RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949)

I write this short biographical sketch as part of Matthew Taylor’s series in 2020 of
Music Around 1900; more precisely, music written in the decade from 1895 and
1905. I first encountered Strauss with his tone poem Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry
Pranks. I was just under seventeen and had only recently succumbed to the joys of
classical music. This was music more modern than I’d known after having travelled
from Beethoven to Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms; then via Wagner
(orchestral selections only), Tchaikovsky (excluding piano concerto No 1, too often
played on Two Way Family Favourites). It was against this learning curve that I
found myself bravely tackling the modernity of Strauss. Later, much later, one would
plunge in at the deep end with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, an obstacle course to
overcome, not the concert hall pot boiler it has since become in comparison with
which Richard Strauss seemed as if he were back into the tiers of the conservatives.
He was born in 1864 in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, an eminent orchestral
horn player at the Court Opera in Munich and a music school professor. His year of
birth takes him into a new period from that of the established romantic composers of
the immediate post Beethoven generation. He was from the same later generation
as Mahler and Debussy and hence his influences had been conservative but he was
to be part of the new sound world to emerge. Strauss showed examples of his talent
writing as early as age six. His education was conventional but concentrated on his
musical abilities. When he left school at 18 he had produced some 140 works, in
classic style and classed as juvenilia including chamber music, lieder and orchestral
works. His father’s influence was strong but one from which the son was soon to
move away. Munich was Bavaria and Bavaria was the domain of mad King Ludwig,
the host to Wagner operas. And it was from the orchestra pit of the opera that the
sounds of the horn of Franz Strauss would be heard notwithstanding his abhorrence
of that particular composer.
Through his father’s connections, Strauss would go on to meet the leading musicians
of the day, amongst whom was the conductor Hans von Bülow. Germany at the time,
as we saw with Mahler, was dotted with towns all of which had an orchestra and
needed a conductor. Those that emerged were those where they built a good
orchestra or had great conductors like von Bulow, Nikisch or Richter. Otherwise to
be second in command to one of those top notchers was a leg up to higher things.
Bulow had been married to Cosima Liszt, daughter of the composer. Bulow got well
and truly cuckolded by her having a liaison with Wagner whose music Bulow
continued to conduct. Ultimately, he divorced her and she went on to marry Wagner
once she was pregnant. It was von Bulow who commissioned Strauss’s Suite for 13
Winds for the Meiningen Orchestra and Strauss himself conducted its first
performance in Munich in November 1884 by which time Cosima had become a
widow! This was followed by von Bulow offering Strauss the post of assistant
conductor at Meiningen, then the most prodigious orchestra of its day and Brahms’
favourite for choice.
From then on Strauss’s reputation as a conductor ran in parallel with his growing
fame as a composer. Among the posts he went on to hold were conductorships of
the Munich Opera (1886–89), the Weimar Court Orchestra (1889–94), back home to
Munich as second and then chief conductor (1894–98), Berlin Opera (1898–1919),
and the Vienna State Opera (1919–24).
Up till the 1880s, Strauss’s music had been traditionally classical including his early
horn concerto written for his father. (He would write a second 60 years later). The
new sounds he sought were not coming down the German orchestral line of
Mendelssohn and Schumann who retained a lighter touch, nor Brahms whose music
Wagner described as chamber music writ large. A new sound was emerging from
the orchestra pit of Wagner operas for whom new instruments were being invented.
For musical form Strauss was turning away from the traditional symphony and
towards the symphonic poem, conceived in form by Liszt who wrote thirteen of them.
He, in turn, had been inspired by the large programme symphonies of Berlioz. The
symphonic poem, like the programme symphony before it, told a story and the story
line did not fit hand in hand an exposition, a development, a recapitulation and a
coda, the essential ingredients of sonata form. The music needed liberalising in form
to track the line of the story. Nor was it going to need separate movements unless
the story was written in separate chapters. It was against this background that
Strauss devised symphonic stories based on characters and heroes in the same
sound world as that which might be heard coming from the Wagner orchestra pit.
In 1886 he left Meiningen and toured Italy. He recorded his impressions musically,
