A Forgotten Goethe Song by Richard Strauss

Extract

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Goethe's birth, we call to mind a little known Goethe song by Richard Strauss that does not appear in any of the Master's song collections. It is based on a poem from the Westöstlicher Divan. Goethe's homage in a Persian disguise to the Grand Duke Karl August, which was written in the early months of the year 1815, and was published under the title Schach Sedschan and His Equals in the Buch der Betrachtungen, was set to music by Richard Strauss on the 11th June, 1925—that is to say, on his 61st birthday. He intended this hymn-like canto for the presentation to Romain Rolland which Maxim Gorki, Georges Duhamel and Stefan Zweig were preparing and which as Liber Amicorum Romain Rolland under the editorship of Emile Roniger (Rotapfel-Verlag, Erlenbach-Zürich), appeared on the 60th birthday of the poet on 29th January, 1926. The song appeared in facsimile in that volume, but has never been otherwise published.