French Horn Photo: CC0 Public Domain
In the summer of 1889 Strauss wrote that: "Beethoven's Eroica is so little beloved of our conductors, and is on this this account now only rarely performed, that to fulfil a pressing need I am composing a largish tone poem entitled Heldenleben, admittedly without a funeral march, but yet … with lots of horns, which are always a yardstick of heroism".
