Yesterday I attended an open rehearsal at the
San Francisco Symphony. I was drawn to the rehearsal by the first act of Die Walkure, but also on the program was Metamorphosen, a work unknown to me. Composing it during the summer of 1944, Richard
Strauss had just turned 80. According to
our pre-rehearsal lecturer Peter Grunberg, Strauss was inspired by a poem of
the same name by Goethe. Strauss was reflecting on his life, but also
contemplating the disaster that the Nazis and WWII had wrought on Germany and
the world. In 1942 he and his extended
family had moved to Vienna where he could protect his Jewish daughter-in-law from the
Nazis. He was bearing witness to “the
twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest
criminals,” as Strauss mourned the death of centuries of German culture
and the “transformation of opera which is no longer alive in Germany”.
Grunberg said, “As one gets older, one can understand
oneself and the world better.” I hope
that this is true, but I’m not sure it is.
In my experience, many people age and go to their grave calcified in
their viewpoints, unable or unwilling to deeply examine their own lives and
reluctant to open their hearts to the world around them. I strive to not be one of them.
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