The Hero’s Life is nearer the symphony in a formal sense than any of his newer works. It is his most robust composition. The conception is breath-catching, for it is a chant of the _Ego_, the tableau of Strauss’s soul exposed as objectively as Walt Whitman’s when he sang of his _Me_. The general outline of the work is colossal; it has no wavering contours, and is virile with a virility that shocks. It flouts the critics of the composer and shows a stupendous battle-piece, Tolstoyian in fury, duration, and breadth. Cacophony rules; yet is not a battle always cacophonous? The old-fashioned symbols of trumpet-blasts with ornamental passage-work are here rudely disclaimed; war is cruel, and this episode is repulsive in its aural cruelty. The ancient harmonic order will be indeed changed when such a tonal conflict is accepted by the rear-guard. Often we cannot hear the music because of the score. For the rest, there are apposite quotations from the composer’s earlier works, and the _coda_ is beautiful with its supreme peace, supreme absorption in Nirvana. This, then, has Richard Strauss accomplished: He has restored to instrumental music its rightful sovereignty; it need fear no longer the encroachment of music-drama, at best a bastard art. Enlarged, its eloquence enormously intensified, its capacity for rare, subtle beauty increased tenfold, the modern orchestra has been literally enfranchised by Strauss from the house of operatic bondage. He has revolutionized symphonic music by breaking down its formal barriers, and he has filled his tone-poems with a new and diverse _content_. In less than an hour he concentrates, relates, makes us see, feel, and hear more than could be seen, heard, or felt in a music-drama enduring six. His musical themes, _quâ_ themes, are not to be matched with Beethoven’s, his melodic invention deviates from the classic prettiness; yet because of his incomparable architectonics, of his majestic grip on the emotional, he keeps us hypnotized as his stately, fantastic tonal structures slowly uprise and unfold like many-colored smoke from the incantations of legendary Eastern genii. He absorbs absolutely our consciousness with a new quintessence of poetic, pictorial, sculptural, and metaphysical art. Music, unaided by words or theatric device,—for the compositions of Strauss may be enjoyed without their titles,—has never been so articulate, so dangerously definite, so insidiously cerebral. Madness may lie that way; but the flaming magic of the man is ever restrained by deep artistic reverence. We catch glimpses of vast vistas where dissonance is king; slow, iron twilights in which trail the enigmatic figures of another world; there are often more moons than one in the blood-red skies of his icy landscapes; yet the sacred boundaries of music are never overstepped. Little matters the niche awarded this composer by posterity—Richard Strauss is the musical enchanter of our day. IV