g that was the life of
Torquato Tasso is outward enough. And even "Mazeppa," in which Liszt's
virtuosic genius stood him in good stead, makes one feel as though
Liszt could never quite keep his eye on the fact, and finally became
engrossed in the weaving of a musical pattern fairly extraneous to his
idea. The "Faust Symphony" is, after all, an exception. Berlioz, too,
failed on the whole to achieve the musical novel. Whenever he did attain
musical form, it was generally at the expense of his program. Are the
somewhat picturesque episodes of "Harold in Italy," whatever their
virtues, and they are many, more than vaguely related to the Byronism
that ostensibly elemented them? The surprisingly conventional overture
to "King Lear" makes one feel as though Berlioz had sat through a
performance of one of Shakespeare's comedies under the impression that
he was assisting at the tragedy, so unrelated to its subject is the
music. And where, on the other hand, Berlioz did succeed in being
regardful of his program, as in the "Symphonic Fantastique," or in
"Lelio," there resulted a somewhat thin and formless music.

But Strauss, benefiting by the experiments of his two predecessors,
realized the new form better than any one before him had done. For he
possessed the special gifts necessary to the performance of the task. He
possessed, in the first place, a miraculous power of musical
characterization. Through the representative nicety of his themes,
through his inordinate capacity for thematic variation and
transformation, his playful and witty and colorful instrumentation,
Strauss was able to impart to his music a concreteness and
descriptiveness and realism hitherto unknown to symphonic art, to
characterize briefly, sparingly, justly, a personage, a situation, an
event. He could be pathetic, ironic, playful, mordant, musing, at will.
He was sure in his tone, was low-German in "Till Eulenspiegel," courtly
and brilliant in "Don Juan," noble and bitterly sarcastic in "Don
Quixote," childlike in "Tod und Verklaerung." His orchestra was able to
accommodate itself to all the folds and curves of his elaborate
programs, to find equivalents for individual traits. It is not simply "a
man," or even "an amatory hero" that is portrayed in "Don Juan." It is
no vague symbol for the poet of the sort created by "Orpheus" or "Tasso"
or "Mazeppa." It is Lenau's hero himself, the particular being Don Juan
Tenorio. The vibrant, brilliant music of the u