RICHARD STRAUSS Composer Biography

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RICHARD STRAUSS Composer Biography Richard Strauss (June 11, 1864–September 8, 1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Born into a family of musicians, he received a formal music education from his father and wrote his first composition at the age of six. He heard his first Wagner operas in 1874; the composer would go on to hugely influence Strauss’s style. He became the Music Director in Meiningen at the age of 21 and, a year later, the Musical Director at the Munich Court Opera. 1886 saw the peak of his skill at orchestration. In 1889, he moved to Weimar and became 2nd Kappelmeister. He married soprano Pauline de Ahna in 1894. Salome premiered in 1905, and Strauss became known as the father of modern opera music. His operas during this time were met with extremely mixed reactions. Elektra, like Salome, was considered extremely risqué by critics. After World War I, Strauss’s fortune was confiscated as “enemy assets”. He began to compose Lieder again during this time. In 1919, he was appointed Vienna State Opera Music Director and fought against its image as an outdated institution that produced only traditional operas by bringing new productions to the opera house. Wishing to confront the bleakness of the post-war era with cultural beauty, he helped to co-found the Salzburg Festival in 1920. He also toured in the USA and South America during this time. The interwar period saw the production of more light-hearted tunes and musical comedies. This is a stark contrast to the following period in which he was made President of the German State Music Bureau “Reichsmusikkammer” in 1933. He was unable to convince others in his fight against the Aryan policies of Hitler and thus incurred Goebbels’s wrath. Eventually, he escaped to Switzerland in 1945, where he experienced great financial hardship. He relived some of his old fame before his death in 1949. For more in-depth biographical information on Strauss, please see these websites: http://www.richardstrauss.at/biography.html https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Strauss .

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Kostka, Stefan
TEN Classical Serialism INTRODUCTION When Schoenberg composed the first twelve-tone piece in the summer of 192 1, I the "Pre- lude" to what would eventually become his Suite, Op. 25 (1923), he carried to a conclusion the developments in chromaticism that had begun many decades earlier. The assault of chromaticism on the tonal system had led to the nonsystem of free atonality, and now Schoenberg had developed a "method [he insisted it was not a "system"] of composing with twelve tones that are related only with one another." Free atonality achieved some of its effect through the use of aggregates, as we have seen, and many atonal composers seemed to have been convinced that atonality could best be achieved through some sort of regular recycling of the twelve pitch class- es. But it was Schoenberg who came up with the idea of arranging the twelve pitch classes into a particular series, or row, th at would remain essentially constant through- out a composition. Various twelve-tone melodies that predate 1921 are often cited as precursors of Schoenberg's tone row, a famous example being the fugue theme from Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zararhustra (1895). A less famous example, but one closer than Strauss's theme to Schoenberg'S method, is seen in Example IO-\. Notice that Ives holds off the last pitch class, C, for measures until its dramatic entrance in m. 68. Tn the music of Strauss and rves th e twelve-note theme is a curiosity, but in the mu sic of Schoenberg and his fo ll owers the twelve-note row is a basic shape that can be presented in four well-defined ways, thereby assuring a certain unity in the pitch domain of a composition.
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0/-*/&4637&: *ODPMMBCPSBUJPOXJUI6OHMVFJU XFIBWFTFUVQBTVSWFZ POMZUFORVFTUJPOT UP MFBSONPSFBCPVUIPXPQFOBDDFTTFCPPLTBSFEJTDPWFSFEBOEVTFE 8FSFBMMZWBMVFZPVSQBSUJDJQBUJPOQMFBTFUBLFQBSU $-*$,)&3& "OFMFDUSPOJDWFSTJPOPGUIJTCPPLJTGSFFMZBWBJMBCMF UIBOLTUP UIFTVQQPSUPGMJCSBSJFTXPSLJOHXJUI,OPXMFEHF6OMBUDIFE ,6JTBDPMMBCPSBUJWFJOJUJBUJWFEFTJHOFEUPNBLFIJHIRVBMJUZ CPPLT0QFO"DDFTTGPSUIFQVCMJDHPPE THE AMERICAN STRAVINSKY THE AMERICAN STRAVINSKY The Style and Aesthetics of Copland’s New American Music, the Early Works, 1921–1938 Gayle Murchison THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS :: ANN ARBOR TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHERS :: Beulah McQueen Murchison and Earnestine Arnette Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2012 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America ϱ Printed on acid-free paper 2015 2014 2013 2012 4321 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-472-09984-9 Publication of this book was supported by a grant from the H. Earle Johnson Fund of the Society for American Music. “Excellence in all endeavors” “Smile in the face of adversity . and never give up!” Acknowledgments Hoc opus, hic labor est. I stand on the shoulders of those who have come before. Over the past forty years family, friends, professors, teachers, colleagues, eminent scholars, students, and just plain folk have taught me much of what you read in these pages. And the Creator has given me the wherewithal to ex- ecute what is now before you. First, I could not have completed research without the assistance of the staff at various libraries.
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