Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was a famous German composer and conductor. Some say he was an Australian who migrated to Germany shortly after his mother's descent into irreparable madness.

Life

Richard Strauss was born into a line of many famous people such as Franz Strauss, Johann Strauss, Johann Strauss (who was so famous he must be mentioned twice), and Levi Strauss. His father, Franz Strauss, was forced to play the French horn to make ends meet, thus affecting the whole of Richard's artistic output, as well as much of his other music. Franz blamed his lack of success as a jeans tycoon on the music of Richard Wagner, which he forbade Richard from ever listening to.

Strauss married soprano Pauline de Ahna on September 10, 1894. She was famous for being bossy, ill-tempered, eccentric, outspoken and altogether a bitch (which is indicative of Strauss' masochistic Oedipal desires) but that didn't prevent the marriage from being awful. Throughout Strauss' life, she was a great source of irritation to him.

Something of a shadow was cast over Strauss's reputation in later life: Not only was he once coldly polite to someone who had something to do with Hitler (nobody can quite remember who or what, but this seems like pretty incriminating evidence nonetheless), but he also had an unfortunate lifetime fascination with scat. He died on September 8, 1949, and his funeral was attended by a number of his grief-stricken favourite sopranos, who were so overcome by his music that one by one they each had to break off from weeping in order to sing it. The demented Pauline memorably threw herself on his coffin in her distraction, but the gravediggers weren't quick enough and she outlived her husband by a further six months.

Music

Strauss had a thing for making very loud noises with 600 hundred piece orchestras composed entirely of French horns. Often times, the noise is so unbearable that nothing lasts over 50 minutes before the conductor kills himself. (Except for Herbert von Karajan, who invaded Poland single-handedly with his army of horns as they played bits of Strauss's music.)

His tone poems tended to be annoyingly loud and screechy. He also chose lewd subjects (much like that French whore Debussy) for them. In Don Juan, he tells the tale of a young count who goes around and fucks everything appearing to be female until he dies a horribly quiet death due to some condition (probably syphilis) he contracted from some stable girl in Iglau. (It may or may not have been one of Mahler's sisters.) In Till Eulenspiegel, he writes of a naughty country boy who goes around waving his private bits at women until he is unceremoniously hanged by his penis in the town square and chokes on an e-flat clarinet in the process. Audiences thought this to be delightfully amusing, and they still get their jollies from picturing poor Till being hung from the gallows by his wiener schnitzel. In Also Sprach Zarathustra, he dithers about Europe whilst having naughty thoughts about Nietzsche and eventually ends up whimpering to death in the corner of his apartment while playing the notes c and b over and over again on his hurdy gurdy (which he lifted from Mahler's father's tavern during one of Mahler's monumental weeping fits.) In Don Quixote, he chose to muck about with Cervantes and turn the crazy Don and his sidekick Sancho Panza into string instruments and wave them about in the air on a flying horse until everyone dies of asphyxiation. (Which is why Msistlav Rostropovich was terrified of performing the piece, but Karajan threatened to take his lunch money if he didn't.)In Ein Heldenleben, he says "Fuck it, Imma do me" and wrote a longish piece about how wonderful he was, and beefed up his normal 600 horns to over 9,000, making every horn player ever in the history of ever both orgasm and piss themselves due to its length and hardness. (insert that's what she said joke here) He also throws in a violin solo, which at its head says "Try me - I dare you." No one has ever actually heard the violin solo, due to its being covered up by all the horns.

In An Alpine Symphony, Strauss decides to write music about the time he saw a picture book about mountains (he was too lazy to look through it) at his local Bavarian bath house/library. He manages to write a 50 minute piece of music depicting some poor guy (likely Richard Wagner) trying to bitch-slap The Matterhorn, and in the process gets blown back down the mountain by a thunderstorm and ends up getting impaled by a Wagner tuba at the bottom. As he lays dying, he thinks about all the wonderful music he could have written, and dies a sad, quiet death. This event is likely what brought about the creation of the Bayreuth Festpielhaus, where it is said to this day you can still hear Wagner saying "I'll climb on top of you and make you my bitch." This may be why so many sopranos are terrified of singing too close to the orchestra pit, where it's rumored Wagner's ghost lives...

Operas

Strauss' first two attempts at opera, Gun Tram (later turned into the hit movie Speed) and Feuersnot (in which the hero dies horribly of severely inflamed sinuses and his girlfriend succumbs to embarrassing flatulence), were complete and total failures. Nevertheless, Strauss insisted on writing a further thirteen before being satisfied that he wasn't very skilled in that genre.

Salome

DVD cover of Salome by Oscar Wilde Richard Strauss.

A first-century event originally documented by Oscar Wilde, the legend of Salome (pronounced "salami") was later translated into French by the lesser-known St. Matthew in his gospel. Matthew fell into obscurity, dying penniless after spending all his earnings on expensive jeans, but his reputation was rescued by Strauss when he set the play to music.

