xxxxxThe German
composer and conductor Richard Strauss, the last of the Romantics,
is especially remembered today for his mastery of the symphonic
poem and his operatic works. His ten tone poems, which began with
Don Juan in 1888 and included Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, Don Quixote
of 1897, and A Hero’s life, were brilliantly orchestrated,
but their vastness and powerful, expressive music shocked his
contemporaries. And this “modernism” was continued in Salome
of 1905 and Elektra four years later,
two operas which offended public good taste. However, after the
composition of his love story Knight of
the Rose, produced in 1911, his operas -
such as Ariadne on Naxos, The
Egyptian Helen, Arabella,
Daphne and Capriccio
- proved acceptable and popular. In addition to these works,
Strauss wrote horn and oboe concertos, pieces for string
orchestra, and some ballet music. He produced, too, over one
hundred songs (lieder), many of which
have stood the test of time. In addition to composing, Strauss
gained an international reputation as a conductor. He tried his
hand at conducting as a young man and then, with the encouragement
and help of his mentor, the German conductor Hans von Bulow, took
on a number of important posts throughout Germany and Austria,
ending his career as joint director and conductor of the Vienna
State Opera from 1919 to 1924. Under the Nazi regime he was music
minister for a short time, but fell out of favour due to his
Jewish contacts and was dismissed.
RICHARD STRAUSS 1864 -
1949 (Vb, Vc, E7, G5,
G6)
Acknowledgements
Strauss: detail,
by the German painter Max Liebermann (1847-1935), 1918 – Alte
Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Bulow: 1870s,
photographer unknown – National Portrait Gallery, London. Quixote: by the French artist Honoré Daumier (1808-1879).
Caricature: by the German-born
Austrian artist Hans Schliessmann (1852-1920), published in
Schliessmann’s Conductors of Yesterday and
Today, Vienna 1928. Mahler: by
the Bohemian painter and etcher Emil Orlik (1870-1932), 1902
– Galerie Bassenge, Berlin. Caricature:
by the German-born Austrian artist Hans Schliessmann (1852-1920),
publised in Schiessmann’s Conductors of
Yesterday and Today, Vienna 1928. Silhouettes: by the Austrian artist Otto Boehler (1847-1913),
published in Dr. Otto Boehler’s Silhouettes,
Vienna 1914. Mahler (cartoon): from the
Illustrated Vienna Special Edition, a
Viennese daily newspaper (1872-1928), November 1900, artist
unknown. Dukas: date and photographer
unknown. Apprentice: The Walt Disney
Company.
xxxxxThe German composer and conductor Richard Strauss is
primarily remembered today on two counts: His mastery of the
symphonic poem - a form in which, by his brilliant
orchestration, he captured in music every scene, action and mood -,
and for his sensational, outrageous operas Salome
and Elektra. For some 30 years the
shocking modernism of his music, enthusiastically admired or
vigorously opposed, dominated the musical world and kept audiences
wondering just what might come next. And alongside his career as a
composer went that of a conductor, a profession in which he showed
great technical skill and by which he earned a worldwide reputation.
xxxxxStrauss
was born in Munich, the son of a celebrated horn player. He attended
the local gymnasium for his general education, but he had inherited
his father’s musical skills. He was playing the piano and violin by
the age of five, composing by the age of six, and studying theory by
the age of eleven. As a young man he played in a local amateur
orchestra, and it was then that he first tried his hand at
conducting. By then he had written a large number of pieces,
including the Festival March, a serenade for wind instruments, a
symphony and a violin concerto. Like all his early works, these
leaned heavily upon the classical and romantic masters. In 1882 he
attended Munich University, but he never worked for a degree and
left the following year. By 1884 he was in Berlin, studying part
time and playing the piano at various musical functions.
