Ein Heldenleben

 ( Tone Poems By Richard Strauss ) 

Ein Heldenleben ( A Hero's Life), Opus number 40, is a tone poem 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, Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Death and Transfiguration.

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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'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, 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."Richard Freed. " Ein Heldenleben, Op 40", The Kennedy Center, accessed September 6, 2013 On the other hand, in the words of the critic Richard Freed:

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Structure and analysis The work, which lasts about fifty minutes, is through-composed: 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):

1. "Der Held" (The Hero)
2. "Des Helden Widersacher" (The Hero's Adversaries)
3. "Des Helden Gefährtin" (The Hero's Companion)
4. "Des Helden Walstatt" (The Hero at Battle)
5. "Des Helden Friedenswerke" (The Hero's Works of Peace)
6. "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.

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Instrumentation The work is scored for a large orchestra consisting of piccolo, three flutes, three , cor anglais (doubling fourth oboe), E-flat clarinet, two , bass clarinet, three , contrabassoon, eight French horn in F, E and E, three in B (briefly used offstage) and two in E, three , tenor tuba in B, tuba, timpani, bass drum, two , , tenor drum, tam-tam, triangle, two , and string section, including an extensive solo violin part.

In one section, the second violins are called on to play a G-flat or F-sharp which is a semitone below the normal range of the instrument, and which can only be accomplished by temporarily retuning their lowest string.

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Dedication and performances Strauss dedicated the piece to the 27-year-old Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. However, it was premiered by the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester on March 3, 1899 in Frankfurt, 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's Queen's Hall Orchestra."Richard Strauss's Heldenleben conducted by the composer in London", The Manchester Guardian, December 8, 1902, p. 5

Béla Bartók wrote a piano reduction 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.

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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, "the 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." "Perlman to appear in concert", News OK, October 11, 2002 The critic in The New York Times 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". "The Philharmonic Society", The New York Times, December 8, 1900. 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:

Staatskapelle Berlin	Richard Strauss	1926	Classical Recordings Quarterly
New York Philharmonic	Willem Mengelberg	1928	Pearl Records
Bayerisches Staatsorchester	Richard Strauss	1941	Deutsche Grammophon; Dutton Vocalion
NBC Symphony Orchestra	Arturo Toscanini	1941	RCA Records; Naxos Records
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra	Willem Mengelberg	1942	Teldec; Naxos Historical
Wiener Philharmoniker	Richard Strauss	1944	Preiser Records
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra	Thomas Beecham	1947	Testament; Biddulph
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra	Fritz Reiner	1947	RCA
Wiener Philharmoniker	Clemens Krauss	1952	Decca Records
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra	Antal Doráti	1953	Mercury; Pristine Classics
Chicago Symphony Orchestra	Fritz Reiner	1954	RCA Records
Staatskapelle Dresden	Karl Böhm	1957	Deutsche Grammophon
Berliner Philharmoniker	Herbert von Karajan	1959	Deutsche Grammophon
Philadelphia Orchestra	Eugene Ormandy	1959	CBS
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra	Thomas Beecham	1959	EMI Classics (stereo)
Philadelphia Orchestra	Eugene Ormandy	1960	Sony Classical
San Francisco Symphony	Pierre Monteux	1960	RCA Records
London Symphony Orchestra	John Barbirolli	1969	EMI
Los Angeles Philharmonic	Zubin Mehta	1969	Decca Records
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra	Bernard Haitink	1970	Philips Records
London Symphony Orchestra	John Barbirolli	1970	BBC Classics (live recording)
Staatskapelle Dresden	Rudolf Kempe	1972	EMI
Berliner Philharmoniker	Herbert von Karajan	1974	EMI
Wiener Philharmoniker	Karl Böhm	1975	Deutsche Grammophon
Wiener Philharmoniker	Sir Georg Solti	1978	Decca Records
Philadelphia Orchestra	Eugene Ormandy	1980	RCA Records
Cleveland Orchestra	Vladimir Ashkenazy	1984	Decca Records
Berliner Philharmoniker	Herbert von Karajan	1985	Deutsche Grammophon
Wiener Philharmoniker	André Previn	1988	Telarc
Staatskapelle Dresden	Giuseppe Sinopoli	1992	Deutsche Grammophon
Cleveland Orchestra	Christoph von Dohnányi	1992	Decca Records
Wiener Philharmoniker	Carlos Kleiber	1993	Sony Music (unreleased)
San Francisco Symphony	Herbert Blomstedt	1994	Decca Records
Minnesota Orchestra	Eiji Oue	1998	Reference Recordings
Philadelphia Orchestra	Wolfgang Sawallisch	1996	Warner Classics
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks	Lorin Maazel	1999	RCA Red Seal
Czech Philharmonic	Vladimir Ashkenazy	2000	Exton
WDR Symphony Cologne	Semyon Bychkov	2001	Avie
Chicago Symphony Orchestra	Daniel Barenboim	2003	Erato Records /Warner Classics
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich	David Zinman	2003	Arte Nova Classics
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra	Mariss Jansons	2004	RCO Live
Berliner Philharmoniker	Simon Rattle	2005	EMI
Wiener Philharmoniker	Christian Thielemann	2006	Deutsche Grammophon
Staatskapelle Dresden	Fabio Luisi	2007	Sony Music
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra	Manfred Honeck	2008	Exton
Philharmonia Orchestra	Christoph von Dohnányi	2009	Signum Records
Chicago Symphony Orchestra	Bernard Haitink	2010	CSO Resound
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra	Yannick Nézet-Séguin	2011	BIS
Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester	Sebastian Weigle	2013	Oehms Classics
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra	Mariss Jansons	2015	BR-Klassik
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra	Andrew Davis	2016	ABC Classics
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra	Valery Gergiev	2017	MPHIL

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Notes

• Donald Nivison Ferguson (1968). 9780816604678, University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816604678
• Charles Youmans (2025). 9780521899307, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521899307

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External links

• , Frankfurt Radio Symphony, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Recorded at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, December 11, 2015
• Strauss' Ein Heldenleben: Beyond Autobiography by Timothy Judd, September 11, 2017

Categories: Tone Poems By Richard Strauss, 1898 Compositions, Music Dedicated To Ensembles Or Performers

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