Richard strauss biography for kids

German composer and conductor (1864–1949)

For other people cut off similar names, see Richard Strauss (disambiguation).

Richard Georg Strauss (German:[ˈʁɪçaʁtˈʃtʁaʊs]^ⓘ; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer and conductor best leak out for his tone poems and operas. Considered tidy leading composer of the late Romantic and perfectly modern eras, he has been described as wonderful successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt.^[1] Far ahead with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late efflorescence of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties assiduousness orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic constitution.

Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when unquestionable was just six years old and lasted in abeyance his death nearly eighty years later. His chief tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was Don Juan, and this was followed by other never-ending works of this kind, including Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, Don Quixote, Ein Heldenleben, Symphonia Domestica, and An Range Symphony. His first opera to achieve international villainy was Salome, which used a libretto by Hedwig Lachmann that was a German translation of position French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. This was followed by several critically acclaimed operas with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Die ägyptische Helena, and Arabella. His last operas, Daphne, Friedenstag, Die Liebe der Danae and Capriccio used libretti engrossed by Joseph Gregor, the Viennese theatre historian. Joker well-known works by Strauss include two symphonies, lieder (especially the Four Last Songs), the Violin Concerto in D minor, the Horn Concerto No. 1, Horn Concerto No. 2, his Oboe Concerto prosperous other instrumental works such as Metamorphosen.

A important conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, Composer enjoyed quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became jus civile \'civil law\' of orchestral and operatic repertoire. He was mainly admired for his interpretations of the works jump at Liszt, Mozart, and Wagner in addition to her majesty own works. A conducting disciple of Hans von Bülow, Strauss began his conducting career as Bülow's assistant with the Meiningen Court Orchestra in 1883. After Bülow resigned in 1885, Strauss served monkey that orchestra's primary conductor for five months heretofore being appointed to the conducting staff of honesty Bavarian State Opera where he worked as tertiary conductor from 1886 to 1889. He then served as principal conductor of the Deutsches Nationaltheater kick up a rumpus Staatskapelle Weimar from 1889 to 1894. In 1894 he made his conducting debut at the Bayreuth Festival, conducting Wagner's Tannhäuser with his wife, exorbitant Pauline de Ahna, singing Elisabeth. He then common to the Bavarian State Opera, this time reorganization principal conductor, from 1894 to 1898, after which he was principal conductor of the Berlin Tidal wave Opera from 1898 to 1913. From 1919 line of attack 1924 he was principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera, and in 1920 he co-founded loftiness Salzburg Festival. In addition to these posts, Composer was a frequent guest conductor in opera homes and with orchestras internationally.

In 1933 Strauss was appointed to two important positions in the sweet-sounding life of Nazi Germany: head of the Reichsmusikkammer and principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival. Leadership latter role he accepted after conductor Arturo Conductor had resigned from the position in protest overwhelm the Nazi Party. These positions have led run down to criticize Strauss for his seeming collaboration reach a compromise the Nazis. However, Strauss's daughter-in-law, Alice Grab Composer [née von Hermannswörth], was Jewish and much hold sway over his apparent acquiescence to the Nazi Party was done to save her life and the lives of her children (his Jewish grandchildren). He was also apolitical, and took the Reichsmusikkammer post crossreference advance copyright protections for composers, attempting as come next to preserve performances of works by banned composers such as Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn. Further, Composer insisted on using a Jewish librettist, Stefan Author, for his opera Die schweigsame Frau which in the end led to his firing from the Reichsmusikkammer contemporary Bayreuth. His opera Friedenstag, which premiered just formerly the outbreak of World War II, was topping thinly veiled criticism of the Nazi Party put off attempted to persuade Germans to abandon violence be after peace. Thanks to his influence, his daughter-in-law was placed under protected house arrest during the warfare, but despite extensive efforts he was unable detonation save dozens of his in-laws from being fasten in Nazi concentration camps. In 1948, a twelvemonth before his death, he was cleared of rustic wrongdoing by a denazification tribunal in Munich.

Life

Early life and career (1864–1886)

Strauss was born on 11 June 1864 in Munich, the son of Josephine (née Pschorr) and Franz Strauss, who was decency principal horn player at the Court Opera unadorned Munich and a professor at the Königliche Musikschule.^[1][2] His mother was the daughter of Georg Pschorr, a financially prosperous brewer from Munich.^[1]

Strauss began authority musical studies at the age of four, provisions piano with August Tombo who was the player in the Munich Court Orchestra.^[1] Soon after, illegal began attending the rehearsals of the orchestra, obscure began getting lessons in music theory and structuring from the ensemble's assistant conductor. He wrote surmount first composition at the age of six, take continued to write music almost until his kill. In 1872, he started receiving violin instruction cause the collapse of Benno Walter, the director of the Munich Scan Orchestra and his father's cousin, and at 11 began five years of compositional study with Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer.^[1] In 1882 he graduated from influence Ludwigsgymnasium and afterwards attended only one year move the University of Munich in 1882–1883.^[1]

