The Influence of Goethe on Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen (1945)

ABSTRACT While Germany was ravaged by war in winter 1944, Richard Strauss read the complete works of Goethe. During this period, he composed Metamorphosen, usually considered an elegy for Germanic culture with its quotation from Beethoven’s Eroica inscribed ‘In Memoriam’. Goethe’s influence on the work is far greater than hitherto realized. I argue that Strauss’s late choice of title invites a search for the conceptual content of the score. Close analysis of two poems by Goethe copied out in Strauss’s sketchbook, including a musical setting published here in full for the first time, reveals a ‘poetische Idee’ which unifies the multiple layers of meaning within the work. Relating Metamorphosen to its historical context, I interpret the work as a self-portrait of Strauss’s experience reading Goethe.