Richard Strauss

Il dibattito fra idealismo universalista e materialismo individualista ha avuto inizio più di duemila anni fa nell’Antica Grecia con Platone e Aristotele, ed è giunto fino all’epoca moderna con la contrapposizione fra Classicismo e Romanticismo. Nella prima metà dell’Ottocento i tumulti sociali e i malcontenti che portarono alla Rivoluzione Francese si scontrarono prima con le sue conseguenze dirette e poi con i meccanismi della Restaurazione; il senso di “nulla di fatto” portò a quella serie di atteggiamenti collettivi che nell’arte si traducono nei temi topici del Romanticismo, nello specifico: la fuga dalla realtà verso mondi lontani nello spazio e nel tempo; la fuga intimista introspettiva; l’esaltazione della coscienza e dell’autodeterminazione individuale in luogo di grandi ideali collettivisti sempre validi; e infine la scoperta dei concetti di infinito e di eterno ritorno, che applicati alla storia e all’evoluzione della società, danno vita a una concezione circolare del tempo, contrapposta a quella giudaico-cristiana finalistica del tempo lineare. A causa dello smontaggio di alcuni valori fondativi della società, che iniziava il suo cammino verso il moderno capitalismo, tali concetti portarono gli intellettuali e gli artisti da un lato a operare con maggior libertà espressiva, dall’altro a dover scendere a continui compromessi con i gusti dei committenti. Per alcuni ciò era in qualche misura sopportabile, ma la mercificazione dell’arte e la perdita del ruolo sociale dell’intellettuale causate dal ceto borghese sempre più plutocratico, generarono dapprima un atteggiamento caricaturale e provocatorio nei confronti delle sue conseguenze, e subito dopo ad una netta opposizione conflittuale. È l’inizio della variegata stagione delle Avanguardie storiche, che spaziano dall’Espressionismo alla Nuova Oggettività. Ancora una volta però, gli atteggiamenti provocatori sfociarono in aspri conflitti sociali fra le varie anime del “Modernismo”, inteso come coesistenza del tardo Romanticismo decadente, delle Avanguardie e del Positivismo; essi portarono rapidamente alle due guerre mondiali, che sanciscono rispettivamente la fine della stagione borghese, e la fine delle “grandi narrazioni” e l’inizio del Postmodernismo. Esso si profila come l’ennesima crisi dell’idealismo, aggravata però dalla totale liquefazione globalizzante della società e delle informazioni fino alla rottura del logocentrismo, sintomo che rappresenta l’unica grossa differenza con il Modernismo. Nell’arte postmoderna, la contrapposizione tra Postavanguardie e Neoromanticismo si presenta per la prima volta dopo duemila anni non come scontro ma come dialettica non-violenta tra idealismo e materialismo. Le prime si presentano come voglia di rivoluzionare il pensiero tramite una rivoluzione del linguaggio tramite il metodo dell’apprendimento sperimentale. Il secondo accetta in realtà la globalizzazione, ma non in maniera rassegnata: bensì vuole sfruttare romanticamente i linguaggi stilistici di epoche passate, decontestualizzati e fusi in una sinergia eclettica promossa ad elemento strutturante e armonizzante nelle opere d’arte. Esse diventano quindi immagini di un’idea nascosta nell’anima mundi, la “memoria collettiva eterna”, aperte tra l’altro a varie interpretazioni come le opere postavanguardiste. La differenza sta invece
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nell’intento di salvaguardia di una complessità non elitaristica in un’epoca privata del logocentrismo e in cui l’arte ha perso non solo ogni fine etico, ma anche la pretesa che possa averlo.
Analizzando tre brani con il corno, di cui uno per corno e pianoforte e due concerti per corno e orchestra, si sono andati a ricercare gli elementi che dimostrano l’appartenenza non al Romanticismo o ad un semplice “stile personale”, bensì ad uno stile nuovo legittimato da una nuova idea musicale, facendo tesoro della distinzione operata da Arnold Schönberg fra stile e idea. Ognuno di questi brani si colloca in modo diverso nella musica del Neoromanticismo corni stico, della quale in particolare si identifica il Secondo Concerto per Corno e Orchestra di Richard Strauss come uno dei precursori, in quanto sebbene lo stile non abbracci ancora un largo eclettismo storico, le idee sono già presenti in toto. En forêt di Eugène Bozza si configura come il più accademico e “antecedente” dei tre brani, che tuttavia si colloca perfettamente negli ideali neoromantici, mentre il Concerto per Corno e orchestra di John Williams, anch’esso assolutamente neoromantico, costituisce fra i tre il più complesso e sperimentale, caratterizzato da uno stile particolare e del tutto originale.
Il Neoromanticismo si afferma quindi non come revival del Romanticismo - tramontato assieme alle grandi narrazioni del passato - e neanche come sua semplice attualizzazione, ma come un’idea artistica nuova, figlia dell’epoca contemporanea postmoderna, che testimonia la possibilità non solo di entrare in polemica senza andare a cercare scontri ideologici, atteggiamento coerente del resto con l’accettazione della condizione di società liquida, ma anche di poter costruire la novità rimanendo legati alla totalità del passato collettivo eterno e all’anima mundi.

