Thus Spoke Friedrich Nietzsche: Piano Music

by Georg Predota, Interlude

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) is primarily known as a philosopher who published some groundbreaking books. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None,” was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885, and it spawned a number of philosophical and theological contemplations. Not to mention a gigantic tone poem by Richard Strauss!

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche at 21

Essentially, Nietzsche questioned the value and objectivity of truth, looking at God as a historical process and construct. Nietzsche wrote numerous texts on morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science. Interestingly, he never really trusted the written word. He wrote, “all communication through words is shameless. The word diminishes and makes stupid; the word depersonalises, the word makes what is uncommon common.”

It might come as a surprise, but music was actually Nietzsche’s true love. Descended from a family of pastors where music and theology went hand in hand, young Friedrich was an accomplished pianist and organist by the time he reached the age of seven. At that age, he already played several Beethoven sonatas, transcriptions of Haydn Symphonies, and he was skilled in the way of improvisation. A couple of recent recordings have engaged with Nietzsche’s piano compositions, so we decided to take a closer look.

Reminiscences on my Life

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Young Nietzsche initially improvised his own melodies, yet he soon moved on to sketch motets, symphonies, masses and oratorios, most of them unfinished. As he grew up, Nietzsche switched to smaller forms, particularly Lieder and piano pieces. As pianist Jeroen van Veen writes, “these pieces reflect the philosopher as a human being, vulnerable and desirous, but above all melancholic.”

At the age of 14, Nietzsche wrote his “Reminiscences on my Life.” He explained, “All qualities are united in music: it can lift us up, it can be capricious, it can cheer us up and delight us, nay, with its soft, melancholy tunes, it can even break the resistance of the toughest character.”

“Its main purpose, however, is to lead our thoughts upward so that it elevates us and even deeply moves us. All humans who despise it should be considered mindless, animal-like creatures. Let music, this most marvellous gift from God, remain forever my companion on the pathways of life.” 

Barbarous Frenzy

In his “Reminiscences on my Life,” Nietzsche carefully listed his writings and his compositions, and at age fourteen, he had 46 compositions to his name. The earliest Lieder settings of Klaus Groth, the Hungarian poet Sándor Petöfi, Pushkin and Hoffmann von Fallersleben, were all composed “in a kind of barbarous frenzy, as the demon of music took hold of me.”

Nietzsche never took composition lessons, as he was essentially self-taught. He described himself as “a wretched youth who tortured his piano to the point of drawing from it cries of despairs, who with his own hands heave up in front of himself the mire of the most dismal greyish-brown harmonies.” 

The Germania

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

At the age of 16, Nietzsche started on a Christmas oratorio that was never finished. However, he would develop several themes for later use in subsequent compositions. “I look for words for a melody that I have and for a melody for words that I have, and these two things I have don’t go together, even though they come from the same soul. But such is my fate.”

Nietzsche’s early piano music is frequently dedicated to family and friends. Together with two young friends, he founded a small society called “The Germania,” which was dedicated to the “development of the spirit.” They would send each other compositions and poems, lectures and articles. And Nietzsche loved to improvise. A fellow student listened to these improvisations and wrote, “I should have no difficulty in believing that even Beethoven did not play extempore in a more moving manner.” 

Assessment

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s Hungarian March

However, assessment from professional sources was less encouraging. Nietzsche sent Hans von Bülow, son-in-law of Richard Wagner, his “Manfred Meditation” for evaluation. Bülow was not impressed and wrote, “this music is the most extreme in fantastic extravagance and the most unsatisfying and most anti-musical composition I have seen in a long time. Is this a joke that deliberately mocks all rules of tonal harmony, of the higher syntax as well as of ordinary orthography?”

“In musical terms, this piece is the equivalent to a crime in the moral world, with which the musical muse, Euterpe, was raped. If you would allow me to give you some good advice, just in case you are actually serious with your aberration into the area of composition, stick with composing vocal music, since the word can lead the way on the wild sea of tones. I apologize, esteemed Herr Professor, of having thrown such an enlightened mind as yours, into such regrettable piano cramps.” 

