Putting  aside  Riemann  as  a  hopelessly  in-
volved guide  —  a  baleful  ignis-fatuus  in  a
midnight  forest,  —  Strauss'  poem  impressed
me,  after  three  hearings,  as  the  gigantic
torso  of  an  art  work  for  the  future.  Eu-
phony was  hurled  to  the  winds,  the
Addisonian  ductility  of  Mozart,  the  Theo-
phile  Gautier  coloring  of  Schumann,  Cho-
pin's delicate  romanticism,  all  were  scorned
as  not  being  truthful  enough  for  the  subject  in
hand,  and  the  subject  is  not  a  pretty  or  a  senti-
mental one.  Strauss,  with  his  almost  super-
human mastery  of  all  schools,  could  have
written  with  ease  in  the  manner  of  any  of  his
predecessors,  but,  like  a  new  Empedocles  on
ALtna,  preferred  to  leap  into  the  dark,  or
148


STRAUSS  AND  NIETZSCHE

rather  into  the  fiery  crater  of  truth.  In  few
bars  did  I  discover  an  accent  of  insincerity,
a  making  of  music  for  the  mere  sake  of
music.  He  has  leaped  where  Liszt  feared
to  venture,  and  Strauss  is  Liszt's  descendant
as  well  as  Wagner's.  He  cast  aside  all  make-
shifts, even  the  human  voice,  which  is  the
human  interest,  and  dared,  with  complicated
virtuosity,  to  tell  the  truth  —  his  truth,  be  it
remembered  —  and  so  there  is  little  likelihood
of  his  being  understood  in  this  century.
It  were  madness  to  search  for  Nietzsche  in
Strauss  —  that  is,  in  this  score.  It  is  un-
Nietzsche  music  —  Nietzsche  who  discarded
Wagner  for  Bizet,  Beethoven  for  Mozart.
