Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Richard Strauss was born in Munich in 1864. His father was one of the finest horn players of his day, and held the post of principal horn player in the Munich Court Opera Orchestra. He had taken as wife an heiress of a famous brewer, Georg Pschorr, and the young Strauss grew up in comfort and with plenty of opportunity. He was a precocious musician, studying piano beginning at age four, writing compositions by age six, and beginning formal instruction in composition at age eleven. His father, a musician with conservative musical tastes, disliked both Brahms and (especially) Wagner, the leading German composers of the day, and so the young Strauss was brought up on a diet of the Viennese classics (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert). Strauss had the opportunity to learn the practical dimensions of orchestration and orchestral performance through hearing his father perform regularly in the Munich Court Orchestra, but also through his father's leadership of an amateur orchestra in which the young Strauss eventually played violin. The pieces written during the first twenty years of Strauss's life (while he remained in Munich) were in traditional forms-piano and violin sonatas, his only two symphonies, his violin concerto and first horn concerto, and two fine works for wind ensemble (a serenade and a suite).

When Strauss came to the age of attending university, the nature of his life and musical perspective changed. He only spent one semester at the University of Munich, but during that time his horizons expanded to include an interest in Shakespeare, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and the history of art and culture in general. On a visit to Berlin after this period in the university he made one of the decisive acquaintances of his life-Hans von Bülow, one of the leading interpreters of his age both as a pianist (he had been Liszt's first important pupil) and as a conductor (he was a disciple of Wagner and had led the premieres of both Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg). Von Bülow, who at this time was the conductor of the famous Meiningen Orchestra, took great interest in Strauss, performing some of his music and forcing him to conduct the orchestra in some of his works. This relationship eventually turned into a more permanent one when von Bülow appointed Strauss his assistant in the Meiningen Orchestra; Strauss later credited von Bülow with having turned him into an interpreter through his example and encouragement. A year after Strauss took up this appointment, von Bülow resigned his post and the 21-year old Strauss succeeded him, having the honor of preparing the orchestra for the premiere of Brahms's 4th symphony (conducted by Brahms). While in Meiningen Strauss made the acquaintance of Alexander Ritter, who was married to Wagner's niece and worked as a violinist in the orchestra. Ritter was an avid Wagnerian, cultivated an interest in Schopenhauer, and introduced Strauss to the symphonic poems of Liszt.

This last influence helped to determine the direction of Strauss's career. On a trip to Italy he began his first tone poem, Aus Italien (From Italy), and then returned to Munich to take up duties as an assistant Kapellmeister. Although he remained there for three years, he was not happy with his low place in the court opera hierarchy, since he had been the one in charge of a fine orchestra at Meiningen. As he obtained guest conducting engagements elsewhere and began to enjoy success as a composer, his desire to be in charge of a musical establishment led him to Weimar in 1889, where he set the seal on his reputation as a conductor with a model production of Wagner's Tristan (the day of the premiere he called the happiest day of his life) and introduced some of his own works (notably the flashy Don Juan). He became close to the Wagner family at Bayreuth and conducted the first Bayreuth production of Tannhäuser in 1891. After a serious illness in 1892, which led him to take time off and recuperate in Greece and Egypt, he returned to write his first opera, Guntram, which received a lukewarm reception at its premiere in 1894. In this year Strauss, thirty years old, married the singer Pauline de Ahna, who participated in the premiere of Guntram and was to be a frequent recital partner with her husband in programs of his many lieder, and became head Kapellmeister in Munich. Until 1898 he was busy writing many of his most famous tone poems (Till Eulenspiegel, Ein Heldenleben, Also sprach Zarathustra, Don Quixote).

In 1898 he became Kapellmeister in Berlin and began to turn his attention more intentionally to the writing of operas. First came the satirical Feuersnot (The Need for Fire), which achieved a less than promising reception, but with Salome (1905) he achieved a major success through the scandalous nature of the plot and the "advanced" musical style for the expression of Salome's depravity. The profits from this opera helped him to buy a villa at Garmisch in the Bavarian Alps, which remained his home (or at least retreat during quiet times) for the rest of his life. Shortly thereafter he set the text of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play Elektra to music, and the even more modern idiom he adopted here made Strauss the leading German opera composer of his day. This was cemented by his foreign tours (to the USA in 1904, for which he wrote his Sinfonia domestica) and his service at the head of numerous boards, committees, and organizations in German musical life. The greatest operatic success Strauss ever enjoyed was Der Rosenkavalier (The Cavalier of the Rose), premiered in Dresden in 1911 after very close and extensive collaboration with Hofmannsthal. The musical style of this work, one that cultivates archaic or old-fashioned musical styles and vocabularies, marked a watershed in Strauss's career-from then on his compositions were often unjustly viewed as the meanderings of a veteran late-Romantic composer. Other operas with Hofmannsthal followed-Ariadne auf Naxos (1912, revised version in 1916), Die Frau ohne Schatten (The woman without a shadow, 1919), Die aegyptische Helena (The Egyptian Helen, 1928), and Arabella (1933, completed after Hofmannsthal's death in 1929). Strauss was his own librettist for Intermezzo (1924), an autobiographical comedy that is the operatic counterpart to the Sinfonia domestica. In the meantime Strauss had become co-director of the Vienna State Opera in 1919-24, and thereafter became a free-lance conductor, combining that career with the royalties from his compositions to make a handsome living for himself and his family.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Strauss naively took on some duties that compromised his reputation among those horrified by the new regime; at the same time he suffered from their refusal to accept his new librettist Stefan Zweig and from their continual harassment of his Jewish daughter-in-law. After Arabella came five further operas, the last of which was Capriccio, based on a libretto by the conductor Clemens Krauss and was first produced in Munich in 1942. The destruction of opera houses at which he had worked in Munich, Vienna, and Dresden near the end of World War II left him despondent, and his deep feelings for this tragedy well up in the Metamorphosen for 23 strings (1945). Around the same time, though, he wrote some sunny works, including the Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon, the second horn concerto, and the oboe concerto. His last works include the Four Last Songs, wonderfully autumnal reflections on his life and art. He died in 1949 at the age of 85, after a long career during which his reputation spanned several phases: as an heir to Wagner, as a herald of a new modernist age, and as a conservative Romantic figure out of touch with more recent currents in composition.

