Strauss, Richard (1864 - 1949)

[Ein Heldenleben]

For the greatest 20th Century (multi-)opera composer candidate, give me Janacek. For me, it's partly a matter of class (social, that is).

I wouldn’t want to choose between them. Strauss does feature ordinary people Barak and wife for example - but in terms of psychological characterisation (quite impt in drama ) Janacek is ahead really isn’t he ? . Mind you watched the ROH Jenufa on YouTube Saturday and I’m still reeling..,

[jayne lee wilson]

Tod und Verklärung and Metamorphosen, works that come at either end of Strauss' long life. The composer contemplating death in the former, written as a young man, and staring it in the face after the destruction of all he held dear, in his 80's..

I've never even thought about having a 'problem' with Tod, bit puzzled about that, to be honest, while calling Metamorphosen 'bombastic' is one of the more silly comments I've read on this Forum. Metamorphosen must surely be the saddest piece of music ever written. It's Strauss surveying the ruins of German culture, the destruction of the opera houses that played such a significant role in his life and the loss of his beloved Dresden. There's no warmth on offer here.

Eloquently articulated, Pet......

Surely (given its references and melodic, expressive, restrained artistic profile) Metamorphosen is an elegy, a lament inspired (or provoked, in a cry of pain) by the carpet-bombing destruction of those great cities and their musical hearts, for the "Old" Germany and its noble culture so subversively misrepresented, betrayed and ruined by Nazism and it horrors.

Most of the greatest Elegies and Laments, whether Musical, literary or visual, grow any universality of expression from their localised intensity (think of Picasso's Guernica, Zbigniev Herbert's Report from the Besieged City, or the Marcia Funèbre of Beethoven's Eroica).

One does not expect such responsive creations to explicitly reach out to other "races or cultures" etc..... what matters here is the intensity and depth of their response.

Should that be true to itself, anyone may find an empathy, a self-identification, within it. A reaching-out-and-across....

[Barbirollians]

I wouldn’t want to choose between them. Strauss does feature ordinary people Barak and wife for example - but in terms of psychological characterisation (quite impt in drama ) Janacek is ahead really isn’t he ? . Mind you watched the ROH Jenufa on YouTube Saturday and I’m still reeling..,

Puccini over the pair of them - runs and hides …

[Ein Heldenleben]

Puccini over the pair of them - runs and hides …

Not at all - a strong case good be argued . I wonder though if he isn’t essentially a 19th century Opera composer ? Without La Boheme , Butterfly and Tosca the bigger houses probably wouldn’t be able to stage Janacek or most Strauss.

[LHC]

Not at all - a strong case good be argued . I wonder though if he isn’t essentially a 19th century Opera composer ? Without La Boheme , Butterfly and Tosca the bigger houses probably wouldn’t be able to stage Janacek or most Strauss.

His operas are certainly more popular than either Strauss or Janacek, and as you stay are mainstays of the repertory without which most opera houses would go under.

Shostakovich is reported to have replied to Britten, when he said he thought Puccini's operas were dreadful "No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas but dreadful music!"

Personally, I wouldn't want to have to choose between any of them.

[cloughie]

His operas are certainly more popular than either Strauss or Janacek, and as you stay are mainstays of the repertory without which most opera houses would go under.

Shostakovich is reported to have replied to Britten, when he said he thought Puccini's operas were dreadful "No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas but dreadful music!"

Personally, I wouldn't want to have to choose between any of them.

I’d put Britten fourth some way behind R Strauss, Janacek and Puccini. Personal preferences are just that. Sea Interldes and Passacaglia are the part of Peter Grimes I really like but I’ll leave the rest!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Please could we keep on topic?

[Ein Heldenleben]

I’d put Britten fourth some way behind R Strauss, Janacek and Puccini. Personal preferences are just that. Sea Interldes and Passacaglia are the part of Peter Grimes I really like but I’ll leave the rest!

With apologies for straying off Alpie’s very own thread with its truly magnificent list of recordings I was tempted to put Britten up there with Strauss and Janacek. It’s just that his masterpieces were , in my view , loaded towards the beginning of his opera career and he suffered a bit from dodgy libretto syndrome…

On topic heard the much recommended Jurowski Alpine this week after an excerpt on Essential Classics was played. I still think the Kempe , recorded in the 70s has better sound and is a better performance.

[pastoralguy]

Please could we keep on topic?

Apologies, Alpie but I’ll keep it brief…

A friend has always felt that Britten’s operas appeal mainly to citizens in the A1 social class bracket…

[Ein Heldenleben]

Apologies, Alpie but I’ll keep it brief…

A friend has always felt that Britten’s operas appeal mainly to citizens in the A1 social class bracket…

Does your friend mean AB1? I think that might be true of all opera and indeed classical music in general including the work that heads up this thread.

[richardfinegold]

While I have some sympathy with Richard's views on Eine Alpensinfonie and Zarathustra (to which I would add my particular Straussian bête-noire, Tod und Verklärung), I'm not sure that I've ever thought of Metamorphosen as up there making a lot of noise with a large orchestra. Written in very different circumstances to the afore-mentioned trio of works (not to mention the other pair of works which, for me, tend to outstay their welcome - Aus Italien and especially the Sinfonia Domestica), twenty three strings do not bombast make but something rather more rueful and reflective. Or am I missing something?

