Four Last Songs

Richard Strauss was in his 80s, living in quiet isolation in his villa in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, close to the Austrian border in the Bavarian Alps. In the early days of the Nazi regime, he had briefly been president of the Reichsmusikkammer, a state music bureau. This was enough to make his position in Germany tenuous at the end of World War II, even though he had consistently tried to distance himself from the world and events around him. He and his wife, Pauline, chose to go into exile in Switzerland, where they lived until 1949, the last year of his life. In that year, his name was cleared by a denazification tribunal, so he was able to spend his 85th birthday and the last few months of life back at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the beautiful surroundings he loved.

He composed very little music in those years of exile. One work was his Oboe Concerto. Another was the Duett-Concertino for clarinet, bassoon, harp, and strings, an unusual work rarely performed today. He also composed some incomplete scenes for a comic opera titled The Donkey’s Shadow. The only other music he wrote in exile is the masterpiece that came to be known as his Four Last Songs, full of nostalgia and that autumnal tone of which Strauss was a master.

The first to be composed was Im Abendrot (At Sunset), based on a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. This became the last in the set of four, and the one that touches most closely on the theme of death. It was sketched in 1946 but not finished until May 1948. Perhaps Strauss did not expect to compose anything more. But a friend sent him an anthology of Hermann Hesse’s poems, three of which Strauss set in quick succession: Frühling (Spring), Beim Schlafengehen (At Bedtime), and September — the last appropriately finished on September 20, 1948, and essentially the last music he ever wrote. He died a year later without hearing the songs performed.

Throughout these songs, Strauss is completely comfortable in a style he had perfected over many years. The scoring is intricate, full of active filigree in the upper voices, while the bass line moves slowly, underpinning harmonies that can change color with kaleidoscopic swiftness, yet never fail to resolve to cadences that seemed inevitable all along. Divided strings, gorgeous horn writing, and great restraint in the heavy brass, all at a gentle tempo (three of the songs are marked Andante) — these are the traits of a master in his twilight years.

Strauss never indicated the order in which the songs should be sung, apart from placing Im Abend at the end. The standard sequence places Frühling first, a song that invokes spring without a hint of gloom and takes the voice soaring higher than in the other songs, suggesting birdsong (“Vogelsang”) and the miracle (“Wunder”) of the season. There is a rapturous quality in the rich scoring that keeps the winds fully occupied, the strings divided into many parts, and trumpets and trombones silent.

September bids farewell to summer with much regret, expressed in shimmering textures and a wonderful melody that comes to full bloom at the words “Sommer lächelt” (summer smiles). The horn has the unforgettable last word.

Beim Schlafengehen touches on the oblivion of sleep that the soul longs for. Another wonderful melody is offered by a solo violin, to which the singer responds with a magisterial rising phrase while the cellos climb through two octaves. Never has the key of D-flat major been more expressively applied to the sense of peace and repose.

Im Abendrot is darker than the other songs, full of weariness and apprehension. As soon as death is mentioned, we hear the broad, climbing theme from the tone poem Death and Transfiguration, which Strauss had composed 60 years before, capturing hope for a transfigured future. As the music comes to a radiant close, life is not extinguished. High in the woodwinds, two piccolos evoke a pair of larks, and their faint twitterings linger in the air when all else has gone.

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.

Sung Texts

Frühling (Spring)
Text by Hermann Hesse

In dämmrigen Grüften
träumte ich lang
von deinen Bäumen und blauen Lüften,
von deinem Duft und Vogelsang. 

Nun liegst du erschlossen
in Gleiss und Zier,
von Licht übergossen
wie ein Wunder vor mir. 

Du kennst mich wieder,
du lockst mich zart,
es zittert durch all meine Glieder
deine selige Gegenwart!

In dusky hollows
I have long dreamt
of your trees and blue skies,
of your fragrance and birdsong. 

Now you stand, revealed
in glitter and glory,
bathed in light,
like a miracle before me. 

You recognize me,
you gently beckon,
all my limbs tremble
in your blessed presence!

September
Text by Hermann Hesse

Der Garten trauert,
Kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.
Der Sommer schauert
still seinem Ende entgegen.

Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
nieder vom hohen Akazienbaum.
Sommer lächelt erstaunt und matt
in den sterbenden Gartentraum. 

Lange noch bei den Rosen
bleibt er stehn, sehnt sich nach Ruh.
Langsam tut er die
müdgewordnen Augen zu.

The garden mourns,
cool rain sinks into the flowers.
The summer shudders
silently, as it comes to an end. 

Leaf after golden leaf drops
down from the tall acacia tree.
Summer smiles, astonished and weak,
at the dying garden dream. 

For a long while, within the roses
it lingers, yearning for rest.
Slowly it closes
its wearied eyes.

Beim Schlafengehen (At Bedtime)
Text by Hermann Hesse

Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
wie ein müdes Kind empfangen. 

Hände, lasst von allem Tun,
Stirn vergiss du alles Denken,
alle meine Sinne nun
wollen sich in Schlummer senken. 

Und die Seele, unbewacht,
will in freien Flügen schweben,
um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
tief und tausendfach zu leben.

Now that the day has made me tired,
my ardent desire shall
happily receive the starry night,
like a tired child.

Hands, cease all doing,
brow, forget all thinking,
all my senses now
want to sink in slumber.

And the soul, unguarded,
wants to soar in free flight
in the magic realm of night,
to live there deeply and a thousand times.

Im Abendrot (At Sunset)
Text by Joseph von Eichendorff

Wir sind durch Not und Freude
gegangen Hand in Hand;
nom Wandern ruhen wir
nun überm stillen Land.

Rings sich die Täler neigen,
es dunkelt schon die Luft,
zwei Lerchen nur noch steigen
nachträumend in den Duft.

Tritt her und lass sie schwirren,
bald ist es Schlafenszeit,
dass wir uns nicht verirren
in dieser Einsamkeit.

O weiter, stiller Friede!
So tief im Abendrot,
wie sind wir wandermüde —
ist dies etwa der Tod?

Through sorrow and joy
we have walked hand in hand;
from our wanderings, let us rest
well over the quiet land.

Around us the valleys are waning,
the sky is already darkening,
only two larks soar upwards
in the air, under the spell of a dream.

Step closer and let them flutter.
Soon it is time to sleep;
let us not lose our way
in this solitude.

O spacious, silent peace!
So deep in evening’s glow,
how tired of wandering we are —
can this, perhaps, be death?