Strauss as Conductor
Strauss believed that Hans von Bülow was responsible for having made an interpreter of him, and it is reasonable to speculate that some of Strauss's tempo fluctuations in his recordings of music by Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, and others represent the von Bülow style. Although his wife is reported by Georg Solti to have reproached Strauss with his wild podium manner when he was young, countless eyewitness report that as a mature man Strauss was an extremely efficient and aloof conductor who favored brisk, unsentimental tempi. Although it would be expected that his performances of his own music would seem to possess immense authority, some commentators found that his involvement with the music of others was much greater than in his own. Nevertheless, he had strong ideas about how his music should be played. When Herbert von Karajan asked for Strauss's critique of his performance of Elektra, Strauss encouraged him just to "wave his arms around"-a suggestion that the many notes in a Strauss score should be seen as generalized gestures and textures rather than as precisely realized details. His performance of the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome gives a taste of his performance style, preserved in several commercial recordings and quite a few broadcast performances.

Strauss as Orchestrator
Strauss was acknowledged as one of the composers who had a great mastery of the capabilities of the instruments of the orchestra, both from expressive and technical standpoints. Fairly early in his career Hector Berlioz had written a marvelous treatise on orchestration; as the 19th century progressed and the capabilities of orchestral instruments changed because of mechanical modifications and improvements, this treatise needed to be revised and Strauss was the one who did it, using examples from the works of Wagner (and occasionally himself) to show what could be done. Numerous spots in his works are fodder for orchestral musicians-the horn theme in Till Eulenspiegel, the oboe solo in Don Juan, and the solo violin passages in Ein Heldenleben are only three of the many summits that would-be orchestral musicians must master if they want to get anywhere in their profession.
Despite his mastery as an orchestrator, Strauss continued throughout his life to question his abilities in this regard. He found it especially vexing that Wagner seemed to have the secret of greater transparency even when writing for vast orchestra. Some of that frustration (and a typical example of Strauss's ironic manner) emerges in an anecdote from the rehearsals for the premiere of Elektra. Most of the singers were completely drowned out by the orchestra, but apparently the great contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink was not-whereupon Strauss yelled down to the conductor, "Louder! Louder! I can still hear Frau Heink!"

Richard and Pauline
Anyone who has read biographies of Strauss or reminiscences of those who knew him must come away shaking their heads, thinking how impossible it would be for the reader to live with Strauss's wife without murdering her out of annoyance. To say that she was high-spirited and insulting to her husband as a matter of course is an understatement-all her life she, the daughter of a German general, complained loudly in Strauss's presence that she had married beneath her. At the dinner after Strauss's funeral she is supposed to have remarked that "old Richard must be pretty hot right about now," and in more ways than it is profitable to relate she seems to have browbeat him throughout their marriage.

The story of their engagement is particularly humorous. Pauline was singing in an opera rehearsal conducted by Richard when an argument arose between her and the young conductor, which finally reached its climax when she threw the piano score from the stage on to his head, shrieked some frightful insults, and…rushed to her dressing-room. Strauss, terribly annoyed, laid down his baton, interrupted the rehearsal which had been so violently disturbed, and without knocking entered Pauline's artist's room. Those waiting outside heard through the closed door wild shrieks of rage and fragmentary insults-then all was quiet. Turning pale each looked at the other-who had killed whom? A shy knocking…Strauss opened the door and stood in the doorway beaming radiantly. The representative of the orchestra stammered his speech: "The orchestra is so horrified by the incredibly shocking behavior of Miss Pauline de Ahna, that they feel they owe it to their honored conductor to refuse in the future to play in any opera in which she might have a part…" Strauss regarded the musicians smilingly. Then he said: "That hurts me very
much, for I have just become engaged to Miss de Ahna."

Despite her tendency toward being a termagant , Pauline's letters to Strauss reveal a much warmer and more considerate personality, and there can be little doubt that Strauss loved her fervently. The musical portraits of her left in Ein Heldenleben, Sinfonia domestica, and Intermezzo, as well as the songs written for her as a wedding present (those published as op. 27, including "Morgen!"), show the depth of his feeling where Pauline was concerned.

Strauss as Pianist
Piano playing was not an important part of Strauss's career, although during his years in Weimar he performed the solo part of Mozart's C minor concerto while conducting from the keyboard and accompanied singers in recitals for many years (his wife and Elisabeth Schumann were prominent among these collaborators). Those who knew his songs well were always intrigued by the freedom with which he treated the score-he embellished, recomposed, and improvised freely in these settings. Elisabeth Schumann relates that once, when the trunk storing their music and concert attire was left behind during a tour, Strauss had to play some of his songs by heart.
He is not a good "by-heart-player," and something quite wonderful happened in
"All Fein Gedanken." Already by the third measure he had quite forgotten the
accompaniment and he composed a completely new song. I kept up with him, the
words fitted perfectly, nobody in the audience suspected a thing, and when we
reached the end safe and sound, I looked to the right out of the corner of my eye
to see his reaction. All I saw was his mouth stretching from ear to ear in one huge
grin. Later in the Artists' Room I begged him to write down the new version, but
he said, "Oh, I've already totally forgotten it."

Strauss as pianist is preserved on several acoustically made recordings from around 1919, including several featuring the great baritone Heinrich Schlusnus. From these recordings we can deduce the free, off-hand style, almost casual style that Strauss preferred and that brings a lightness to material that in the wrong hands can seem portentous (or at least pretentious).

Strauss and the Tone Poem
Until the appearance of Salome in 1905, Strauss's claim to prominence as a composer was due to his tone poems. They emerged in three groups: Aus Italien in 1886 and a trio of works from 1888-89: Don Juan, Macbeth, and Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration). After he left his post in Weimar, Strauss wrote four of his best tone poems between 1894 and 1898: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spake Zarathustra), Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), and Don Quixote. Only two other tone poems came from his pen-the Sinfonia domestica (written in 1902-03 for his forthcoming American tour) and the Alpine Symphony (completed in 1915). His other orchestral music consists of occasional pieces, suites from his operas or ballets, and concertos or other works involving an instrumental soloist.