Lou Salomé

Lou Salomé

Nietzsche’s “Hymn to Life” is based on a text by Lou Salomé, a Russian-born psychoanalyst, well-travelled author, narrator, and essayist. At a literary salon in the city, Salomé met the author Paul Rée, who instantly proposed to her. Salomé declined and suggested setting up an academic commune, which was joined by Nietzsche in April 1882. He instantly fell in love with her as well, but she rejected him twice. Instead, Salomé, Rée, and Nietzsche travelled in search of setting up their commune in an abandoned monastery, but as no suitable location was found, the plan came to naught.

We do find an interesting assessment of Nietzsche by Salomé, which reads, “The higher he rose as a philosopher in his exaltation of life, the more deeply he suffered, as a human being, from his own teachings about life. This battle within his soul, the true source of the philosophy of his last years, is only imperfectly represented in his words and books, but it sounds perhaps most profoundly through his music to my poem Hymn to Life.” 

Sabbatical

After completing the “Hymn of Life” and receiving Bülow’s devastating letter, Nietzsche wrote, “As for my music, I only know that it allows me to master a mood that unsatisfied, would perhaps produce even more damage. If music serves only as a diversion or a kind of vain ostentation, it is sinful and harmful. Yet this fault is very frequent; all of modern music is filled with it.”

After receiving this letter, Nietzsche did not touch his piano for a while, but in the end, “his awareness of being an amateur was overshadowed by his urge to become a better person, through music,” writes Vrouwkje Tuinman. As Nietzsche frequently proclaimed, “Emotions, morals, the world: the only way to (maybe) grasp the essence of being is surrendering to the highest of art forms,” he writes again and again. “Without music, life would be a mistake.” 

The Affair Wagner

Richard Wagner

During his time as Professor of Philosophy at Basel University, Nietzsche became a close personal friend of Cosima and Richard Wagner, then living in Swiss exile. He was a regular house guest and even had his own room at Tribschen. We know that Nietzsche fell in love with Cosima Wagner, and he certainly composed some music for her.

Nietzsche dedicated his first book, “The Birth of Tragedy” to Wagner, proclaiming Wagner’s music the modern rebirth. The first part of the book was developed from long conversations between Cosima, Wagner and Nietzsche, roughly around the same time that Wagner began to develop the story of what eventually would become the “Ring Cycle.” 

Postlude

Cosima Wagner

Nietzsche offered Richard and Cosima his “Reminiscence of a New Year’s Eve,” but they basically ignored it. In turn, Nietzsche started to object to Wagner’s “endless melody,” suggesting that listening to Wagner’s music made his whole body feel discomfort. He called it “a music without a future,” and that the effects of Wagner’s music are “for idiots and the masses.”

Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 44, from which he never recovered. For the last eleven years of his life, he was no longer able to speak or write, but he continued to play the piano. Listening, performing and composing music became an unconscious philosophical activity for Nietzsche, who had suggested earlier that “sound allowed me to say certain things that words were incapable of expressing.”

Editors of Nietzsche considered his compositions “amateurish and lacking in originality.” However, composing for Nietzsche meant experimentation and therapy, as he famously wrote, “we have art so not to die from the truth.” His piano music continues to be explored, and scholars write that “these piano miniatures present a fascinating window into the creative mind of a still-lofty figure in Western thought.” To me, his piano music, an elaboration of the conflicted world of Schumann, sounds hesitant and even unguarded, and the occasional ray of optimism is quickly cast aside by all-pervasive melancholy.

10 More Dazzling and Awe-Inspiring Piano Quartets

by Hermione Lai, Interlude

A couple of years ago, Interlude published a blog on the 10 most beautiful piano quartets. Once again, featuring just 10 works in that particular genre is simply not enough. So, we decided to present a follow-up, highlighting 10 more dazzling and awe-inspiring piano quartets.

As a quick recap, you get a piano quartet when you add a piano to a string trio. The standard instrument lineup for this type of chamber music pairs the violin, viola, and cello with the piano. In its development, the piano quartet had to wait for technical advances of the piano, as it had to match the strings in power and expression.

© serenademagazine.com

Piano quartets are always special because the scoring allows for a wealth of tone colour, occasionally even a symphonic richness. The combined resources of all four instruments are not easy to handle, and the number of works in the genre is not especially large. However, a good many of the extant piano quartets are very personal and passionate statements. 

