Richard Strauss (jan 1, 1864 – may 1, 1949)

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was 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. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

A. Richard Strauss
1. Even more so than Mahler, Strauss’s music scandalized many critics.
2. His early works are conservative, in the style of Brahms.
3. His acquaintance with Alexander Ritter pointed him in another direction: toward Liszt and Wagner.
4. His first work in the programmatic vein was Aus Italien (1886); the first tone poem was Macbeth (1888).
5. He wrote both instrumental and dramatic music—usually he composed in the larger genres. (Strauss wrote a good deal of lieder as well.)

Maximalizing Opera
1. Strauss’s two early operas met with mixed success.
a. The first, Guntram (1892–93), was Wagnerian and a flop; the second, Feuersnot (1900–01), was more successful.
2. His real fame as an opera composer came with Salome in 1905.
(SEE THE SALOME TAB)
5. The next opera, Elektra, continues to explore decadence, taking it to a gruesome extreme.
6. Both of these operas end with the title characters dead, which is not part of the “original” story but reflects fin-de-siècle interests. They also go hand in hand with the social emancipation of women, and with men’s fear of empowered women.
7. The next opera, Der Rosenkavalier, is entirely different from the previous two in that it is more traditional.
8. Strauss continued in the more traditional style of Rosenkavalier for the rest of his life, quickly becoming old-fashioned in a radically changing stylistic period.

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