xxxxxIt was while in Berlin that Strauss met the renowned
conductor Hans von Bulow (illustrated) - the legendary interpreter of Wagner - and
this marked the beginning of his musical career. The German was
impressed with the young composer’s
Serenade for 13 wind instruments and had
his next work, Suite for 13 wind instruments,
performed by his Meiningen orchestra later that year - in
Munich and with Strauss conducting. It was so well received that in
1885 Bulow made him his assistant conductor. He held that post for
just a few months. Later that year Bulow resigned, and at the age of
21 Strauss found himself in sole charge of the Meiningen orchestra.
Hisxfuture seemed
assured and routinely set, but it was at this time that he came
under the influence of the German composer and violinist Alexander Ritter (1833-1896),
then a member of the orchestra. Extolling the virtues of Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz,
he persuaded Strauss to abandon his conservative style and look
for new ways of writing. Soon after this, Strauss was appointed
third conductor at the Munich Opera House, and it was there, with
the production of his symphonic fantasy Aus
Italien - composed after a visit to Italy -
that the first signs of change began to show. When it was
premiered in 1887, the unbridled orchestration of the last
movement caught the musical world by surprise and attracted some
scathing criticism. Strauss was unperturbed. It simply confirmed
his view that this was the road he wanted to take.
xxxxxIn 1889 Strauss became the director of the Weimar Court
Orchestra. He continued to compose traditional works, but it was in
that year that his symphonic poem Don Juan,
premiered in the November, gave final notice that a new force in
music had arrived. Charged with a score that demanded an orchestra
of unprecedented size, its powerful, expressive music, and its
variety of passages - many restless and discordant -
launched him on his career as a “modernist”. Over the next twenty
five years he produced a series of symphonic poems, each bigger and
more sensational than the last, in which his music brilliantly
illustrated the chosen theme, be it the adventures of Don Quixote,
the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, the portrait of a dying man,
or simply the bleating of sheep, a sunrise, or the sound of a
violent wind. And in perfecting this musical form, Strauss
introduced new techniques in harmony and instrumentation, and often
made use of Wagner’s “leitmotiv system” whereby recurring short
musical phrases are chosen to represent characters, objects, ideas
or emotions. Among this outstanding contribution to programme music
were the symphonic poems Macbeth, Death and Transfiguration, Thus
Spoke Zarathustra (which inspired Nietzsche’s book of that
name), Don Quixote of 1897,
A Hero’s Life, and Symphonia
Domestica (a musical picture of married life).
xxxxxThese works, characterised by audacious, colourful
orchestration and seen by Strauss as “the musical expression and
development of my emotions”, shocked audiences by their disturbing
non-conformity, but worse was to come. At the turn of the
century he moved on to opera. He had, in fact, tried his hand at
this genre earlier. Under the influence of Wagner he had produced Guntram in May 1894 and Feuersnot
in 1901, but these had been complete failures, and had made him
reluctant to return to the stage. When he did so, however, his
notorious productions of Salome in 1905
and Elektra in 1909, offended both by
their decadent content and their discordant music, as well as posing
serious problems for the singers and the orchestra. Salome,
based as it was on the play by the disgraced Irish writer Oscar
Wilde, aroused a howl of protest. Containing the
erotic Dance of the Seven Veils, and
ending with the scene in which Salome declares her love to the
severed head of John the Baptist, it was roundly condemned for its
blasphemous treatment of a Biblical subject. Newspapers had a field
day, and one described the opera as “moral stench”. (On the other
hand the Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler regarded it
as a “live volcano” and a work of
genius!). Then four years later, Sophocles’ Elektra,
a gloomy drama of bloodthirsty revenge, stunned its audiences by its
near atonal music, its attempt to create a new kind of melody, and
its bewildering use of leitmotivs. New ideas, Strauss responded,
must “search for new forms”.
xxxxxAfterxSalome, Strauss went into partnership with the Austrian
poet and librettist Hugo von
Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), and it
was with him - despite their differences - that he
produced some of his finest operas. The bittersweet love story Knight of the Rose (Der
Rosenkavalier), set in 18th century Vienna and produced
two years after Elektra, proved
especially popular and marked the return - one might say
retreat - to a more traditional style. His days of violent
experiment and excitement were over. His later works, noted for
their allegory and symbolism, showed talent, but were without that
earlier touch of genius. They included Ariadne
on Naxos, The Woman without a Shadow,
The Egyptian Helen, and Arabella.
