Richard StraussEssay Preview: Richard StraussReport this essayRichard Strauss(1864-1949)Richard Strauss was a programmatic composer of the nineteenth century, and he used freedoms of musical pictorialism to create sounds that bring us into the twentieth century. While many of his works seem classical, they are driven by descriptive techniques. He uses these to create musical representations
Richard Strauss was born in Munich, Germany on June 11, 1864. He was composing by the time he was 6 years old, having received basic instruction from his father, a professional horn player. This was his only formal training. His Father instilled in Richard a love of the classical composers, and his early works follow in their path. He went briefly to a university but he had no formal training as a composer. His first symphony premiered when he was 17, and his second when he was 20. By this time he had focused all his energy on conducting, and in 1885 he succeeded Hans von Bulow as conductor of the orchestra in Meiningen. For the next forty years, he conducted orchestras throughout Germany.
The conductor of the orchestra (1889 and 1910)
The famous conductor, Hans G. Münster, who succeeded his father as conductor of German music during the time of the Great War at this time, has been described by some as the most accomplished sound-engineer in the world. His work often included harmonizing the strings, playing with notes and playing them back in unison. His repertoire is distinguished only by a lack of classical accompaniment, or by the great number of individual scales which he is often credited with. Nevertheless, his work was still highly celebrated by early composers, including Wolfgang von Trier, the composer of the famous Stenier-Böchner symphony, and Paul Horn, who was also an expert on German symphonies. He was one of the first composers to take up the role of conductor-in-the-game. His work in the orchestra (1890), the final performance of the “Eine deutsche Musik” (“the music of the orchestra”) (1901), and the original “Turgenhausen” score for his opera “Zukunfti” (1922) received an Academy Award; the same award he received also for the original “Turgische” for the opera “Schönweise”. He also received the Order of the Redeemer Award for the Wagner-esque “Schmacherbebe” (1891) for orchestral symphonies and a Lifetime Achievement Award (1927). The Wagner symphony (1889, 1890, 1926, 1928, 1927, 1958, 1956, 1959) and some of the orchestral works of the 18th and 19th centuries (1918, 1919, 1924, 1922, 1923) received a prize of one million marks.
As a conductor, Strauss had a unique vantage point in which to observe the workings of an orchestra. From this vantage point he developed a sense for orchestration that was incomparable. He immediately put this sense to use in a series of orchestral pieces that he called “tone poems”, including Macbeth, Don Juan, Tod und VerklÐrung, Till Eulenspeigels lustige Streiche, and Don Quixote. These works were intensely programmatic, and in the last two he elevated descriptive music to a level not approached since the techniques of text painting during the Renaissance. He also used his knowledge of orchestral techniques to revise Hector Berliozs important orchestration treatise; this edition remains standard to this day.
At the beginning of the 20th century Strauss began to shift his focus to opera.