And the Mountain Sings

The Alpine Symphony is not like a normal symphony because it is 22 continuous sections of music. Strauss composed the symphony to match up with an experience of 11 hours spent climbing the mountain. It starts at twilight just before dawn to the following nightfall. It actually was the last symphonic poem written by Strauss based on an experience he had as a boy when he and some climbers lost their way heading up a mountain and were caught in a storm and soaked on the way down. It premiered on October 28th, 1915 in Berlin and first performed in the United States on April 27th 1916.

The first movement is Night. It opens with strings, horns, and lower woodwinds. Eventually every degree of the scale is heard at the same time representing the deep mysterious night of the mountain. Strauss amazes me as he communicates his surroundings through his poetic symphony. In the third movement, The Ascent, he starts the transition for the introduction into the main part of the piece. He presents two main themes that are reoccurring throughout the piece. The first is a marching theme full of dotted rhythms to suggest the physical act of climbing through the use of large upwards leap. The second was a pointed triumphant fanfare played by the brass which comes to represent the more rugged dangerous aspects of the climb.

Strauss even paints a picture in the movement called On Flowering Meadows through the use of pictorial-ism. He uses isolated points of color by the short notes in the winds, harps, and pizzicato in the violas to dot the landscape. I cannot think of a more talented composer who could write a symphony with such musical description.