After Hofmannsthal’s death in 1929, his major works were The
Silent Woman in 1935, Daphne,
three years later, and Capriccio,
premiered in 1942.
xxxxxStrauss
is particularly well known for his symphonic poems and his operas,
16 in total, but he also wrote a variety of other works, including
two horn concertos - an instrument he was particularly fond of
-, an oboe concerto, works for string orchestra, a piano
quartet, and some ballet music. In addition he composed more than
one hundred songs (lieder), mostly for
sopranos, and many of these, such as Dedication
and Morning, have remained extremely
popular. His haunting Four Last Songs of
1948 are considered by many to be one of his finest works. And
worthy of special mention is his Metamorphosen,
a work for 23 solo strings, based on a poem by Goethe. Composed in
the closing months of the Second World War, it was a lament over the
misery caused by the conflict, and over the destruction of German
culture during twelve years of Nazi rule.
xxxxxAlong
side Strauss’ brilliance as a composer went his skill as a
conductor, influenced in the main by his mentor Bulow. For most of
his life he conducted important orchestras throughout Germany and
Austria, and in 1891, at the invitation of Cosima Wagner, he
conducted the first performance of Tannhauser
to be given at the Bayreuth Festival. He was conductor of the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra from 1894 to 1898, conductor and musical
director of the Berlin Royal Opera from 1898 to 1919, and co-director
of the Vienna State Opera from 1919 to 1924. In 1925 he compiled his
own ten golden rules for the album of a young conductor, and his
later recordings - notably when conducting the works of Mozart
and Wagner - greatly enhanced his
reputation.
xxxxxDuring
the Nazi regime Strauss was appointed music minister in 1933, but
was dismissed two years later for working with a Jewish librettist.
The opera in question, The Silent Woman,
was banned by the government. After the war he was cleared of any
collaboration with the Nazi party, and spent the rest of his life at
his country home at Garmisch in Bavaira. He died there in September
1949.
xxxxxStrauss
was the last great composer of the romantic tradition, and a worthy
successor to Wagner in the field of German opera. Despite his period
of modernism, he perfected a form - the symphonic poem -
which had run its course. By his technical agility, his brilliant
orchestration, and his skill at composing for the human voice, he
earned his place among the musical giants, but the future of
European music lay with the likes of Schoenberg, Bartok and
Stravinsky.
xxxxxIncidentally, Strauss, a
quiet, modest man by nature, married the opera soprano Pauline de
Ahna in 1894. She was a forceful woman, but she encouraged his work,
and the marriage appeared to be a happy one. They had one son,
Franz, and his marriage to a Jewish woman in 1924 made matters
difficult for the family during the Nazi regime. ……
xxxxx…… Strauss composed the Olympic Hymn for the opening of
the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. The theme was taken from a
symphony he planned but never finished. While writing it he
confessed to a friend that he had no time for sport of any kind!
