Richard Strauss was born at Munich, June 11, 1864. He is the son of Franz S. Strauss, formerly first horn player in the Bavarian Court Band. His father has written studies and other compositions for his instrument; and, as his son said, “he could play most of the instruments in the orchestra.” He sat under Wagner’s stick, but was not a Wagnerian. Once he played so well that Wagner exclaimed, “I fancy after all, Strauss, you cannot be such an anti-Wagnerian as they make out, for you play my music so beautifully.” “What has that got to do with it?” answered the stubborn artist. The mother of Richard was born Pschorr, and is a daughter of the wealthy Munich brewer. The boy received his first piano lessons at the age of four and a half from his mother. Later he studied with August Tombo, a harp player, and took up the violin under Benno Walter. At the age of six he composed a three-part song, a valse, and a polka—Schneider Polka, he called the dance. Before he went to school he had tried his hand at songs, piano pieces, and an orchestral overture. Sent to the elementary schools from 1870 to 1874, the gymnasium from 1874 to 1882, and the university from 1882 to 1884, Strauss laid the foundation of a comprehensive culture, a catholicity in taste, a love of belles lettres, and a general knowledge of the world’s literature. He early mastered the technics of the piano and violin, and in 1875, with Kapellmeister Fr. W. Meyer, theory and composition. This course lasted five years. The composing went on apace. A chorus for the Electra of Sophocles and a festival chorus were given a hearing at a gymnasium concert. Three of his songs were sung in 1880; and in March, 1881, his string quartet in A, opus 2, the scherzo of which he wrote in his fifteenth year, was played by Benno Walter’s quartet, to whom it was dedicated. Four days later his first symphony was accorded a hearing under Hermann Levi, and the extreme youth of the composer called forth remonstrances. In 1883 Berlin heard his C minor overture under Radecke. Both are still in manuscript.
Of this formative period Strauss has told us that, “My father kept me very strictly to the old masters, in whose compositions I had a thorough grounding. You cannot appreciate Wagner and the moderns unless you pass through this grounding in the classics. Young composers bring me voluminous manuscripts for my opinion on their productions. In looking at them I find that they generally want to begin where Wagner left off. I say to all such, ‘My good young man, go home and study the works of Bach, the symphonies of Haydn, of Mozart, of Beethoven, and when you have mastered these art works come to me again.’ Without thoroughly understanding the significance of the development from Haydn, via Mozart and Beethoven, to Wagner, these youngsters cannot appreciate at their proper worth either the music of Wagner or of his predecessors. ‘What an extraordinary thing for Richard Strauss to say,’ these young men remark, but I only give them the advice gained by my own experience.”
Then came a stroke of luck. Von Bülow’s attention being attracted by the charmingly written and scored serenade (opus 7) in E flat for thirteen wind instruments, secured it for the repertory of the Meiningen orchestra. It is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, four horns, two bassoons, and contrabassoon (or bass tuba). His second symphony in F minor was composed during the season of 1883-1884. It was first played in New York under Theodore Thomas, December 15, 1884, and later by Walter Damrosch. It shows many traces of the young composer’s close study of Brahms. The horn concerto, opus 11, and the piano quartet, opus 13, were composed at the same period. The latter won a prize. It shows a straining for bigger effects, as if the form were too cramped for the strenuous composer. The andante and scherzo are the more agreeable movements. The Wanderer’s Sturmlied, after Goethe’s poem, beginning, “Wen du nicht Verlässest, Genius,” revealed the taste for literary themes and themes that exalt the individuality. This opus 14 is written for six-voiced chorus, two soprani, one alto, one tenor, two bassi, and orchestra. It also shows the serious influence of the Brahms Schicksalslied. A second suite for wind was first given at Munich, conducted by the composer.
“Bülow, who was very fond of my father,” says Strauss, “interested himself in me, and I have much to thank him for. He started me on my conducting career. My first experience of standing before an orchestra was in connection with the performance of a suite, in four movements, for wind instruments, which I had composed at his request. It is still in manuscript. Bülow made me conduct it without any rehearsal!” This must be the grand suite in B flat, misleadingly numbered opus 14—the same opus number as the Sturmlied. It is scored for thirteen wind instruments, and has been heard in London. The introduction and entire fourth movement are said to be the best. It is early Strauss. Strauss became music director in Meiningen, October, 1885, conducted his own F minor symphony and also made his début as pianist in Mozart’s C minor concerto. Von Bülow honored him by conducting the concerto.
