Metamorphosen

This elegiac work from Strauss’s later years has become synonymous with the destruction of culture, specifically German culture embracing Beethoven and Strauss himself, epitomized by the wartime bombing of the opera houses in Dresden, Berlin, and Vienna. The composer wrote that “2000 years of cultural evolution had met its doom, and irreplaceable monuments of architecture and works of art were destroyed.” Towards the end of the work, Strauss quotes bars of Beethoven’s funeral march from the Eroica as a symbol of mourning across the centuries and the repeated short–short–short–long pattern on a monotone G can be heard as a reference to the motto theme from the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. As well as the 23 solo string classic frequently performed by orchestral string sections, a string septet version is available based on an early short score by Strauss.