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Rh night. Could Strauss have once more girded himself, once more summoned the faith, the energy, the fire that created those first grand pages that won a world to him, he would have been saved. But it was impossible. Something in him was dead for ever. And so, to us; who should have been his champions, his audiences, his work already seems old, part of the past even at its best, unreal except for a few of the fine symphonic works. And to us, who once thought to see in him the man of the new time, he seems only the brave sonorous trumpet-call that heralded a king who never put in his appearance, the glare that in the East lights the sky for an instant and seems to promise a new day, but extinguishes again. He is indeed the false dawn of modern music.