Richard Strauss
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Richard Strauss (June 11, 1864 – September 8, 1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic era, particularly noted for his tone poems and operas. He was also a noted conductor.
His 1896 composition Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) is well known today for its use in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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History
Early life
He was born on June 11, 1864 in Munich, Germany (then the Kingdom of Bavaria), the son of Franz Strauss, who was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. He received a thorough, but conservative, musical education from his father in his youth, writing his first music at the age of six; he was to write music almost continuously between then and his death almost eighty years later.
During his boyhood he had the good fortune to be able to attend orchestra rehearsals of the Munich Court Orchestra, and he also received private instruction in music theory and orchestration from an assistant conductor there. In 1874 Strauss heard his first Wagner operas, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Siegfried; the influence of Wagner's music on Strauss's style was to be profound, but at first his father forbade him to study it: it was not until the age of 16 that he was able to obtain a score of Tristan und Isolde. Indeed, in the Strauss household the music of Richard Wagner was considered inferior. Later in life, Richard Strauss said and wrote that he deeply regretted this.
In 1882 he entered Munich University, where he studied philosophy and art history—not music—however he left a year later to go to Berlin. There he studied briefly before securing a post as assistant conductor to Hans von Bülow taking over from him at Munich when he resigned in 1885. His compositions around this time were quite conservative, in the style of Robert Schumann or Felix Mendelssohn, true to his father's teachings. His Horn Concerto No. 1 (1882–1883) is representative of this period and is still regularly played. Strauss's style began to change when he met Alexander Ritter, a noted composer and violinist, and the husband of one of Richard Wagner's nieces. It was Ritter who persuaded Strauss to abandon the conservative style of his youth, and begin writing tone poems; he also introduced Strauss to the essays of Richard Wagner and the writings of Schopenhauer. Strauss went on to conduct one of Ritter's operas, and later Ritter wrote a poem based on Strauss's own Tod und Verklärung.
Richard Strauss married soprano singer Pauline Maria de Ahna on September 10, 1894. The marriage was happy, and she was a great source of inspiration to him. Throughout his life, from his earliest songs to the final Four Last Songs of 1948, he always preferred the soprano voice above all others.
Tone poems
This newly found interest resulted in what is widely regarded as Strauss' first piece to show his mature personality, the tone poem Don Juan. When this was premiered in 1889, half of the audience cheered while the other half booed. Strauss knew he had found his own musical voice, saying "I now comfort myself with the knowledge that I am on the road I want to take, fully conscious that there never has been an artist not considered crazy by thousands of his fellow men." Strauss went on to write a series of other tone poems, including Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration, 1888–89), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, 1894–95), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1896, well known today for its use in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey), Don Quixote (1897), Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life, 1897–98), Symphonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony 1902–03) and Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony1911–15)
Opera
Around the end of the 19th century, Strauss turned his attention to opera. His first two attempts in the genre, Guntram in 1894 and Feuersnot in 1901 were critical failures. However, in 1905 he produced Salome (based on the play by Oscar Wilde), and the reaction was as passionate and extreme as it had been with Don Juan. When it opened at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, there was such a public outcry that it was closed after just one performance. Doubtless, much of this was due to the subject matter, however some of the negative reactions may have stemmed from Strauss's use of dissonance, rarely heard then at the opera house. Elsewhere the opera was highly successful and Richard Strauss financed his house in Garmisch-Partenkirchen completely from the revenues generated by the opera.
Strauss' next opera was Elektra, which took his use of dissonance even further. It was also the first opera in which Strauss collaborated with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The two would work together on numerous other occasions. For these later works, however, Strauss moderated his harmonic language somewhat, with the result that works such as Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose, 1910) were great public successes. Strauss continued to produce operas at regular intervals until 1940. These included Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1918), Intermezzo (1923), Die ägyptische Helena (1927), and Arabella (1932), all in collaboration with Hofmannsthal; and Die schweigsame Frau (1934), with Stefan Zweig as librettist; Friedenstag (1936) and Daphne (1937) (libretto by Joseph Gregor and Zweig); Die Liebe der Danae (1940) (with Gregor) and Capriccio (libretto by Clemens Krauss) (1941).