Vc-1881-1901-Vc-1881-1901-Vc-1881-1901-Vc-1881-1901-Vc-1881-1901-Vc-1881-1901-Vc
Including:
Gustav Mahler
and Paul Dukas
xxxxxThe Austrian
composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was a contemporary of Richard
Strauss and studied under the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. He
began his conducting career in 1880 and over the next seventeen
years worked at theatres and opera houses across Europe, including
Prague, Leipzig and Budapest. His first permanent appointment was
at Hamburg in 1901, and it was there that his constant search for
perfection impressed Strauss and the German conductor Hans von Bulow. Six years later he
was made director of the Vienna Court Opera and during his ten-year
stay there he made Vienna a leading city in the operatic world,
and gained for himself international recognition as a conductor of
outstanding merit. He completed his conducting career at the
Metropolitan Opera House and the Philharmonic Orchestra in New
York. As a composer he produced nine large-scale symphonies,
some with voices, and seven song cycles, including Songs
of a Wayfarer in 1883 and Songs on the
Deaths of Children in 1902. His vast, emotional
symphonies - troubled works concerned in the main with death
and the meaning of life - were not readily understood in his
day, but together with Strauss he represented the late flowering
of German Romanticism, extending the symphonic form initiated by
Beethoven in his ninth choral symphony, and developed by Wagner in
his musical dramas. In addition, however, as a brilliant
orchestrator and musical innovator, his new, unconventional
harmonies anticipated the “modernism” of the early 20th century.
xxxxxA contemporary of Richard Strauss who was also a
competent composer and conductor was the Austrian Gustav
Mahler (1860-1911). During a brief
career, he wrote nine large-scale symphonies, some with voices,
and seven song cycles. Like the works of Strauss, they provided a
link between the late Romantic era and the modern idiom of the 20th
century. His compositions did not gain a great deal of favour in
their own time, but during his musical career he gained an
international reputation as a brilliant conductor, fully dedicated
to his task and constantly striving for perfection. As such he
became a model for many famous conductors of the 20th century.
xxxxxMahler
was born at Kaliste in Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic), the son
of a Jewish shopkeeper. A few months later the family moved to the
nearby town of Jihlava, and it was there that Mahler grew up. His
early years were not particularly happy ones. As a Jew he was
conscious of being an outsider, and his home life was marred by
strained relations between his parents. These racial and family
tensions might well account for his somewhat troubled personality,
and his difficulty in relating to other people. Nonetheless, he
showed early talent as a pianist and, influenced by local band and
folk music, was trying his hand at composition by the age of six. He
made his debut as a pianist when he was ten, and was accepted as a
pupil at the Vienna Conservatory just five years later. On
completing his musical studies, he attended lectures at the city’s
university, and it was there that he was taught and influenced by
the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. After leaving the university
he earned his living as a teacher, but was anxious to make his way
as a composer. However, his first significant attempt, his cantata The Song of Sorrow, completed in 1880, failed
to win the Conservatory’s Beethoven Prize and, on the advice of his
piano teacher, he took up a career as a conductor, confining his
composition to his leisure time.
xxxxxOver the next 17 years, by dint of constant hard work
and a ruthless determination to succeed, he battled his way to the
top of his chosen profession. He began his career as assistant
conductor in a summer theatre at the Austrian spa town of Bad Hall,
but then gradually gained experience by way of theatres and opera
houses across Europe. During the 1880s these included theatres at
Ljubljana, Olmutz and Kassel and opera houses in Prague, Leipzig and
Budapest. In 1901 he gained his first permanent position as chief
conductor with the Hamburg Opera House, and three years later,
following the death of Hans von Bulow, was appointed conductor of
the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.
xxxxxIt
was while in Hamburg that he was seen by Richard Strauss and Bulow,
both of whom were impressed by his skill as a conductor, and the way
in which he had enhanced the reputation of the Hamburg
Opera. In 1892 he took the company to London to give the first
performances of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and
in December 1895 he premiered his own Resurrection
Symphony in Berlin. It must be said that in many of these
appointments his uncompromising stance on achieving the highest of
standards, and the despotic regime he imposed to this end, did not
win him many friends. A number of orchestras were pleased to see him
move on! Personality apart, during this time he did succeed in
promoting the operas of Mozart, Weber and Wagner.
xxxxxMahler
was appointed director of the Vienna Court Opera in 1897
at the age of 37. Over the next ten years, by his ruthless quest for
perfection, he made Vienna supreme among the opera houses of the
world. These were Vienna’s golden years. He cleared the company of
its debts and provided performances which set the standards by which
others could be judged. In so doing he alienated many by his long,
gruelling periods of preparation and rehearsal, but no one could
question his immense dedication and determination. And the tours he
made across Europe during his time as director added to his fame as
a conductor of outstanding merit.