producing his first symphonic poem, Aus Italien (From Italy). Having said that, the
work is in four movements and not particularly that symphonic. When played in
Munich, the first three movements were applauded and the fourth booed. This last
was an orchestral variation of the then new popular song about the cable car,
Funiculi Funicula. I myself recall a freezing descent from Etna, a cross between a
moonscape and a coal face, into the overheated sweaty ristorante at the bottom
where a group playing a squeeze box accordion, a trumpet, a saxophone and a
ukulele belted out Funiculi Funicula to the clapping accompaniment of the tourist
diners. I can’t say that I rate Strauss’s version to be that much more memorable.
1886 and 1887 saw changes and new arrivals. To begin with Ludwig II of Bavaria
died in 1886, three years after Wagner. No longer would his successor maintain the
Bavarian State Opera in such lavish manner. The following year Strauss met Mahler
who was in charge at the Budapest Opera. It was just before the completion of the
Mahler first symphony. That same year, 1887, Strauss met Pauline de Ahna. She
was a soprano and a voice student in Munich who switched to private lessons with
Strauss. He was soon to become her principal teacher and his interest in her clearly
went well beyond her tonsils. The couple married in 1894. She was known as being
irascible, garrulous, eccentric and outspoken. Yet to all appearances their marriage
was essentially happy; they were married for 55 years and she outlived him by eight
months. There was no doubt that she was a great source of inspiration to him and
she appears in musical guise in Ein Heldenleben and the Sinfonia Domestica, and
musically his own portrayal tends to show her as irascible, garrulous, eccentric and
outspoken.
Returning to his symphonic poems, we left Strauss after his Italian tour and his
funicular fun. Although the next opus was that of Don Juan, he had already
completed his symphonic poem, Macbeth but it was withheld needing several
revisions. It was written in one movement and in sonata form and Strauss clearly had
difficulty in reconciling the form with the narrative. With Don Juan, there was no such
difficulty and it blazes with the sheer self-confidence of the macho male lover with an
unforgettable unison horn call, possibly proclaiming the hero’s prowess. Death and
Transfiguration which followed lights up heaven and earth. Written in four parts, the
single movement depicts the death of an artist. At Strauss's request, it was accorded
the title of Death and Transfiguration, after its composition. As the artist lies dying,
thoughts of his past life, his childhood innocence, the struggles of his manhood and
his worldly achievement float past followed by the longed-for transfiguration "from the
infinite reaches of heaven". Herbert von Karajan portrayed this better than I can
describe it. In the same year as these two orchestral pieces. Strauss wrote Burleske
for Piano and Orchestra seeking to dedicate it to von Bulow who was a leading
pianist as well as conductor. He disparaged the work describing it as unplayable and
Strauss accepted the criticism and did not give it an opus number. It later became
one of his favourites and has more a Brahmsian sound about it.
We move on to 1894. That year Strauss was appointed chief conductor to the
Bayreuth Festival with Pauline taking the role of Elisabeth in Tannhauser, after which
they got married. The song might have finished but the melody lingered on. In
Weimar that year he produced his first opera, Guntram, with guess who singing the
role of Freihild which he created for her. It got mixed reviews in Weimar but in
Munich it got the thumbs down from the home supporters - Strauss's first major
failure.
After that romantic interlude we move back to the symphonic poems. It is now 1895
with Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, my own introduction to Richard Strauss. Till is,
portrayed at the outset by one of the most wonderful horn themes of all time. Here is
a lovable rogue out of German folklore, hardly a hero, and, like all lovable rogues,
such as Falstaff or Malcolm Arnold’s Beckus the Dandipratt (trumpet in his case),
they are to music what Charlie Chaplin was to silent cinema. Till plays all manner of
pranks until he is caught, sentenced to hang to a background of drum rolls and the
very last squeak of breath from a clarinet. And as we reminisce near the end, I
always ask whether my ears deceive me or is that the Siegfried Idyll that I am
hearing?
There followed a year later “Also Spracht Zarathustra” written by Nietzsche,
composed by Strauss, appropriated by Stanley Kubrick, and misappropriated by
Elvis Pressley in concert. It is a nine section symphonic poem with an unforgettable
opening on double basses, double bassoon and organ. The rest you must find out
for yourself. I have a friend whose identification with music is often from hearing the
background to wholly nongermane films. When he hears the slow movement of
Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto he has a mental image of the sea sweeping
