Beschreibung:

Richard StraussAutograph full score of the orchestral tone poem Macbeth, the second version, signed ("Richard Strauss")
78 pages, plus title and one blank, folio (35.7 x 27cm), 18- and 20-stave papers ("B & H. Nr. 11. C." and "B & H. Nr. 12. C.") (gathering structure: [Nr. 11. C.:] 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + [Nr. 12. C.:] 4 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 2), later pencil pagination ("1"-"78"), rehearsal numbers ("A"-"Ff") and a few other markings in blue crayon, contemporary cloth, gilt title to upper cover ("Macbeth"), Munich, 1887-1888 (completed 8 February 1888), light browning, corners thumbed, tiny tear to upper margin of pp.30/31 and lower margin of pp.57/58, lower hinge broken, splitting at lower joint, corners worn
notated in dark brown ink on one 18- or 19-stave system per page, with autograph title-page and dedication ("Seinem lieben, hochverehrten Freunde Alexander Ritter gewidmet. Macbeth. Tondichtung für grosses Orchester nach Shakespeares Drama von Richard Strauss. op. 20."), with autograph heading ("Macbeth") and signature ("RichStrauss") at the head of the first page of music, dated at the end by Strauss ("Im ersten Entwurfe vollendet 9. Januar. dieser zweite Schluss 8. Februar 1888. München."), scored for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in B flat, bass clarinet in B flat, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in D, 3 trombones, bass tuba, timpani, cymbals, tamtam, bass drum and strings, a number of later autograph additions and corrections in pencil, extensive autograph erasures and revisions, two bars after b.429 cancelled
THIS IS THE COMPLETE SCORE OF A MAJOR LATE ROMANTIC-PERIOD WORK.
IT IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT AUTOGRAPH MUSIC MANUSCRIPT OF STRAUSS TO APPEAR AT AUCTION IN THE LAST THIRTY YEARS.
MACBETH IS STRAUSS'S FIRST FULLY-FLEDGED ORCHESTRAL TONE POEM, THE FIRST IN LINE OF A FAMOUS SERIES, INCLUDING DON JUAN (1888-1889), TILL EULENSPIEGEL (1894-1895) AND ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA (1896).
Strauss's creative development might have gone in quite another direction were it not for influence of the dedicatee of Macbeth, Alexander Ritter a violinist at the Meiningen Court Orchestra, with whom the twenty-one-year-old Strauss became acquainted in 1885, after being appointed assistant to the orchestra's conductor, Hans von Bülow. As Strauss noted to his friend Ludwig Thuille, his musical upbringing had left him with some abiding prejudice against the works of Wagner and, especially, of Liszt. It was Ritter, whose mother Julie had been a supporter of Wagner, and who had himself married a niece of Wagner, Franziska Wagner, who deflected Strauss from his hero worship of Brahms and converted him to the 'music of the future', that of Liszt and Wagner. And it was above all Ritter who instilled in the young Strauss a passion - one of incalculable future significance - for musical theatre.
Strauss began composition of Macbeth in spring 1887, probably shortly after the first performance of his four-movement orchestral fantasy Aus Italien. In December of the same year the composer informed the conductor Franz Wüllner that the 'large-scale symphonic poem for orchestra Macbeth' was almost finished, and by the beginning of January 1888 the score had been completed. Although Strauss may be thought to have turned to the symphonic poem in emulation of Liszt, the composer of some 13 such works, the work's musical language, with its mastery of the development of thematic motives, owed more to the magician of Bayreuth. The form of the work, which well illustrates Strauss's belief that it was the artist's task to develop 'a new form for every new subject', is an elaborate single-movement sonata form where the development greatly exceeds the recapitulation in length and complexity. Strauss makes no attempt to mirror every twist of Shakespeare's drama (Banquo and the witches, for instance, do not figure here), being concerned instead to reflect the events through the changing character of the two central protagonists, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, both represented by complex composite themes, passionate and volatile, in the case of the former, and insinuating and frenzied in that of the latter. The work's important contribution to the maturing of Strauss's musical technique is perhaps most clearly revealed in the organic development section, where, after the second of that section's self-contained episodes (King Duncan's processional music), Strauss's skilful symphonic treatment of the central motives associated with Macbeth and his wife reaches a peak of masterful complexity, while at the same time revealing considerable psychological insight into the protagonists' situation.
