We celebrate the birth of the composer Richard Strauss, who was born on June 11, 1864, 154 years ago today.
I will pull no punches here: in my humble (but happily expressed) opinion, Richard Strauss was one the greatest composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was a melodist and musical dramatist on near par with Mozart, which is, I think, just about the highest compliment any composer can be paid. His brilliant (though, admittedly, sometimes sprawling) tone poems – From Italy, Don Juan, Macbeth, Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Don Quixote, A Hero’s Life, Domestic Symphony, and An Alpine Symphony – constitute, virtually, a genre of experimental music of their own. His superb operas pick up from where Richard Wagner’s “music dramas” leave off, which inspired the wags of his time to call Strauss “Richard II”. He continued to turn out masterworks until the very end of his long life; his exquisite Oboe Concerto (1945) and Metamorphosen for strings (also 1945) were composed when he was 81; his Four Last Songs (1948) was composed when he was 84.
In 1947, the 83 year-old Strauss declared with typical self-deprecation:
“I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.”
We beg to differ; Strauss was, in fact, a first rate composer all the way around: a consummate technician; a dazzling orchestrator; a superlative harmonist who managed to be a modernist (in terms of his expressive content, his use of time and chromatic counterpoint) and a traditionalist (in terms of his use of traditional tonality) all at once.
Despite his brilliance as a composer (and competence as a conductor), Strauss’ reputation continues – to this day – to be sullied by his perceived association with the Nazis. Let’s do what we can to set that record straight.
A Story
Richard Strauss didn’t care a fig for politics; he wanted to be left alone to write his music, play cards, and count his money. (Strauss loved his creature comforts and made no bones about it; he wrote music for a living and not for some higher artistic ideal. A great story. In 1901 Gustav Mahler conducted the Vienna premiere of Strauss’ opera Feuersnot, or “The Need for Fire.” Mahler’s wife, Alma, sat next to Strauss during the rehearsals. She wrote in her diary:
“Strauss thinks of nothing but money. The whole time [during the rehearsals] he had a pencil in his hand and was calculating the profits down to the last penny. It was disgusting.”)
Earth-to-Alma: everyone has to make a living.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Strauss did business with them and appeared to turn a blind eye to the developing catastrophe around him. But in fact – in private – he was mortified; in 1933 he wrote:
“I consider the Jew-baiting as a disgrace to German honor, as evidence of incompetence—the basest weapon of untalented, lazy mediocrity against a higher intelligence and greater talent.”
For their part, the Nazis were publically thrilled to have the single most important living German composer working with them. They showered Strauss with honors and titles and Strauss took everything they offered. But in private the Nazis felt no more affection for Strauss than Strauss felt for the Nazis. The Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary:
“Unfortunately we still need him [meaning Strauss], but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no further need of this decadent neurotic.”
Strauss managed to maintain his pretense of accommodation with the Nazis until the time came when even Strauss – who was called by his friend, the conductor Hans Knappertsbusch, an “[opportunistic] pig” – until even he – Strauss – could no longer pretend to turn a blind eye. The catalyst for Strauss’ change of heart was Kristallnacht – the “Night of Broken Glass” – that took place on the night of Nov...