STRAUSS'S PROGRESS.
(To THE EDITOR OF THZ "SPECTATOR." J have read with interest your article of last week on "Strauss's Progress." I do not know the Heiden- leben, but judging from other works, I feel no doubt that your estimate is a just one. My object in writing is to invite attention to one of his earliest, which is in danger of being forgotten, but without which it is absolutely impossible to estimate Strauss's real powers. The work, Guntram, was produced in 1894 at the Weimar Opera House before the assembled TonkUnstlerverein, and my judgment that it was the most important event in dramatic art since Parsifal was, I believe, that of many of the distinguished musicians and literati who were present. It failed at other theatres for one reason only, because no singer could be found who was equal to the enormous strain of the title-part, although our tenor, Heinrich Zeller, had sung it manfully four times. The work (alone amongst Strauss's compositions with which I am acquainted) is important not only from its supreme poetic beauty and perfect dramatic form, but still more from being, so far as I know, the only worthy attempt that has yet been made to carry on Wagner's conception of the organic union of words and music to express a high dramatic purpose. I cannot treat this fully in the limits of a letter, but Strauss himself pithily expressed what I mean in a remark which he dropped when he read and sang his new work through to our small circle some time before the performance : " Seit Tristan ist der Tod nicht mehr tragisch." G-untram is a tragedy which does not end in death, but in a goal which appears, at least to some among us, higher and more artistic. Musically it displays all the mighty instrumentation, the harmonic and rhythmic wealth, of his later works, without their eccentricities. It is, in the words of your contributor, eminently a work "sanely great and consistently noble," but the serious technical error which I have alluded to—namely, the excessive length and difficulty of the tenor part—has, I fear, proved fatal. Can it not be saved P or, still better, will not Strauss write another Guntram 7-1
am, Sir, &c., GEO. AINSLIR HIGHT. Les Quenelles, Pont de Briques.
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