Richard Strauss - Metamorphosen 

This is one of those pieces that you think about all day and eventually become so excited to return home and listen that it becomes an obsession.

This is an exquisite piece but you have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. It's not easy listening or light entertainment. I can't imagine anyone coming home at the end of a long, hard day and saying, "I need to chill and relax - I think Strauss' Metamorphoses would do the trick." No. But if you're in a contemplative mood and have half an hour to focus your attention exclusively on the music and let it carry you along in its very special sound world, Strauss' music can be cathartic. The appearance of Beethoven at the end and those final modulations are unbelievably dark and moving. Like Vaughan Williams and Verdi, Strauss could still conjure magic into his eighties.

The first time I heard this piece, I cried in the theatre. The performers told us the story of its composition, and I could just feel Strauss’s pain exuding from this piece

This to me is the most extreme music of grief.

According to Timothy L. Jackson's analysis: 0:00 Exposition, Group I, Motive 1 0:41 Motive 2 1:19 Motive 3 5:58 Group II, Subsidiary Theme 1, Motive 4: m.82 8:33 Transition I: m.130 8:46 Motive 5: m.134 9:15 Subsidiary Theme 2, Motive 6: m.144 11:25 Transition II: m.187 12:39 Development section I: m.213 14:05 Development section II: m.246 15:22 Development section III: m.278 16:12 Transition III: m.299 18:04 Reappearance of Group II Sub. Th. 1: m.345 19:34 Recapitulation begins: m.391 22:21 Overlap of Recap and Coda (Beginning of Coda): m.433 22:39 Transition IV: m.437 23:24 Recap resumes: m.449 25:58 Coda resumes: m.487 27:01 "Coda of the Coda," Paraphrase of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony movt. 2: m.502

Toward the end of his life, Richard Strauss underwent a profound aesthetic change that resulted in some of the composer's most intensely personal and philosophical music. Among the most striking of these works from Strauss' final decade is Metamorphosen (1945), written in an atmosphere of devastation following World War II. As a meditation on the bombing of Dresden (which destroyed the city and killed 130,000 of its inhabitants), Metamorphosen represents a significant departure from the more exuberant of Strauss' tone poems -- Til Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Don Juan, Don Quixote -- by that time a half-century old. In contrast to the vivid portraiture of those works, Metamorphosen is wholly unrepresentational, a tragic, pessimistic reflection on a more intimate level than any of Strauss' other music. The work unfolds in a single, long movement. Strauss sustains and develops a series of recurring, interrelated motives that, as the title indicates, are linked by their transformation into new material rather than -- as in conventional variations -- a common thematic identity. The work includes several direct references to the funeral march in the second movement of Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony; here they sound entirely appropriate and natural within the broader structure, underlying rather than emphasizing the somber nature of the work as a whole. (AllMusic)

I remember I first heard this piece in 2019. A friend of my mum's had given her two tickets for a recital happening in our town and I went with my sister. The main event of the recital was the Bruch Violin Concerto, but just before that, this piece was played. I had never heard of this piece before (I knew who the composer was) and I didn't know what to expect. I ended up being so captivated and moved by this music. It was so beautifully haunting and tragic that I went home that night with this piece stuck in my head and I had to give it another listen. And here I am still listening to it! A masterpiece.

The harmony in this piece is like getting punched while having sex while burning while eating rose-flavoured chocolate while getting your heart ripped off your chest while kissing the most beautiful creature upon earth.

19:29 when that melody comes back...but a little different with that b flat on the end of the phrase...gets me every time.

Since around 40 years this music haunt my soul, i have no words to say Why, still at this time...

that chord around 0:32-0:33 completely overwhelmed me.

Probably my favorite piece of music. Stunning.

私は現代を除くクラシックの殆どの作曲者を愛好していますが、Rシュトラウスだけ苦手意識がありました。でも、この動画のおかげでその良さがかなり分かってきました♪感謝。

Look, how deep and condensed this is! It will not give you even the break to feel your own fascination while listening it.

