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The reader has now heard the utmost that can be said against the historic character of the Resurrection by the ablest of its impugners. I know of nothing in any of Strauss's works which can be considered as doing better justice to his opinions than the passages which I have quoted and, I trust, refuted. I have quoted fully, and have kept nothing in the background.
He quoted Prout, he quoted Vincent d'Indy; he minutely compared passages in Elgar's second symphony with passages in Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony; he dissected the delicate orchestral effects in Debussy's Nuages and Fête Nocturne, compared the modern French methods in orchestration with Richard Strauss's gigantic, and sometimes monstrous combinations.
When he dropped in at Alice's a few days later he found her sitting, hot-cheeked and absorbed, over Strauss's Life of Jesus. "Just fancy," she said, holding up her forehead for his kiss, "that young poodle of yours is making me take notice. He gives me intellectual nuts to crack. It's strange how this young generation "
Without a word, Chester pulled one of the orders he had appropriated from General Strauss's desk from his pocket and passed it to the commandant. The latter glanced at it quickly, and then bowed. "You shall have the machine in five minutes," he said, and left them. True to his word, five minutes later a large-winged biplane stood before them.
I am far from thinking that the symphony is without a fault. The themes are of unequal value: some are quite commonplace; and, in a general way, the working up of the composition is superior to its underlying thought. I shall come back later on to certain faults in Strauss's music; here I only want to consider the overflowing life and feverish joy that set these worlds spinning.
They rely upon it that these fragments are related among themselves, and thus confound the logical and the artistic relation between them. Now, the relation between the four questions which provide the chapter-headings of Strauss's book cannot be called a logical one. Are we still Christians? Have we still a religion? What is our conception of the universe? What is our rule of life?
Strauss's score shows to the full the amazing command of polyphony and the bewildering richness and variety of orchestration which have made his name famous. The plot of 'Feuersnoth, however, was against it, and it does not seem to have won a permanent success.
But he was a better craftsman than most of them are. He was a finer workman than Strauss, for instance. His scores are much more bony. They are free of the mass of insignificant detail that clutters so many of Strauss's. He could asseverate with some justice, "I have never written an insincere note."
Fortunately, no such regulation prevails at the Court of Vienna, where Strauss's waltzes invariably form the most attractive feature of the so-called "hofball" and "ball-bei-hof." There is a great difference in the character of these two state balls at Vienna. To the first, all sorts of people are commanded who are entitled solely by virtue of their official position to appear at court.
Wagner's name only appears once, in a transcription of the Venusberg for the pianoforte; and Richard Strauss's name figures only against his Quartette. Grieg had his hour of popularity there about 1887, as well as the Russians Moussorgski, Borodine, Rimsky-Korsakow, Liadow, and Glazounow whom M. Debussy has perhaps helped to make known to us.
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