No Escaping Wagner: Arnold Whittall wonders if Bryan Gilliam doth protest too much in his efforts to distance Strauss from Wagner

Review of Bryan Gilliam, Rounding Wagner’s Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

July 2015, Volume 9, Number 2, 90–93.

Just as the ending of Parsifal – a sustained celebration of spiritual fulfilment – can stand for all that is most Wagnerian about Wagner, so the ending of Capriccio is the purest essence of Strauss; a wryly eloquent acknowledgement of an awkward, possibly insoluble social dilemma. So far, so incompatible. Yet both works deploy a richly chromatic tonality in which distinctions between consonance and dissonance remain fundamental: and the effect of both owes much to the purely orchestral reinforcement of melodic material that has established strong textual and expressive associations during the course of the preceding events. Strauss in 1941 was obviously very different in musical character and dramatic atmosphere from Wagner in 1882. Yet what other significant music was being written sixty years after Parsifal that could set up such profound affinities with Wagnerian precedent?