, the sick man lies “in slumber, breathing heavily and irregularly; pleasant dreams conjure up a smile on the face of the severely afflicted man”. Then, suddenly, with a blood-curdling cry from the orchestra, the allegro main section begins: “He awakens, terrible pains begin to torture him again, fever shakes his limbs – as the attack ends, he remembers his past life: his childhood passes before him, and then, as the pain returns, the ideal he tried to portray artistically appears to him, but which he could not complete because it was impossible for a human being to complete.” Finally, symbolised by striking tam-tam beats, the hour of death approaches, and in the calmer coda, ‘the soul leaves the body to find in the eternal space of the world, in the most glorious form, what it could not fulfil here below.’

What is special about this contrasting sonata movement is the treatment of the so-called “transfiguration theme”, which represents the artist’s ideal, attainable only in death: it appears at the beginning of the allegro, but only as a minor detail, a transitional idea. Only in the course of the development does it gain space and power, before it can fully unfold in the coda – in a brilliant, hymnal, even intoxicating apotheosis. No one can escape the effect of this spine-tingling music, spiced with spectacular key changes – even the musicians at the premiere were “utterly amazed”, as Strauss proudly noted.

Incidentally, it is worth remembering this theme – we will encounter it again at the end of the concert ...

George Benjamins Interludes and Aria from Lessons in Love and Violence

Death is omnipresent in this opera by George Benjamin. And in its most brutal form. The king's friend: pierced by a sword. The sinister schemer: executed on stage for the amusement of the court. An innocent madman: strangled before the eyes of horrified children. And finally, the king: he encounters Death himself in prison. There is no question that in Lessons in Love and Violence, the emphasis is on ‘violence’. The opera stages the story of the English King Edward II, his tragic love for a young courtier, his neglect of his wife and his country, his forced abdication, and the coronation of his underage son. And this story is a bloody one.

Successful duo

‘Yes, people die in opera. But dying is part of life,’ says playwright Martin Crimp. ‘The most important purpose of musical theatre is to look into the dark sides of the human psyche,’ adds composer George Benjamin. ‘My music is sometimes eerie. But I love the ghostly!’ Together, the two Britons are perhaps something like a 21st-century reincarnation of the Richard Strauss–Hugo von Hofmannsthal partnership. A successful duo whose productions are snapped up by international opera houses, even though – or perhaps precisely because – these creations are anything but light fare.

Yet George Benjamin had had no contact with musical theatre during the first 40 years of his career as a composer. He had studied with Olivier Messiaen, who enthusiastically compared Benjamin's talent to that of Mozart, and then caused a sensation primarily with orchestral music that was ‘modern using traditional means’ (as stated in the laudatory speech on the occasion of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize award). He wrote carefully and brilliantly, but slowly, and was appreciated above all by connoisseurs. Until he met Martin Crimp, Britain's darkest playwright, in 2005. And suddenly, something clicked. Since then, the Benjamin/Crimp workshop has produced four operas that get under your skin with their dark subjects and complex but gripping music. These include the international success Written on Skin, which has been performed hundreds of times since its premiere in 2012 and was named one of the best compositions of the 21st century by The Guardian.

Lessons in Love and Violence attempts to build on this success: the piece was commissioned by no fewer than seven European and American opera houses simultaneously (including the Hamburg State Opera), premiered at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London in 2018 and has since been restaged several times. Most recently, in early 2025, Benjamin distilled a concert suite from it to mark Sir Simon Rattle's 70th birthday. At the heart of Interludes and Aria is Queen Isabel's aria from the second scene of the opera. Three witnesses have just denounced the king to her, his profligacy, his adultery, the expensive concerts he organises for his lover. But Isabel refuses to be swayed. In her aria, she teaches the schemers a lesson about the difference between material and aesthetic value by dissolving a precious pearl in acid. This aria is flanked by six short, contrasting orchestral interludes from the opera – as dramatically effective as they are compositionally sophisticated. ‘The listener will not want me to underchallenge him,’ Benjamin summed up his aesthetic in an interview. ‘It would be disrespectful if I didn't consider him intelligent and therefore only offered him light fare.’

Tranquil Abiding by Jonathan Harvey

‘The idea of the path is important to me: that life is a path, that we are all on a path.’ Jonathan Harvey, at least, was on a path throughout his life. A spiritual seeker who absorbed practically all the major spiritual currents from A for anthroposophy to Z for Zen. His path took him from Winchester Cathedral to a monastery in the Tibetan highlands. And yet Harvey was not an esoteric sage in flowing robes, but a rather sober, subtle, polite Briton with an alert gaze behind his glasses. As a composer, he combined musical mysticism with scientific scepticism, and so it is no coincidence that professorships at the elite universities of Oxford and Cambridge became milestones in his career. His style was avant-garde and decidedly modern. But even when he composed electronic music, it was an expression of his spiritual path. Music, according to his credo, ‘cannot be neutral, no matter how much you focus on structure. Music is human and always conveys a message from the composer.’

