When Arabella discovers the roses left by her suitor Matteo, the flutes and first violins let out a sigh, connecting in a very compact space the bliss of a Viennese waltz with the sense of an impending descent into chaos. Strauss creates this threatening atmosphere with third parallels containing the second voice of the melody. Third parallels are a popular tool for giving a melody a soft, sweet sound – but they also serve to stabilise the key, at least if the tones of the upper and lower voices come from the same diatonic basic scale. But Strauss doesn’t do that. Instead, he compactly transposes the lower voice with vastly different keys, giving the blissful third those morbid and brittle undertones that characterise the opera as a whole.

Dr. Takts Notizen zu Strauss' „Arabella“