When talking about chamber music, and specifically chamber music with piano, it is difficult to avoid Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Lucky for us, Brahms wrote three piano quartets, and his Op. 60 took its inspiration from his intense relationship with Clara Schumann. However, it took Brahms almost twenty years to complete the work. The origins date back to around 1855 when Brahms was wrestling with his first piano concerto.

Brahms put this particular piano quartet aside and only showed it to his first biographer in the 1860s with the words, “Imagine a man who is just going to shoot himself, for there is nothing else to do.” Thirteen years later, Brahms took up the work and radically revised it. He probably wrote a new “Andante” and also a new “Finale.” In the end, the work finally premiered on 18 November 1875 with Brahms at the piano and the famous David Popper on cello.

Brahms and the Schumanns

The emotional distress of his relationship with Clara is presented in a mood of darkness and melancholy. A solitary chord in the piano initiates the opening movement, with the string presenting a theme built from a striking two-note phrase. Some commentators have suggested that Brahms is musically speaking the name “Clara” in this two-note phrase. The second theme is highly lyrical but quickly develops towards the dark mood of the opening. The “Scherzo” is also in the minor key, and the deeply felt slow movement is a declaration of love for Clara. The dark opening returns in the final movement, and while the development presents some relief, the work still ends on a note of resignation, albeit in the major key.

Heinrich von Herzogenberg: Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 95

Heinrich von Herzogenberg

The intensely emotional and meticulously crafted compositions by Brahms served as models for a number of composers, among them Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900). As he writes, “Brahms helped me, by the mere fact of his existence, to my development, my inward looking up to him, and with his artistic and human energy.” While Brahms respected Herzogenberg’s technical craftsmanship and musical knowledge, he never really had anything to say.

Herzogenberg was undeterred and never stopped composing. In 1897, he wrote to Brahms, “There are two things that I cannot get used not to doing: That I always compose, and that when I am composing I ask myself, the same as thirty-four years ago, ‘What will He say about it?’ To be sure, for many years, you have not said anything about it, which is something that I can interpret as I wish.”

A few days before Brahms’ death, Herzogenberg presented him with his probably best and most mature work, the Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 95. The gripping “Allegro” is full of unmistakably Brahmsian character, constructed with compositional economy. An introductory chord develops into the motific core of the entire movement. The “Adagio is full of dreamy intimacy, while the capricious “Scherzo” eventually transports us into a pastoral idyll. Three themes, including a folkloric principle theme, combine in a spirited and temperamental “Finale.” 

When Richard Strauss (1864-1949) left college and moved to Berlin to study music at the age of 19, he suddenly discovered a new model in Johannes Brahms. Strauss would meet his current idol personally at the premiere of Brahms’ 4th Symphony in 1885. Under the influence of Brahms, the teenaged Strauss completed his Piano Quartet in C minor in 1884, and a good many commentators believe it to be Strauss’ “greatest chamber work.”

Richard Strauss

Op. 13 is a large work fusing “the sobriety and grandeur of Brahms with the fire and impetuous virtuosity of the young Strauss.” The work opens quietly, and the deceptively simple motif returns in various disguises. However, the music quickly explodes with superheated energy, and its dark sonorities and dramatic scope drive it to a virtually symphonic close.

Finally, the “Andante” introduces a measure of calm, with the piano sounding a florid melodic strain that gives way to a lyrical second subject in the viola. Both themes are gracefully extended while bathing in a delicate and charmed atmosphere. The concluding “Vivace” returns to the mood of the opening movement, and the rondo design also features a serious refrain and a spiky fugato. The work won a prize from the Berlin Tonkünstler, Strauss, however, would say goodbye to chamber music and explore orchestral virtuosity in his great tone poems. 

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) seems another surprising entry into a blog on the piano quartet. However, a single movement from his student days at the Vienna Conservatory does survive. Mahler took piano lessons from Julius Epstein and studied composition and harmony under Robert Fuchs and Franz Krenn. Mahler left the Conservatory in 1878 with a diploma but without the coveted and prestigious silver medal given for outstanding achievement.