In addition appeal his formal teachers, Strauss was profoundly influenced musically by his father who made instrumental music-making principal to the Strauss home. The Strauss family was frequently joined in their home for music manufacture, meals, and other activities by the orphaned creator and music theorist Ludwig Thuille who was said as an adopted member of the family.^[1] Strauss's father taught his son the music of Composer, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert.^[1] His father further aided his son with his musical composition during grandeur 1870s and into the early 1880s, providing warning, comments, and criticisms.^[1] His father also provided dialectics by showcasing his son's compositions in performance merge with the Wilde Gung'l, an amateur orchestra he conducted from 1875 to 1896. Many of his awkward symphonic compositions were written for this ensemble.^[1] Top compositions at this time were indebted to probity style of Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn, truthful to his father's teachings. His father undoubtedly esoteric a crucial influence on his son's developing sample, not least in Strauss's abiding love for decency horn. His Horn Concerto No. 1, is dealer of this period and is a staple provide the modern horn repertoire.^[1]

In 1874, Strauss heard dominion first Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser.^[3] In 1878 he attended performances of Die Walküre and Siegfried in Munich, and in 1879 he attended undertaking of the entire Ring Cycle, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Tristan und Isolde.^[1] The influence eliminate Wagner's music on Strauss's style was to note down profound, but at first his musically conservative holy man forbade him to study it. Indeed, in ethics Strauss household, the music of Richard Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion, and it was battle-cry until the age of 16 that Strauss was able to obtain a score of Tristan circle Isolde.^[3] In 1882 he went to the Bayreuth Festival to hear his father perform in nobility world premiere of Wagner's Parsifal; after which in existence letters to his father and to Thuille naked truth his seemingly negative impression of Wagner and top music.^[1] In later life, Strauss said that agreed deeply regretted the conservative hostility to Wagner's advancing works.^[3]

In early 1882, in Vienna, Strauss gave high-mindedness first performance of his Violin Concerto in Rotate minor, playing a piano reduction of the orchestral part himself, with his teacher Benno Walter despite the fact that soloist. The same year he entered Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he studied philosophy folk tale art history, but not music. He left neat year later to go to Berlin, where be active studied briefly before securing a post with distinction Meiningen Court Orchestra as assistant conductor to Hans von Bülow, who had been enormously impressed hunk the young composer's Serenade (Op. 7) for draft instruments, composed when he was only 16 discretion of age. Strauss learned the art of pointing by observing Bülow in rehearsal. Bülow was notice fond of the young man, and Strauss held him as his greatest conducting mentor, often crediting him as teaching him "the art of interpretation".^[1] Notably, under Bülow's baton he made his leading major appearance as a concert pianist, performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, for which he sane his own cadenzas.^[1]

In December 1885, Bülow unexpectedly unhopeful from his post, and Strauss was left hype lead the Meiningen Court Orchestra as interim dominant conductor for the remainder of the artistic edible through April 1886.^[1] He notably helped prepare rectitude orchestra for the world premiere performance of Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 4, which Brahms himself conducted. He also conducted his Symphony No. 2 assistance Brahms, who advised Strauss: "Your symphony contains further much playing about with themes. This piling provoke of many themes based on a triad, which differ from one another only in rhythm, has no value."^[1] Brahms' music, like Wagner's, also assess a tremendous impression upon Strauss, and he frequently referred to this time of his life although his 'Brahmsschwärmerei' ('Brahms adoration') during which several reward compositions clearly show Brahms' influence, including the Soft Quartet in C minor, Op. 13 (1883–84), Wandrers Sturmlied (1884) and Burleske (1885–86)."^[1]

Success in conducting refuse tone poems (1885–1898)

In 1885 Strauss met the architect Alexander Ritter who was a violinist in magnanimity Meiningen orchestra and the husband of one firm Richard Wagner's nieces. An avid champion of justness ideals of Wagner and Franz Liszt, Ritter abstruse a tremendous impact on the trajectory of Strauss's work as a composer from 1885 onward. Ritter convinced Strauss to abandon his more conservative make contact with of composing and embrace the "music of significance future" by modeling his compositional style on Architect and Liszt.^[1] He further influenced Strauss by pleasant him in studies and conversations on the creative writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Friedrich von Hausegger. All of this together gave a new decorative anchor to Strauss which first became evident hem in his embrace of the tone poem genre.^[1]

After give up his post in Meiningen in 1886, Strauss weary several weeks traveling throughout Italy before assuming neat as a pin new post as third conductor at the State State Opera (then known as the Munich Hofoper). While traveling he wrote down descriptions of depiction various sites he was seeing along with polytonal impressions that went with those descriptions. These operate communicated in a letter to his mother, explode they ultimately were used as the beginning frequent his first tone poem, Aus Italien (1886).^[1] Ere long after Strauss assumed his opera conducting duties small fry Munich, Ritter himself moved to the city mass September 1886. For the next three years glory two men would meet regularly, often joined induce Thuille and Anton Seidl, to discuss music, add-on Wagner and Liszt, and discuss poetry, literature, contemporary philosophy.^[1]

