ABSTRACT

While Germany was ravaged by war in winter 1944, Richard Strauss read the complete works of Goethe. During this period, he composed Metamorphosen, usually considered an elegy for Germanic culture with its quotation from Beethoven’s Eroica inscribed ‘In Memoriam’. Goethe’s influence on the work is far greater than hitherto realized. I argue that Strauss’s late choice of title invites a search for the conceptual content of the score. Close analysis of two poems by Goethe copied out in Strauss’s sketchbook, including a musical setting published here in full for the first time, reveals a ‘poetische Idee’ which unifies the multiple layers of meaning within the work. Relating Metamorphosen to its historical context, I interpret the work as a self-portrait of Strauss’s experience reading Goethe.

摘要

1944 年冬天，德国饱受战火蹂躏，理查·施特劳斯 (Richard Strauss) 阅读了歌德全集。在此期间，他创作了《变形记》，通常被认为是一首日耳曼文化的挽歌，它引用了贝多芬的《英雄》中的“纪念”。歌德对这部作品的影响远比迄今为止所认识到的要大。我认为施特劳斯迟来的标题选择引发了对乐谱概念内容的探索。仔细分析歌德在施特劳斯素描本上抄写的两首诗，包括首次完整发布的音乐背景，揭示了一种“诗意”，它统一了作品中的多层意义。关系变态鉴于其历史背景，我将这部作品解读为施特劳斯阅读歌德经历的自画像。