Gustav Mahler’s Piano Quartet

Although he claimed to have written hundreds of songs, several theatrical works, and various chamber music compositions, only a single movement for a Piano Quartet in A minor survived the ravages of time. Composed in 1876 and awarded the Conservatory Prize, it is strongly influenced by the musical styles of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

Conveying a sense of passion and longing, Mahler presents three contrasting themes within a strict formal design. The opening theme possesses an ominous and foreboding character, while the contrasting second—still in the tonic key—is passionately rhapsodic. To compensate for this tonal stagnation, the third theme undergoes a series of modulations. Thickly textured and relying on excessive motivic manipulation, this movement nevertheless provides insight into the creative processes of the 16-year-old Mahler. 

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) is another composer who, for a time, took his bearings from Johannes Brahms’s music. Dvorák had always been strongly drawn to chamber music, as his first published works are a string quartet Op. 1 and a string quintet Op. 2.

Dvořák in New York, 1893

Apparently, he composed his D-Major piano quartet in a mere eighteen days in 1875. It premiered five years later, on 16 December 1880. Surprisingly, this piano quartet has only three movements, as the composer combines a scherzo and Allegro agitato in alternation in the Finale. The opening “Allegro” sounds like a rather characteristic Czech melody, initiated by the cello and continued by the violin. By the time the piano takes up the theme, the tonality has shifted to B Major.

The melody of the slow movement, a theme followed by five variations, is introduced by the violin. Dvorák skillfully presents fragments of the theme in various meters and textures. The cello, accompanied by the piano, takes the lead in the final “Allegretto.” After the violin has taken up the theme, the piano takes us into the finale proper.

Béla Bartók: Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 20

Béla Bartók

To his contemporaries and critics, Johannes Brahms looked like a bastion of musical conservatism. Surprisingly, it was Arnold Schoenberg, in his celebrated Radio address entitled “Brahms the Progressive”, who suggested that Brahms was “a great innovator in the realm of musical language and that his chamber music prepared the way for the radical changes in musical conception at the turn of the 20th century.”

Just one year after Brahms’ death, the teenage Béla Bartók (1881-1945) embarked on the composition of a four-movement piano quartet. For years, this score was believed to have been lost, but it was rediscovered by a member of the “Notos Quartet,” who also prepared the edition following the composer’s autograph score. What is more, they also presented a world premiere recording in 2007.

The opening “Allegro” immediately evokes the harmonic and sensuous soundscape of Johannes Brahms. And like his model, Bartók’s musical prose does not follow a predictable pattern as the boundaries and distinctions of theme and development are blurred. Brahms’ rhythmic shapes are the topic of a blazing “Scherzo,” with the “Trio” sounding a sombre lyrical contrast. The “Adagio” sounds like a declaration of love for Brahms, while the “Finale” brims with spicy Hungarian flavours. 

Camille Saint-Säens introduced Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) to Pauline Viardot in 1872. Her youngest daughter, Marianne, immediately stole his heart, and Fauré courted her for four painful years. In July 1877, she finally agreed, and the engagement was announced. However, the relationship only lasted until the late autumn of 1877, when Marianne suddenly broke off the engagement.

Pauline Viardot

The exact reasons remain unclear, and Fauré was deeply distressed, with friends reporting that his “sunny disposition took a dark turn.” He started to suffer from bouts of depression, and the Clerc family helped him to recover. At this point, Fauré composed the masterpieces of his youth, among them the piano quartet in C minor.

It might well be considered an early work, however, the composer was already over forty. The opening “Allegro” is pervaded by a sense of optimism, urged on by a strong rhythmical gesture. The E-flat Major “Scherzo” opens with plucked strings and the piano making a light-hearted contribution. The sombre character of the “Adagio” provides an unexpected contrast, and that mood is taken over in the “Finale.” The asymmetrical piano accompaniment continues throughout and brings the work to an emphatic conclusion in the major key.

Théodore Dubois: Piano Quartet in A minor

Théodore Dubois in 1905

Théodore Dubois (1837-1924) was highly influential on the French musical scene. Early on, he was known as a composer-organist with a large oeuvre of sacred music to his name. As a pedagogue, he is still famous as the author of the most common music theory textbooks, and as an administrator, he gained notoriety by denying the famed Rome prize to Maurice Ravel on multiple occasions.

Once Dubois retired from the directorship of the Conservatoire, he worked on a chamber music project. A scholar writes, “If they are not progressive works of genius, we can still enjoy their faultless design and beauty of sonority as documents to help us understand the world and spirit in Paris before, around and after 1900.”