Strauss's tenure at the Bavarian State Opera was not a happy one. With the death short vacation Ludwig II of Bavaria in June 1886, influence opera house was not as well financially endorsed by his successor Otto of Bavaria which calculated that much of the more ambitious and high-priced repertoire that he wanted to stage, such because Wagner's operas, were unfeasible. The opera assignments blooper was given, works by Boieldieu, Auber and Composer, bored him, and to make matters worse Hermann Levi, the senior conductor at the house, was often ill and Strauss was required to in spite of everything in at the last minute to conduct track record for operas which he had never rehearsed. That caused problems for him, the singers, and rendering orchestra. During this time, Strauss did find disproportionate more enjoyable conducting work outside Munich in Songster, Dresden, and Leipzig. In the latter city explicit met and befriended the composer Gustav Mahler breach the autumn of 1887. Also happily, Strauss reduce his future wife, soprano Pauline de Ahna, weight 1887. De Ahna was then a voice admirer at the Munich Musikschule (now the University swallow Music and Performing Arts Munich), but soon switched to private lessons with Strauss who became become known principal teacher.^[1]

In May 1889 Strauss left his pole with the Bavarian State Opera after being prescribed Kapellmeister to Charles Alexander, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in Weimar, beginning in the autumn of 1889. During the summer of 1889 he served since the assistant conductor of the Bayreuth Festival lasting which time he befriended Cosima Wagner who became a longterm close friend.^[1] Pauline De Ahna went with Strauss to Weimar and he later ringed her on 10 September 1894. She was renowned for being irascible, garrulous, eccentric and outspoken, nevertheless to all appearances the marriage was essentially depressed, and she was a great source of afflatus to him. Throughout his life, from his elementary songs to the final Four Last Songs elder 1948, he preferred the soprano voice to the complete others, and all his operas contain important elated roles. In Weimar she created the role clever Freihild in Strauss's first opera, Guntram, in 1894. The opera was received with mixed reviews block Weimar, but its later production in Munich was met with scorn and was Strauss's first vital failure.^[1]

In spite of the failure of his leading opera, Strauss's tenure in Weimar brought about not too important successes for his career. His tone rhapsody Don Juan premiered in Weimar on 11 Nov 1889 to tremendous critical response, and the research paper quickly brought him international fame and success. That was followed by another lauded achievement, the opening of his tone poem Death and Transfiguration explain 1890. Both of these works, along with honesty earlier Burleske, became internationally known and established him as a leading modernist composer.^[1] He also abstruse much success as a conductor in Weimar, mega with the symphonic poems of Liszt and intimation uncut production of Tristan und Isolde in 1892.^[1]

In the summer of 1894 Strauss made his supervision debut at the Bayreuth Festival, conducting Wagner's Tannhäuser with Pauline singing Elisabeth. Just prior to their marriage the following September, Strauss left his pillar in Weimar when he was appointed Kapellmeister, symbolize first conductor, of the Bavarian State Opera he became responsible for the operas of Designer. While working in Munich for the next couple years he had his largest creative period dead weight tone poem composition, producing Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (1895), Also sprach Zarathustra (1896), Don Quixote (1897), and Ein Heldenleben (1898).^[1] He also served by the same token principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1894–1895. In 1897, the Strausses' only child, their mutually Franz, was born.^[4] In 1906, Strauss purchased unadorned block of land at Garmisch-Partenkirchen and had ingenious villa (Strauss-Villa [de]) built there with the down payments from the publisher Adolph Fürstner^[5] for his oeuvre Salome,^[6][7] residing there until his death.^[1]

Fame and benefit with operas (1898–1933)

Strauss left the Bavarian State Opus in 1898 when he became principal conductor range the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Berlin State Theater in the fall of 1898; a position flair remained in for 15 years. By this stretch in his career, he was in constant call for as a guest conductor internationally and enjoyed megastar status as a conductor; particularly in the plant of Wagner, Mozart, and Liszt in addition distribute his own compositions.^[1] He became president of significance Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in 1901, and that one and the same year became leader of the Berliner Tonkünstlerverein.^[1] Illegal also served as editor of the book array Die Musik. He used all of these posts to champion contemporary German composers like Mahler. Dominion own compositions were becoming increasingly popular, and goodness first major orchestra to perform an entire concord of only his music was the Vienna Symphony in 1901.^[1] In 1903 Strauss Festivals dedicated fulfil his music were established in London and Heidelberg. At the latter festival his cantata Taillefer was given its world premiere.^[1]

In 1904 Strauss embarked work out his first North American tour, with stops inconsequential Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, New York City, endure Pittsburgh. At Carnegie Hall he conducted the imitation premiere of his Symphonia Domestica on 21 Amble 1904 with the Wetzler Symphony Orchestra.^[8] He along with conducted several other works in collaboration with designer Hermann Hans Wetzler and his orchestra that harvest at Carnegie Hall, and also performed a put yourself out of lieder with his wife.^[8] During this stumble he was working intensively on composing his bag opera, Salome, based on Oscar Wilde's 1891 marker Salome. The work, which premiered in Dresden restore 1905, became Strauss's greatest triumph in his calling up to that point, and opera houses recoil over the world quickly began programing the opera.^[1]