The concept of a tone poem is tied in to the progressive music of the mid-19th century. At that time there was considerable debate as to the purpose and essence of music, with conservative thinkers holding that music was about itself, created its own world, and ought to be understood on its own terms and via its own language. More progressive musicians held that music should ideally be linked to some extra-musical concept: thus the program and the idée fixe theme of Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique, the literary dimensions of much of Schumann's piano music, and the development of leitmotifs in Wagner's operas. For Strauss's purposes, the primary model was Liszt's development of the symphonic poem, which used works of literature as the scaffolding on which to hang the music he composed, which used the newfangled technique of thematic transformation to provide unity and direction in the unfolding of the music. According to this esthetic, "new ideas must seek new forms," and Strauss followed this precept rigorously, never repeating himself in general procedure while always displaying a readily identifiable personal style.
Don Juan is commonly conceded to be the point at which Strauss became a great composer. Its invigorating spirit, richness of invention and orchestration, lyrical melodiousness, and dramatic force have made it a favorite in the Strauss canon. It is a prime example of a 19th-century experiment (like several symphonic poems of Liszt as well as his B minor sonata for piano) that attempt to superimpose a one-movement sonata form structure (with exposition, development, and recapitulation) onto a multi-movement concept (with opening and closing fast movements surrounding a slow movement and a scherzo-like section). Strauss's 15-minute piece combines all this with hints of thematic transformation that serve as motivations for getting from one section to the next. The program of the piece is a poem by Nicholas Lenau in which the protagonist tires of his adventures and conquest and drops his sword in a duel so as to end his sated existence. Strauss's quiet, shuddering ending matches this development admirably.

Also sprach Zarathustra has become known primarily for its opening, which portrays the rising of the sun and served as a memorable part of the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most commentators argue that the remainder of the work does not match the opening, but Strauss's agenda seems to be that of encouraging mankind to transcend the superstition of religion, much as does the grand philosophical treatise by Nietzsche on which the tone poem is based. His technique in portraying the tension between nature and humanity is to assign a different key to each one (C major for the former, B minor for the latter), and this tension persists to the final bars of the piece. The rest of the work shows Strauss to be at the top of his form where lyricism and exuberance are concerned.
Don Quixote is arguably Strauss's finest tone poem, but his designation of the genre of the piece reads "fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character." In it, the protagonist of Cervantes's novel is portrayed by a solo cello, Sancho Panza appears through a solo viola, and the character Dulcinea (the "fair" maiden for whose favor Don Quixote strives) is presented by means of a recurring theme that is soaring and graceful. The various adventures of Don Quixote, who dies in a poignant ending, are vividly portrayed-the jousting with the windmill, for example, or the battle with the sheep, which uses brass flutter-tonguing and extremely dissonant harmonies that if used by Schoenberg would have caused a riot of disgust but here are brilliantly descriptive in effect, make good on Strauss's boast that he could set the phone book to music.

The piano sonata in B minor, Suite for winds, and violin concerto are all pleasant early works featuring Strauss's discursive style that does not work efficiently in standard forms.

The Deutsche Motette (German Motet) is typical of Strauss's most chromatic and densely harmonized writing. Based on a text by Rückert, to whose poetry Mahler too was greatly attracted, this piece was written in 1913, just after the first version of Ariadne auf Naxos had met with moderate success.

The Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon was dedicated to the former bassoonist of the Vienna Philharmonic. It was written in 1947, just two years before Strauss's death, and is in the Mozartean-Rosenkavalier vein shared by the oboe concerto of about the same time. Apparently Strauss had Hans Christian Andersen's story The Swineherd in mind when working on the piece. There, a prince lays siege to the affections of a princess by disguising himself as a swineherd at her father's palace. In the Duett-Concertino, the clarinet is a dancing princess, the bassoon a bear trying to imitate her and eventually being granted the honor of dancing with her.

Der Rosenkavalier is Strauss's most beloved opera, and one of the most skilled and detailed collaborations between composer and librettist ever undertaken. The subtlety of the plot by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which deals with love, infatuation, deception, appearances, and the mysterious alchemy of time, is worth pondering over and over again in its dramatic context. But Strauss's music has taken on a life of its own-the waltzes are absolute evergreens, the moment of the presentation of the rose one of the airiest and most glittering of musical inventions, the final trio are of such beauty that one doesn't want to breathe for fear of destroying the spell, and so on. The mixture of sophisticated Romantic touches used to portray 18th-centuury style is a heady concoction, and the resulting music has become very popular in numerous suites and excerpts, like this one from Jesus López-Cobos and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

"Morgen!" ("Tomorrow!") is one of the songs Strauss wrote as a wedding gift for his wife Pauline in 1896. Few songs exert so powerful a spell as this one, although for some tastes it comes dangerously close to being sentimental and cloying in nature (this is almost inevitable when it is played by orchestra, allotting the melody to violin). But when performed with an appreciation of the deepest mood it can create, Morgen can be uniquely affecting. The song begins with a rapturously quiet but soaring melody in the piano. Just before it begins to repeat, the voice enters in a cadential hinge, and provides a delicate, finely chiseled countermelody. A brief passage of recitative is the last utterance of the voice, and then an ever more broadly paced statement of the beginning of the melody brings the song to an end. Strauss's musical strategy and melodic imagination perfectly capture and enhance the poem by John Henry Mackay:
And tomorrow the sun will shine again,
and on the path that I shall take
we happy ones shall be reunited
upon this sun-breathing earth…

and to the shore, broad, blue-waved,
we shall quietly and slowly descend;
silently we'll gaze into each other's eyes,
and on us will fall joy's mute silence…

The oboe concerto was requested from Strauss after the end of World War II by one of the occupying American soldiers: John De Lancie, principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Strauss composed it in short score while he was still living at his villa in Garmisch, and orchestrated it after his removal to Switzerland. It was premiered in Zurich in 1946, and has become one of the staples of the oboe literature. It is a sunny, classical work, with flowing and perky writing in the outer movements and a poignantly lyrical melody in the slow middle movement.

