Read complete books and articles on: Richard Strauss

Strauss, Richard - rĭkhˈärt shtrous, 1864–1949, German composer. Strauss brought to a culmination the development of the 19th-century symphonic poem, and was a leading composer of romantic opera in the early 20th cent. Son of a celebrated horn player, he had extensive musical instruction and began composing as a child of six. His first major work, the symphony in D minor, was first performed in 1880. Strauss's early works, in classical forms, brought him instant acclaim. He succeeded Hans von Bülow as conductor at Meiningen (1885–86) and later as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic concerts (1894–95). His friendship with the poet Alexander Ritter influenced him to adopt the romantic aesthetic philosophy and style of Liszt and Wagner. A group of songs, the symphonic fantasy Aus Italien (1886), and the symphonic poems Don Juan (1888) and Death and Transfiguration (1889) were the first works composed in his new romantic manner. These and the works that followed established him as a master of highly evocative, original, and richly orchestrated program music. These works—including Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1895); Thus Spake Zarathustra (1895), after Nietszche; Don Quixote (1898), a tone poem in the form of variations with a cello solo; and A Hero's Life (1898)—were violently both lauded and damned as the very essence of musical modernism.

Strauss also gained wide renown for his operas, including Salomé (1905), after Oscar Wilde's play; the brilliantly dramatic Electra (1909); the delightful comedy Der Rosenkavalier (1911); Ariadne auf Naxos (1912); and Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919). He wrote all but the first of these, as well as Die aegyptische Helena (1928) and Arabella (1933), in collaboration with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. After Hofmannsthal died (1929) Strauss's librettists were Stefan Zweig for Die schweigsame Frau (1935) and Josef Gregor for Friedenstag (1938), Daphne (1938), and Die Liebe der Danaë (1938–40). Strauss's operas, carrying the Wagnerian leitmotif concept to its fullest development, went beyond Wagner in their intensity of drama and psychological treatment of character motivation. The operas display his music at its most sensuous and passionate. From 1919 until 1924 Strauss was codirector of the Vienna State Opera. During this period he made extended tours abroad, including a second trip to the United States (1922). Strauss served briefly as head of musical affairs (Reichsmusikkammer president) under the Nazis; he was officially exonerated of collaboration in 1948. Among Strauss's last major works are the sorrowful Metamorphosen (1946), for string instruments, and two pieces for voice and orchestra, 3 Gesänge and Im Abendrot (both 1948), considered the final musical expression of dying German romanticism.

See his correspondence ed. by R. Myers (1968); biographies by N. Del Mar (1962), W. S. Mann (1964), A. Jefferson (1963 and 1971), K. and R. Bailey (1985), and M. Boyden (1999); study by D. Puffett (1989).

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15 of the Best Books and Articles on: Richard Strauss

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Richard Strauss » Read Now
by Michael Kennedy. 268 pgs.

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Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer...
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Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work-all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years. Extensively revised, this well-received account of Richard Strauss's life and music enters its second edition. The life was rich in controversy, from the `outrage' caused by operas Salome and Elektra to the years under the Nazi regime. In his survey of the music, rejecting the generally accepted view that Strauss's genius declined in his middle years, Michael Kennedy traces refinements of style from the early 1920s to Strauss's late works.
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2.

Richard Strauss: New Perspectives on the Composer and His Work » Read Now
by Bryan Gilliam. 296 pgs.

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...Richard Strauss Sources of Music and Their Interpretation...Alexander Silbiger, and R. Larry Todd Richard Strauss New Perspectives on the Composer...Italian Opera in the...
3.

Twentieth Century and Beyond: The Twentieth-Century Symphonies of Richard Strauss, in Musical Quarterly » Read Now
by Charles Youmans. 21 pgs.

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...Twentieth-Century Symphonies of Richard Strauss Charles Youmans In the oeuvre of Richard Strauss, the word "symphony" reads like...in Der Rosenkavalier, " in Richard...
4.

The Richard Strauss Companion » Read Now
by Mark-Daniel Schmid. 468 pgs.

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5.

Modern Music: Composers and Music of Our Time (1946) (Chap. 5 "Richard Strauss, the Realist") » Read Now
by Max Graf, Beatrice R Maier. 336 pgs.

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6.

Opera and the Culture of Fascism (Chap. 6 "Daughters of Kundry: Salome and Electra") » Read Now
by Jeremy Tambling. 292 pgs.

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Tambling draws on the insights of Adorno, Benjamin, Theweleit, Bataille, Kristeva, and others to read nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera as part of a culture which produced fascism as a crisis-state, and threatened to extinguish the genre as an influential and contemporary form of high...
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Tambling draws on the insights of Adorno, Benjamin, Theweleit, Bataille, Kristeva, and others to read nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera as part of a culture which produced fascism as a crisis-state, and threatened to extinguish the genre as an influential and contemporary form of high art. Examining over a dozen operas in detail, Tambling discovers an ideology with both reactionary and revolutionary potentials.
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7.

Overtones: A Book of Temperaments: Richard Strauss, Parsifal, Verdi, Balzac, Flaubert, Nietzsche, and Turgaenieff » Read Now
by James Huneker. 339 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library

...A BOOK OF TEMPERAMENTS RICHARD STRAUSS, PARSIFAL, VERDI, BALZAC...PUBLISHED MARCH, 1904. TO RICHARD STRAUSS A MUSIC-MAKER OF INDIVIDUAL...CONTENTS I. RICHARD STRAUSS 1 II...
8.