I'm so incredibly happy this channel wasn't erased after all this copyright madness.

Such an intensely emotional, pure and inspired masterpiece! Richard Strauss was a true genius composer, well beyond his own era. Thank you very much for posting it

I heard the first 5 minutes of this piece on the radio and I just had to look this up online to hear the rest of it. Hauntingly beautiful.

probably the best ever written.

thanks for posting....always in tears when i hear this masterpiece...so beautiful.....fragile .....tragic.....fantastische Streicher ........und ein sehr einfühlsamer Dirigent....

The passage at 22:35 gets me every time, so heartbreaking

Dang! That is such an incredible sound!

Hear that melancholy and nostalgia after war

Strauss wrote this masterwork in part as a commission but also as homage to a Europe that was no more--

Cuando empecé a dejar los placeres banales y encontrarme conmigo mismo y saber en realidad quien era yo y que me gusta de este mundo. Por alguna extraña razón sentía como gustos totalmente desconocidos por mi, empezaban a llamarme más y más. Ahora estoy acá, con 26 años y sintiendo uno de los mejores placeres al escuchar esta exquisita pieza musical.

Absolutely amazing. My new favorite work, for me, it's the height of human art. Everything before this leads here!

What an interesting work. Low strings playing on the edge of harmonic tonality. Extreme legato. Emotionally riveting. Reminds me in some ways of Mahler's unfinished 10th.

Wow... Glad I found this piece. Haunting.

I feel embraced by this piece. It’s so beautifully dense

Such a powerful, emotion, tragical, piece. Thank you for sharing.

Many thanks for the score during the playing!

Today I was listening to this remarkable composition -once again, while crossing my fingers and hoping for the best for (all) the people in Ukraine....

astonishing...now more than ever..

“The Lord has rejected all the warriors in my midst; he has summoned an army against me to crush my young men. This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.”

I am thanking you almost 10 years in the future from your original upload for this lovely piece!

En mi andadura musical, Metamorphosen remueve lo más hondo. Siento en esta obra el vigor de cuanto hemos cegado y puja a modo del magma que bulle bajo el volcán en la imperiosa necesidad de emerger. Cuánto daría por saber que hay en mí algo de ese magma y resurgir en él, aun si fuera última emanación, abrasadora y fértil una vez fuera a la merced de líquenes, sazonada por cuanta ave viniera a asentarse para ser al fin nueva tierra y nuevo cobijo.

25:53 is the saddest part of the piece. it sounds like despair

großartige Sendung, danke1

In my mind this is what Kafka's Strasser heard when his sister played the violin in the living room: a most hauntingly beautiful sound, accompanied with the knowledge that he no longer is what he was. A seemingly irreversible metamorphosis. Yet, music never loses his potency, it heeds no human language.

mate, your devotion is amazing, and this type of video is so illuminating. thank you. j.

Requiem for romanticism.

Always have to sub a channel that does videos which take this much work and provide us all with another marvelous service. Thanks Thomas ;) Support these channels, folks! Takes a couple of second to help spread culture and educational material.

Astonishing beauty

Sublime performance of a masterpiece.

The "somewhat flowing" section is so beautiful

OUTSTANDING

I can't waltz to this!

I remember hearing this ( a long time ago now) introduced by Hugh Wheldon on 'Monitor' in a film about R.Strauss by Ken Russell.

thanks for upload this masterpiese

O! yeth! this i`s beautiful- absolutely anything- but my prof.spoke with a human voice It is the best instrument.

You're welcome!

This opus the really presents the Zeitgeist of its time.

Maravilhoso.

I might be shunned for saying this, but this reminds me alot of a certain piece from a video game. Eryth Sea (night) - Xenoblade Chronilces Several parts are very similar, especially the into.

Is this the composer who said he was not a first class composer but he was a first rate second class composer, or something like that? If he said that, he was wrong. This is first class stuff.