Strauss was 19 when he completed his First Horn Concerto, which was inspired by his father's talents and was written for his use. It is, like Liszt's concertos, a work in which the several movements of a typical concerto are folded into a single movement of contrasting sections, connected by thematic transformation. The opening horn cadenza gives vent to the heroic quality that was later perfected in Don Juan, but the work blends pleasing lyricism with the prevailing sense of youthful energy.

The song "Alphorn" is heard more often than its compositional merits warrant. This is because it is one of relatively few songs in the literature that is written for piano and an additional instrument (in this case the horn) as accompaniment for the voice. Strauss was only fourteen when he completed it, so its immaturity is pardonable; it was dedicated to his father, who was to play the horn part.

Strauss wrote a number of piano works during his teenage years; except for the fact that they are by a famous composer (or, rather, a composer who later became famous) they have not been accorded much respect-except by the brilliantly eccentric Glenn Gould, who championed them as a part of his effort to displace such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Schumann from their dominance of the piano repertory.

Till Eulenspiegel was the tone poem that launched Strauss's second phase of works in the genre, which occurred just after he turned 30. It is one of his most popular works, bristling with orchestral virtuosity as it relates the adventures of a merry rogue in the 14th century who was always up to mischief, playing practical jokes of innumerable kinds on the well to do. Strauss invoked the model of a rondo for this ingenious works: he first introduces two themes associated with Till (the opening string passage, then the famous horn-call a few measures later), then lets them be freely modified and transformed while interspersing them with different musical material describing Till's adventures. The most authoritative guide to the programmatic significance of the work-one which Strauss accepted without actually approving whole-heartedly-portrays the title character as a real rascal who thumbs his nose at authority, dresses up as a priest in order to take advantage of the trust piously placed in such an office, woos and falls in love, is jilted and vows revenge, stumps some stuffy academicians, and so on. He is finally hauled before the authorities, who end up hanging him for his crimes. But Till's lighthearted spirit ascends to heaven, and the conclusion of the piece shows (by allowing the opening theme to return) that Till's essence remains always a part of the human spirit.

Capriccio was Strauss's last opera, completed in 1941 and premiered a year later. The opera is set in mid-18th-century Paris, during the famous Guerre des bouffons, a debate on the relative merits of (serious) French and (comic) Italian opera. Strauss and his librettist, the conductor Clemens Krauss, changed the debate into an argument over the primacy words and music in opera, and made this potentially tedious plot dramatic by presenting a poet and a composer as rival suitors for the affections of the countess. Since the plot takes place in the hinge between the baroque and classical eras, Strauss invokes an older musical style by means of essentially tonal writing, and in the prelude establishes the courtly tone of the work by writing only for string sextet. This prelude has become established as a regular part of the relatively small repertory for six string instruments, and is sometimes performed in a chamber orchestra version. It is one of those sunny pieces that cause some commentators to grumble that the aged Strauss was stylistically and politically out of touch with his surroundings. The rest of us can revel in its serenely affecting beauty.

During World War II Strauss cast an affectionate eye back on his early years. One way in which he did so was to revisit some of the genres he had cultivated then, in the days before he became master of the tone poem and opera. The two sonatinas for wind ensemble are examples of this retrospective outlook, because in his early years he had written a serenade and a suite for the same ensemble. After having been asked to write a piece for a trumpet corps when he was awarded a prize in Vienna in 1942, he regained interest in writing for winds and began the first of his sonatinas during the following winter. Strauss and his wife were unwell at the time, and so the work is subtitled "From the Workshop of an Invalid." The word "workshop" is used advisedly-Strauss did not regard this work as a major composition for public consumption as much as a piece in which he challenged both himself and the players of the work to hone the craft of writing for and performing in a wind ensemble.

Macbeth was the first "real" tone poem from Strauss's pen (after the initial four-movement suite Aus Italien). However, the form in which we now know it includes substantial revisions made after Strauss had written the next two tone poems, Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration. As a result, it is a bit of a stylistic hybrid, an orchestrally sophisticated realization of a rather stiff structure derived from sonata form. Strauss concentrates on portraying the character of Macbeth, his lady, and their relationship, and provides appropriately suggestive themes for that purpose, but does not make any attempt to "retell" the course of the play through music. Although the revised version of the tone poem made something of a sensation when it was premiered (after the first performances of Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration, surprisingly enough), it has become the least known of his works in the genre. You can decide whether this neglect is justified!

In the latter stages of World War II Allied bombs destroyed the opera houses in Vienna, Dresden, and Munich. All of these institutions had been linchpins of Strauss's career and were central symbols of the culture he represented, and his dejection at their demise was profound. Out of his despair came one of the most important works of his last years, the Metamorphosen for 23 strings. Two themes in Strauss's most lyrically expansive vein interact and intensify until the basis of one of them is revealed in the final measures, where Strauss quotes the funeral march from Beethoven's Eroica symphony. This moving work has earned a place of honor in Strauss's output, although its unusual scoring prevents frequent performance.

Strauss's first great set of songs was the group of eight published as op. 10; they were written when Strauss was 18-19 years old. In the final published version the outer songs are the most famous ones-Zueignung (Dedication), which praises and thanks the beloved for the transforming effect s/he has on the life of the lover, and Allerseelen (All Soul's Day), a richly nostalgic reliving of young love-and the third of the set, Die Nacht (Night) is also extremely evocative (it feigns fear at the power of night to extinguish all visible objects, and perhaps even the love of the one whom the singer loves). Hermann von Gilm, who died in the year Strauss was born, wrote the poems of these songs. Although the three famous songs are justly prized, all the songs in the set are fine achievements and deserve to be heard in the order and context Strauss devised for them. The overall sequence is:

Zueignung (Dedication)
Nichts (Nothing)
Die Nacht (Night)
Die Georgine (The Dahlia)
Geduld (Patience)
Die Verschwiegenen (The Silent Ones)
Die Zeitlose (The Forget-me-not)
Allerseelen (All Soul's Day)

Salome was the opera that made Strauss into the leading German practitioner of the genre at a single stroke. Based on a translation of Oscar Wilde's decadent play, Strauss pulled out all the stops to make the harmonic language and orchestral effects of this work utterly sensational, and he succeeded. The story focuses on the nubile, spoiled Salome, daughter of Herodias, who becomes erotically obsessed by the voice and wild, rough appearance of John the Baptist, being kept prisoner in the dungeon of her step-father, Herod. After the prophet resists her amorous overtures and curses her for her immorality, Herod asks Salome to dance for him and, to overcome her initial indifference, promises her anything if she will comply. After her famous dance of the seven veils, she reveals the price of her performance-the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter. Herod tries hard to talk her out of so depraved a request, being superstitious about killing a holy man, but eventually Salome gets her way. The final scene of the opera finds her in a one-sided love "duet" with the head as she mulls over the love she feels for him/it and works herself up to their first kiss. At the end, she exults in this kiss and the epiphany she experienced with it. The climax of this speech reaches an intentionally sickening orchestral dissonance which causes Herod to disgustedly order his soldiers to crush Salome with their shields, and the scene closes with orchestral depictions of her final convulsions of death.