Salome's 'Dance of the Seven Whales' is often performed, with disastrous results, in concert by artists such as Deborah Voigt. The soprano is required to sing and simultaneously dance for several minutes while taking off seven huge pieces of clothing and holding upright a plate containing the head of the prophet John the Baptist which must not be allowed to fall off.

Elektra

Inspired by classical drama from Strauss's homeland, Prisoner Cell Block H. Birgit Nilsson is bent on revenge when her mother, Klytämnestra, cuts short bathtime, and is driven further into raging insanity by her sister, who can't help making noises like a demented sheep. They are rescued by their brother, Orinoco, who butchers Klytämnestra, then tidies up before settling down to forty winks.

Der Rosenkavalier

The first of Strauss's operas to take up a horticultural theme, the work charts the shockingly blasé attitude of the Viennese middle classes to garden upkeep. The plot centres on a lesbian love-triangle and includes some of Strauss's most famous music, such as the Birkenstock Trio and the Presentation of the Hose. The opera incorporates a number of anachronistic dance tunes with high leg-kicks, most popular of which is known as the quin quin (pronounced 'waltz'). Strauss went on to rework the charming Act I breakfast scene in his Alpen Symphony, and the opera also inspired a number of less successful spinoffs, such as Baron Ochs's Experiment.

Ariadne auf Naxos

An excellent early example of dissatisfaction with a package holiday to Greece. Ariadne arrives on Naxos only to find that she doesn't get on with any of the other guests, all of whom are considerably lower class. Worse still, her hotel room is little better than a cave, and is beset by an irritating echo. Eventually she enjoys a holiday romance with J. S. Bach, who is so drunk on his own wine that he mistakes her for Mary Magdalene. As they leave the island, the lower classes continue their revels. The opera is controversial, in that many believe the attribution to Strauss is wrong, and that there are significant clues in the prologue that the opera was in fact written by another composer entirely. However, it must be noted that Strauss's initial impetus for the composition of this work was to fill a commission by the twentieth-century budget recording company of the same name (Naxos).

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Based on a novella by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, it tells the tale of the fairy empress unable to fulfil her husband sexually until he is encased in concrete and she receives a golden shower (see also Die Liebe der Danae, below). The role of the nurse was famously created by Hattie Jacques, while the character of the dyer's wife was based on Strauss's own wife, apparently because every moment he spent in her presence made him want to die.

Intermezzo

A less successful working of Ariadne, in which the ghastly Christine books a skiing holiday by telephone, goes on the holiday, and returns disappointed.

Die Aegyptische Helena

Never a great success, as the most three-dimensional character is a giant talking shellfish who exits the action after twenty minutes. The work's most famous passage is the duet for Helena and Menelas, 'We'll always have Paris'. Less successful, but nonetheless noteworthy, is the chorus for elves, 'Ha ha ha, hee hee hee, little brown jug how I love thee'.

Arabella

Generally dismissed as a poor imitation of Der Rosenkavalier, this opera is indeed very similar to its predecessor, except that now there are fewer lesbians. The plot centres on the beautiful Arabella, a teetotal prostitute closely based on the singer Lisa Della Casa. The shocking Viennese disregard for roses remains.

Die Schweigsame Frau

A comedy with so many notes that Strauss was forced to leave some characters with no music at all. Debate continues as to just how many characters this applies to.

Friedenstag

Never performed, as it lasts over thirty years and is almost entirely populated by tenors.

Daphne

Another gardening opera, and spinoff from the Hanna Barbera cartoon, Scooby Doo. The work takes an environmentalist, if somewhat impractical, view on improving forestation. Aside from Daphne's transformation scene, the work is also famous for the monologue during which Apollo reveals his true identity, 'And I would have got away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky kids and that stupid dog'.

Die Liebe der Danae

Feel-good opera in which the tedious Danae rejects the love of all-powerful Jupiter in favour of the penniless donkey-driver Midas and his stinking hut. Yeah, right.

Capriccio

Considered by many to be Strauss's finest stage work, this highly dramatic opera covers an afternoon in an eighteenth-century drawing room during which some rich French people drink cocoa and talk about Gluck. In the thrilling denouement, we mercifully come almost two hours closer to the Revolution, during which everyone is sure to be guillotined (see Salome above), and the tension is almost unbearable as the countess, ignorant of her probable fate, looks in a mirror, wonders about something, and then has her dinner.

Songwriting career

Strauss was also a successful composer of songs, amongst the most famous of which are 'Ich wollt' ein Sträusslein binden' (I could have throttled the little sod) – an affectionate tribute to his son, 'Hochzeitlich Lied' (It's high time too) – narrated by a man looking forward to his wedding night, and 'Gestern war ich Atlas' (But I'm sure the map said it was here) – a bitter-sweet remembrance of an outing with his beloved wife, Pauline.

Death

Strauss died in 1949 following a routine de-Nazification procedure.