Solo Works
Strauss wrote a good number of solo works. The best-known are his two horn concerti which are still part of the standard repetoire of most performing solo hornists. There are also his concerto for violin, his concerto for oboe, and his duet concertino for bassoon and clarinet. In this last, there is an extra-musical plot, where the clarinet represents a princess while the bassoon a bear who is trying to dance with her. Eventually, they dance and the bear turns into a prince.
Strauss and the Nazis
There is much controversy surrounding Strauss' role in Germany after the Nazi Party came to power. Some say that he was constantly apolitical, and never cooperated with the Nazis completely. Others point out that he was an official of the Third Reich.
In November 1933, without any consultation with Strauss, Goebbels appointed him to the post of president of the Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau. Strauss decided to keep his post but to remain apolitical, a decision which has been criticized as naïve, but perhaps the most sensible one considering the circumstances. While in this position he wrote and conducted the Olympic Hymn for the 1936 Olympics, and also befriended some highly-ranked Nazis. Evidently his intent was to protect his daughter-in-law Alice, who was Jewish, from persecution. In 1935, Strauss was forced to resign his position as Reichsmusikkammer president, after refusing to remove from the playbill for Die schweigsame Frau the name of the Jewish librettist, his friend Stefan Zweig. He had written Zweig a supportive letter, insulting to the Nazis, which was intercepted by the Gestapo.
His decision to produce Friedenstag in 1938, a one-act opera set in a besieged fortress during the Thirty Years War – essentially a hymn to peace and a thinly veiled criticism of the Third Reich--during a time when an entire nation was preparing for war, has been seen as extraordinarily brave. With its contrasts between freedom and enslavement, war and peace, light and dark, this work has been considered more related to Fidelio than to any of Strauss's other recent operas. Production ceased on the outbreak of war in 1939.
When his daughter-in-law Alice was placed under house arrest in Garmisch in 1938, Strauss used his connections in Berlin, for example the Berlin Intendant Heinz Tietjen, to secure her safety; in addition, there are also suggestions that he attempted to use his official position to protect other Jewish friends and colleagues. Unfortunately Struass left no specific records or commentary regarding his feeling about Nazi Anti-Semitism, so most of the reconstruction of his motivations during the period are conjectural. While most of his actions during the 1930s were midway between outright collaboration and dissidence, it was only in his music that the dissident streak was, in retrospect, more obvious, such as in the pacifist drama Friedenstag.
In 1942 Strauss moved with his family back to Vienna, where Alice and her children could be protected by Baldur von Schirach, the Gauleiter of Vienna. Unfortunately even he was unable to protect Strauss's Jewish relatives completely; in early 1944, while Strauss was away, Alice and the composer's son were abducted by the Gestapo and imprisoned for two nights. Only Strauss's personal intervention at this point was able to save them, and he was able to take the two of them back to Garmisch, where they remained, under house arrest, until the end of the war.
The final years
In 1948, Strauss wrote his last work, Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) for soprano and orchestra. All his life he had produced lieder, but these are probably the best known. When compared to the work of younger composers, Strauss' harmonic and melodic language was looking somewhat old-fashioned by this time. Nevertheless, the songs have always been popular with audiences and performers.
Richard Strauss died on September 8, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany at the age of 85.
Note. Richard Strauss was not related to and should not be confused with Johann Strauss or his sons, the Viennese composers of popular waltzes. Nor should he be confused with the carillon engineer Richard Strauss.[1][2][3][4][5]
Sources
- Michael Kennedy, "Richard Strauss," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
- Bryan Gilliam: "Richard Strauss", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed August 19, 2005), (subscription access) (This article is very different from the one in the 1980 Grove; in particular, the analysis of Strauss's behavior during the Nazi period is more detailed.)
Selective Bibliography
- Del Mar, Norman (1962). Richard Strauss. London: Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 0214157350.
- Gilliam, Bryan (1999). The Life of Richard Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521578957.
- Kennedy, Michael (1999). Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521581737.
- Osborne, Charles (1991). The Complete Operas of Richard Strauss. New York City: Da Capo Press. ISBN 030680459X.
- Wilhelm, Kurt (1989). Richard Strauss: An Intimate Portrait. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500014590.
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