Dubois’ piano quartet in A minor appeared in 1907 and features a conventional four-movement design. The opening “Allegro” begins with a cautious drama but quickly transitions to a lyrical melody. The sense of melodic dominance is taken over in the “Andante,” followed by an “Allegro” replacing a scherzo. Essentially a character piece in the style of Mendelssohn, it is followed by a “Finale” of sophistication and balance.

Mélanie Bonis: Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 69

Mélanie Bonis, 1908

Mélanie Bonis (1858-1937) was born into a Parisian lower-middle-class family and initially discouraged from pursuing music. Undeterred, she taught herself how to play the piano, and only at the urging of a family friend and with help from César Franck was she admitted to the Paris Conservatoire.

To conceal her gender during a time when compositions by women were not taken seriously, she shortened her first name to “Mel.” A good many of her late compositions have still not been published, and as she wrote to her daughter, “My great sorrow is that I never get to hear my music.”

Her first piano quartet was written between 1900 and 1905, and stylistically, it is cast in a post-Romantic tradition. Bonis explores the various possibilities of harmony and rhythm, infused with a dash of Impressionism. A good many passages show the influence of César Franck with long developments and rigorous counterpoint. At the work’s first performance, a surprised Camille Sain-Saëns declared, “I would never have believed a woman capable of writing that. She knows all the tricks of the trade.” 

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949), together with his friend Manuel de Falla, helped to promote the national character of 20th-century Spanish music. At first, influenced and inspired by Debussy, Turina soon developed a distinctly Spanish style, “incorporating Iberian lyricism and rhythms with impressionistic timbres and harmonies.”

Jacinto Higueras Cátedra: Bust of the composer Joaquín Turina, 1971 (Madrid: Escuela Superior de Canto)

While his Op. 1 Piano Quintet in G minor emerged from his study with Vincent d’Indy, the Op. 67 piano quartet in A minor is “music without the slightest need of any explanations.” The three-movement work is carefully constructed in cyclical form, and “the juxtaposition of contrasting themes give the overall shape a rhapsodic structure.”

The fundamental musical idea is introduced in the opening movement and transformed and modified throughout the work. Of particular lively interest is the central “Lento,” where Turina transformed Andalusian elements without abandoning the gestures, temperament and uniqueness of his native lands. I hope you have enjoyed this further excursion into the realm of the piano quartet, and I can already promise one more article on the subject with music by Mozart, Taneyev, Hahn, Brahms, Copland and others.

Strauss - Don Juan | Cristian Măcelaru | WDR Symphony Orchestra

16,462 views Premiered Aug 23, 2024 KÖLNER PHILHARMONIE

Richard Strauss' Don Juan Op. 20, played by the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its chief conductor Cristian Măcelaru. Recorded live on 08.06.2024 in the Kölner Philharmonie. Richard Strauss - Don Juan Op. 20 WDR Symphony Orchestra Cristian Măcelaru, conductor ► Find out more about the symphony orchestra, concerts and current live streams at https://sinfonieorchester.wdr.de ►The WDR Symphony Orchestra on Facebook   / wdrsinfonieorchester   Introduction to the work: Two heavenly strikers meet: Don Juan, the imaginary seducer of women, and Richard Strauss, the aspiring young composer and conductor. Strauss is at the beginning of his career. His talent and ambition will take him far, says the 24-year-old's self-assurance. The only question is: how to climb the career ladder as quickly as possible? In 1888, at any rate, he was dissatisfied with his position: he hoped to “swap the oppressive atmosphere of a 3rd Kapellmeister for a sphere of activity better suited to his abilities”. That is the conductor's side of the story. On the composer's side, he has something unusual in his quiver: a tone poem that he knows he can conquer the world with. Strauss sees in himself the tone poet who will be able to solve the symphonic problem of the time. Initially, he had the idea of combining the venerable genre of the symphony with Franz Liszt's pioneering invention of the symphonic poem. The result was the 4-movement program symphony “From Italy” in 1886. Two years later, he considered this attempt to be outdated: “Away with the dreary four-movement formula, from which no new content has sprouted since the IXth [...]. I too began to create in the sonata form, now I have [...] broken with it completely and have written two great symphonic poems: Macbeth and Don Juan [...] I have turned completely to the one-movement form”. While the form of “Macbeth” still causes Strauss difficulties, the composition of “Don Juan” is almost a thorough march. The heavenly striker reaches for the stars. The tone poem is nothing less than a stroke of genius, with which Strauss became famous around the world virtually overnight: exuberant sound imagination, coupled with innovative and masterful orchestration. The dramatic poem “Don Juan” by Nikolaus Lenau served as his inspiration. He prefaces his score with excerpts from it, beginning with the words: “I would like to traverse the magic circle, the immeasurably wide one, of many charming and beautiful women in a storm of pleasure, at the mouth of the last to die of a kiss.” Text: Otto Hagedorn

