Max Derrickson

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration)

With Richard Georg Strauss one finds music at the very height of the Romantic period:
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Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration, 1889) was written when Strauss was 25, and represents his earlier period of formal training and his fascination with the harmonies of Richard Wagner. Lush, romantic, and broad in scope, this symphonic poem (tone poem) depicts in detail the last moments of a dying man.

The timpani beats out a faint pulse rhythm that represents the dying man’s heart as he lies upon his death bed in great pain. The man muses upon the span of a life frustrated by
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