Der Beitrag basiert auf einem Vortrag im Rahmen der Salzburger Festspiel-Dialoge 2012.
Er behandelt anlässlich der von Sven-Eric Bechtolf inszenierten Urfassung der Ariadne die Oper des Autorenduos Strauss/Hofmannsthal als Formexperiment unter folgenden thematischen und formalen Aspekten:
- Rezeptionsgeschichte des Ariadne-Mythos, wie sie dem Autorenduo Hofmannsthal und Strauss um 1900 vorlag,
- Kontrast zwischen den divergierenden Frauenfiguren Ariadne und Zerbinetta und ihren Lebenshaltungen
- Thematik der Verwandlung mit Bezug auf den Dionysos Mythos
- Komödie als Kunst der Kontraste.

Inscindibile dalle vicende della Germania nazista, la musica scandì l'ascesa e il crollo del regime hitleriano, assumendo un ruolo di preminenza assoluta su tutte le arti. Que-sto libro ne indaga l'intimo intreccio con la politica tedesca tra il 1933 e il 1945, analizzandone le tappe principali: i presupposti; l'epurazione di ebrei e oppositori politici; la costruzione del «mito» del Terzo Reich da parte dei musicologi; l'ascesa e la caduta di nuovi e vecchi astri; l'effimero tentativo di colmare il vuoto lasciato dalle epurazioni; in-fine, la sorprendente organizzazione musicale del sistema concentrazionario. Accanto alle vicende dei musicisti ebrei, vittime predestinate e oggetto delle più gravi vessazioni, emerge un groviglio indistricabile di partigianerie e atti di resistenza, fedeltà cieca al regime e op portunismo, invidie e ri-valità tra potenti, sullo sfondo della più spa-ventosa tragedia collettiva del XX secolo.

When Richard Strauss saw Oscar Wilde's play Salome in Max Reinhardt's 1901 production, he felt that it "cried out for music". Indeed, the insistent repetition of dramatic phrases, incantatory dialogue, fashionable orientalism and stark emotional contrasts all lent themselves very well to iconic representation through music, as became abundantly clear in Strauss' famous opera, first performed in 1905. This paper examines the various semiotic resources that Strauss used to effectively "translate" Wilde's play into music. They include an exploitation of the possibilities for signification inherent in musical genre, traditional tonality and operatic convention, as well as the use of Wagnerian leitmotif and musical quotation. The result is a musical portrait of world teetering on the brink of moral bankruptcy-an effective rendering of Wilde's fin-de-siècle spirit, which also offers a subtle comment upon Strauss' own times.

In this thesis I argue that Richard Strauss’s 1918 song-set Drei Lieder Der Ophelia is best interpreted as a work of German expressionism. I argue that such a reading must take place outside the standard definition of “expressionism” upheld in musicology, since that definition only describes a narrow range of stylistic techniques. To establish a model of expressionism that can be satisfied by the Ophelia Lieder, I outline four basic criteria of Expressionist art that I have developed through an interdisciplinary survey of the movement. When this model for expressionism is established, I use it to compare the Ophelia Lieder to two Expressionist poems that also use Ophelia imagery: “Schone Jugend” by Gottfried Benn and “Ophelia” by Georg Heym. This comparison provides the basis for a close musical analysis of the song-set as an Expressionist work.

Il Corno nella Letteratura Liederistica: gli esempi di Lachner, Schubert e Strauss.
Conservatory degree thesis abouth some example of Romantic Lieder with obbligato horn: Lachner's "Die Seejungfern" and "Notte soave delizia", Schubert's "Auf dem Strom" and Strauss' "Halphorn"

Es ist eine Arbeit, die die Lyzeums-Schülerin Edith Borgemeister aus Duisburg während des I. Weltkriegs für eine Aktion der Cecilienhilfe anfertigte. Eher unfreiwillig erstellte sie damit eine umfangreiche Dokumentation zur Helden- und Durchhaltekunst in der damaligen Kriegszeit.