xxxxxExhausted
and weakened by overwork and the beginnings of a serious heart
condition - and well aware that there were those inside and
outside the company who were intriguing against him - he
resigned as director in 1907 but, characteristically, looked for a
new challenge. He found it in the United States. For the next four
years - save for summers spent in Austria - he was
conductor of the Metropolitan Opera House and, later, of the
Philharmonic Orchestra in New York City. He gained a reputation for
the brilliance of his performances, but, as in earlier appointments,
the demands he made upon singers and musicians, and disagreements
over quality and the means of production, brought about friction
with the management. Having been all-powerful in Vienna, he
found it difficult and, eventually, impossible to take orders from
others. He returned to Europe in 1911, just a few months before his
death.
xxxxxAs
far as composing was
concerned, Mahler regarded himself as a part-time composer. His
works were few in number but vast in scale. He produced nine long
epic symphonies, a number of songs, and seven song cycles, including
Songs of a Wayfarer in 1883 and Songs
on the Deaths of Children in 1902. These works, the
outpourings of a troubled, sometimes tormented mind, were not
readily understood or appreciated in his day. He followed in the
romantic notes of Liszt, Wagner and Tchaikovsky, but he was obsessed
with death and the meaning of life, and this coloured both his
symphony and song. By his brilliant orchestration he attempted to
build a world which encompassed every kind of human experience and
emotion and, in so doing, he produced a bewildering range of musical
moods. Some of his works were interspersed with popular-style
music - peasant tunes, student songs, military marches -
and some with sounds from nature, whilst others contained exciting
new harmonies which anticipated the “modernism” of the early 20th
century.
xxxxxHis
first three symphonies were programme works and incorporated themes
from the German folk anthology entitled The
Youth’s Magic Horn. They sought to find a reason for human
existence in a world which was dominated by pain, despair and the
uncertainties of death. The First,
composed in 1888, lent heavily upon his song cycle Songs
of a Wayfarer, and is noted especially for its macabre
funeral march. The Second, his Resurrection,
complete with soloists and chorus, and based on
Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony, opened with a funeral ceremony but ended
optimistically with its spectacular choral finale, a joyous
confirmation of the Christian belief in immortality. The Third,
completed in 1896, a vast work of six movements, again with soloist
and chorus - much in the vogue of Wagner’s musical dramas -
was one great hymn to the creative force in the universe world,
ascending, as he put it, from inanimate nature to the love of God.
xxxxxHis
next three symphonies were composed while he was in Vienna. The Fourth, the portrayal of a child’s vision of
heaven, was based upon a song he had written in 1892 entitled The Heavenly Life.
This provided themes for the first three movements and is sung in
full in the fourth. The Fifth Symphony is
remembered especially for its opening trumpet fanfare -
followed by a funeral march - and its third movement, the
beautiful Adagietto for harp and strings,
one of his best known pieces. His Sixth,
classical in construction, is the darkest and most despondent of his
symphonies, and is appropriately labelled Tragic.
The three measured hammer blows of the last movement bring a brutal
ending. The world comes crashing down and all is lost.
