THIS DAY IN CLASSICAL MUSIC HISTORY: One of the foremost German composers of the late Romantic and early Modern eras, Richard Strauss, was born on June 11, 1864 in Munich. Strauss is best known for his magnificent operas, which include “Der Rosenkavalier” and “Salome;” his Lieder, especially his “Four Last Songs;” and his tone poems, such as “Death and Transfiguration,” “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” and “Also sprach Zarathustra,” the beginning of which was made world famous as the opening of the motion picture “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Along with Gustav Mahler, Strauss represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after the death of Richard Wagner. He pioneered in combining subtle, complex orchestration with an advanced harmonic style. Strauss was the son of the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. In his youth, his father gave him a thorough musical education. He wrote his first composition at the age of six. His career took a major step forward in 1885, when he was appointed to follow the renowned conductor Hans von Bülow as music director of the Meiningen orchestra. At that time, Strauss’ compositions most resembled those of Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. His remarkably mature first concerto for horn is representative of this period and is a staple of modern horn repertoire. At the end of the 19th century, Strauss turned his creative attention to opera. His initial attempts in the genre, “Guntram” and “Feuersnot” were controversial works: Feuersnot was considered obscene by some critics. In 1905, Strauss produced “Salome,” based on the play by Oscar Wilde. The premiere was a major success, with the artists taking more than 38 curtain calls. Subsequent performances were also successful, not only with the general public but also with Strauss’ peers. No less than Maurice Ravel said that the work was “stupendous” and Mahler described it as “a live volcano, a subterranean fire.” Strauss’ next opera was “Elektra.” The composer employed a more dissonant, lush, late-Romantic style based on Wagnerian chromatic harmonies, exhibiting immense virtuosity in orchestral writing and tone color. Ensuing operas such as “Der Rosenkavalier” also enjoyed great public success. Strauss continued to produce operas at regular intervals, including. “Ariadne auf Naxos” (1912), “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (1918), “Die ägyptische Helena” (1927), and “Arabella” (1932). His final opera, “Capriccio,” was written when the composer was 78 years old. Strauss married in 1894. His marriage was a happy one, and his wife was a great source of inspiration to him. His son Franz was born in 1897. Franz married Alice von Grab, a Jewish woman, in a Catholic ceremony in 1924. Franz and Alice had two sons, Richard and Christian. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany. Strauss never joined the Nazi party, and studiously avoided Nazi forms of greeting. For reasons of expediency, however, he initially cooperated with the regime in the hope that Hitler, known as an ardent Wagnerian and an admirer of Strauss’ work, would promote German art and culture. He revealed his true feelings in an entry in his personal notebook, where he wrote “I consider [Joseph] Goebbels’ Jew-baiting as a disgrace to German honor, as evidence of incompetence - the basest weapon of untalented, lazy mediocrity against a higher intelligence and greater talent.” He privately scorned Goebbels and called him “a pipsqueak.” For his part, the powerful Nazi propaganda minister was cordial to Strauss when they met in public, but wrote in his own diary that, “Unfortunately we still need him, but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no further need of this decadent neurotic.” Strauss attempted to ignore Nazi bans on performances of works by Claude Debussy, Mahler and Mendelssohn. He also continued to work on a comic opera, “Die schweigsame Frau,” with his Jewish friend and librettist Stefan Zweig. When the opera was premiered in Dresden in 1935, Strauss insisted that Zweig’s name appear on the theatrical billing, much to the ire of the Nazi regime. Hitler and Goebbels refused to attend the opera, and ordered it halted after three performances. Nevertheless, Strauss’ seeming relationship with the Nazis in the 1930’s attracted criticism from some noted musicians, including Arturo Toscanini, who said, “To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again.” In fact, much of Strauss’ seeming cordiality to members of the Third Reich was due to the necessity of protecting his Jewish daughter-in-law and two grandchildren from persecution. Strauss used his considerable influence to prevent their being sent to concentration camps. After World War II, Strauss’ genius, which had ebbed because of the horrors of the conflict, enjoyed a remarkable “Indian Summer.” He composed some of the best works of his life, including his second horn concerto, his oboe concerto, and his masterful and haunting “Four Last Songs.” Indeed, his late works, modeled, as he put it, on “the divine Mozart at the end of a life full of thankfulness,” are the most remarkable output by any octogenarian composer. He died at the age of 85 on September 8, 1949. During his lifetime Strauss was considered the greatest composer of the first half of the 20th century, and his music had a profound influence on the development of 20th-century music. There were few composers of the period who compared with Strauss in terms of orchestral imagination, and no composer since Wagner made a more significant contribution to the history of opera. Through it all, Strauss remained characteristically self-deprecating, saying two years before he died, “I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer!” Herewith a performance of one of Strauss’ most enduringly popular tone poems, “Don Juan,” his Opus 20, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. The concert was recorded in Osaka, Japan in 1984. youtube/watch?v=CcBGsjPky0c
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 05:12:38 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015