| Database: |
Composers |
| Name of the author: |
STRAUSS, RICHARD |
| Year of Birth: |
1864 |
| Year of death: |
1949 |
| Composed works: |
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| Written specialised literature: |
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| Compositions on CDs: |
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| Text information: |
Name: Strauss, Richard (Pseudonyme): *: 1864 in: München +: 1949 in: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Deutschland
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Strauss entstammt der großen musikalischen Familie und es war nur allzu natürlich, daß er ebenfalls die musikalische Laufbahn einschlug. So kam es, daß er bereits im Alter von vier Jahren Harfestunden nahm und später mit elf widmete er sich bereits sehr intensiv der Komposition. Großer Beliebtheit erfreuten sich seine sinfonischen Gedichte und Lieder. Ganz anders wie so manch andere Komponisten wußte er sein Talent auch zu verkaufen. Er erkannte schon recht bald, daß ein Zusammenhang zwischen kommerziell und sensationell bestand. Mit seinen Opern "Der Rosenkavalier", "Elektra" und "Salome" wurde er dann zu einem der wohlhabendsten Komponisten. Strauss hatte eine sehr gute Stelle im Jahre 1886 am Hof in München als musikalischer Direktor angeboten bekommen. Und später zog er nach München, Weimar und Berlin und übte dort ein ähnliches Amt aus.
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Richard Strauss was one of the major transitional composers from the Romantic era of music to modern music. Well known as a conductor and composer of operas, symphonic tone poems, chamber music, and art songs, he is considered a post-Romantic composer in his expansive forms. In the area of harmony and subject matter, however, he was a great innovator. His advanced harmonic vocabulary went well beyond the compositions of his contemporaries, and his innovations served as examples for Schoenberg and Ravel. Although his subject matter could be quite shocking at times (e.g. the opera "Salome), he had great successes in spite of being labelled a "modernist". In fact, he was a composer of great melodic genius from an early age, and his long career serves testament to the fact that he was a major influence on most composers in the first half of the 20th century. His greatest contributions to opera are in Harmonic language and in tackling risqué subject matter. In instrumental literature, he is best remembered for his tone poems that serve as both program music and (somewhat) as personal narration. Most of his career was spent in Munich and Berlin. At the height of his fame, the only living composer considered an equal was Debussy. He is still revered today as a genius who personified Wagner's vision of "Zukunftmusik", or music of the future.
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