Perspectives on Music ("Program Music and Richard Strauss" begins on p. 87) » Read Now
by Leroy Ostransky. 434 pgs.

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...MUSIC FREDERICK NIECKS Program Music and Richard Strauss 87 HOMER ULRICH The National Schools...SOLLITT Orlande de Lassus 327 RICHARD ANTHONY LEONARD Bach 337 NICOLAS...
9.

Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (Chap. 8 "Richard Strauss: Jupiter Compromised") » Read Now
by Michael H. Kater. 399 pgs.

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How does creativity thrive in the face of fascism? How can a highly artistic individual function professionally in so threatening a climate? The final book in a critically acclaimed trilogy that includes Different Drummers (OUP 1992) and The Twisted Muse (OUP 1997), this is a detailed study of the...
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How does creativity thrive in the face of fascism? How can a highly artistic individual function professionally in so threatening a climate? The final book in a critically acclaimed trilogy that includes Different Drummers (OUP 1992) and The Twisted Muse (OUP 1997), this is a detailed study of the often interrelated careers of eight outstanding German composers who lived and worked amid the dictatorship of the Third Reich: Werner Egk, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Carl Orff, Hans Pfitzner, Arnold Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss. Noted historian Michael H. Kater weighs issues of accommodation and resistance to ask whether these artists corrupted themselves in the service of a criminal regime--and if so, whether this is evident in their music. He also considers the degrees to which the Nazis politically, socially, economically, and aesthetically succeeded in their treatment of these individuals, whose lives and compositions represent diverse responses to totalitarianism.
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10.

Alfred Einstein on Music: Selected Music Criticisms ("Die aegyptische Helena [The Egyptian Helen]" begins on p. 57, and "Richard Strauss' Arabella" begins on p. 145) » Read Now
by Catherine Dower. 306 pgs.

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This collection is a tribute to the talent, teaching, and humanism of Alfred Einstein, whose scholarship and criticisms affirm his position as one of the foremost musicologists of the 20th century. Written by a former student of Einstein's and based partly on information provided by Einstein's...
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This collection is a tribute to the talent, teaching, and humanism of Alfred Einstein, whose scholarship and criticisms affirm his position as one of the foremost musicologists of the 20th century. Written by a former student of Einstein's and based partly on information provided by Einstein's daughter, Eva, this study furnishes a unique portrait of a critic whose research produced valuable musical discoveries, and whose writings always recognized the important relationship between music and its cultural background. The work features more than a hundred examples of his criticisms which both document early 20th century music in Germany and the United States and demonstrate music criticism at its best.
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11.

Musical Trends in the 20th Century (Discussion of Richard Strauss begins on p. 180) » Read Now
by Norman Demuth. 364 pgs.

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...in decline in the person of Richard Strauss also saw the ascendancy of the...HOLBROOKE 111 RICHARD STRAUSS 111 DAME ETHEL...which lacks all the violence of Richard Strauss...
12.

The Modern Age, 1890-1960 (Discussion of Richard Strauss begins on p. 2) » Read Now
by Martin Cooper. 766 pgs.

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...Holland 321 Richard Strausss Last Years 322...Shostakovich, 2nd Piano Concerto; Richard Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra...Messidor. Edition Peters: Richard Strauss, Ein...
13.

Richard Strauss's Elektra » Read Now
by Bryan Gilliam. 265 pgs.

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Elektra was the fourth of fifteen operas by Strauss and opened his successful partnership with the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Gilliam's study of this major work examines its musical-historical context and also provides a detailed analysis of some of its musical features. He establishes a...
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Elektra was the fourth of fifteen operas by Strauss and opened his successful partnership with the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Gilliam's study of this major work examines its musical-historical context and also provides a detailed analysis of some of its musical features. He establishes a chronology of the evolution of the opera and places it in the larger framework of German opera of the time. His detailed examination of the sketchbooks enables him to offer fresh insight into Strauss's use of motifs and overall tonal structure. In so doing he shows how the work's arresting dissonance and chromaticism have hidden its similarities to his later, seemingly more tonally conservative opera, Der Rosenkavalier: not only does Strauss exploit in both a variety of musical styles to express irony, parody, and other emotions, but both are in fact thoroughly tonal.
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14.

The Tuning of the Word: The Musico-literary Poetics of the Symbolist Movement (Discussion of Richard Strauss begins on p. 173) » Read Now
by David Michael Hertz. 241 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Ariadne auf Naxos , music by Richard Strauss, libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal...systematically in the influential essay " Richard Wagner et Tannhauser a...
15.

Composers on Composers ("Richard Strauss (1864-1949)" begins on p. 139) » Read Now
by John L. Holmes. 192 pgs.

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This important compilation lends a new perspective to music criticism by gathering the comments of 85 well-known composers concerning the work of their peers. Encompassing all forms of commentary, from caustic attacks to perceptive criticism and praise, the book offers new insights into the...
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This important compilation lends a new perspective to music criticism by gathering the comments of 85 well-known composers concerning the work of their peers. Encompassing all forms of commentary, from caustic attacks to perceptive criticism and praise, the book offers new insights into the development of music and its most important creators by collecting under each composer's name the remarks made about him by other composers.
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