Strauss's father was near death when Strauss played Salome for him on the piano. The conservative old man's response bears repeating: "Dear Lord, all this nervous music! It's like having your trousers full of crawling June bugs." The first performer of the title role-which Strauss said demanded a sixteen-year-old beauty with the voice of Isolde-at first said she wouldn't do the part because she was "a decent woman." The opera was banned from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera after one performance because it was too decadent, and even the powerful Gustav Mahler couldn't allow the censors to approve performances of the work in Vienna. The controversy surrounding this opera ended up winning renown and financial success for its composer, however, and it remains one of the most shocking of opera and an important precursor of expressionistic developments within the early years of the twentieth century.

Many people who had followed Strauss's burgeoning career as a writer of tone poems with great interest and approval felt that he had gone too far with Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life). This work is autobiographical, beginning with a heroic passage depicting the composer himself, continuing with a petty depiction of his critics, using a solo violin to portray Strauss's wife Pauline, and quoting some of his earlier works in its closing stages. The sheer immodesty of referring to himself as a hero, combined with the length of the work (it takes over 40 minutes to perform), makes this work a hard one to swallow for some people despite its orchestral brilliance. But it was a precursor for more explicit works in which Strauss aired his family's dirty linen in music, including the Sinfonia domestica and the opera Intermezzo. Strauss's portrait of Pauline is particularly insightful; through it he intended to sketch a woman who was "very complex, very feminine, a little perverse, a little coquettish, never like herself, at every minute different from how she had been the moment before." This portrait comes between the opening heroism and the carping of the critics, but before the battle between the composer and the critics, which at the very end of the 19th century was perceived as the most advanced modern music to be heard anywhere.

Strauss and Cards
Strauss was famous for his love of playing cards, especially a game called "Skat." The suspicion among the singers and orchestral musicians he led as a conductor was that his notoriously fast tempi sometimes were the result of a desire on his part to get backstage to begin or resume a card game!

Strauss's second horn concerto is a late work, written during the war in 1942. The composer was particularly happy with how the concluding rondo turned out, and the piece as a whole provides a fitting bookend to pair with the early first concerto; together the two works convey initial homage to and long-term gratitude to the influence of his horn-playing father.

The Serenade for thirteen wind instruments is one of Strauss's more successful early works, completed in the year the young composer turned seventeen. It is scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, plus four horns (remember, Strauss was the son of a horn player!) and contrabassoon. It was impressive enough for Hans von Bülow to accept it into his repertory at Meiningen, to become Strauss's mentor, and to urge Strauss to write more works with similar scoring. A suite followed shortly, and various occasional pieces appeared throughout Strauss's life, culminating with the two sonatinas from his last years.

Symphonia domestica can perhaps be understood as fifth tone poem in the central group that also contains Till Eulenspiegel, Also sprach Zarathustra, Don Quixote, and Ein Heldenleben, even though it came five years after the latter. These years of interruption in the production of tone poems had seen Strauss try his had at opera for the second time, with Feuersnot. In the meantime he had become accustomed to family life, complete with children, because his son (named Franz after his father) had been born in 1897. Strauss's status as a proud papa convinced him to write a tone poem about his domestic situation. The resulting work bears all the trademarks of Strauss's style but is perhaps the most derided tone poem in the Strauss canon. The idea of portraying domestic life in progressive harmonic and orchestral garb has a way of monumentalizing trivial material, such as baby being paraded in front of relatives, baby's bath, baby's lullaby, and so on. Strauss presents a more "realistic" portrait of himself in this work than through the tongue-in-cheek heroism found in Ein Heldenleben, and does so by presenting a variety of genial, grumpy, and dreamy themes in quick alternation. The portrait of his wife remains much as it did in Ein Heldenleben, and the child is the opportunity for numerous innocent, playful, and noisy themes and moments. Perhaps the most controversial moment is the love scene between husband and wife, which is quite graphic and (according to many listeners) in extremely bad taste. The concluding section, which shows the many activities and disputes that occur in an argumentative but happy family, is brilliantly orchestrated, and perhaps the piece does end by being fun rather than pretentious.

Death and Transfiguration is the last of Strauss's early tone poems. It was begun when he was only twenty-four, before he had any experience with illness or death of those in his immediate family or circle, and thus is not autobiographical. Strauss later explained that he had in mind the portrayal of a man suffering on his deathbed, wracked with pain, who then is able to recall the experiences and exploits of his life before his soul leaves his body to enter eternal realms. He quoted passages in some of his later music, notably in Ein Heldenleben and at the end of "Im Abendrot," the last of the Four Last Songs, and the memory of this early score stayed with him to the very end-one of his last comments is reported to have been "Dying is just as I composed it in Death and Transfiguration."

After his success with Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal developed the idea of making a German adaptation of Molière's play Le bourgeois gentilhomme that would lead directly into a light opera on the subject of Ariadne auf Naxos. The premiere of this opera occurred in 1912, but was not a success, and so composer and librettist set about recasting Ariadne as an independent opera, thereby abandoning the music for Le bourgeois gentilhomme. He eventually salvaged this music, however, by arranging it as a suite which has become one of the charming lighter works in the Strauss repertory. Strauss intends to evoke the flavor of 18th-century style in this music without abandoning the chromaticism of his usual harmonic language. Many saw this reversion-in the works beginning with Der Rosenkavalier-as a regression in style, but it's worth noting that this move anticipates by nearly ten years the neoclassical style that became the rage in Paris in the 1920s.

