Richard Georg Strauss
(Born; Munich, 11 June 1864; Died; Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
8 Sept 1949). German composer. His father, a professional horn player, gave him a musical
grounding exclusively in the classics, and he composed copiously from the age of six. He
went briefly to university, but had no formal tuition in composition. He had several works
given in Munich, including a symphony, when he was 17, and the next year a wind serenade
in Dresden and a violin concerto in Vienna. At 20, a second symphony was given in New York
and he conducted the Meiningen Orchestra in a suite for wind. In 1885 he became conductor
of that orchestra, but soon left and visited Italy. He had been influenced by Lisztian and
Wagnerian thinking; one result was Aus Italien, which caused controversy on its
première in 1887. By then Strauss was a junior conductor at the Munich Opera.
Other tone poems followed: Macbeth, Don
Juan and Tod und Verklärung come from the late 1880s. It is Don Juan
that, with its orchestral brilliance, its formal command and its vivid evocation of
passionate ardour (he was in love with the singer Pauline von Ahna, his future wife),
shows his maturity and indeed virtuosity as a composer. With its première, at Weimar (he
had moved to a post at the opera house there), he was recognized as the leading
progressive composer in Germany. He was ill during 1891-3 but wrote his first opera, Guntram,
which was a modest success but a failure later in Munich. His conducting career developed;
he directed many major operas, including Wagner at Bayreuth, and returned to Munich in
1896 as chief conductor at the opera. To the late 1890s belong the witty and colourful Till
Eulenspiegel, a portrait of a disrespectful rogue with whom Strauss clearly had a good
deal of sympathy, the graphic yet also poetic and psychologically subtle Don Quixote
(cast respectively in rondo and variation forms) and Ein Heldenleben, 'a hero's
life', where Strauss himself is the hero and his adversaries the music critics. There is
more autobiography in the Symphonia domestica of 1903; he conducted its première
during his first visit to the USA, in 1904.
Strauss was now moving towards opera. His Feuersnot
was given in 1901; in 1904 Salome was begun, after Wilde's play. It was given at
Dresden the next year. Regarded as blasphemous and salacious, it ran into censorship
trouble but was given at 50 opera houses in the next two years. This and Elektra
(given in 1909) follow up the tone poems in their evocation of atmosphere and their
thematic structure; both deal with female obsessions of a disordered, macabre kind, with
violent climaxes involving gruesome deaths and impassioned dancing, with elements of
abnormal sexuality and corruption, exploiting the female voice pressed to dramatic
extremes.
Strauss did not pursue that path. After the
violence and dissonance of the previous operas, and their harsh psychological realism,
Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal turned to period comedy, set in the Vienna of
Maria Theresa, for Der Rosenkavalier; the score is no less rich in inner detail,
but it is applied to the evocation of tenderness, nostalgia and humour, helped by
sentimental Viennese waltzes. Again the female voice - but this time its radiance and
warmth - is exploited, in the three great roles of the Marschallin, Octavian and Sophie.
It was given at Dresden in 1911 with huge success and was soon produced in numerous other
opera houses. Strauss followed it with Ariadne auf Naxos, at first linked with a
Molière play, later revised as prologue (behind the scenes at a private theatre) and
opera, mixing commedia del'arte and classical tragedy to a delicate, chamber
orchestral accompaniment. The two versions were given in 1912 and (in Vienna) 1916.
Strauss had been conducting in Berlin, the court and opera orchestras, since 1908; in 1919
he took up a post as joint director of the Vienna Staatsoper, where his latest
collaboration with Hofmannsthal, Die Frau ohne Schatten, was given that year: a
work embodying much symbolism and psychology, opulently but finely scored, and regarded by
some as one of Strauss's noblest achievements. His busy, international conducting career
continued in the inter-war years; there were visits to North and South America as well as
to most parts of Europe in the 1920s, which also saw the premiEgrave;res of two more
operas, both at Dresden, the autobiographical, domestic comedy Intermezzo and Die
Ägyptische Helena. His last Hofmannsthal opera, Arabella, an appealing
re-creation of some of the atmosphere of Rosenkavalier, followed in 1933. Of his
remaining operas, Capriccio (1942), a 'conversation-piece' in a single act set in
the 18th century and dealing with the amorous and artistic rivalries of a poet and a
musician, is the most successful, with its witty, graceful, serene score.
During the 1930s Strauss, seeking a smooth and
quiet life, had allowed himself to accept - without facing up to their full import - the
circumstances created in Germany by the Nazis. For a time he was head of the State Music
Bureau and he once obligingly conducted at Bayreuth when Toscanini had withdrawn. But he
was frustrated at being unable to work with his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig
(Hofmannsthal had been part-Jewish), and he protected his Jewish daughter-in-law; during
the war years, when he mainly lived in Vienna, he and the Nazi authorities lived in no
more than mutual toleration. When Germany was defeated, and her opera houses destroyed,
Strauss wrote an intense lament, Metamorphosen, for 23 solo strings; this is one of
several products of a golden 'Indian summer', which include an oboe concerto and the Four
Last Songs, works in a ripe, mellow idiom, executed with a grace worthy of his beloved
Mozart. He died in his Garmisch home in 1949.
Operas Guntram (1894);
Feuersnot (1901); Salome (1905); Elektra (1909); Der Rosenkavalier (1911); Ariadne auf
Naxos (1912, rev. 1916); Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919); Intermezzo (1924); Die Ägyptische
Helena (1928); Arabella (1933); Die schweigsame Frau (1935); Friedenstag (1938); Daphne
(1938); Die Liebe der Danae (1940, perf. 1952); Capriccio (1942) Instrumental
music Aus Italien (1886); Don Juan (1888); Macbeth (1888); Tod und Verklärung
(1889); Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1895); Also sprach Zarathustra (1896) Ein
Heldenleben (1898); Don Quixote, vc, orch (1897); Symphonia domestica (1903); Eine
Alpensinfonie (1915); Metamorphosen, strs (1945); 2 hn concs. (1883, 1942); Ob Conc.
(1945); Circa; 50 other works; 15 chamber works; 30 pf works Vocal music
8 choral works with orchestra; Circa; 30 unacc. choral works; nearly 200 songs, including
Frühling, September, Beim Schlafengehen, Im Abendrot ['Four Last Songs'] (1948)
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