Strauss had already come under the influence of Alexander Ritter (1833-1896), a violinist in the Munich Orchestra who had married a niece of Wagner’s. Ritter, like von Bülow, was a man of strong magnetic personality, and both were warm-blooded Wagnerians and Lisztians. As boys they listened to that wonderful performance of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony given by Wagner at Dresden in 1849, and the two young gentlemen schoolfellows used to doff their caps every time they passed the master’s windows in the Ostra-Allee. “Ritter was exceptionally well read in all the philosophers, ancient and modern, and a man of the highest culture. His influence,” says Strauss, “was in the nature of a storm-wind. He urged me on to the development of the poetic, the expressive, in music, as exemplified in the works of Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz. My symphonic fantasia, Aus Italien, is the connecting link with the old and the new methods.” The young composer went to Rome and Naples in the spring of 1886. Strauss tells an amusing incident. “A few days ago I was conducting this symphony at Brunswick, when a policeman appeared on the scene and stopped the performance because, as he said, some condition had not been complied with. Soon after, however, another policeman came and said the concert might proceed. This unwarrantable interruption caused great uproar, and the audience shouted anathemas against the police. At the close of the symphony I turned to the audience and said, ‘You see, ladies and gentlemen, in this Italy there are no anarchists!’”
In 1886 he left Meiningen to become third Kapellmeister under Levi and Fischer. He wrote his tone-poem Macbeth at this period, though it bears a later opus number than Don Juan. The former, after a revision and partial rewriting, was dedicated to Alexander Ritter, and first performed under von Bülow in Berlin. Strauss remained at Munich until 1890, when he received a call from Weimar. In the ducal city he shed his pupil’s skin and developed into a brilliant conductor. His radical tendencies were now beginning to be recognized, and his espousal of the music of the extreme Left caused his conducting of Wagner and Liszt to become notable. At Leipsic his influence was felt as conductor at the Liszt society. He has always warmly defended the music of Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz.
In 1892 his lungs were affected and a protracted journey to Greece, Egypt, and Sicily was necessary. He was not idle, however, for on his return his grand opera, Guntram, opus 25, and dedicated to his parents, was produced at Weimar. He married in 1894 Pauline de Ahna, the daughter of a well-known Bavarian general, and the soprano who created the Freihild in Guntram.
From Weimar Strauss returned to Munich as Court Kapellmeister, and three years later he succeeded Levi as general music director. Not satisfied with matters, he left Munich to become Kapellmeister at the Berlin Royal Opera, which position he still occupies. He had conducted the Philharmonic Orchestra of Berlin after the death of von Bülow, but the trip from Munich to Berlin was too exhausting, and Arthur Nikisch was permanently engaged. Strauss has conducted at Bayreuth, festivals at Liège, Cologne, Leipsic, Milan, Moscow. In 1897 he visited London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, and a year later Zurich and Madrid. In 1903 he conducted, in conjunction with Wilhelm Mengelberg, a series of concerts in London, a Strauss festival organized by Hugo Goerlitz. The Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra, a remarkable aggregation of artists, played. His Parisian experiences were most gratifying; he appeared in the dual rôles of conductor-composer, his wife singing his lieder with exquisite taste.
As a conductor he ranks among the great ones. He is particularly sympathetic in his readings of modern works, though any one who has heard him direct a Mozart opera can never forget the impressions gleaned—the blitheness, sanity, sweetness. He is cool, never eccentric in his beat, and does not play upon his own personality, as do some other conductors.
A little critical and polemical literature has grown up about the Strauss case. In addition to the analytical programmes, some of them too fantastic to be of value, Hans Merian has written an extended study of Also sprach Zarathustra; Gustav Brecher, Richard Strauss; Dr. Erich Urban, Strauss contra Wagner—in which Wagner is proved to be old-fashioned; Urban has also put forth a pamphlet-essay, Richard Strauss. In his youth, writes Urban, Wagner cried exultantly, “I am a musician;” in his age he mumbled, “I am a poet.” And he really believed he had discovered in the Greek an excuse for his mutilation of drama and music. Then Urban turns to Liszt. Liszt, he said, went far, but not far enough. He grew timid when he saw the logical outcome of his experiments. He still clung to the classic, to the formal. Strauss appears. Urban thinks he showed absolutely no individual talent until his opus 14, Wanderer’s Sturmlied. His early work is Schumann, and Schumann at his worst. The learned critic does not believe that either von Bülow or Ritter counted in the formation of Strauss. He looks upon Guntram as an accident, and Heldenleben as an answer to Zarathustra. He does not believe the latter to have been inspired by Nietzsche,—Strauss composed it when he discovered that Nietzsche’s philosophy coincided with his own revolutionary programme. And as the same ideas are expressed in Heldenleben, the titles could be exchanged without any harm. Truly a Daniel come to judgment! It is in Heldenleben that Urban sees Strauss at the top notch of his ideals. Here is musical drama without the words, scenery, stage, or singers.