Strauss's bold score failed, however, to impress Bülow, who raised objections to the work's many dissonances and, especially, the concluding triumphal march of Macduff. Strauss took at least some of Bülow's criticisms immediately to heart and jettisoned the original ending, replacing the original last 130 bars with a mere 20, a revision that seems to have been effected by the simple removal from the score of the last eight leaves (pp.76-91), and by their replacement with a bifolium containing the new last 20 bars. Of this masterful exercise in concision, Strauss's great biographer, Norman Del Mar, observed as follows:
....Already in Macbeth there is a wholly three-dimensional theatricality in the Macduff/Malcolm fanfares, with their offstage side-drum roll. It is as if the bodies of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are still lying dead before us as we look to the background and see the bright vision of the future projected against the grim tragedy which has just reached its bitter catastrophe...
This act of revision created the so-called 'second version' of the work, although one might just as well also call it the revised first version. As Strauss's inscription at the end of the score reveals, the revision was concluded speedily by 8 February 1888. Yet Bülow remained unconvinced by the work, which led Strauss to defend himself in a long, highly revealing letter of 24 August 1888. In it he maintained his support of Liszt's principle that the form of a work should be created solely by the musical-poetic content, vigorously defending Macbeth as 'stylistically the most independent and purposeful work' that he yet composed.
It was following the first public performance of the work, at Weimar on 13 October 1890, under the composer's direction, that Strauss resolved to undertake a more thorough-going revision of the score, evidently dissatisfied especially with aspects of his instrumentation. As he wrote to Alexander Ritter six days after the première: 'On account of too many middle voices, the main themes in many places do not come out vividly enough...and I am pretty well determined to revise the whole piece completely.' This revision was completed, as indicated by Strauss's date at the end of the new score (preserved today in The Morgan Library, New York), on 4 March 1891. No cuts were made, although there was one addition of four bars following b.254. Aside from countless modifications of rhythm and dynamic, the main changes affected the instrumentation (with the addition of a bass trumpet and - already entered in the second-version score in pencil - bass drum and, to terrifying effect, tamtam) and, especially, the orchestration, now more translucent and dynamic in service of the thematic material. This so-called third version, labelled now op.23 on the autograph (not op.20, as found on the title-page of the second version, a number later given to Don Juan), was published in January 1892 by Joseph Aibl. A highly successful performance of this revised version in Berlin in February 1892 even met with Bülow's enthusiasm, the great conductor praising it as a work of genius of the highest order.
Although the score of the second version is essentially a fair copy manuscript, in Strauss's inimitably precise and elegant hand, it bears witness to a variety of corrections and additions. At least three layers of emendations can be identified. The first concerns the extensive erasures, which, however, are not recorded in the modern collected edition of Strauss's works. Another layer, presumed to indicate the final stage of the second version, included the addition of music for bass drum and tamtam, these entries found in the score in pencil from bb.468ff. A last layer of interventions in the score concerned a number of inserted/corrected accidentals in the string parts, corrections that, since they were not also made in other corresponding parts, can be viewed as harbingers of the final thorough-going revision of the work, the so-called third version of the score.
In addition to the present score, the following autograph material for Macbeth also survives:
Autograph manuscript of the final revised, and published, version (the so-called third version): The Morgan Library, New York (Robert Owen Lehman Collection: S9125.M118).
Fragments of the rejected original ending of the so-called first version (i.e. the four known leaves of the original final eight of the score): Private collection (pp.76/77); Bibliothèque nationale de France Ms. 10. 187 (pp.86-89); Private collection, ex J.A. Stargardt, 28 November 1973, lot 857 (pp.89-90).
Autograph score of Strauss's arrangement of the second version for piano four hands: Richard-Strauss-Archiv Garmisch-Partenkirchen (TrV_163_q00307). Orchestral parts for the second version of the work are unknown, and this version remained unpublished until its edition in the collected works (2016).
LITERATURE:Norman Del Mar, Richard Strauss, i (1962), pp.52ff.; Franz Trenner, Richard Strauss Werkverzeichnis (second edition, 1999) 163; Walter Werbeck: ' "Macbeth" von Richard Strauss. Fassungen und Entstehungsgeschichte', Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, l (1993), pp.232-253; Richard Strauss Werke. Kritische Ausgabe, III/4, edd. Stefan Schenk and Walter Werbeck (2016)
PROVENANCE:The violinist and composer Alexander Ritter (1833-1896); from him by family descent