Don Juan
14 min
Recording
- Acoustic recording · four disc sidesSymphony Orchestra (Gramophone Company), Albert Coates · 28 April and 5 May 192214:09
Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan, Op. 20, opens with a rising figure in the violins in E major and ends in E minor. Albert Coates conducted this acoustic recording in 1922. It was first issued on four sides of two records.
Listening notes · joins
- Opening flourish and violin theme
A flourish opens Don Juan in E major. The violins’ theme climbs in long, accented strides, with quick notes running between them.
- Lenau extracts printed with the score
Strauss printed three extracts from Nikolaus Lenau’s verse drama before the score. In them Don Juan pursues a love that no single encounter can satisfy. The last extract describes the world around him as empty and dark.
- Padua and first sketches, 1888
Strauss later recalled that the first themes came to him in Padua, in the cloister of Sant’Antonio, during a holiday in May 1888. His sketches show that he had begun months earlier. On his twenty-fourth birthday, 11 June, he told his uncle that he had “drafted a single-movement Don Juan”.
- First love scene, solo violin
The first love scene opens with a solo violin. The melody then passes through the orchestra and expands, until Don Juan’s upward-rushing theme interrupts it.
- Letter to his father, 1889
At the Weimar rehearsals the horn and trumpet players blew themselves “blue in the face”. Strauss told his father so on 8 November 1889, delighted with the sound. Three days later he conducted the première.
- Hans von Bülow, 1888–1890
In 1888 Hans von Bülow, Strauss’s mentor, rejected Macbeth, and Strauss wrote that Don Juan might soon join it in his desk. Bülow heard Don Juan with an orchestra at a Berlin rehearsal in January 1890 and sent Strauss a card praising the “magnificent” work.
- Victor 55176 and 55177
Coates’s performance was issued on two twelve-inch, 78 rpm Victor records, numbered 55176 and 55177. The music took four sides. At home, a listener had to lift the needle and turn the disc, then change to the second record.
- Completion of the score, 1888
On the last page of his score Strauss wrote: “begun in the middle of June, completed 30 September 1888”. It was his second tone poem, and he was twenty-four. Neither it nor Macbeth had yet been performed, and the first performance was more than a year away.
- Oboe melody with muted strings
A serenade in the lower strings and answering phrases in the flute lead to a long melody for the oboe. Strauss accompanies it with muted strings.
- Dedication to Ludwig Thuille, 1889
Strauss dedicated Don Juan to Ludwig Thuille, who received the score in July 1889. Strauss dedicated each of his first four tone poems to a member of the Munich circle around Alexander Ritter. Macbeth went to Ritter, Don Juan to Thuille, Death and Transfiguration to Friedrich Rösch and Till Eulenspiegel to Arthur Seidl.
- First performance, Weimar, 1889
Strauss conducted the première on 11 November 1889, two months after taking up his post at Weimar. He told his father that it “sounded enchanting” and had won a storm of applause nearly unheard of in Weimar. The Musikalisches Wochenblatt reported three curtain calls.
- Horn theme in unison
Four horns play a broad theme in unison. In the development it is combined with the opening theme, while quick figures run around the longer melodic lines. The horn theme returns at the final climax.
- Hanslick’s review, Vienna, 1892
In January 1892 Eduard Hanslick reviewed the Vienna Philharmonic’s Don Juan in the Neue Freie Presse. Of the younger composers he wrote: “Colour is everything to them, musical thought nothing,” He said young Wagnerians recalled the piece with a “voluptuous shiver”, and called it “a tumult of dazzling blots of colour”.
- The “hangover passage”, bars 447–457
Strauss called this the “hangover passage” in a letter to his father of 8 November 1889. In bars 447–457 the harp plays trembling chords (bisbigliando). The violas and second violins play sul ponticello, close to the bridge.
- Recapitulation in E major
The main theme returns in E major, with the violins climbing again. The horn call returns and joins the final drive. The music continues past the point of a triumphant ending, towards the sudden break.
- Recording at Hayes, 1922
The orchestra was the Gramophone Company’s own Symphony Orchestra. Albert Coates conducted it in Room 1 of the company’s studio at Hayes, Middlesex, where the first part was made on 28 April 1922, and take three was kept. Victor issued the set in America as 55176–77.
- Coda in E minor
A sudden silence stops the music. A dissonant trumpet note sounds over a wind chord, and the violins play tremolando beneath it. E major turns to E minor for the close.
Joins
- Solo violin leads to the love theme
An expressive melody first breaks into the rush at fortissimo. The orchestra then thins out for a solo violin, whose phrases prepare the full statement of that melody. The first love theme is then stated in full and expanded by the orchestra.
- Viola and cello serenade to oboe
The upward-rushing theme interrupts the first love scene. In the next section violas and cellos begin a serenade, and the flute follows. The oboe then takes over the long melody above muted strings, in bars 232–307.
- Oboe love scene to horn call
A broad unison call for four horns, marked sehr energisch, carries Don Juan away from the oboe’s love scene. In the development the call is paired with the opening theme, and quick orchestral figures surround these two large ideas.
- Harp bisbigliando and strings sul ponticello
Near the end of the development the driven middle section is followed by quiet recollections of the love music. In bars 447–457 Strauss writes bisbigliando chords for the harp, and the violas and second violins play sul ponticello, bowing close to the bridge. The remembered melodies sound above this thin accompaniment.
- The violins return to E major
The quiet recollections lead into the main theme in E major. The violins restore their upward leaps and the orchestra builds up behind them. The horn call returns later in the closing climax, so the work’s two most forceful themes both appear in its closing stretch.