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During the fourteen years in which he worked on his First Symphony, Brahms was under a high pressure of expectation in the shadow cast by Beethoven, he was forced to take a compositionally convincing position both with respect to the dominant father figure as well as the InchNew German School.Inch Moreover, he saw himself associated with friends who pressed him for a first symphony. And, finally, in the 1850s the scrupulous, hard working but at times insecure Brahms suffered setbacks in at least two attempts to form a symphony out of already extensively developed compositional material. Among all these obstacles, Beethoven's InchmodelInch was undoubtedly the greatest. Concerning this, the following remarks by Brahms have come down to us he explained to his friend Carl Bargheer of Detmold InchIf one still attempts to write symphonies after Beethoven, then they have to look entirely different.Inch Some ten years later, after he had already composed a first version of the opening movement of his First Symphony, he admitted to the conductor Hermann Levi InchI will never compose a symphony! You have no idea how I feel when I always hear such a giant marching behind meInch - meaning Beethoven. Strauss' tone poem Death and Transfiguration Inchis an example of a poetic idea that was retrospectively assigned. Alexander Ritter, poet-musician in Meiningen also gave the new composition the title and program Ritter initially thought of the title InchSeraphic FantasyInch - thus a first hint of a metaphysical program - but then decided on InchDeath and TransfigurationInch. But that's not all Strauss had a poem by Ritters that existed in two versions preceded the printed score, combining music and poetry. This dedicated program came into being only after the composition had been completed - whether Strauss was creatively guided by a Inchpoetic ideaInch remains to be seen.
