Richard Strauss Free Sheet Music, Program Notes, Recordings and Biography

The Last Romantic

The premiere of Richard Strauss's opera Salome in Dresden in 1905 was the musical scandal of the decade. Based on a lurid play by Oscar Wilde, the one-act opera featured a biblical princess performing the seductive "Dance of the Seven Veils" and culminating in a shocking scene where she kisses the severed head of John the Baptist. The music was just as shocking: dissonant, psychologically intense, and scored for a colossal orchestra. The audience was horrified and electrified. The opera was a scandalous triumph that made Strauss a wealthy man and confirmed his status as the audacious heir to Wagner and the boldest new voice in German music. It was a position he would hold, in one form or another, for the next half-century.

The Musician's Son from Munich

Richard Strauss was born in Munich into a highly musical family. His father, Franz Strauss, was the principal horn player of the court orchestra and a staunch musical conservative. He revered Mozart and Beethoven but despised the revolutionary music of Richard Wagner. As a result, the young Richard was raised on a strict diet of the classics, showing prodigious talent as a pianist and composer from a very young age. His early works are charming and well-crafted pieces in the style of Schumann or Brahms.

The Discovery of Wagner and the Tone Poem

As a young man, Strauss encountered the music of Wagner, and it changed his life. Against his father's wishes, he immersed himself in Wagner's scores, discovering a new world of harmony, drama, and, above all, orchestration. This "conversion" unlocked his own unique genius. He decided to abandon traditional symphonic forms and instead began composing a series of magnificent "tone poems"—large, single-movement orchestral works that tell a story or illustrate a literary idea.

Between 1886 and 1898, he produced a string of masterpieces that stunned the musical world and remain staples of the concert hall today: Don Juan, the wickedly clever Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, the profound Death and Transfiguration, and his philosophical epic, Also sprach Zarathustra, whose magnificent "Sunrise" opening fanfare became world-famous after its use in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Scandal and Triumph on the Opera Stage

After conquering the orchestra, Strauss turned his attention to opera. Following the scandalous success of Salome, he composed an even more brutal and modernistic work, Elektra (1909). This one-act opera, a raw and dissonant portrayal of ancient Greek vengeance, pushed the bounds of tonality to their very limit. It seemed Strauss was destined to lead music into the world of atonality.

Then, he did something completely unexpected. For his next project, he collaborated with the brilliant Austrian poet and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Together, they created Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose, 1911). Instead of continuing his modernist path, Strauss composed a charming, poignant, and nostalgically beautiful comedy of manners set in 18th-century Vienna. Filled with shimmering waltzes and soaring vocal lines, it was a conscious look backward, a tribute to the world of Mozart. It was a massive success and remains his most beloved opera. The partnership with Hofmannsthal would become one of the greatest in operatic history, producing other masterpieces like Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten.

An Uneasy Coexistence: Strauss and the Third Reich

Strauss's life became immensely complicated with the rise of the Nazi Party in 1933. As Germany's most famous living composer, he was appointed the first president of the Reichsmusikkammer (the State Music Chamber). His motivations remain a subject of intense debate. He was largely apolitical and hoped to protect German musical culture and, most importantly, his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren. However, his acceptance of the post and his willingness to work with the regime in its early years have permanently tainted his reputation. He soon fell out of favor after the Gestapo intercepted a letter in which he made critical remarks, and he was forced to resign in 1935. He spent the rest of the war in a precarious position, a cultural icon tolerated but not trusted by the regime.

An Indian Summer: The Final Works

After the devastation of World War II, Strauss, then in his 80s, experienced one last, astonishing burst of creativity. Contemplating the destruction of the German opera houses where his works had been born, he composed Metamorphosen, a heartbreakingly beautiful lament for 23 solo strings.

His final masterpiece was the sublime Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs), composed in 1948. These songs, settings of poems by Hesse and Eichendorff for soprano and orchestra, are a serene and beautiful farewell to life and to the German Romantic tradition he embodied. The music is filled with a sense of peaceful acceptance and luminous beauty. Richard Strauss died in 1949, rightfully remembered as the last great composer in a musical lineage that stretched back through Wagner and Liszt to Beethoven and Mozart.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• References and Further Reading

• Kennedy, Michael. Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

• Gilliam, Bryan. The Life of Richard Strauss. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

• Del Mar, Norman. Richard Strauss: A Critical Commentary on His Life and Works. Cornell University Press, 1986.

• Kater, Michael H. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. Oxford University Press, 2000.