Richard Strauss

by Georg Predota, Interlude

“I may not be a first-rate composer, but I AM a first-class second-rate composer!”

Richard Strauss conducting

Born on 11 June 1864 in Munich, Germany, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) almost exclusively expressed his life and thoughts through music and the arts. From his glorious summation of 19th-century Romanticism to the deeply probing psychological experimentations of 20th-century Modernism, his long career spanned one of the most chaotic political, social, and cultural periods in human history. To celebrate his birthday, let’s explore the magnificent compositions of one of the most versatile, talented and creative forces in the history of music and culture. 

Juvenilia

Richard Strauss and parents

Richard’s father Franz Strauss, a member of the Royal Court Orchestra in Munich and a celebrated horn virtuoso, quickly recognized the exceptional musical talents of his son. He started piano lessons at four and a half and made swift progress. Richard was also eager to try his hands at composition, and at the tender age of six, he composed a little polka for solo piano. He took up the violin under Benno Walter at age 8 and began five years of compositional study with Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer at age 11.

Young Richard was primarily interested in orchestral music, and his early instrumental works include marches, concert overtures and ultimately two symphonies. His Serenade for 13 Winds, Op. 7, composed when he was 17, led conductor Hans von Bülow to famously proclaim, “Richard Strauss is by far the most striking personality since Brahms.” Within this early phase of Richard Strauss’s career, we also find a number of works featuring solo instruments. The Violin Concerto Op. 8 was written for his teacher Benno Walter, and the Horn Concerto Op. 11 for his father.  

Burleske

Richard Strauss at 22 years old, 1886

The Burleske, first performed in 1886, was dedicated to Bülow and “is one of the earliest pieces to use the historical canon as a source of parody, simultaneously burlesquing both piano concertos by Brahms and Tristan and Die Walküre by Wagner.” Strauss’s artistic sensibilities were developing with great rapidity, and he confessed to “feeling trapped in a steadily escalating antithesis between poetic content and formal structure.”

After spending several weeks touring Italy, Strauss sketched his tonal impressions to be used for his “first hesitant steps” into the realm of the tone poem. After the completion of Aus Italien in 1886, he jubilantly wrote to Bülow, “I am now capable of composing works based on external inspirations. New ideas must seek new forms.” Frequently described as a first step towards independence, Aus Italien gave rise to a series of magnificent works that represent a significant body of music of central importance in the late German Romantic repertoire. Play

The Tone Poems

Richard Strauss’ Don Juan

Richard Strauss’s monumental tone poems, essentially written during a ten-year period from 1888 to 1898, fused the sheer force of Strauss’ imagination with his embrace of an aesthetic of program music that denounced traditional, abstract musical form as obsolete. In fact, Strauss crafted the central musical expressions of the Austro-German tradition at the turn of the century. These highly innovative orchestral works—ranging from Macbeth of 1888 to the Sinfonia domestica of 1903—with Eine Alpensinfonie added in 1915—project youthful confidence and virility in its music handling, but also in subject matters.

Don Juan (1889), with its provocative subject matter, dazzling orchestration, sharply etched themes, novel structure and taut pacing, earned Strauss his international reputation as a symphonic composer. Cosima Wagner, who was an early admirer of Richard Strauss, was deeply offended by the blatantly erotic subject matter. Although Wagner and Liszt had initially inspired Strauss to embrace the extra-musical, the young composer was determinedly and irreverently carving his own musical path.  

Ein Heldenleben

Throughout his life, Strauss had been attracted by the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, and he was especially partial to the notion that the “individual had the power to change the world around him, and was able to control his destiny without promise of a hereafter.”

