Chapter 64

Richard Strauss in Berlin

The German World in 1871 The modern nation of Germany was founded in 1871, just following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War – Berlin is its capital. This map shows its expansive borders. The new German empire of 1871 extended far into the northeast of Europe (into what is now Poland and Russia) and to the west into what is now France (including the regions of Alsace and Lorraine). Some German-speaking lands were excluded from the empire, including Austria and neutral Switzerland.

The Life of Richard Strauss (1864–1949)

• 1864 - born in Munich, son of a French horn virtuoso

• 1885 - begins the career of conductor and composer

• 1898 - rises to the position of conductor of the Berlin court opera

• 1898 - appointed Music Director in Berlin

• 1905 - opera Salome completed

• 1908 - settles in Garmisch-Partenkirchen between opera performances

• 1919 - conducts at the Vienna opera

• 1945 - moves to Switzerland following World War I

• 1949 - dies in Garmisch

Strauss’s Tone Poems• Strauss revives the genre of tone poems

– which Franz Liszt had advanced in the mid 19th-century.

• Liszt called these compositions “symphonic poems” – while Strauss preferred the equivalent term tone

poem.

• He wrote a total of 8 tone poems:– Aus Italien – Don Juan – Macbeth – Tod und Verklärung - "Death and Transfiguration" – Till Eulenspiegel – Also Sprach Zarathustra – Don Quixote – Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero's Life" )

Strauss’s Salome• In addition to conducting, Richard Strauss wrote tone poems and

operas– among which Salome (1905) was his first major operatic success.

• This work introduces a new subject matter for opera filled with – grotesquerie – parody that mix with a biblical story.

• Based on a play by Oscar Wilde– the opera brings the literary content of the genre to a higher

level.

• Strauss’s music is very innovative:– he builds on Wagner’s technique of the leitmotive by

developing this motive to a complexity that is almost impossible to follow.

– this complexity is only heightened by the extreme dissonance of the music in which a key is scarcely apparent.

• Strauss justifies this musical direction as the result of a necessary progress in music.

Principal Compositions by Richard Strauss

• Opera: 15, including – Salome– Elektra– Der Rosenkavalier– Ariadne auf Naxos– Arabella

• Orchestra: tone poems, including – Don Juan– Death and Transfiguration– Ein Heldenleben– Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks– An Alpine Symphony– Metamorphoses

• Songs: about 200 including the orchestra Four Last Songs

Richard Strauss, Salome, 1905, concluding passage

Through-composed form