A Hero's Life, Op. 40 (German: Ein Heldenleben) is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898, and heralds the composer's more mature period in this genre. The piece is said to depict a hero fighting his enemies.
Read more about A Hero's Life: Structure and Analysis, Dedication and Performances, Instrumentation, Recordings
Famous quotes containing the words hero and/or life:
“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the “tough guy;” today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist—a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist—only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.”
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