Richard Strauss
German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist
1864 CE to 1949 CE
Richard Georg Strauss (June 11, 1864 – September 8, 1949) is a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist.
Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt.
He ,along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Strauss's compositional output begins in 1870 when he is just six years old and lasts until his death nearly eighty years later.
While his output of works encompasses nearly every type of classical compositional form, Strauss achieves his greatest success with tone poems and operas.
His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim is Don Juan (1889), and this wis followed by other lauded works of this kind, including Death and Transfiguration (1890), Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (1895), Also sprach Zarathustra (1896), Don Quixote (1897), Ein Heldenleben (1898), Symphonia Domestica (1905), and An Alpine Symphony (1915).
His first opera to achieve international fame is Salome (1905), which uses a libretto by Hedwig Lachmann that is a German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde.
This is followed by several critically acclaimed operas with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912, rev. 1916), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), Die ägyptische Helena (1928), and Arabella (1933).
His last operas, Daphne (1938), Friedenstag (1938), Die Liebe der Danae (1940) and Capriccio (1942) uses libretti written by Joseph Gregor, the Viennese theater historian
Other well known works by Strauss include two symphonies, lieder (especially his Four Last Songs from 1948), the Violin Concerto in D minor (1882), the Horn Concerto No. 1 (1883), Horn Concerto No. 2 (1943), his Oboe Concerto and other instrumental works such as Metamorphosen (1945).
Strauss is also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions become standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire.
He is chiefly admired for his interpretations of the works of Liszt, Mozart, and Wagner in addition to his own works.
A conducting disciple of Hans von Bülow, Strauss begins his conducting career as Bülow's assistant with the Meiningen Court Orchestra in 1883.
After Bülow resigns in 1885, Strauss serves as that orchestra's primary conductor for five months before being appointed to the conducting staff of the Bavarian State Opera, where he works as third conductor from 1886-1889.
He then serves as principal conductor of the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar from 1889-1894.
In 1894 he makes his conducting debut at the Bayreuth Festival, conducting Wagner's Tannhäuser with his wife, soprano Pauline de Ahna, singing Elisabeth.
He then returns to the Bavarian State Opera, this time as principal conductor, from 1894-1898, after which he is principal conductor of the Berlin State Opera from 1898-1913
From 1919-1924 he is principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera, and in 1920 he co-founds the Salzburg Festival. In addition to these posts, Strauss is a frequent guest conductor in opera houses and with orchestras internationally.
In 1933 Strauss is appointed to two important positions in the musical life of Nazi Germany: head of the Reichsmusikkammer and principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival.
The latter role he accepts after conductor Arturo Toscanini had resigned from the position in protest of the Nazi party.
These positions lead some to criticize Strauss for his seeming collaboration with the Nazis.
However, Strauss's daughter-in-law, Alice Grab Strauss [née von Hermannswörth], is Jewish and much of his apparent acquiescence to the Nazi Party is done in order to save her life, and the lives of her children (his grandchildren).
He is also apolitical, and takes the Reichsmusikkammer post in order to advance copyright protections for composers, attempting as well to preserve performances of works by banned composers such as Debussy, Mahler, and Mendelssohn.
Further, Strauss insists on using a Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig, for his opera (1935) which ultimately leads to his firing from the Reichsmusikkammer and Bayreuth.
His opera Friedenstag, which premieres just before the outbreak of the Second World War, is a thinly veiled criticism of the Nazi party that attempts to persuade Germans to abandon violence for peace.
Thanks to his influence, his daughter-in-law is placed under protected house arrest during the war, but despite extensive efforts he is unable to save dozens of his in-laws from being killed in Nazi concentration camps.
In 1948, a year before his death, he is cleared of any wrongdoing by a denazification tribunal in Munich.
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Richard Strauss continues the Romantic tradition with Wagnerian-style operas and tone poems.
Strauss made his conducting debut at the Bayreuth Festival of 1894, conducting Wagner's Tannhäuser with Pauline singing Elisabeth.
Just prior to their marriage the following September, Strauss left his post in Weimar when he was appointed Kapellmeister, or first conductor, of the Bavarian State Opera where he became responsible for the operas of Wagner.
While working in Munich for the next four years he had his largest creative period period of tone poem composition, producing Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (1895), Also sprach Zarathustra (1896), Don Quixote (1897), and Ein Heldenleben (1898).
He also served as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1894–1895.
In 1897, the Strausses’ only child, their son Franz, was born.
Strauss left the Bavarian State Opera in 1898 when he became principle conductor of the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Berlin State Opera in the Fall of 1898; a position he will remain in for fiffteen years.
By this time in his career, he is in constant demand as a guest conductor internationally and enjoys celebrity status as a conductor; particularly in the works of Wagner, Mozart, and Liszt in addition to his own compositions.