I know that Metamorphasen is frequently viewed as a lament for an irretrievably lost Culture, and is frequently spoken of with great reverence, but after years of listening and hearing it in Concert, I’ve concluded it is largely devoid of enough substance to sustain its length . It sounds less bombastic than most RStrauss because of the limits of its orchestration. As for its supposed meaning, how would we view it if it had been written, say, around 1910? Most of Meta sounds like it could of been recycled from unlistenable 95% part of Zarathustra.
Don Quixote and Heldenlaben were RS true Orchestral masterpieces. Till and Don Juan are probably as great but for me are too overly familiar. I like Death and Transfiguration but I understand HD and others who can’t abide its kitsch. I can’t tolerate the Domestic Symphony enough to listen to the end, and rank Alpine only slightly higher. Strauss was right to have abandoned Orchestral Music for Opera because he had nothing left to say.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I know that Metamorphasen is frequently viewed as a lament for an irretrievably lost Culture, and is frequently spoken of with great reverence, but after years of listening and hearing it in Concert, I’ve concluded it is largely devoid of enough substance to sustain its length . It sounds less bombastic than most RStrauss because of the limits of its orchestration. As for its supposed meaning, how would we view it if it had been written, say, around 1910? Most of Meta sounds like it could of been recycled from unlistenable 95% part of Zarathustra.
Don Quixote and Heldenlaben were RS true Orchestral masterpieces. Till and Don Juan are probably as great but for me are too overly familiar. I like Death and Transfiguration but I understand HD and others who can’t abide its kitsch. I can’t tolerate the Domestic Symphony enough to listen to the end, and rank Alpine only slightly higher. Strauss was right to have abandoned Orchestral Music for Opera because he had nothing left to say.

I think Strauss “abandoned” orchestral music for opera because he had too much to say. He is one of music’s great story tellers and and in Opera that’s so important. I disagree re Ein Alpensinfonie- it has a beautifully constructed narrative arc.

[richardfinegold]

My problem with it is that it’s very much Strauss’s sadness at the ruins of German culture but where is the sadness at the ruins of other countries’ (and indeed other races’) cultures? Without getting into the endless debate over Strauss and the Second World War I wonder why he didn’t write it in 1941 or 1942 when country after country had already been destroyed it was obvious to most intelligent Germans that genocide was Nazi policy. Admittedly it would have been a brave option . To me , although I think the music is a masterpiece, it plays into the comforting myth that the German people were just as much victims as any one else - a myth that some contemporary German historians have comprehensively debunked. That’s why I think it’s self-pitying.

If you want a ‘bombastic’ Strauss piece look no further than Ein Heldenleben…

Did Strauss ever state anywhere what Metamorphosis is “about”? I believe not, although someone will probably prove me wrong. The statements that Petrushka. made about its so called meaning are the standard party line that commentators invented after the debut, that RS was writing a lament for Germany, and by extension a Universal Lament for Humanity Strauss was a bit tainted by his association with the Third Reich (that is a complicated subject, beyond the scope of my post here) and there was probably a desire to buff his reputation immediately after War so that we could all listen to the Music of a Composer so tainted without feeling guilty or having to apologize for our enjoyment. Strauss was also a notoriously practical (some might say mercenary) man, and like all Germans climbing out of the rubble he and his family were not financially secure. Do we know that he simply didn’t utilize something he had written but never published before Germany hit ground zero?
Again, try to put out of ones mind the date of the work, and listen to it as pure music. A great deal of it reminds me of Zarathustra, the parts that we all fall asleep to, minus the brass, woodwinds, and percussion

[Ein Heldenleben]

Did Strauss ever state anywhere what Metamorphosis is “about”? I believe not, although someone will probably prove me wrong. The statements that Petrushka. made about its so called meaning are the standard party line that commentators invented after the debut, that RS was writing a lament for Germany, and by extension a Universal Lament for Humanity Strauss was a bit tainted by his association with the Third Reich (that is a complicated subject, beyond the scope of my post here) and there was probably a desire to buff his reputation immediately after War so that we could all listen to the Music of a Composer so tainted without feeling guilty or having to apologize for our enjoyment. Strauss was also a notoriously practical (some might say mercenary) man, and like all Germans climbing out of the rubble he and his family were not financially secure. Do we know that he simply didn’t utilize something he had written but never published before Germany hit ground zero?
Again, try to put out of ones mind the date of the work, and listen to it as pure music. A great deal of it reminds me of Zarathustra, the parts that we all fall asleep to, minus the brass, woodwinds, and percussion

As so often the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra website has a helpful précis of the debate around the “inspiration” for this work. Like so much artistic work it is shrouded in convenient ambiguity. We are trying to pin down a butterfly …

https://www.sfsymphony.org/Data/Event-Data/Program-Notes/S/Strauss-Metamorphosen

I should add there is a very good musical analysis in Vol 3 of Del Mar’s Richard Strauss. He develops the Goethe connection outlined above.

[HighlandDougie]

As so often the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra website has a helpful précis of the debate around the “inspiration” for this work. Like so much artistic work it is shrouded in convenient ambiguity. We are trying to pin down a butterfly …

https://www.sfsymphony.org/Data/Event-Data/Program-Notes/S/Strauss-Metamorphosen

I should add there is a very good musical analysis in Vol 3 of Del Mar’s Richard Strauss. He develops the Goethe connection outlined above.

As an adjunct to the SFSO programme note so helpfully cited by EH above, the Wikipedia entry is worth reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosen

It would seem to answer Richard's question about whether Strauss ever expanded on what he meant by 'Metamorphosen': in short, no. Hence it having sparked off a veritable cottage industry of theories aiming to provide a plausible answer. Michael Kennedy also discusses the Goethe connection in one of his books on the composer which I vaguely remember thinking when I read it as quite likely. There are no doubt other contenders, not, though, that it hugely matters: the music can speak for itself.