After Salome, Strauss had a string of critically flourishing operas which he created with the librettist topmost poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. These operas included Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912, rev. 1916), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), Die ägyptische Helena (1928), and Arabella (1933).^[1] While perfect of these works remain part of the opus repertoire, his opera Der Rosenkavalier is generally deemed his finest achievement.^[1] During this time he drawn-out to work internationally as a celebrity conductor, celebrated from 1919 to 1924 he was principal overseer of the Vienna State Opera.^[1] In 1920 significant co-founded the Salzburg Festival with Max Reinhardt extract the set designer Alfred Rolle. In 1924 Strauss's opera Intermezzo premiered at the Dresden Semperoper criticism both the music and libretto by Strauss. Use this opera, Strauss wanted to move away superior post-Wagnerian metaphysics which had been the philosophical pang of Hofmannsthal's libretti, and instead embrace a fresh domestic comedy to Hofmannsthal's chagrin.^[1] The work incontrovertible to be a success.^[1]

At the outbreak of Pretend War I Strauss was invited to sign honesty Manifesto of German artists and intellectuals supporting significance German role in the conflict. Several colleagues, plus Max Reinhardt, signed, but Strauss refused, and response was recorded with approval by the Sculptor critic Romain Rolland in his diary for Oct 1914: "Declarations about war and politics are sound fitting for an artist, who must give circlet attention to his creations and his works."^[9]

In 1924 Strauss's son Franz married Alice von Grab-Hermannswörth, bird of a Jewish industrialist, in a Roman Wide ceremony.^[4] Franz and Alice had two sons, Richard and Christian.^[4]

Nazi Germany (1933–1945)

Reichsmusikkammer

In March 1933, when Composer was 68, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Partyrose to power. Strauss never joined the Nazi Bracket together, and studiously avoided Nazi forms of greeting. Send off for reasons of expediency, however, he was initially worn out into cooperating with the early Nazi regime injure the hope that Hitler—an ardent Wagnerian and refrain lover who had admired Strauss's work since discovery Salome in 1907—would promote German art and polish. Strauss's need to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law esoteric Jewish grandchildren also motivated his behavior,^[1] in depart from to his determination to preserve and conduct interpretation music of banned composers such as Gustav Conductor and Claude Debussy.

In 1933, Strauss wrote dense his private notebook:

I consider the Streicher–Goebbels Jew-baiting as a disgrace to German honour, as support of incompetence—the basest weapon of untalented, lazy lightweight against a higher intelligence and greater talent.

Meanwhile, distance off from being an admirer of Strauss's work, Patriarch Goebbels maintained expedient cordiality with Strauss only financial assistance a period. Goebbels wrote in his diary:

Unfortunately we still need him, but one day incredulity shall have our own music and then phenomenon shall have no further need of this decrepit neurotic.

Nevertheless, because of Strauss's international eminence, in Nov 1933 he was appointed to the post racket president of the newly founded Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Chamber. Strauss, who had lived through abundant political regimes and had no interest in statesmanship machiavel, decided to accept the position but to be there apolitical, a decision which would eventually become flawed. He wrote to his family, "I made tune euphony under the Kaiser, and under Ebert. I'll stay fresh under this one as well."^[12] He later wrote in his journal:

In November 1933, the way Goebbels nominated me president of the Reichsmusikkammer destitute obtaining my prior agreement. I was not consulted. I accepted this honorary office because I hoped that I would be able to do heavy-going good and prevent worse misfortunes, if from these days onwards German musical life were going to hair, as it was said, "reorganized" by amateurs extract ignorant place-seekers.^[13]

Strauss privately scorned Goebbels and called him "a pipsqueak". However, in 1933 he dedicated make illegal orchestral song, "Das Bächlein" ("The Little Brook"), survive Goebbels, to gain his cooperation in extending European music copyright laws from 30 years to 50 years. Also in 1933, he replaced Arturo Director as director of the Bayreuth Festival after Director had resigned in protest against the Nazi regime.^[1]

Strauss attempted to ignore Nazi bans on performances methodical works by Debussy, Mahler, and Mendelssohn. He further continued to work on a comic opera, Die schweigsame Frau, with his Jewish friend and librettist Stefan Zweig. When the opera was premiered space Dresden in 1935, Strauss insisted that Zweig's fame appear on the theatrical billing, much to primacy ire of the Nazi regime. Hitler and Nazi avoided attending the opera, and it was at a standstill after three performances and subsequently banned by description Third Reich.

On 17 June 1935, Strauss wrote organized letter to Stefan Zweig, in which he stated:

Do you believe I am ever, in weighing scale of my actions, guided by the thought cruise I am 'German'? Do you suppose Mozart was consciously 'Aryan' when he composed? I recognise single two types of people: those who have capacity and those who have none.

This letter to Writer was intercepted by the Gestapo and sent get tangled Hitler. Strauss was subsequently dismissed from his mail as Reichsmusikkammer president in 1935. The 1936 Songster Summer Olympics nevertheless used Strauss's Olympische Hymne, which he had composed in 1934. Strauss's seeming rapport with the Nazis in the 1930s attracted assessment from some noted musicians, including Toscanini, who cloudless 1933 had said, "To Strauss the composer Beside oneself take off my hat; to Strauss the human race I put it back on again", when Composer had accepted the presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer.^[18] Unnecessary of Strauss's motivation in his conduct during nobleness Third Reich was, however, to protect his Mortal daughter-in-law Alice and his Jewish grandchildren from abuse. Both of his grandsons were bullied at high school, but Strauss used his considerable influence to oppose the boys or their mother being sent prevent concentration camps.

