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''Metamorphosen,'' study for 23 solo strings (TrV 290, AV 142) is a composition by Richard Strauss, scored for ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses. It was composed during the closing months of the Second World War, from August 1944 to March 1945. The piece was commissioned by Paul Sacher, the founder and director of the Basler Kammerorchester and Collegium Musicum Zürich, to whom Strauss dedicated it. It was first performed in January 1946 by Sacher and the Collegium Musicum Zürich, with Strauss conducting the final rehearsal . In 1996, Rudolf Leopold wrote a version for Septet . ==Composition history== By 1944, Strauss' health was not good and he needed to visit the Swiss spa at Baden near Zurich. However, he was unable to get permission to travel abroad from the Nazi government. Karl Bohm, Paul Sacher and Willi Schuh came up with a plan to get the travel permit: a commission from Sacher and invitation to the premier in Zurich. The commission was made in a letter from Bohm on August 28, 1944 for a "suite for strings". Strauss replied that he had been working for some time on an adagio for 11 strings . In fact, in the early work on ''Metamorphosen'' he wrote for a septet (2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and a bass), later expanding it to 23 strings. The starting date for the score is given as 13 March 1945, which suggests that the destruction of the Vienna opera house the previous day gave Strauss the impetus to finish the work and draw together his previous sketches in just one month (finished on 12 April 1945). As with his other late works, Strauss builds up the music from a series of small melodic ideas "which are the point of departure for the development of the entire composition" . In this unfolding of ideas "Strauss applies here all of the rhetorical means developed over the centuries to express pain". However, Strauss also alternates passages in a major key expressing hope and optimism with passages of sadness, as in the finales of both Gustav Mahler's 6th Symphony and Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony. The overall structure of the piece is "a slow introduction, a quick central section, and a return to the initial slower tempo" which echoes the structure of ''Death and Transfiguration'' . There are five basic thematic elements that make up ''Metamorphosen''. First, there are the opening chords. Second there is the repetition of three short notes followed by a fourth long note. Third, there is the direct quote from bar 3 of the ''Marcia Funebre'' from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Fourth, there is a minor theme with triplets. Fifth, there is the lyrical theme "that becomes the source of much of the contrasting music in major, sunnier keys" . The second theme does not stand on its own, but is put preceding the third and fourth themes. Its most obvious source is Beethoven's 5th Symphony, for example the short-short-short-long repetition of G played by the horns in the third movement. However, it has other progenitors: the Finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony (a personal favorite of Strauss as a conductor) and the Fugue from Bach's Solo Violin Sonata in G minor BWV 1001. Strauss also used it the Oboe Concerto written only a few months after completing ''Metamorphosen'', displaying "a remarkable example of the thematic links between the last instrumental works" . Indeed he had also used this motif over 60 years before in his youthful 1881 Piano Sonata. At the end of ''Metamorphosen'', he quotes the first four bars of the Eroica Marcia Funebre with the annotation "IN MEMORIAM!" written at the bottom where the basses and cellos are playing the Eroica quote. As one of Strauss's last works, ''Metamorphosen'' masterfully exhibits the complex counterpoint for which the composer showed a predilection throughout his creative life. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Metamorphosen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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