“The greatest technical master of the Orchestra, making of it a vibrating dynamic machine, a humming mountain of fire, Richard Strauss, by virtue of his musical imagination, is painter-poet and psychologist. He describes, comments and narrates in tones of jewelled brilliancy; his Orchestra flashes like a canvas of Monet,—the divided tones and the theory of complementary colors (over-tones) have their analogues in the manner with which Strauss intricately divides his various instrumental choirs: setting one group in opposition, or juxtaposition, to another; producing the most marvellous, unexpected effects by acoustical mirroring and transmutation of motives; and almost blinding the brain when the entire battery of reverberation and repercussion is invoked. If he can paint sunshine and imitate the bleating of sheep, he can also draw the full-length portrait of a man. This he proves with his _Don Quixote_, wherein the noble dreamer and his earthly squire are _heard_ in a series of adventures terminating with the death of the rueful knight—one of the most poignant pages in musical literature.”[82] Richard Strauss was born in Munich, in 1864. His father, Franz Strauss, was first horn-player in the Court Orchestra and could play almost every orchestral instrument. He was an extraordinary musician. Once when playing under Wagner’s _bâton_, the composer said to him: “Strauss, you can’t be such an anti-Wagnerite as I hear. You play my music so beautifully!” “What has that got to do with it?” the horn-player replied. Richard early showed his great genius. He played the piano at the age of four and began to compose at the age of six. While at school he had lessons on the piano and violin and studied composition. “My father kept me very strictly to the old masters,” says Strauss, “in whose compositions I had a thorough grounding. You cannot appreciate Wagner and the moderns unless you pass through a grounding in the Classics. Young composers bring me voluminous manuscripts for my opinion on their productions. In looking at them, I generally find that they want to begin where Wagner left off. I say to all such: ‘My good young man, go home and study the works of Bach, the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and when you have mastered these art works come to me again.’ Without thoroughly understanding the significance of the development from Haydn _via_ Mozart and Beethoven to Wagner, these young students cannot appreciate at their proper worth either the music of Wagner, or of his predecessors. ‘What an extraordinary thing for Richard Strauss to say,’ these young men remark; but I only give them the advice gained by my own experience.”