A Preliminary Study On Symphonic Poem "Don Quixote" And Methods To Represent Literary Images From The Conductor Perspective

Richard Georg Strauss was a great German composer of the late Romantic era,and Don Quixote is his sixth symphonic poem work.Don Quixote is a Spanish anti-chivalric novel by Miguel de Cervantes and was originally published in two parts,in 1605 and 1615.It is the first modern novel in the history of Western literature.From reading and interpreting the literary masterpiece to listening and annotating its symphonic poem,it only helps the audience to better understand the story,but also provides a clear learning path for music scholars,especially conductors.For music lovers,the interpretation of both the literary work and the symphonic poem allows them to better understand,comprehend and enjoy such artistic treasures.For orchestral conductors,it should be of certain significance to analyze the conducting gestures of this work.From the perspective of conducting,this paper will compare the musical art,movement by movement,to its literary form,and provide an analysis of the structure,materials and obvious or hidden clues both on the macroscopic and microscopic scales,in order to reveal how Richard Georg Strauss "tells the story" through an orchestra.It also embarks on the journey of exploring how to help the orchestra "perform a story" by combining literary images with orchestra techniques.This paper first briefly introduces the life of Cervantes and the story of the literary work Don Quixote,as well as the life of Richard Georg Strauss and the symphonic poem Don Quixote.It then provides work analysis on the symphonic poem,including the structure,form,harmony,orchestration and so on.Finally,from the perspective of conducting methodology,the author provides how to prepare this great masterpiece and how to suggest the actions of musical instruments via the conductor’s own hands to achieve the principal goal of character expression.Of course,the lessons contemporary students can draw from the spirit of Don Quixote is also mentioned in the end,and the process of a conductor’s exploration,research,analysis,and re-creation of a piece of work are thus explained.