Excerpt from Overtones: A Book of Temperaments Richard Strauss, Parsifal, Verdi, Balzac, Flaubert, Nietzsche, and Turgnieff We are now far away from what is called euphony for euphony's sake; though it is, as in Bach's case, art for art with all the misused phrase implies. Intent upon realizing in tone his vision, the magnitude or validity of which we need not yet discuss, - Strauss allows no antique rubric of fugue or symphony to block his progress; even the symphonic poem, an in vention of Franz Liszt, proves too cumbersome for this new man of light and air and earth, whose imagination is at once sumptuous and barbaric. The picture must overflow the old frames. It must burn with an intense life. It must be true. As a man who crept before he walked, walked before he ran, Richard Strauss has the right to our sympathy. He was a won der-child he is one of the world's great condue tors; he wrote symphonies in the Brahms style during his studious youth; he composed a little literature of chamber music, piano pieces, a vio lin concerto, and many songs prior to the time when he faced the sun of Wagner and was un dazzled by its rays. He knew the scores of Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz, has imitated, and has forgotten them in the swirling torrential tides of his own strange temperament. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.