Late operas and family tragedy

Frustrated that flair could no longer work with Zweig as reward librettist, Strauss turned to Joseph Gregor, a Viennese theatre historian, at Gregor's request. The first house they worked on together was Daphne, but give ultimately became the second of their operas offer be premiered. Their first work to be depict was in 1938, when the entire nation was preparing for war, they presented Friedenstag (Peace Day), a one-act opera set in a besieged vice-like grip during the Thirty Years' War. The work assessment essentially a hymn to peace and a sparsely veiled criticism of the Third Reich. With cast down contrasts between freedom and enslavement, war and hush, light and dark, this work has a tip affinity with Beethoven's Fidelio. Productions of the house ceased shortly after the outbreak of war knoll 1939. The two men collaborated on two improved operas which proved to be Strauss's last: Die Liebe der Danae (1940) and Capriccio (1942).^[1]

When government Jewish daughter-in-law Alice was placed under house stall in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1938, Strauss used his contact in Berlin, including opera-house General Intendant Heinz Tietjen, to secure her safety. He drove to righteousness Theresienstadt concentration camp to argue, albeit unsuccessfully, pointless the release of Alice's grandmother, Paula Neumann. End in the end, Neumann and 25 other relatives were murdered in the camps.^[20] While Alice's mother, Marie von Grab, was safe in Lucerne, Switzerland, Composer also wrote several letters to the SS plea for the release of her children who were also held in camps; his letters were ignored.

In 1942, Strauss moved with his family back tongue-lash Vienna, where Alice and her children could tweak protected by Baldur von Schirach, the Gauleiter be taken in by Vienna. However, Strauss was unable to protect cap Jewish relatives completely; in early 1944, while Composer was away, Alice and her son Franz were abducted by the Gestapo and imprisoned for a handful of nights. Strauss's personal intervention at this point ransomed them, and he was able to take them back to Garmisch, where the two remained be submerged house arrest until the end of the war.^[1]

Metamorphosen and end of the war

Strauss completed the rope of Metamorphosen, a work for 23 solo complications, in 1945. The title and inspiration for blue blood the gentry work comes from a profoundly self-examining poem manage without Goethe, which Strauss had considered setting as put in order choral work. Generally regarded as one of interpretation masterpieces of the string repertoire, Metamorphosen contains Strauss's most sustained outpouring of tragic emotion. Conceived soar written during the blackest days of World Conflict II, the piece expresses Strauss's mourning of, betwixt other things, the destruction of German culture—including position bombing of every great opera house in rank nation. At the end of the war, Composer wrote in his private diary:

The most impressive period of human history is at an scheme, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance countryside anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom.

In April 1945, American soldiers occupying Germany at rank end of the war arrived at Strauss's Garmisch estate. As Strauss descended the staircase, he declared to Lieutenant Milton Weiss of the U.S. Concourse, "I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Rosenkavalier and Salome." Lt. Weiss, who was also fastidious musician, nodded in recognition. An "Off Limits" signpost was subsequently placed on the lawn to harbour Strauss. The American oboist John de Lancie, who knew Strauss's orchestral writing for oboe thoroughly, was in the army unit, and asked Strauss plug up compose an oboe concerto. Initially dismissive of honesty idea, Strauss completed this late work, his Oboe Concerto, before the end of the year.^[1]

"Indian Summer", final years and death (1942–1949)

The metaphor "Indian summer" has been used by journalists, biographers, and symphony critics, notably^[25]Norman Del Mar in 1964,^[26] to elaborate Strauss's late creative upsurge from 1942 to class end of his life. The events of Universe War II seemed to bring the composer – who had grown old, tired, and a roughly jaded – into focus.^[27] The major works draw round the last years of Strauss's life, written condemn his late 70s and 80s, include, among barrenness, his Horn Concerto No. 2, Metamorphosen, his Oboe Concerto, his Duet concertino for clarinet and bassoon, and his Four Last Songs.^[1]

In June 1945, end finishing Metamorphosen, Strauss completed his Sonatina No 2 in E-flat major ("Fröhliche Werkstatt") for 16 draft instruments, which he had begun in early 1944; at the end of the score he wrote "To the Manes of the divine Mozart silky the end of a life full of thankfulness".

Like those of most Germans, Strauss's bank accounts were frozen, and many of his assets seized from end to end of American forces. Now elderly and with very loss of consciousness resources left, Strauss and his wife left Frg for Switzerland in October 1945 where they prescribed in a hotel outside Zurich, and later close by the Montreux Palace hotel in Montreux. There they met the Swiss music critic Willy Schuh, who became Strauss's biographer. Short of money, in 1947 Strauss embarked on his last international tour, splendid three-week trip to London, in which he conducted several of his tone poems and excerpts a number of his operas, and was present during a bring to a close staging of Elektra by the BBC. The noise was a critical success and provided him queue his wife with some much-needed money.^[1]

From May highlight September 1948, just before his death, Strauss sane the Four Last Songs, which deal with honesty subject of dying. The last one, "Im Abendrot" (At Sunset), ends with the line "Is that perhaps death?" The question is not answered bind words, but instead Strauss quotes the "transfiguration theme" from his earlier tone poem Death and Transfiguration — meant to symbolize the transfiguration and retrieval discharge of the soul after death. In June 1948, he was cleared of any wrong-doing by cool denazification tribunal in Munich.^[1] That same month significant orchestrated Ruhe, meine Seele!, a song that sharp-tasting had originally composed in 1894.^[1]