Strauss's last opera was Capriccio, written to a libretto of the conductor Clemens Krauss, completed in 1941 and first produced in the following year. The opera is set in Paris in the late 18th century, a time rife with strife over the relative merits of French and Italian opera and the "operatic reforms" proposed by Gluck. The opera as a whole is a fleshing out of the argument over what is most important in opera, words or music. These two "rivals" are represented by the poet Olivier and the composer Flamand, each of whom is a suitor for the hand of the Countess (who represents opera, the mixture of words, music, and much else besides). Near the beginning of the opera, Olivier presents a sonnet to the countess, which Flamand promptly sets to music. Eventually Olivier and Flamand are commissioned to collaborate on an opera together, and in the final scene the Countess has a famous monologue in which she mulls over the merits of the men and the arts they represent, sings sections of her sonnet, and finally decides that she cannot choose between the two. Observers have noticed, however, the sheer beauty of the melodic writing for soprano that Strauss indulges yet again in this passage after countless other purple passages for soprano written over the previous decades; it's easy to suspect Strauss's choice even if the Countess claims indecision!

One of the great patrons of music in the first part of the twentieth century was the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein), who, having lost his right arm on the battlefield during World War I, commissioned concert works featuring piano left-hand from a number of composers (including Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten, Franz Schmidt, and Wolfgang Erich Korngold). Strauss's contribution consisted of two pieces. The first of them is the Parergon to the Symphonia Domestica, completed in the first month of 1925. The unusual title (which might most conveniently be translated as "supplement") refers to the fact that the baby's theme from the Symphonia Domestica is used as the primary theme of this work. The fact that it initially appears in minor mode, with all sorts of "advanced," dissonant harmonies, refers to the bout of typhus that Strauss's son Franz (the "baby") experienced on his honeymoon. Eventually the gloomy and stormy music subsides, finally relaxing into relief and finally high spirits.

Serge Diaghilev commissioned numerous important ballet scores for his Ballets russes, one of the leading artistic institutions of the early twentieth century. One thinks in particular of the numerous works by Stravinsky in this connection, but Ravel, Debussy, Falla, Prokofiev, and Satie also wrote for him. It is sometimes forgotten that Strauss too belongs to this group-he wrote Josephs Legende for Diaghilev and led the premiere in Paris in May 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I would have made such an event impossible. The production was recalled as looking quite brilliant-one eyewitness reports that "nearly everything in the ballet was some shade of gold, except for [Joseph's] white tunic." Strauss enjoyed a great vogue at the time, and the work was outwardly a success, but it has not retained much of a reputation despite its elaborate orchestration. Sir Thomas Beecham, who led the British premiere several months after the Paris production, concluded that "in spite of a few vivid and picturesque moments, the piece went with a heavy and plodding gait."

The ballet deals with a fictional elaboration of the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. After much incidental dancing to set the scene, Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph, is angry when he repulses her, has him arrested, and then commits suicide when she sees him freed by an archangel.

Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils is a famous orchestral passage from Strauss's first great operatic success, Salome (1905). In the opera, this is the point at which the erotic, spoiled title character dances for her lustful stepfather in exchange for the promise that if she does so he will give her anything she asks, little knowing that she has her heart set on obtaining the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter. This passage has taken on a life of its own in the concert hall, since it vividly captures the wild exoticism of the Middle Eastern setting through its harmonies and orchestration. In its dramatic setting, one famous commentator has complained that it is little more than "a gemütlich [jolly] belly dance," but it remains a concert favorite. The 1928 recording led by Strauss himself gives us an idea of his way on the podium.

Arabella was the last of Strauss's collaborations with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who died in 1928, before the libretto for this work could be subjected to the rigorous negotiation between composer and librettist that had marked their previous work (and provides the basis for their extensive and fascinating correspondence, which is required reading for all interested in knowing how their works turned out the way they did). The opera deals with a well-to-do family in Vienna suffering hard times and hoping to wed their beautiful daughter Arabella to a rich man so as to retain their way of life. The duet from Act I that we will hear takes place between Arabella and her younger sister Zdenka, who has been raised as a boy but has fallen in love with Arabella's most passionate (but poor) suitor, in whom Arabella has no interest. Zdenka pleads this Matteo's case to Arabella, who calmly replies that the right man will come along sometime and she will know it right away. The duet is a celebration of Strauss's love of the soprano voice: and remember, he fell in love with and married a soprano!

Burleske for piano and orchestra was completed early in 1886 while the 21-year-old Strauss was working at Meiningen, and was premiered by the famous pianist and Liszt pupil Eugen d'Albert four years later. As the closest thing to a "real" piano concerto Strauss ever wrote (discounting the two works for left hand and orchestra written in the 1920s) it gets played a fair amount and remains a witty work that anticipates the high-spirited hi-jinks of Till Eulenspiegel. It was written at a time when Strauss-briefly-was heavily influenced by the example and music of Brahms, and the scherzo of Brahms's second piano concerto is sometimes cited as a model. But the successive cadenzas near the end bring to mind the end of Brahms's first concerto, and the idea of beginning with a tympani solo takes off from the beginning of Beethoven's violin concerto (although Strauss uses four pitches as opposed to Beethoven's repeated strokes on a single pitch).

The Sonatina no. 2 for winds was begun in 1944 but completed a year later, after the end of World War II. After a long life of musical experiences, Strauss's thoughts turned increasingly toward his longstanding allegiances. The two late wind sonatinas recall his youth, when some of his earliest works were for wind ensemble. The second is subtitled "Merry Workshop," and at the end of the score Strauss adds: "To the spirit of the divine Mozart at the end of a life full of thankfulness." This is a long work, essentially quite cheerful and filled with the thick, flowing counterpoint that characterizes Strauss's musical language.

