Strauss, Richard

Strauss, Richard (rĭkh`ärt shtrous), 1864–1949, German composer. Strauss brought to a culmination the development of the 19th-century symphonic poem, and was a leading composer of romantic opera in the early 20th cent. Son of a celebrated horn player, he had extensive musical instruction and began composing as a child of six. His first major work, the symphony in D minor, was first performed in 1880. Strauss's early works, in classical forms, brought him instant acclaim. He succeeded Hans von Bülow as conductor at Meiningen (1885–86) and later as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic concerts (1894–95). His friendship with the poet Alexander Ritter influenced him to adopt the romantic aesthetic philosophy and style of Liszt and Wagner. A group of songs, the symphonic fantasy Aus Italien (1886), and the symphonic poems Don Juan (1888) and Death and Transfiguration (1889) were the first works composed in his new romantic manner. These and the works that followed established him as a master of highly evocative, original, and richly orchestrated program music. These works—including Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1895); Thus Spake Zarathustra (1895), after Nietszche; Don Quixote (1898), a tone poem in the form of variations with a cello solo; and A Hero's Life (1898)—were violently both lauded and damned as the very essence of musical modernism.

Strauss also gained wide renown for his operas, including Salomé (1905), after Oscar Wilde's play; the brilliantly dramatic Electra (1909); the delightful comedy Der Rosenkavalier (1911); Ariadne auf Naxos (1912); and Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919). He wrote all but the first of these, as well as Die aegyptische Helena (1928) and Arabella (1933), in collaboration with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. After Hofmannsthal died (1929) Strauss's librettists were Stefan Zweig for Die schweigsame Frau (1935) and Josef Gregor for Friedenstag (1938), Daphne (1938), and Die Liebe der Danaë (1938–40). Strauss's operas, carrying the Wagnerian leitmotif concept to its fullest development, went beyond Wagner in their intensity of drama and psychological treatment of character motivation. The operas display his music at its most sensuous and passionate. From 1919 until 1924 Strauss was codirector of the Vienna State Opera. During this period he made extended tours abroad, including a second trip to the United States (1922). Strauss served briefly as head of musical affairs (Reichsmusikkammer president) under the Nazis; he was officially exonerated of collaboration in 1948. Among Strauss's last major works are the sorrowful Metamorphosen (1946), for string instruments, and two pieces for voice and orchestra, 3 Gesänge and Im Abendrot (both 1948), considered the final musical expression of dying German romanticism.

Bibliography

See his correspondence ed. by R. Myers (1968); biographies by N. Del Mar (1962), W. S. Mann (1964), A. Jefferson (1963 and 1971), K. and R. Bailey (1985), and M. Boyden (1999); study by D. Puffett (1989).

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Strauss, Richard (Georg)

Richard Strauss, portrait by Max Liebermann, 1918; in the National-Galerie, Berlin

(credit: Courtesy of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany)

(born June 11, 1864, Munich, Ger.—died Sept. 8, 1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen) German composer and conductor. Son of a horn player, he began composing at age six. Before he was 20, he had already had major premieres of two symphonies and a violin concerto. In 1885 the conductor of the Meiningen Orchestra, Hans von Bülow, made Strauss his successor. Strongly influenced by the work of Richard Wagner, he began to write programmatic orchestral tone poems, including Don Juan (1889), Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (1894–95), and Also sprach Zarathustra (1896). After 1900 he focused on operas; his third such work, Salome (1903–05), was a succès de scandale. Elektra (1906–08) marked the beginning of a productive collaboration with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, with whom Strauss wrote his greatest operas, including Der Rosenkavalier (1909–10). He remained in Austria through World War II and held a music post in the German government, but he was later cleared of wrongdoing in connection with the Nazi regime. After many years writing lesser works, he produced several remarkable late pieces, including Metamorphosen (1945) and the Four Last Songs (1948).

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Strauss, Richard 

Born June 11, 1864, in Munich; died Sept. 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. German composer and conductor.

The son of a horn player, Strauss studied piano and violin as a child. He studied music theory and orchestration under F. W. Meyer. Strauss achieved an international reputation as a conductor, above all for performances of his own works. He regularly toured various countries, traveling to Russia for the first time in 1896. He was the principal conductor of the Royal Opera in Berlin from 1898 to 1918 and of the Vienna State Opera from 1919 to 1924. After the fascists came to power, Strauss was appointed president of the Reichsmusikkammer (State Music Council), but he was removed from the post in 1935.

Strauss’ most important compositions are his program symphonies, symphonic poems, and operas. His symphonic poems, which continue the traditions of the program symphony established by H. Berlioz and F. Liszt and of the orchestral style of R. Wagner, often take their plots and subject matter from classical literature, as in Macbeth (1886), Don Juan (1888), Till Eulen-Spiegel’s Merry Pranks (1895), and Don Quixote (1897), and from ancient legends. Several of Strauss’ works were influenced by F. Nietzsche’s philosophy, notably the tone poems Death and Transfiguration (1889) and Thus Spake Zarathustra (1896).

In his first works for the stage, the operas Guntram (1894; years here and below refer to production) and Feuersnot (1901), Strauss was influenced by Wagner; he subsequently developed his own style, which reflected elements of expressionism and neo-classicism. In his operas he drew on a variety of traditions: Salome (1905), Elektra (1908), and Ariadne aufNaxos (1912) are in the tradition of the mythologically oriented opera seria; Der Rosenkavalier (1911) recalls the old comic opera; and Die ägyptische Helena (1928) and Die Lieb der Danae (1952) are based on subject matter from ancient history and mythology.

At their finest, Strauss’ scores are characterized by deep psychological insight, a heightened expressiveness, dramatic tension, and the subtle transmission of states of mind ranging from a profound sense of tragedy and philosophic concentration to joyful humor. Strauss’ music is noted for its elegance, its beautiful melodies, its bold and rich harmonies, and its magnificent and colorful orchestration; at the same time, elements of naturalism appear in such works as Sinfonía domestica (1903), and certain works exhibit an exaggerated expressiveness and an attempt to create musical “pictures.”

In his final period Strauss turned away from large orchestras and strove for a transparent orchestration, a more subtle and simple musical idiom, and a laconic means of expression in such works as the opera Capriccio (1941); Metamorphosen (1946), for 23 solo strings; and Three Songs for Voice and Orchestra (1948).

Strauss, who greatly influenced 20th-century European music, contributed to the development of program music and of the opera and enriched the expressive possibilities of the orchestra. His finest works are marked by a humanist spirit, a love of life, and an affirmation of the ideals of beauty. Strauss was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Heidelberg and Munich in 1902 and was elected a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1909.

REFERENCES

Sollertinskii, I. Simfonicheskiepoemy Rikharda Shtrausa. Leningrad, 1934.
Rolland, R. “Rikhard Shtrauss.” Sobr. soch., vol. 16. Leningrad, 1935. (Translated from French.)
Krause, E. Rikhard Shtraus: Obraz i tvorchestvo. Moscow, 1961. (Translated from German.)
Ordzhonikidze, G. “R. Shtraus.” In Muzyka XX veka, part 1 (1890–1917), book 2. Moscow, 1977.
Trenner, F. Richard Strauss: Dokumente seines Lebens und Schaffens. Munich, 1954.

M. M. IAKOVLEV