Metamorphosen

Metamorphosen
study for 23 solo strings by Richard Strauss
Strauss in July 1945, picture taken by US Army Special Film Project 186.
Catalogue	TrV 290
Composed	12 April 1945.
Dedication	Paul Sacher
Scoring	10 violins, 5 violas, 5 cellos, and 3 double basses

Metamorphosen, study for 23 solo strings (TrV 290, AV 142) is a composition by Richard Strauss, scored for ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses. It was composed during the closing months of the Second World War, from August 1944 to March 1945. The piece was commissioned by Paul Sacher, the founder and director of the Basler Kammerorchester and Collegium Musicum Zürich, to whom Strauss dedicated it. It was first performed in 25 January 1946 by Sacher and the Collegium Musicum Zürich, with Strauss conducting the final rehearsal.

By 1944, Strauss' health was not good and he needed to visit the Swiss spa at Baden near Zurich. However, he was unable to get permission to travel abroad from the Nazi government. Karl Bohm, Paul Sacher and Willi Schuh came up with a plan to get the travel permit: a commission from Sacher and invitation to the premier in Zurich. The commission was made in a letter from Bohm on August 28, 1944 for a "suite for strings". Strauss replied that he had been working for some time on an adagio for 11 strings. In fact, in the early work on Metamorphosen he wrote for a septet (2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and a bass), later expanding it to 23 strings. The starting date for the score is given as 13 March 1945, which suggests that the destruction of the Vienna opera house the previous day gave Strauss the impetus to finish the work and draw together his previous sketches in just one month (finished on 12 April 1945).

As with his other late works, Strauss builds up the music from a series of small melodic ideas "which are the point of departure for the development of the entire composition". In this unfolding of ideas "Strauss applies here all of the rhetorical means developed over the centuries to express pain". However, Strauss also alternates passages in a major key expressing hope and optimism with passages of sadness, as in the finales of both Gustav Mahler's 6th Symphony and Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony. The overall structure of the piece is "a slow introduction, a quick central section, and a return to the initial slower tempo" which echoes the structure of Death and Transfiguration.