STRAUSS
(Richard Strauss: born in Munich, June 11, 1864; now living in Berlin)
"FROM ITALY," SYMPHONIC FANTASIA: Op. 16
1. ON THE CAMPAGNA
(Andante)
2. AMID ROME'S RUINS
(Allegro molto con brio)
3. ON THE SHORE OF SORRENTO
(Andantino)
4. NEAPOLITAN FOLK-LIFE
(Allegro molto)
"Aus Italia," the first of Strauss's descriptive works for orchestra, was composed in 1886, a year in which the composer visited Rome and Naples. The score is avowedly programmatic, however, only to the extent of the titling of the different movements, except that the second, "Amid Rome's Ruins," bears this additional superscription: "Fantastic Pictures of Vanished Splendor; Feelings of Sadness and Grief in the Midst of the Sunniest Present."
Of the first movement Mr. Vernon Blackburn has remarked: "... the Campagna is absolutely destitute of scenery, its tragic secret lying, for the most part, too deep even for the modern explorer; its 'dim warm weather' is an attribute which exactly describes its general aspect of loneliness and locked quietude. These are the points which Strauss makes apparent in his music, and proves the constancy of that mood in the second portion of his Fantasia, in which he only completes the hidden tragedy of the Campagna—in the section which he has entitled ['Amid Rome's Ruins']."
In the third movement, "On the Shore of Sorrento," Mr. Hermann Kretzschmar finds (in the middle portion) a picture of the sea ruffled by the wind. "A boat appears, and in it a singer sings a genuine native melody, sprung from the noble sicilianos, which since the end of the seventeenth century have passed over Europe, journeying from the region near Sorrento." "The strings," says another commentator, furnish "a rich background for the sparkling flashes of melody which emanate from the other instruments, the whole being suggestive of a water-picture. The almost constant shimmer in the strings might easily be construed as a description of the restlessness of the ocean, over which the melodies of the wood-wind play like the glintings of sunlight."
In the last movement, "Neapolitan Folk-life," the famous song "Funiculi, Funicula," serves as the principal theme, announced by violas and 'cellos. "The finale is brilliant, tumultuous, audacious."
"'My desolation doth begin to make a better life.' Such," remarks Mr. Blackburn, "might have been the motto upon which Strauss has built the labor of this extraordinary work. He makes you feel through every bar how completely his musical spirit is oppressed by a sense of tragic thought which, if anywhere, is surely appropriate in the presence of the wreckage of that huge civilization which reached the zenith of its glory in the genius of Julius Cæsar."