Richard Strauss and His World

by Bryan Gilliam (Editor)

Overview

Strongly influencing European musical life from the 1880s through the First World War and remaining highly productive into the 1940s, Richard Strauss enjoyed a remarkable career in a constantly changing artistic and political climate. This volume presents six original essays on Strauss's musical works—including tone poems, lieder, and operas—and brings together letters, memoirs, and criticism from various periods of the composer's life. Many of these materials appear in English for the first time. In the essays Leon Botstein contradicts the notion of the composer's stylistic "about face" after Elektra; Derrick Puffett reinforces the argument for Strauss's artistic consistency by tracing in the tone poems and operas the phenomenon of pitch specificity; James Hepokoski establishes Strauss as an early modernist in an examination of Macbeth; Michael Steinberg probes the composer's political sensibility as expressed in the 1930s through his music and use of such texts as Friedenstag and Daphne; Bryan Gilliam discusses the genesis of both the text and the music in the final scene of Daphne; Timothy Jackson in his thorough source study argues for a new addition to the so-called Four Last Songs. Among the correspondence are previously untranslated letters between Strauss and his post-Hofmannsthal librettist, Joseph Gregor. The memoirs range from early biographical sketches to Rudolf Hartmann's moving account of his last visit with Strauss shortly before the composer's death. Critical reviews include recently translated essays by Theodor Adorno, Guido Adler, Paul Bekker, and Julius Korngold.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691027623
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/30/1992
Series:	The Bard Music Festival , #3
Pages:	444
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Pt. I Essays

The Enigmas of Richard Strauss: A Revisionist View

Daphne's Transformation

Structure and Program in Macbeth: A Proposed Reading of Strauss's First Symphonic Poem

Ruhe, meine Seele! and the Letzte Orchesterlieder

"Lass Er die Musi, wo sie ist": Pitch Specificity in Strauss

Richard Strauss and the Question

Pt. II Letters

Selections from the Strauss-Thuille Correspondence

A Glimpse of Strauss during His Formative Years

Selections from the Strauss-Gregor Correspondence: The Genesis of Daphne

Pt. III Memoirs

Richard Strauss: The Man

Richard Strauss: Seer and Idealist

Richard Strauss at Eighty

The Last Visit with Richard Strauss

Pt. IV Criticism and Reception

On the Tone Poems of Richard Strauss

Strauss and the Viennese Critics (1896-1924): Reviews by Gustav Schoenaich, Robert Hirschfeld, Guido Adler, Max Kalbeck, Julius Korngold, and Karl Klaus

Elektra: A Study by Paul Bekker

Richard Strauss at Sixty

Index of Names and Compositions

List of Contributors

Editorial Reviews

"This book of essays, letters, memoirs, and criticism is a most cordial study of Strauss and his music.... This is a significant book that gives readers a very positive assessment of a very important 20th-century composer."

Choice

This timely, important Festschrift stems from the current postmodernist reappraisal and widespread acceptance of Strauss's oeuvre. The book is in four parts: original essays by six musicologists; selected correspondence of Strauss, newly translated; four memoirs of Strauss, two appearing in English for the first time; and critical reviews, which give a cross section of the reception accorded to Strauss's music during his lifetime. Outstanding in this fine collection is Leon Botstein's essay ``The Enigmas of Richard Strauss: A Revisionist View,'' which may well become a classic. In replacing the 19th-century view of historical necessity in music, which culminated in Schoenberg's ``emancipation of the dissonance,'' with a completely different paradigm exemplified by Strauss, Botstein argues brilliantly for a new way of considering the music of our century. Highly recommended for serious music collections.-- E. Gaub, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.

Library Journal

"This book of essays, letters, memoirs, and criticism is a most cordial study of Strauss and his music.... This is a significant book that gives readers a very positive assessment of a very important 20th-century composer."—Choice

From the Publisher