For Strauss, the genius of Nietzsche found its greatest manifestation in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Mirroring the nature and character of this literary source, Strauss musically depicts humanity not in search of eternity, but rather struggling to transcend religious superstition.

With his three last and largest tone poems, particularly with Ein Heldenleben (1899), Strauss faced mounting criticism, charges of excess, megalomania, superficiality, and bad taste. A Hero’s Life should not be read as a musical autobiography, however, as the music is much more psychologically complex than its showy and grandiose surface at first suggests. It is principally concerned with exploring the inner world of personality, emotion, and psychology; all deeply embedded in lush layers of irony and parody. 

The Operatic Stage

Alexander Ritter

Young Richard Strauss had grown up under the archconservative direction of his father Franz, who never missed an opportunity to rail against Richard Wagner’s music. When Richard Strauss took up his appointment with the Meiningen orchestra, he met the Estonian-born Alexander Ritter, who had married the niece of Richard Wagner. Ritter took an immediate liking to the young Richard, and began to engage him on the aesthetic beliefs of Liszt and Wagner, both of whom he regarded almost as gods. In his memoirs, Strauss credited Ritter with his so-called “conversion” to Wagner and the music of the future.

Ritter provided Strauss with an aesthetic focus for his creative energies, and above all, spurred the young composer to devote himself to the musical theatre. After the dismal failure of his first opera Guntram (1894) and the scandal caused by the sexual and erotic subtext of Feuersnot (1901), Strauss’s next opera, Salome (1905) simultaneously provoked fascination and revulsion. “Lust, incest, decapitation, and necrophilia is wrapped in a lush tapestry of dazzling orchestration,” and decidedly established Strauss as the leading German opera composer of his time. Elektra (1909), in turn, proved crucial to Strauss’s later development as a composer of opera, since it marked the beginning of his collaboration with the young Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. 

Der Rosenkavalier

Richard Strauss’ Elektra, title page of the libretto, 1909

In terms of popularity, nothing comes close to Der Rosenkavalier (1911). Collaborating once more with Hofmannsthal, Strauss turned to 18th-century Vienna and the musical world of Mozart. This comic opera presents a critical layering of musical styles, referencing Mozart, Verdi, and the waltzes. It evokes a sense of sentimentality and denotes the middle-class sensibilities of Johann Strauss. Strauss essentially discloses his modernist preoccupation with the dilemma of history, and the popularity of the score has overshadowed the theatrical brilliance and modernity of the work.

Strauss further exploits the musical canon as a source of parody in Ariadne auf Naxos (1916), while Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919) is a complex mixture of operatic and musical elements. Based on a fairytale, the complexity of the libretto inspired Strauss to compose one of his densest scores, packed with intricate leitmotifs and brilliant orchestral colours. The comedy Intermezzo (1924), on the other hand, was inspired by Strauss’s wife mistakenly accusing him of philandering, while Die Ägyptische Helena (1928) returns to the more elevated world of Greek myth. Although Strauss referred to Die Liebe der Danae (1944) as his last opera, his final completed work for the stage was a “Conversation Piece for Music,” entitled Capriccio (1942). Rich in historical allusions and self-references, it represents the culmination of the composer’s work in this genre. Play

Vocal Musings

Richard Strauss with Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Richard Strauss composed Lieder throughout his entire life. In more than 200 songs, the composer thoroughly explored the German Romantic tradition and significantly advanced the genre with his autumnal orchestral songs. A good many songs were written for his wife, the celebrated soprano Pauline de Ahna, and Strauss went on to orchestrate some of them. Without doubt, the Vier letzte Lieder, which “contemplate the meaning of death, are among Strauss’s finest works in any genre.”

Strauss summed up his artistic legacy by stating, “I may not be a first-rate composer, but I AM a first-class second-rate composer!” This deceptively light-hearted self-assessment brings into focus the composer’s role in the growing rift between the 19th century bourgeois and a rapidly encroaching modernist perspective. For a good many scholars, Strauss and Schoenberg were the two greatest composers of the century, with the ideal likeness of Strauss not corresponding to a painting, drawing, or sculpture, “but to a mosaic, coherent from afar, but upon closer view made of numerous contrasting fragments.”

Richard Strauss died quietly in his sleep on 8 September 1949, and he was buried in the garden of his Villa in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.