over the coral reefs of Australia . I doubt that Beethoven envisaged that. Likewise
there are thousands who have been brain washed to conjure up 2001, A Space
Odyssey, when hearing the only part of Also Spracht they know, Stanley Kubrick’s
musical contribution to science fiction with a little bit of help from the Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra and Herbert von Karajan.
We now come to the two symphonic poems by Strauss, the subject of Matthew’s
lecture, Don Quixote (1897) and Ein Heldenleben (1898). I cannot emphasize
enough that when it comes to musical analysis, I should be leaving this to Matthew,
but I can’t help sometimes adding my own tuppence ha’penny worth.
To begin with, the two works do get coupled by music historians. First, the Don
described by Strauss as Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character. Hold
it there a moment. The Don? Well Matthew referred to him as such and that is how
he has become lovingly referred to in the community of anglophone music followers
but why “the Don” exactly. It is said to be an honorific title in Italy and Spain for
someone a little above one’s equal, head of the family, particularly leader of the local
mafia and, to be used by the common or garden worker who himself is only allowed
to be addressed by his surname. Don is no more than Mister and The Don is
therefore The Mister? I am sure that John Bartram, one of our long term members, a
Lords Taverner to boot, will agree there has only been one justifiable instance for the
appellation of “The Don” - Bradman.
Don Quixote is perceived by Strauss as a knightly character, not so much Arthurian
as a Spanish distant counterpart of Sir John Falstaff. He was pitiable rather than
laughable. His is a different world to that of the tourist flamenco or fandango,
castanets and all, as presented even by Telemann in his rendering of Don Quichotte
150 years earlier. Actually a better comparison would be with that of Manuel da
Falla’s neo-classical “El Retablo de Maese Pedro” (The Puppet Theatre of Master
Peter). In this the puppets enact the kidnap of a Christian princess by the Moors until
Don Quixote rises from the audience to challenge the Moors and strikes down the
puppets with his sword. He declares that here is proof of the merits of knights-errant.
Don Quixote is mediaeval, set in the early sixteenth century, a Walter Mitty of his
time, lost in his own make believe world and not to be viewed as some Carry On Up
The Costa Brava character. For his orchestral effect, do watch out for the flutter
tongued trumpets which Strauss uses to conjure up the bleating of sheep when
attacked by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
I move on to Heldenleben which is a bird of another feather. Strauss’s previous
heroes have all been different in character. Now he sets out to unfold the nature of a
hero, some abstract being, or so he said. The hero however can only be Strauss
himself mirrored musically by references to the heroes he has already created.
There is also a heroine, none other than Frau Strauss herself. He has enemies, not
Moors, but music critics who have condemned his works. It has been said to be a
symphonic poem in sonata form but I don’t buy that at all. It sets out in heroic mood.
The critics (woodwinds) in their nastiness, enter to sneer and interrupt. The loved
one appears on a solo violin to flirt and charm before morphing into the great love
duet between the two. There follows the re-appearance of the critics with a special
place reserved for Eduard Hanslick who was the most conservative critic of his day.
Distant off stage trumpets announce the battle scene between the hero and the
critics and a conflict of Napoleonic proportions ensues intermingled with support from
his beloved. This is the Strauss wow factor, blowing one out of one’s seat. Total
victory is reached over the critics with a proclamation of the great horn theme from
Don Juan. The work could well have ended there but instead Strauss decided to
blazon his achievement by recalling his earlier creations. I do not know if one might
call it self indulgence but there are numerous references to these earlier oeuvres
although one would have to possess extensive knowledge of them to appreciate the
self glorification. Ultimately Strauss’s hero retires from this world but not before he
placed himself on Beethoven’s plinth by including reference to the Eroica Symphony.
Here we have reached the pivotal point with the turn of the century and the
procession of Straussian heroes. There are two further works to mention in passing
which adopt the name symphony or sinfonia. In 1903 Strauss wrote a new extended
symphonic poem which he saw as sequential to Heldenleben. He called it Sinfonia
Domestica - a family portrait of the Strausses- himself, his wife, his screaming
baby, his uncles and his cousins and his aunts. The super hero is replaced by
Strauss as the ultimate bourgeois. In Don Quixote he created the sound of sheep
bleating; in Sinfonia Domestica he created the sound of the crying baby. The first
performance was conducted by Mahler.

