Richard Strauss

     This is the fourth (but not final) draft of a short bioagraphy about Richard Strauss I wrote recently, thought you would enjoy it.
    
     Richard Strauss was born in Munich Bavarian, 1864. He was a composer of the late Romantic and early Modern eras. He primarily wrote Operas, Tone Poems, and Leider. In fact, his tone poem An Alpine Symphony was the first music released commercially on a compact disc by Deutsche Grammaphon in 1983.
     In his early years he had a conservative musical upbringing from his father Franz Strauss, the respected first horn in the Meiningen Court Orchestra. Richard started piano at age five (later to go on to violin at eight) and took his first steps in composition at age 6, beginning with Schneiderpolka (Tailor’s Polka), notated by his father. He also attended several Operas early his in life where he was enraptured as much by the orchestra as the scenes on stage. Later, he studied violin with his second cousin and leader of the court orchestra, Benno Walter.
     Although he started writing music at a young age, it was not until 1875 that he took composition lessons with Hofkapellmeister Freidrich Wilhelm Mayer to whom he dedicated his first orchestral work, a Serenade in G major. Compositions around this time were naturally conservative. In 1882 he began two terms at Munich University, studying philosophy, aesthetics, and art history, but not music. However, three years later he became assistant conductor to Hanz Bülow at the Meiningen Court Orchestra, succeeding him as principal conductor later in the year. During this time he met violinist and composer Alexander Ritter who strongly influenced Strauss’s compositions. He encouraged him to abandon the conservative style of writing and to start writing tone poems, which he did. His first one being, Macbeth.
     In addition to this newly found interest he wrote his first opera, Guntram, which was a failure along with his second attempt, Feuersnot, which he wrote six years later, was also a failure. In 1894 he conducted a premiere of Guntram with Pauline de Ahna as Freihild, the Heroine. He had met the Ahna Family on a vacation outside Munich, in 1887, he was giving singing lesson to the eldest Ahna daughter Pauline whom he married in September of 1894. Three years later they had a son, which they named Franz.
     Around the turn of the century he became Kapellmeister of the Court Opera. He also helped found the guild for the promotion of new music Genossenshaft Deutscher Tonsetzer, the first steps in copyright protection for composers, as well as putting music to playwright Oscar Wilde’s, Salome.
     Six months before the greatly successful premiere of Salome, his father died in Dresden at 83 years of age. Just five years later, the same year he finished Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose), his mother Josepha died, aged 73. Soon after their deaths he began working on one of his most famous tone poems mentioned earlier, Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony).
     Looking at a timeline of his life during World War I it would seem that he was hardly affected by it. He even accepted the position as co-director of the Vienna State Opera with Franz Schalk. However, World War II was a different matter. Before the war in 1933, without his consultation, he was appointed president of Reichmusikkammer.  Three years later he was forced to resign because of collaboration with Jewish writer Stefan Zweig. He was also an official of the Third Reich, yet he used this position to protect his daughter-in-law, Alice, who was also Jewish. It would seem he was apolitical. However, from his work Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) he apparently embraced the socialistic ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche.
     At the End of the War, he met John de Lancie, Oboist for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and an American soldier. De Lancie suggested the idea of writing an Oboe Concerto, which Strauss completed before moving to Switzerland with Pauline.
     Following his 85th birthday celebration he conducted an orchestra for the last time. After several heart attacks and six weeks of illness, he died peacefully at Garmisch on the 8th of September, 1949. Six months later his wife, Pauline, died.