xxxxxHis Seventh Symphony -
Song of the Night - was premiered in
Prague in September 1908, after he had resigned from the Vienna
Court Opera House. Despite the anguish he was suffering at this
time, the work is surprisingly optimistic. In five movements he
returns to nature for inspiration and, via a weird series of flights
of fancy, moves from darkness to light, rejoicing in the wonders of
mother Earth. His
Eighth, composed in the summer of 1906,
was a monumental work requiring two full orchestras, three choirs, a
children’s choir and eight soloists. As in earlier works, this
choral symphony - the first of its kind - again wrestles
with man’s hopes and fears, eventually finding a measure of comfort
in the resilience of the human spirit and the continuing beauty of
the Earth itself. Dubbed the Symphony of a
Thousand, this fusion of song and symphony was well
received when he conducted its first performance at Munich in
September 1910. His final three works, none of which he heard in
performance, were The Song of the Earth,
a song cycle created around Chinese poems, and his Ninth
and Tenth Symphonies, the last left
unfinished. In these he again attempted to understand the meaning of
death. The Ninth, in particular, has
outbursts of anguish, conjured up by dissonance, but the Adagio
with which it ends is quiet and reflective, producing a
feeling of calm resignation.
xxxxxBy
the time Mahler returned home from New York he was fatally ill and
had only a few weeks to live. He died in Vienna in May 1911, and was
buried at Grinzing cemetery in the city. Mahler was first and
foremost an inspired conductor who, by his constant search for
perfection, raised the standard of interpretation and performance to
new heights. As a “part-time” composer he was a man of
outstanding originality who excelled as an orchestrator and pushed
musical form in a new and exciting direction. Along with Richard
Strauss, he represented the late flowering of German Romanticism
and, as such, he made a major contribution to the symphonic
tradition. He expanded the musical form initiated by Beethoven in
his 9th choral symphony and his monumental productions - vast
orchestras, large choirs and numerous soloists - carried on
from where Wagner’s musical dramas had left off. His fusion of songs
and symphony, highly personal and highly emotional, were not readily
understood in his time, but his new, unfamiliar harmonies had a
major influence upon composers such as the Austrian Arnold
Schoenberg, the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich, and the Englishman
Benjamin Britten. As such he must be regarded as one of the leading
figures in the development of 20th century music.
xxxxxIncidentally, bearing in mind
the “curse of the ninth” - the notion that no major composer
since Beethoven had completed more than nine symphonies -
Mahler chose not to tempt fate. He decided not to give a number to
his ninth symphony and, instead, made it into an orchestral song-cycle.
Then, having started his tenth symphony, he confidently assumed that
he had avoided the curse, but he died before the work was completely
finished, and the symphony he had not numbered became known as his
Ninth! ……
xxxxx…… The three hammer blows which bring to an end his Tragic Symphony No.6, premiered at Essen in
May 1906, were later seen as portending the three tragedies that
beset Mahler in 1907. In that year his three-year old daughter
Maria died of diphtheria; he himself was diagnosed as having a fatal
heart disease; and, reluctantly, he was obliged to give up his
directorship of the Vienna Court Opera. Subsequently he removed the
final blow from the score - though the three blows are still retained
in some performances.
xxxxxIt
was in this year, 1897, that the French
composer and teacher Paul Dukas (1865-1935) produced the work by which he is best
known, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a
brilliantly orchestrated piece of programme music based on a ballad
of the same name by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His
other major work was the opera Ariadne and
Bluebeard, produced in 1907. Considered today as one of the
outstanding French operas of its time, it was much admired by
Richard Strauss.
xxxxxDukas was born in Paris, and studied harmony, piano,
conducting and orchestration at the city’s Conservatoire. It was
there that he met the young French composer Claude Debussy, and they
became close friends. Following his military service, he worked as a
successful critic, and in 1910 returned to the Conservatoire to
teach composition. Among his other works were his concert overture King Lear, composed in 1883, his Symphony
in C major of 1896, his oriental ballet The
Genie, produced in 1912, and his Sonnet
de Ronsard for voice and piano, written in 1924. His
skilful orchestration has been described as an intoxicating mixture
of Debussy and Richard Strauss.
xxxxxDukas’
dazzling scherzo The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
became internationally famous in 1940 when the American film
producer Walt Disney featured it in his symphonic concert entitled Fantasia. The part of the apprentice was taken
by his cartoon character Mickey Mouse, and the Sorcerer was named
Yen Sid - Disney written backwards!