Strauss's Four Last Songs are shrouded in some mystery. Although they were all written during the years 1946-48, when the composer was in his early eighties, Strauss did not live to publish them and never referred to them as a cycle or a group. They are not all by the same poet (three are poems by Hermann Hesse, and one by Eichendorff). Another song was written during the same period (Malven, by yet another poet, although Strauss never orchestrated it), although it only came to light in 1982 after the death of its dedicatee, the soprano Maria Jeritza. One scholar suspects that if the songs were meant to form a group, the orchestration of an earlier song ("Ruhe, meine Seele") that Strauss made at this time was also to be a part of the set. The order in which the songs were first performed (by Kirsten Flagstad) does not correspond to the layout when they were first published.

All these details do not substantially affect the appreciation of these songs, which are among the most beloved works in the Strauss canon. They are often referred to as "autumnal," and their orchestration glows with a particularly rich radiance. The texts deal with the promise of spring, the beauty of autumn, the desire of the soul to soar unencumbered through the starry night sky, and the sated feeling of a long life filled with love. But the motivation behind Strauss's selection and setting of these texts is his undiminished love for his wife, Pauline, the chief soprano of his life.

Die Frau ohne Schatten is the most elaborate of the joint creations of Strauss and the playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Although other operas resulting from their collaboration receive more frequent performances, this is the one that many operatic connoisseurs find most intriguing and sophisticated. It is an early-twentieth-century counterpart to Mozart's The Magic Flute, with its extensive symbolism. Relating the details of the plot is a convoluted enterprise. "The Woman Without a Shadow" refers to the Empress, a spirit who took on the outward image of a beautiful woman but has not yet embraced humanness to the point of being able to conceive children. When she discovers that her husband, the emperor, will turn to stone if she does not conceive shortly, she and her nurse resolve to "steal" a "shadow" from an earthly woman. They find a willing victim in the wife of the dyer Barak; she longs for the "good things" of life-riches, beauty, and the like, and willingly parts with her "shadow." But in the course of this exchange all the leading characters grow: the Empress learns pity for the good-hearted Barak, who wants children; Barak himself learns himself capable of anger toward the wife for whom he has always cared tenderly but without considering her as a person apart from himself; and the wife learns to appreciate Barak's heart after disdaining his common social status. The beginning of Act III finds the married couple in separate chambers, repenting of their mistaken attitudes toward each other; their voices blend in a duet (although they are not aware of each other's proximity); each in turn is called upward by a voice, and they escape to search for one another. The melody allotted to Barak is one of Strauss's most memorable and prototypically endless, soaring lyrical effusions.

The first of Strauss's two non-programmatic symphonies (the one in D minor) was completed in the year he turned sixteen, and, while he was a precocious musician, this work has not made a very significant impact on the orchestral repertory despite its charming style and already inventive orchestration.

The first of the collaborations between Strauss and his favorite librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, was Elektra. In fact, it is not quite fair to call it a collaboration, because Strauss came to know this "libretto" when he attended a performance of it as a play. He immediately desired to set it as an opera, and did so with only minimal changes and additions by Hofmannsthal. It struck audiences in the first decade of the twentieth century as a further step in the direction of "advanced" musical style that Strauss had been pursuing in his tone poems and Salome. Although there was no banning of this work because of its subject matter as had been the case with Salome, Elektra's mad longing for revenge on her mother and consort for the murder of her father Agamemnon opened windows onto a demented soul that were matched only by the portrait of depravity offered in portraying the mother, Klytämnestra. When Elektra dances herself to death after the murder of the villains, all to very dissonant music, audiences had a preview of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which four years later portrayed a similar dramatic situation to even greater controversy. In Elektra's first monologue she calls on her dead father, recalls his grisly murder, vows a similarly gruesome revenge on the perpetrators, and looks forward to eventual rejoicing over their fate. Strauss's orchestra is immense, and the texture of his writing dense with Wagnerian leitmotifs. In hindsight it is possible to say that Elektra is the farthest extreme to which any of Wagner's followers pushed Wagnerian operatic techniques.

Strauss's Violin Sonata is one of Strauss's latest pieces of chamber music, but it was completed when he was only twenty-three, just before his tone poems lit up the world. It was dedicated to a cousin on his mother's side. Strauss thought highly of this work throughout his life-he performed it in public as late as the early 1930s and chose it to be performed on several ceremonial occasions even later. Certainly by the time he wrote it melodic characteristics of the mature Strauss had begun to become evident, and the vigorous part of Strauss's nature is clearly perceptible. In the original manuscript the slow movement is entitled "Improvisation," and reveals both the nature of Strauss's early models and the extent of his liberation from them.

After the great success of Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, Strauss and Hofmannsthal searched for another subject. Although they eventually arrived at Die Frau ohne Schatten, the work that occupied much of their effort for the intervening years was the opera that eventually became Ariadne auf Naxos. At first their intention was to have this work performed as part of an evening also including an adaptation and translation of Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme, for which Strauss wrote incidental music. But lack of success for the 1912 premiere prompted a revision so that the opera stands on its own as a prologue and a lengthy single act; in this form it was first performed in 1916.

The premise of this opera is laid out in the prologue. A wealthy patron of the arts has commissioned a serious opera from a young composer, and last-minute preparations are being made for its production that evening. But the plans begin to change. First, it is decided that the opera will be followed by a performance by a group of harlequins. Then we learn that there will be fireworks at nine o'clock, so neither performance can be very long. Finally the patron decrees that the two performances should be given simultaneously, so that the comic elements will intermingle with the serious ones.
This mingling of musical styles is an attractive one and most congenial to Strauss (who, incidentally, joins ranks with Ives, Mahler, and others around this time in seeking for "reality" through a kind of collage technique). Near the beginning of the opera proper, Ariadne, who has been abandoned by Theseus, indulges in profound grief over her fate while the harlequins try to entertain her and restore her will to live. In the passage we will hear, Ariadne sings of her desire to enter the land of death, the male harlequins sing and dance for her, and then Zerbinetta, the star singer of the troupe, reasons with Ariadne. Her tactic is to try to help her get over her pining for Theseus by explaining that, in her experience, each relationship with a man seems to be the only one of importance. Zerbinetta's aria is one of the great showpieces of the operatic repertory-even so, it's less taxing than the one included in the original version of the opera.

For lieder on Thursday afternoon-see "Strauss as pianist" from original script.

