their outlet in song-writing. The composer was later to explain that a new song might be dashed off at any half-way idle moment—might even be scribbled down in the twinkling of an eye between the acts of an opera performance or during a concert intermission. And as spontaneously as Schubert, Richard Strauss busied himself with poems of the most varied character.

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On the young man’s twenty-first birthday Hans von Bülow recommended to Duke George of Meiningen “an uncommonly gifted” musician as substitute while he himself went on a journey for his shattered health. Bülow referred to the suggested deputy as “Richard III”, since after Richard Wagner, “there could be no Richard II.” Strauss arrived in Meiningen in October, 1885. The little ducal capital boasted a high artistic standing. Its theatrical company enjoyed international fame. The town, to be sure, had no opera, but the orchestra, though numbering only 48 instrumentalists, had been so trained by the suffering yet exigent Bülow that it was virtually unrivalled in Germany. The newcomer was encouraged to submit under his mentor’s eye to an intensive training. Bülow’s rehearsals ran from nine in the morning till one in the afternoon and his disciple from Munich was invariably on hand from the first to the last note. The rest of the day was devoted to score reading and to every subtlety of conductor’s technic. The young man was absolutely overwhelmed by “the exhaustive manner in which Bülow sought out the ultimate poetic content of the scores of Beethoven and Wagner.” And a favorite saying of the older musician was never to be forgotten by his disciple from Munich: “First learn to read the score of a Beethoven symphony with absolute correctness, and you will already have its interpretation.”

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Strauss made other friends and valuable connections in Meiningen. One of the most important and influential of these was an impassioned devotee of Wagner, Alexander Ritter. Like so many apostles of the creator of Parsifal at that period, Ritter was a violent opponent of Brahms. Besides he was the composer of a comic opera, “Der faule Hans”, and of a symphonic poem that once enjoyed a vogue in Germany, “Kaiser Rudolfs Ritt zum Grabe”. It was Ritter’s service to familiarize Strauss with some of the deepest secrets of the scores and writings of Wagner as well as of Liszt, and he understood how to fire his young friend with soaring enthusiasm for his own ideals. He also did much to inspire the budding conductor with a taste for the writings of Schopenhauer, an inclination he himself had inherited from Wagner. Ritter’s influence, in short, was one of the luckiest developments at this stage of Strauss’s career.

The first concert the youth from Munich conducted in Meiningen took place on October 18, 1885. It afforded him a chance to exploit his talents as pianist and batonist as well as composer, what with a program that included Beethoven’s Coriolanus Overture and Seventh Symphony, Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto and that F minor Symphony of his own which Theodore Thomas had conducted the previous year in New York. Strauss had every reason to be pleased with the outcome. Bülow speaking of his debut as pianist and conductor had referred to it as “geradezu verblüffend” (“simply stunning”); even the hard-shelled Brahms, who chanced to be on hand, had deigned to encourage him with a cordial “very nice, young man!” When on December 1 of that year Bülow gave up the orchestra’s leadership, Strauss inherited the post, conducted all concerts and had to direct, sometimes on the spur of the moment, almost anything this or that high placed personage might suddenly take a fancy to hear. With the courage of despair he repeatedly attempted compositions he hardly knew or had not directed publicly. Yet he never made a botch of the job, inwardly as he may have quaked.

* * *

To this period belongs a composition which has survived and at intervals turns up on our symphonic programs—the curious Burleske for piano and orchestra. The piece is something of a problem but it is one of the most yeasty and original products of its composer’s youth. It possesses a type of wit and bold humor worthy of the subsequent author of Till Eulenspiegel. If it still betrays Brahmsian influences some of those dialogues between piano and kettledrums depart sharply from the more flabby romantic effusions of the youth who still clung to the coat tails of Schumann, Mendelssohn and some lesser romantics. Rightly or wrongly the composer always harbored a dislike for the Burleske though when he created it his original instinct led him aright, if more or less unconsciously. Not till four years later did the pianist, Eugen d’Albert, give it a public hearing in Eisenach; at that, Strauss himself never brought himself to dignify the Burleske with an opus number and insisted he would not have consented to its publication but for his need of funds. Today the saucy little score seems more alive than certain other early efforts which were rather closer to their composer’s heart.

Meiningen had been a sort of stepping stone. Strongly against the advice of Hans von Bülow, who detested Munich from the depths of his being, Strauss, nevertheless, accepted a conductor’s post in his native city, where he had the advantage of continuing his stimulating contact with Alexander Ritter, who had followed him to the Bavarian capital. Yet he did not look forward to a Munich position with particular joy. Before entering on his duties he permitted himself a vacation in Naples and Sorrento. In Munich he found the Royal Court Theatre bogged down in a morass of routine. The musical direction of that establishment, though in the capable hands of Hermann Levi, was unfired by real enthusiasm, let alone true inspiration. The first of Strauss’s official assignments was the direction of Boieldieu’s opéra comique, Jean de Paris, and a quantity of similar old and harmless pieces. One promised duty which augured well was a production of Wagner’s boyhood opera, Die Feen. He would probably never have been promised anything so rewarding had not the conductor for whom it had been intended in the first place fallen ill. But even this unusual prize was in the end snatched from his grasp after he had presided over the rehearsals. At the last moment the direction of the Wagner curio was assigned to a certain Fischer. There was a managerial conference concerning the matter at which, we are told, “Strauss was like a lioness defending her young”; but the Intendant put a stop to the argument by announcing that “he disliked conducting in the Bülow style” and that, moreover, Strauss was becoming intolerable because of his high pretensions “for one of his youth and lack of experience!”

Meanwhile, the composer made the most of leisure he did not really want, by occupying himself with more or less creative work. One of his editorial feats of this period was a new stage version of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, manifestly inspired by Wagner’s treatment of the same master’s Iphigénie en Aulide. More important still was his first really large-scale work, Aus Italien, to which he gave the subtitle Symphonic Fantasy for large Orchestra. He had completed the score in 1886 and on March 2, 1887, he conducted it at the Munich Odeon. To his uncle Horburger he wrote an amusing account of the first performance at which, it appears, moderate applause followed the first three movements and violent hissing competed with handclappings. “There has been much ado here over the performance of my Fantasy” Strauss