Broadening his horizons
Harvey grew up in the Church of England. His childhood as a choirboy in Cambridge, the sound of the organ in the dark chapel, singing together during mass – he felt at home there throughout his life. From there, he gradually conquered modern music: he studied with Schoenberg's pupil Erwin Stein, explored computer music at Princeton, and got to know Stockhausen and Boulez. And just as his musical horizons broadened, so did his spiritual ones: Harvey read the writings of Rudolf Steiner, found a kindred spirit in the English mystic Evelyn Underhill, and finally discovered transcendental meditation for himself in the 1970s. The Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to whom the Beatles had also made a pilgrimage, had developed this concept based on Hinduism and made it popular in the West. In the 1990s, Harvey finally turned to Buddhism. ‘I see no conflict at all between all these religions,’ he confessed. ‘They seem to me like different colours of the same thing.’ It was only logical that he addressed theologian Hans Küng's Global Ethic Project in one of his last compositions.

Harvey meditated daily for decades. He regarded the exercises not only as a source of strength, but also as a practical exploration of human consciousness. One of the fundamental Buddhist meditation techniques is referred to by the Sanskrit term ‘Shamata’. This involves directing one's concentration to a single point, such as one's breath. ‘Shamata’ is described in German as ‘Ruhiges Verweilen’ (calm abiding) and in English as ‘tranquil abiding,’ and so Harvey's orchestral piece of the same name is, in the truest sense of the word, a musical meditation. It begins with a very calm orchestral inhalation and exhalation, which forms the basis of the entire fifteen-minute piece (and invites the listener to breathe along with this rhythm). A kaleidoscope of very different motifs unfolds, culminating in colourful, dazzling visions, characterised by the exotic sound of bells, gongs and singing bowls. As in meditation, however, attention is repeatedly drawn back to the breath. At the end, plucked strings and rustling bamboo gently bring us back to the world.

Vier letzte Lieder by Richard Strauss

‘Well, they'll just have to die!’ Richard Strauss is said to have replied laconically to a young journalist who asked the 83-year-old composer about his plans for the future. What else could he say? The composer had been stuck in Switzerland since October 1945, his assets confiscated, his royalties frozen, while the Allies investigated whether the former president of the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Chamber of Music) was guilty of collaborating with the Nazis (a trial that ultimately ended in acquittal). At the same time, a young generation of composers based in Paris was making a name for itself, eloquently breaking with the late Romantic tradition that was so dear to Strauss. ‘I saw how he was tormenting himself,’ recalled his son Franz, "and I said to him: 'Papa, stop brooding and write some beautiful songs instead. He didn't answer. When I visited again a few months later, he came into our room, laid some scores on the table and said to my wife Alice: ‘Here are the songs your husband ordered. ’” However, the compositions were not intended as a cycle and were only published posthumously as Four Last Songs.
 

Lush musical language
The late works of many great composers are characterised by a particular concentration and austerity. Bach immersed himself in the world of canons and fugues, Beethoven's late string quartets are still considered difficult to listen to today, and Shostakovich's last symphonies are filled with the lonely clattering of bones. But such a reduction to the essentials did not correspond to Strauss's nature. The Four Last Songs may speak of autumn and farewell, but musically they are as opulent as ever in Strauss. The cantilenas blossom, the strings revel, the harp rustles, and when the text mentions birds, the flutes trill along. Strauss approaches the theme of death and farewell undaunted, with the mastery of his craft, which irritated not only Hermann Hesse – the author of three of the four poems set to music – who said that the settings were “like all Strauss music: virtuosic, sophisticated, full of technical beauty, but without a centre, only an end in itself.”

And yet this music can be deeply moving. For example, when in the song Beim Schlafengehen (At Bedtime) the violin spreads its wings in a sweeping melody line like the soul in Hesse's poem. Or when in September the orchestra exudes a beguiling rose scent that the weary summer enjoys one last time. This is particularly true in the brocade-heavy, farewell-drunk melancholy of Eichendorff's Im Abendrot (In the Evening Glow). ‘Is this death?’ asks the singer in the last line, and in the middle of these words, the old Strauss once again inserts the famous motif of the young Strauss from Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), almost a little surprised at how quickly this long life has come to an end. Perhaps Richard Strauss remained a stranger to death until the very last minute.

Thorsten Preuß

Dr Thorsten Preuß studied German, Romance languages and musicology in Erlangen and Paris. He was awarded the Lilli Bechmann-Rahn Prize for his dissertation on Bertolt Brecht's Lukullus, and has also published works on Baroque poetry and radio opera, among other topics. Today, Thorsten Preuß works as an editor for early and contemporary music at BR-KLASSIK.