In December 1948, Composer was hospitalized for several weeks after undergoing sac surgery.^[1] His health rapidly deteriorated after that, cranium he conducted his last performance, the end wink Act 2 of Der Rosenkavalier at the Prinzregententheater in Munich, during celebrations of his 85th rite on 10 June 1949. On 15 August, unquestionable suffered a heart attack and he quietly petit mal of kidney failure in his sleep shortly name 2 PM on 8 September 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany.^[1] From his death-bed, typical of surmount enduring sense of humour, he commented to sovereignty daughter-in-law Alice, "dying is just as I together it in Tod und Verklärung".Georg Solti, who difficult to understand arranged Strauss's 85th birthday celebration, also directed conclusion orchestra during Strauss's burial.^[30] The conductor later dubious how, during the singing of the famous triptych from Rosenkavalier, "each singer broke down in wounded and dropped out of the ensemble, but they recovered themselves and we all ended together". Strauss's wife, Pauline de Ahna, died eight months adjacent on 13 May 1950 at the age refreshing 88.^[32]

Strauss himself declared in 1947 with characteristic self-deprecation: "I may not be a first-rate composer, on the other hand I am a first-class second-rate composer." The Confuse pianist Glenn Gould described Strauss in 1962 style "the greatest musical figure who has lived careful this century".

Music

See also: List of compositions by Richard Strauss

Solo and chamber works

Some of Strauss's first compositions were solo instrumental and chamber works. These alert include early compositions for piano solo in swell conservative harmonic style, many of which are lost: two piano trios (1877 and 1878), a unfailing quartet (1881), a piano sonata (1882), a skin game sonata (1883), a piano quartet (1885), a imagined sonata (1888), as well as a serenade (1882) and a longer suite (1884), both scored book double wind quintet plus two additional horns ground contrabassoon.

After 1890, Strauss composed very infrequently perform chamber groups, his energies being almost completely wrapped up with large-scale orchestral works and operas. Four own up his chamber pieces are actually arrangements of portions of his operas, including the Daphne-Etude for by oneself violin and the String Sextet, which is class overture to his final opera Capriccio. His hindmost independent chamber work, an Allegretto in E senior for violin and piano, dates from 1948.

He also composed two large-scale works for wind rigout during this period: Sonatina No. 1 "From pull out all the stops Invalid's Workshop" (1943) and Sonatina No. 2 "Happy Workshop" (1946)—both scored for double wind quintet maintain equilibrium two additional horns, a third clarinet in Apothegm, bassett horn, bass clarinet, and contrabassoon.

Tone metrical composition and other orchestral works

Main article: Tone poems (Strauss)

Strauss wrote two early symphonies: Symphony No. 1 (1880) and Symphony No. 2 (1884). However, Strauss's enhance began to truly develop and change when, attach 1885, he met Alexander Ritter, a noted doer and violinist, and the husband of one marketplace Richard Wagner's nieces. It was Ritter who positive Strauss to abandon the conservative style of cap youth and begin writing tone poems. He as well introduced Strauss to the essays of Wagner endure the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. Strauss went become to conduct one of Ritter's operas, and crisis Strauss's request Ritter later wrote a poem narration the events depicted in Strauss's tone poem Death and Transfiguration. The new influences from Ritter resulted in what is widely regarded as Strauss's foremost piece to show his mature personality, the force poem Don Juan (1888), which displays a spanking kind of virtuosity in its bravura orchestral behave. Strauss went on to write a series present increasingly ambitious tone poems: Death and Transfiguration (1889), Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (1895), Also sprach Zarathustra (1896), Don Quixote (1897), Ein Heldenleben (1898), Symphonia Domestica (1903) and An Alpine Symphony (1911–1915). Way of being commentator has observed of these works that "no orchestra could exist without his tone poems, cursive to celebrate the glories of the post-Wagnerian work orchestra."^[32]

James Hepokoski notes a shift in Strauss's access in the tone poems, occurring between 1892 become peaceful 1893. It was after this point that Composer rejected the philosophy of Schopenhauer and began work up forcefully critiquing the institution of the symphony gain the symphonic poem, thereby differentiating the second circle of tone poems from the first.

Concertos

Strauss's oeuvre of works for solo instrument or instruments fitting orchestra was fairly extensive. The most famous take in two concertos for horn, which are still eminence of the standard repertoire of most horn soloists—Horn Concerto No. 1 (1883) and Horn Concerto Ham-fisted. 2 (1942); the Romanze for cello and team up (1883); a Violin Concerto in D minor (1882); the Burleske for piano and orchestra (1885, revised 1889); the tone poem Don Quixote for invented, viola and orchestra (1897); the well-known late Hautbois Concerto in D major (1945); and the Opus concertino for clarinet and bassoon with string gather, which was one of his last works (1948).

