Posted on 02/02/2015 9:26:01 AM PST by Borges
By the time Richard Strauss died in 1949, many musicians and critics considered him an embarrassing fossil. Born in 1864 while Berlioz and Rossini still lived—and a dozen years before Johannes Brahms had written any of his own symphonies—Strauss composed steadily for some sixty-five years and passed away a few months after the premieres of Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata and John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. But the path he took long overshadowed a clear assessment of his enormous accomplishments as a composer of opera and orchestral music.
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Classial Ping
Cage?
Whose music awfulness is only exceeded by rap?
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While he fiddled with music, his brother Levi made a fortune on blue jeans........
His Alpine Symphony is one I listen to with headphones and no interruptions at least once a week. It's food for the soul, especially in these down times when it's too icy for rock climbing but too soon for ice.
Middlebrow is coming back into fashion in the aesthetics world, which is a good thing AFAIC. Popular music has hit its nadir; it may bounce back in the next generation with the underground popularity of Americana, or if the syncretism that is occurring in much non-American popular music makes it across the oceans. Esoteric 20th-21st century classical music (serialism, aleatory, etc.) is becoming increasingly recognized for the non-aesthetic intellectual claptrap that it is, with the singular exception of composers experimenting with just intonational microtonalism—it’s tonal, but goes beyond the usual major/minor. All the “good stuff” in the middle, from traditional classical music to jazz to complex rock, blues, folk etc., is coming back into its own, and the music world, not counting the have-some-music-with-your-drugs-and-sex hit parade, is much the better for it.
I might disagree with you about Intermezzo, but that's a matter of taste :-) your main point is a salient one: every composer, painter, sculptor, architect, playwright, poet, movie director, choreographer produces some dogs, but even The Dogs of Richard Strauss make the world a much better place than The Hits of Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga admits that she is influenced by Bach, but Bach would never have needed to be influenced by Lady Gaga.
His Ein Heldenleben is the one I listen to often, probably equal in beauty to the Alpine Symphony.
Absolutely. A glorious 50 to 60 minutes.
Elektra is glorious. One of the best operas of the 20th century.
Where would Also Sprach Zarathustra rate, compared to those already noted?
I remember hearing the main title and end credit music of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Boys From Brazil and thinking, “Gee. I wonder where his inspiration came from.” :)
“Death and Transfiguration” has always been one of my favorites, along with the trio in the finale of “Der Rosenkavalier”. Otherwise I’m undecided on Strauss. My biggest problem with most of Strauss’ other works is that he often introduces themes from out of nowhere and doesn’t develop them in any way before jumping to the next unrelated theme (such as in “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, “Till Eulenspiegel”, etc).
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