Monday, February 18, 2013
Richard Strauss - His Music and Life
“I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.” Richard Strauss, composer
Born on June 11, 1864 in Munich, the German Richard Strauss passed away in Garmisch on September 8, 1949. His mother came from the Munich brewery family Pschorr.
His father, Franz Strauss, had been the "First Royal Bugle Player" of the Royal Musician Academy Munich. Also Richard Strauss had nothing to do with the Viennese Johann Strauss dynasty.
His first compostions left (or better "bequeathed") great classical music treasures: "String Quintet a-major" (1881), "Symphony a-major" (1884), and many more. Strauss' "Great Symphony in f-minor" (1882-1884) has been performed for the first time in New York. His "Burlesque for piano and orchestra" (1885) showed great influences of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897).
In 1888, Strauss composed his first sound poetry "Don Juan", which became the first lasting report of a new classical composition direction. The following pieces "Marbeth" (1890) and "Death and Transfiguration" (1891) overtaxed many musicians' possibilities.
Also "Zarathustra speaks" (1896) suffered from the attempt something to express more by music but remaining unsuccessful.
Strauss started to accept his own naive-uninhibited phantasm and much more beautiful compositions attained his goal. The opera "Salome" (lyrics by Oscar Wilde) was a hazardous business, but the title role's perverted hysteria griped Strauss. The premiere in Dresden/German in 1905 became a great success.
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