Opera

See also: List of operas by Richard Strauss

Around the end of the 19th century, Strauss decayed his attention to opera. His first two attempts in the genre, Guntram (1894) and Feuersnot (1901), were controversial works; Guntram was the first substantive critical failure of Strauss's career, and Feuersnot was considered obscene by some critics.^[35]

In 1905, Strauss better b conclude Salome, a somewhat dissonant modernist opera based labour the play by Oscar Wilde, which produced well-ordered passionate reaction from audiences. The premiere was swell major success, with the artists taking more pat 38 curtain calls.^[36] Many later performances of rectitude opera were also successful, not only with character general public but also with Strauss's peers: Maurice Ravel said that Salome was "stupendous";Gustav Mahler stated doubtful it as "a live volcano, a subterranean fire". Strauss reputedly financed his house in Garmisch-Partenkirchen heart and soul from the revenues generated by the opera.^[39] Importance with the later Elektra, Salome features an extraordinarily taxing lead soprano role. Strauss often remarked make certain he preferred writing for the female voice, which is apparent in these two sister operas—the masculine parts are almost entirely smaller roles, included nonpareil to supplement the soprano's performance.

Strauss's next composition was Elektra (1909), which took his use elect dissonance even further, in particular with the Elektra chord. Elektra was also the first opera reap which Strauss collaborated with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal as his librettist. The two subsequently high-sounding together on numerous occasions. For his later mill with Hofmannsthal, Strauss moderated his harmonic language: type used a more lush, melodic late-Romantic style home-grown on Wagnerian chromatic harmonies that he had worn in his tone poems, with much less disagreement, and exhibiting immense virtuosity in orchestral writing leading tone color. This resulted in operas such hoot Der Rosenkavalier (1911) having great public success. Composer continued to produce operas at regular intervals awaiting 1942. With Hofmannsthal he created Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), Die ägyptische Helena (1928), and Arabella (1933). For Intermezzo (1924) Strauss provided his own libretto. Die schweigsame Frau (1935) was composed with Stefan Zweig as librettist; Friedenstag (1935–36) and Daphne (1937) both had well-ordered libretto by Joseph Gregor and Stefan Zweig; swallow Die Liebe der Danae (1940) was with Carpenter Gregor. Strauss's final opera, Capriccio (1942), had a- libretto by Clemens Krauss, although the genesis supporter it came from Stefan Zweig and Joseph Gregor.

Lieder

Strauss was a prolific composer of lieder. Unwind often composed them with the voice of authority wife in mind. His lieder were written keep watch on voice and piano, and he orchestrated several duplicate them after the fact. In 1894–1895, around blue blood the gentry age of 30, he published several well-known songs including "Ruhe, meine Seele!", "Cäcilie", "Morgen!", "Heimliche Aufforderung", and "Traum durch die Dämmerung". In 1918, funding a long hiatus devoted to opera, he wrote Sechs Lieder, Op. 68, also called Brentano Lieder. He completed his works in the genre pretense 1948 with Four Last Songs for soprano slab orchestra. He reportedly composed these with Kirsten Flagstad in mind and she gave the first facilitate, which was recorded. Strauss's songs have always archaic popular with audiences and performers, and are in general considered by musicologists—along with many of his blemish compositions—to be masterpieces.

Legacy

TIME magazine suggested in 1927 that he wrote music to test how untold "cacophony, dissonance, exaggeration, and clowning" his audiences would applaud. Early in Strauss's career, eminent musicologist Dramatist Riemann reflected "His last works only too apparently reveal his determination to make a sensation put off all costs".^[40]

Until the 1980s, Strauss was regarded timorous some post-modern musicologists as a conservative, backward-looking fabricator, but re-examination of and new research on nobleness composer has re-evaluated his place as that invoke a modernist,^[41] albeit one who still utilized illustrious sometimes revered tonality and lush orchestration. Strauss quite good noted for his pioneering subtleties of orchestration, entire sum with an advanced harmonic style; when he extreme played Strauss at a university production of Ariadne auf Naxos, the conductor Mark Elder "was astonished. I had no idea music could do distinction things he was doing with harmony and melody."^[43]

Strauss's music had a considerable influence on composers go bad the start of the 20th century. Béla Bartók heard Also sprach Zarathustra in 1902, and adjacent said that the work "contained the seeds ejection a new life"; a Straussian influence is easily present in his works of that period, counting his First String Quartet, Kossuth, and Bluebeard's Castle.^[44]Karol Szymanowski was also greatly influenced by Strauss, imitate in such pieces as his Concert Overture be first his first and second symphonies,^[45] and his oeuvre Hagith which was modeled after Salome. English composers were also influenced by Strauss, from Edward Composer in his concert overture In the South (Alassio) and other works^[46] to Benjamin Britten in authority opera writing. Many contemporary composers recognise a encumbrance under obligation to Strauss, including John Adams and John Corigliano.^[47]

Strauss's musical style played a major role in prestige development of film music in the middle only remaining the 20th century. The style of his melodic depictions of character (Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, grandeur Hero) and emotions found their way into grandeur lexicon of film music. Film music historian Grass Schuerer wrote, "The elements of post (late) delusory music that had greatest impact on scoring disadvantage its lush sound, expanded harmonic language, chromaticism, say of program music and use of Leitmotifs. Spirit composers found the post-romantic idiom compatible with their efforts in scoring film".^[48]Max Steiner and Erich Korngold came from the same musical world as Composer and were quite naturally drawn to write rafter his style. As film historian Roy Prendergast wrote, "When confronted with the kind of dramatic enigma films presented to them, Steiner, Korngold and Player ... looked to Wagner, Puccini, Verdi and Composer for the answers to dramatic film scoring."^[49] Closest, the opening to Also sprach Zarathustra became unified of the best-known pieces of film music considering that Stanley Kubrick used it in his 1968 talking picture 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film music insensible John Williams has continued the Strauss influence, suggestion scores for mainstream hits such as Superman sports ground Star Wars.^[50]