The closing scene of Der Rosenkavalier, in which the Marschallin relinquishes her young lover Octavian now that he has become smitten with Sophie, contains some of Strauss's most gorgeous music-the fact that three sopranos were involved resulted in one of the composer's finest inspirations. This was commonly recognized throughout Strauss's lifetime, so much so that this final trio was performed at the composer's funeral. The scene begins with a trio for all three characters: the Marschallin had realized that someday she would have to give up Octavian, but didn't know that sad day would come so soon; Sophie, rapturously in love with Octavian, realizes the sacrifice the Marschallin is making but feels helpless to know how to react; Octavian too is powerless in the grip of his love for Sophie. A simple duet for Sophie and Octavian follows, interrupted only when Sophie's father, not knowing of the relationship between Octavian and the Marschallin, turns to the latter and says "That's how they are, young people," and the Marschallin responds with a reserved but heartfelt "Ja, ja" ("Oh, yes") that sets the seal on the elegance of her character and on one of the most sophisticated operas ever written.

Aus Italian (From Italy) is sometimes referred to as Strauss's first tone poem. In fact, it is a transitional work, a way station between his early works cast in traditional forms and his later programmatic works. It is a kind of successor to Beethoven's "Pastoral" symphony in that it attempts to describe the impressions and sensations of an experience, in this case the character and scenery of Italy as Strauss perceived it during his first trip to Italy in 1886, when he was only 22. Up to this point Strauss's works had been largely well received, but the last of the four movements made the orchestra laugh derisively during rehearsals for the premiere. Everywhere it was performed this last movement aroused controversy, with audiences booing and fleeing in droves. Strauss had the sense of perspective to realize that this reaction meant he was on the "right" path: "I felt immensely proud," he wrote; "the first work to have met with the opposition of the multitude-that proves it must be of some significance."

Strauss composed the Festival Prelude for organ and orchestra for the opening of the Vienna Konzerthaus in 1913. It has been noted that this piece employs the largest orchestra Strauss ever devised, and its sonic impact disguises the fact that it is not a bad piece at all.

By the time he was 19 it was clear that Strauss was going to be a professional composer, and it was during 1883 that he first spent most of his time composing. The cello sonata was one of the products of this year, and most experts feel that it is one of the most successful pieces he had written to that time. The principal cellist of the Dresden Court Opera, who gave an early performance of it, was "blissfully happy" with it, and it remains something of a staple in the cello repertory.

An Alpine Symphony is Strauss's last tone poem, begun just after the triumphant premiere of Der Rosenkavalier when Strauss was impatient for another libretto from Hofmannsthal. At first working on this piece was not enjoyable for him-it was "a job, when all's said and done, that amuses me even less than chasing Maybugs." In the end, however, he was very satisfied with how it came out: "I have finally learned to orchestrate!" was his comment at one of the rehearsals. Although it is usual to understand this work as a musical depiction of the experiences one can have while climbing in the mountains, it is perhaps useful to note that Strauss began the project as part of a three-movement work to be called "The Anti-Christ: An Alpine Symphony." Strauss was concerned with the hold of Christianity on such otherwise artistic figures as Wagner and Mahler, and turned to Nietzsche for a way out of this (in his view) fatal attraction. Thus the climbing of a mountain as depicted in this piece really stands for one's journey through life.

Daphne was one of the operas written after the death of Strauss's most congenial librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In his place was Josef Gregor, who was too much in awe of Strauss to stand up to him when the latter found fault with some of his work. In the end, Stefan Zweig, librettist for Die schweigsame Frau but now forbidden to Strauss because he was a Jew, ended up helping Gregor and the conductor Clemens Krauss helped Strauss in conceiving of options for the work. It was dedicated to the conductor Karl Böhm, who directed the premiere of this one-act work on a double bill with another Strauss opera, Friedenstag, in 1938. The story deals with Daphne, loved by her childhood sweetheart Leukippos but unresponsive to his ardent affection-rather, she identifies with the trees and flowers of the pastoral scene in which the opera is set. She is impressed when the god Apollo, disguised as a herdsman, shows himself to know things about her that she thought only she knew, but repulses his protestations of love as well even though he is utterly fascinated by her beauty. In a struggle over the affections of the unresponsive Daphne, Apollo mortally wounds Leukippos. Now Apollo is repentant to the other gods for interfering with the lives of mortals, and asks that Daphne, a child of nature not interested in human love, be transformed into a laurel tree, so that the best among men can be adorned by branches cut from her. The scene we will hear is the end of the opera, in which this transformation of Daphne into a laurel tree takes place. At the beginning of the scene she welcomes this development, and near its end continues to sing without words (from offstage) in her new condition. All the while Strauss concocts one of his most serene and beatific orchestral tapestries.

Der Rosenkavalier is commonly thought of as Strauss's operatic masterpiece-Strauss too thought so, identifying himself as the composer of Der Rosenkavalier when American occupation forces came to his home in Garmisch after the defeat of Germany in World War II. It is an incredibly detailed invention on the part of both Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal, but one of its most rewarding features is the depth of the central character (at least of Act I), the Marschallin. She is married to a Field Marshall who is much older than she and neglects her; into this vacuum has come the young count Octavian, with whom she is having a passionate affair. The scene we will now hear is in Act I, just after her distant cousin from the country, Baron Ochs, has come to announce his forthcoming engagement. The Marschallin finds Ochs's behavior boorish in the extreme and pities the young girl who will be unwillingly betrothed to him. This thought launches her on a series of reminiscences and reflections on her past and the nature of her life. She realizes that time is passing inexorably, that though still young, she is growing old. When Octavian reappears (after having dressed as her maid during Ochs's visit so that he wouldn't sense any impropriety), he makes ardent protestations of love to the Marschallin, but she tries to make light of his affection in order to prepare both of them for the day that he will leave her for someone else. After feigning calm maturity by encouraging him to leave for his day's activities so that she can be about hers, she's overcome by the power of the love that is nevertheless so fleeting, and asks her servants to bring him back. But he's beyond reach, and, indeed, only hours away from laying eyes on the woman for whom he will leave the Marschallin-none other than Sophie, Ochs's supposed bride-to-be. Strauss's music during this scene is among his most memorably reflective, capturing the Marschallin's depth as well as her volatility.