The other work is An Alpine Symphony, a vast work describing the climbing of a
mountain, its ascent, its glaciers and everything else down to the snow boots with
the exception of a cable car. No Funiculi, Funicula, thankfully. It was completed in
1915 during the Great War, not a fertile period for Strauss composition. He had first
thought about this work in 1899 but it fell by the wayside. Originally he had intended
calling it Der Antichrist (after Nietzsche) : Eine Alpensinfonie, but again he never
finished it. Instead, he dropped the Antichrist label and called it simply Eine
Alpensinfonie. It was only after the shattering death of Mahler in 1911 did Strauss
return to it.

The 1890’s had been the predominant decade for the symphonic poems with their
heroes. The 1900’s up till the Great War would be the predominant period for the
great Strauss operas in partnership with his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Already Guntram in 1894, had flopped, although you would not think so from the
references Strauss made to it in Heldenleben.

This next paragraph is X certificated. Not to be read by any under 18s in our group.
Strauss’s second opera was called Feuersnot written in 1902. It was bound to be too
much for the audiences of its time. You could say that for an audience of today. The
plot concerned the loss of fire for a town and redemption through sex, Nietzsche
again, who else?. Simulated sex on stage with orchestral effects to match was
bound to shock. If you want a night out without risk by unsolicited titillation, I suggest
you might do better to see “Only Fools and Horses”, the Musical.

Strauss was now however to concentrate more and more on opera and there
followed a continuous flow of operas not just limited to the pre-WW1 period as is
often thought the case although it is those which are his most famous works in this
genre and on which his reputation matches that of the orchestral works.
First in 1905, came Salome, based on a play written in French by Oscar Wilde, best
known for the dance of the seven veils which Salome strips off one by one until
naked on stage. This is customarily undertaken by a dancer. The narrative is a bit
gory with the severed head of John the Baptist brought in on a silver platter and
passionately kissed on the lips by Salome. At the time Strauss was on a successful
orchestral tour of America and Salome was very soon to receive fifty performances.
It got banned in Vienna and by the Lord Chamberlain in London until an edited
version was allowed in 1910 which got performed under Beecham.

Electra was the next in line, the first from the Strauss/Hofmannsthal team and is cold
blooded Greek tragedy based on the Sophocles tragedy. It set out to shock and it did
as witness, one of the original critics “The whole thing impresses one as a sexual
aberration. The blood mania appears as a terrible deformation of sexual perversity.”

Der Rosenkavalier is set in the Hapsburg Empire, the first in three acts. Its sexual
behaviour is more acceptable and allowable in a comic opera where no one objects
to a little bit of cross dressing. Forget that, we go to hear the great soprano trio sung
by the Marschallin and Sophie, the sopranos, and Octavian, a young man played by
a mezzo-soprano.

The last before WW1 was Ariadne, after Moliere. Originally it was intended to be a
drama, written by Hofmannsthal followed by the opera with incidental music for the
drama written by Strauss as well as the opera music. This would have taken over
six hours and was and restyled anew in 1916 as Ariadne auf Naxos. Strauss was
able to retrieve the incidental music to become instead the divertimento, Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

The theatrical lights of Europe went down during the First World War and when the
curtain went up again in 1919 the stage setting had changed. The powerful
romanticism of the Strauss of the pre-war years was no longer the order of the day,
nor for that matter was the airy-fairyism of the impressionists of the art nouveau
period of the pre-war years. Soon to come would be neo-classicism with modern
interpretations of baroque and classical form or pastiches of earlier periods. Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme which received its first performance in 1918 seemed to be
an early example to this category with its absorption of Lully for Moliere

Strauss continued to write, including operas into the 1930s, said by most critics to
lack the inspirational brilliance of the earlier years. I think it can be said that Strauss
had not lost it but the world had moved on and lost Strauss. Throughout his life he
wrote a considerable number of lieder to be sung by his wife particularly in the early
1920’s, lieder which often had orchestral accompaniment in his discernible style. He
had not dried up but his compositional style did not bed well with the likes of Kurt
Weill, Alban Berg and the new German modernists of the Weimar Republic years. It
must also be remembered that Strauss was also a conductor of international repute
and much of his time was devoted to this side of his musical activities.

Hitler came to power in 1933 and the Weimar Republic was crushed into oblivion, its
artists and musicians forced to flee. Richard Strauss stood apart from them, and was
appointed without consultation Reichsmusikkammer (Chamber of State Music),the
virtual equivalent of Master of the King’s Music. He was almost 70 in 1933 and
might first have perceived this as an honour. There is no suggestion that he was a
political figure and he did not join the Nazi party. Hofmannsthal had died in 1929
and Strauss had chosen Stefan Zweig, a Jew, as his new librettist. They had
collaborated on a comic opera, Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman) in 1935
which was unacceptable to the Nazis. The opera was banned after four
performances, and Strauss was made to work with a non-Jewish librettist. That his
son’s wife was Jewish was also held against him. How odd when you think about it
that at much the same time Shostakovich had been suffering the same treatment
from Stalin for the Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.