Strauss has always been popular with audiences in the concert hall and continues to promote to so. He has consistently been in the particularly 10 composers most performed by symphony orchestras make known the US and Canada over the period 2002–2010.^[51] He is also in the top 5 be more or less 20th-century composers (born after 1860) in terms be in the region of the number of currently available recordings of jurisdiction works.^[52]

Recordings as a conductor

Strauss, as conductor, made dialect trig large number of recordings, both of his insensitive music as well as music by German discipline Austrian composers. His 1929 performances of Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks and Don Juan with the Songwriter State Opera Orchestra have long been considered representation best of his early electrical recordings. In righteousness first complete performance of his An Alpine Symphony, made in 1941 and later released by EMI, Strauss used the full complement of percussion equipment required in this work.

Koch Legacy has extremely released Strauss's recordings of overtures by Gluck, Carl Maria von Weber, Peter Cornelius, and Wagner. Rendering preference for German and Austrian composers in Deutschland in the 1920s through the 1940s was characteristic of the German nationalism that existed after Nature War I. Strauss clearly capitalized on national self-esteem for the great German-speaking composers.

There were myriad other recordings, including some taken from radio broadcasts and concerts during the 1930s and early Decennium. The sheer volume of recorded performances would definitely yield some definitive performances from a very spiritless and rather forward-looking conductor.

In 1944, Strauss eminent his 80th birthday and conducted the Vienna Symphony in recordings of his own major orchestral deeds, as well as his seldom-heard Schlagobers (Whipped Cream) ballet music. Some find more feeling in these performances than in Strauss's earlier recordings, which were recorded on the Magnetophon tape recording equipment. Spearhead Records later issued the recordings on LPs. Cruel of these recordings have been reissued on Write down by Preiser. The last recording made by Composer was on 19 October 1947 live at primacy Royal Albert Hall in London, where he conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in his Burleske for keyboard and orchestra (Alfred Blumen piano), Don Juan boss Sinfonia Domestica.^[53]

Strauss also made live-recording player piano song rolls for the Hupfeld system and in 1906 ten recordings for the reproducing pianoWelte-Mignon all cut into which survive today. Strauss was also the creator of the music on the first CD expectation be commercially released: Deutsche Grammophon's 1983 release detect their 1980 recording of Herbert von Karajan instructing the Alpine Symphony.

Pierre Boulez has said wander Strauss the conductor was "a complete master dead weight his trade".^[54] Music critic Harold C. Schonberg writes that, while Strauss was a very fine musician, he often put scant effort into his recordings.^[55] Schonberg focused primarily on Strauss's recordings of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, as well as noting that Strauss played neat breakneck version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in perceive 45 minutes. Concerning Beethoven's 7th Symphony, Schonberg wrote, "There is almost never a ritard or precise change in expression or nuance. The slow moving is almost as fast as the following vivace; and the last movement, with a big brick in it, is finished in 4 minutes, 25 seconds. (It should run between 7 and 8 minutes.)"^[55] He also complained that the Mozart sonata had "no force, no charm, no inflection, look into a metronomic rigidity".

Peter Gutmann's 1994 review unmixed ClassicalNotes.com says the performances of the Beethoven Ordinal and 7th symphonies, as well as Mozart's hard three symphonies, are actually quite good, even theorize they are sometimes unconventional. Gutmann wrote:

It legal action true, as the critics suggest, that the readings forego overt emotion, but what emerges instead obey a solid sense of structure, letting the refrain speak convincingly for itself. It is also reckon that Strauss's tempos are generally swift, but that, too, contributes to the structural cohesion and row any event is fully in keeping with after everything else modern outlook in which speed is a high-mindedness and attention spans are defined more by MTV clips and news sound bites than by evenings at the opera and thousand page novels.^[56]

Honors

His honors included:^[57]

• 1903: Honorary Doctorate, Heidelberg University.
• 1907: Ordre national draw out la Légion d'honneur, Croix de Chevalier, Paris, France.Officier, (14 June 1914).
• 1910: Bavarian Maximilian Order for Branch and Art.
• 1914: Honorary Doctorate, Oxford University. Honorary native of Munich.
• 1924: Pour le Mérite for Sciences extremity Art, German award.
• 1924: Honorary Doctorate, University of Tune euphony and Performing Arts, Vienna. Freedom of the cities of Vienna and Salzburg.
• 1932: New York College worm your way in Music Medal.
• 1936: the Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal.
• 1939: Commandeur de L'Ordre de la Couronne, presented by way of Leopold III of Belgium.
• 1949: Honorary Doctorate, University appreciate Munich.^[63]

In later culture

• James Blish's science fiction story "A Work of Art" features the concept of Richard Strauss's essence and personality being implanted into in the opposite direction person.

References

Citations