Beatiful

Jesus im crying and having infinite placer at same time

Nesbi what marvellous création!! isnent'it

in fact, it is an E minor chord. it sounds like a C minor chord because of the unusual inversion (the double bass is not playing E, but instead playing the G of the chord) which gives it a flavour almost like a Cmin 2nd inversion chord, which is how your ear interprets it, given that the chord is surrounded by C minor chords... interesting aural effect

I can hear how Knights of the Old Republic 2 soundtrack took influence from this

Thanks for the score.

Amazing piece, the top of harmony and counterpoint he reached throughout his life as a composer, and so emotional, can leave you with tears and happiness at the same time, the themes go so well together and the quatation of Beethoven 2nd mov. from his Eroica 3rd symphony is brilliant. I can feel how he saw germany falls apart and being destroyed, he could fully understand the pain of the ruins of this amazing country with it's amazing culture being destroyed because of the Nazi regime, even though he supposedly collaborated with them, but deep inside he knew that that's will ruin germany at the end. And the quatation of Beethoven while writing "in memoriam to a great man" was not meant to be for hitler, but for Beethoven, because he knew that he was the great spirit of Germany classical music culture, and the believe in democracy that Beethoven held throughout his life and believing in freedom and justice, that's the true essence of this piece. I bet he would be happy to live a little bit longer to see Germany being wiped out of the Nazi regime and being liberated and becomes a democracy. Long live Strauss!

Woah oh my oh my oh my

Harmonies très proches de Capriccio, l'instabilité tonale souligne l'ambiance sombre, la dépression méditative.

from PERSIA with Passion

Masterpiece.

Anyone remarked the "grief motif" from Wagners' Parsifal? This excellent composition is in fact a reworking of the prelude to act III of Parsifal. The expertise of Strauss is kept up till the very end. Never have I heard and seen a better spaced c minor chord.

I think I read this was inspired by the 2n mvt of Beethoven's "Eroica."

Les chefs d'oeuvre ne sont pas fait pour éblouir.. Ils sont faits pour persuader, pour convaincre, pour entrer en nous par les pores !

Such a sad piece

There Will be Blood Jonny Greenwood, did you get inspiration from this melody?

@20:09 breaks me every time!

Can someone explain the relation between this piece and Dimitri Shostakavich's Quartet no.8? I read somewhere they are somehow related???

So beautfull! Any chance of having the PDF for the piece? Or a link to buy it?

Did he also quote Beethoven Adagio arioso mov. from piano Sonata op. 110?

is there a slight shadow of early schoenberg?

I reckon it sounds like a C minor chord. Odd that this score depicts something else. Would have been a really interesting sound to put that E minor chord there.

9:16 gorgeusssssssssss

What's the third last bar doing there in the score? E natural in the Vl. 1 and Vla. 2??

Based

9:17

Solo strings? Sounds like some are getting a bit of extra-curricular help.

It's very dangerous for me to listen to Metamorphosen without being under the protective influence of lithium.

27:06 Beethoven

I think the audio is 23 string version

Do I hear Strauss quoting Elgar's Nimrod at bar 61 and 300? Maybe more, but those two jumped out.

How does the violin play those F#'s and F's below middle C?

Richard Strauss:Metamórfózisok Weimari Állami Zenekar Vezényel:Antoni Wit

21:05-21:15

17:04

how many thema in this Mov？

yeah i retract my statement. it IS totally a c minor 2nd inversion chord. wonder why...

This is very different from the original score

12:39 sooool beautiful

What happened to the third bar from the end?

What would Bach have thought of this, I wonder?

I don't get the work of this guy (In this piece I only get the climax). I don't get what makes Elektra good for example. Edit: (Nevermind, I'm starting to understand it)

why the last third bar haven't be played?

I cAn Do aNyThInG

Strauss = orgasmi multipli

tune the G string a half step down.