This official position was not going to last two years as it happened. Strauss had
shown his contempt for the new masters, especially Goebbels, in a letter he wrote to
Sweig and which was intercepted by the Gestapo. Goebbels wielded his axe on this
coming to light. Strauss had already been endorsed to write a new Olympic hymn for
the Berlin Olympics of 1936 not as it happens at the instigation of the Nazi
government but commissioned by the International Olympic Committee before Hitler
came to power. He had retrieved his ideas from a symphony he had ditched and
recycled the parts. Planned for open air performance, it would require an enormous
chorus and orchestra of 450. His expulsion did not black the performance of the
Olympic Hymn nor from Strauss conducting it. If there were any rpm 78 disc, I doubt
it would have got a playing by Jesse Owens when he got home.

There also arose a rift between Toscanini and Strauss. Toscanini was the greatest
international conductor of his day, not just some Italian bandmaster, so described by
Beecham. Toscanini was a Wagner conductor of great repute. He began and ended
his career conducting Wagner and in 1933 was chief conductor of the Bayreuth
Festival. He had already vowed that he would not set foot on Italian soil again so
long as Mussolini was in power, a threat he steadfastly stuck to. Now by reason of
his hatred of Fascism and upon Hitler assuming power, Toscanini resigned his post
with the Bayreuth Festival. Immediately his position was offered to and taken up by
Richard Strauss. He received a contemptuous riposte from Toscanini. His view was
that Strauss should leave Germany like others had. In fact Strauss’s daughter in law
and thus his own grandchildren were Jewish and he would fight tooth and nail for
their protection including moving them to Switzerland. He interceded on the part of
her family but his intervention could not ultimately save them, 12 of whom died in the
camps. He would also take up the cases of the Jewish musicians. Strauss was to
insist that Stefan Sweig’s name as librettist should be shown on the programme for
the first performance of The Silent Woman when it had been ordered to be removed.
It was restored but the party bosses cold shouldered the opening performance. Still
the other side of the coin was no better when the American investigators, in turn,
were to cross examine him for his suspected collaboration.

In 1939, the world went back to war and Strauss lived more or less in retreat in
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the villa he had had built after writing Salome. The end of
war and the post war years have been described as his Indian summer. This was no
bellwether change but Strauss rediscovering his voice and himself. There was time
to compose but he was never going to return to the heroics or shock operas of
yesteryear. He had nothing he needed to prove but to write for his own self-
satisfaction and he did. The latter stages of the war with the heavy blanket bombing
of Germany when its theatres and opera houses went up in fire and smoke
saddened him. For him, it was the destruction of historical German culture and in
1942 he reflected this in Metamorphosen for a 23 piece string orchestra. Its funereal
atmosphere conveys all the dark tragedy including reference to the Eroica
symphony. Toscanini gave the work the recognition it deserved but he was not a
man ever to concede “To Richard Strauss, the composer, I take off my hat. To
Richard Strauss, the man, I put it on again” a distinction between the individual and
his work which raises the age-old question about art and morality.

This period includes composition of an oboe concerto, a second horn concerto

written sixty years after his youthful first, a neo classical divertimento based on music
by Lully, a recording bed mate to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and the sad beautiful
Four Last Songs – should be called Swansongs - written at the end of his life for
soprano with orchestral accompaniment. When the war had ended he was detained
for denazification clearance and the American officer in charge who had been an
oboist in an amateur orchestra suggested that Strauss write an oboe concerto. This
was played to us in another of Matthew’s lectures. Poor Strauss, Pauline looked after
money matters. His income had seized up but he made a highly successful
conducting trip to London which replenished the coffers. The couple ended their
days in Switzerland. The old man (no, not an old man) died at 84 (my age!) with
Pauline following shortly afterwards.

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I want in particular to mention our very good friend, Michael Mellish who has been
with us for many years if not from the very beginning. Michael has been a staunch
supporter and used to undertake looking after the group before I did. We have for
some years shared company at the Festival Hall and the Barbican. We are not what
we were and concert going, like ourselves, has slowed down. There was certainly
more of it back in the fifties and sixties. Michael was a young architect at the time
with Peter Morro the firm which designed the RFH. It was of course designed and
built for the opening of the Festival of Britain in May 1951. Michael went there to see
and hear Toscanini who conducted the Brahms symphonies in September 1952. He
was accompanied by a young lady named Mary whom he wanted to impress and
took her to the new restaurant which probably cost him a bomb and an engagement
ring. Michael and Mary have lived happily in Montpelier Row and after nearly 70
years of marriage I wish them both a trouble free extension. On top of this, Michael
waxes lyrical about my biographical articles. Thank you Michael and for all the
friendship and support you give I dedicate this sketch on Richard Strauss to you,