Strauss's Don Quixote, fantastische Variationen über ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters, op. 35, remains one of his most misunderstood tone poems. Insights into this enigmatic work can, however, be gained by situating it both within Strauss's modernist aesthetic and his compositional path as evidenced by his tone poems as a whole. This interpretation of Don Quixote considers it not as a sympathetic portrayal of Cervantes's hero, but rather as an indictment of the German Romantic tradition and a manifesto for Strauss's compositional future, in which he abandons the teleological compositional philosophy of other musical modernists in favor of his own stylistically eclectic brand of antimetaphysical musical modernism.

Since Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra in 1903, numerous dramatic versions of the Electra story have given the heroine a sexually charged relationship with her brother, or even her sister. Despite being an international phenomenon, predating Jung’s coinage of the ‘Electra complex’ by a decade and enduring through more than a century of artistic and institutional trends, this trope has received little scholarly attention. Since the appearance of sibling incest in adaptations of the Electra plays, scholars from multiple disciplines have even begun to read intimations of incest in the ancient dramatic texts. This article will consider the aetiology of a motif that resists being attributed to a single cause.

The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick had savagely criticised Liszt's symphonic poems when they appeared in the 1850s. This study looks at his reception of symphonic poems that appeared in the 1890s by Antonin Dvorak and Richard Strauss. A careful comparison of his reviews reveals an underlying bias in favour of Dvorak, despite the fact that his works were even more dependent on their subject matter for comprehension than were Strauss's.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. ENNO POPPE – INTERZONE : LEADER UND BILDER – LIVE PERFORMANCE,CITÉ DE LA MUSIQUE, PARIS, DECEMBER 3, 2009
2. JOHANN STRAUSS – DIE FLEDERMAUS
3. JAN WILLEM DE VRIEND – EVA BUCHMANN – HANDEL – AGRIPPINA
4. ILDEBRANDO PIZZETTI – ASSASSINIO NELLA CATTEDRALE
5. PAUL MCCREESH – GABRIELI CONSORT – JEPHTE – JUDICIUM SALOMONIS – JONAS
6. SERGEY EISENSTEIN – SERGEY PROKOFIEV – IVAN THE TERRIBLE
7. JANACEK – BOULEZ – CHEREAU – FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
8. HANDEL – NIKOLAUS HARNONCOURT – JEPHTHA
9. HANDEL - JEPHTHA
10. HANDEL – ISAREL IN EGYPT
11. DELLER CONSORT – PURCELL – KING ARTHUR
12. ALBAN BERG – LULU – PIERRE BOULEZ
13. JEAN-CLAUDE MALGOIRE – PHIIPPE JAROUSSKY – FRIEDRICH HANDEL – AGRIPPINA
14. GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL – NICHOLAS MCGEGAN – JUDAS MACCABAEUS
15. VIVALDI – JUDITHA TRIUMPHANS
16. MOZART  LA FINTA GIARDINIERA
17. MOZART - MITHRIDATE
18. MENDELSSOHN – A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
19. MOZART – ASCANIO IN ALBA
20. MOZART – LA FINTA SEMPLICE
21. PIZZETTI – KARAJAN – MORD IN DER CATHEDRALE – 1998
22. CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI – L’INCORONARIONE DI POPPEA – GABRIEL GARRIDO
23. HERVÉ NIQUET – HENRY PURCELLE – KING ARTHUR
24. GABRIEL GARRIDO – MONTEVERDI – LA FAVOLA D’ORFEO
25. GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL – ARNOLD OSTMAN – AGRIPPINA
26. RICHARD STRAUSS – DER ROSENKAVALIER – PHILIPPE JORDAN – ANNE SCHWANEWLIMS
27. RICHARD STRAUSS – SALOME – SIR GEORG SOLTI
28. GIUSEPPE VERDI – RIGOLETTO STORY
29. RACHMANINOV – ALEKO
30. SHOSTAKOVICH – THE NOSE
31. CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI – IL RITORNO D’ULISSE IN PATRIA – GABRIEL GARRIDO – ENSEMBLE ELYMA
32. PHILIPPE JORDAN – DAVID MCVICAR – RICHARD STRAUSS – SALOME
33. VERDI – OTELLO – PLACIDO DOMINGO
34. JOHN BLOW – VENUS AND ADONIS
35. BENJAMIN BRITTEN – CURLEW RIVER
36. BENJAMIN BRITTEN – PETER GRIMES
37. BENJAMIN BRITTEN – PETER PEARS – BILLY BUDD

A travelogue of an Israeli musicologist, descendant of German Jewish émigrés, her real and imaginary sonic journey roams between ruins and rubble in Germany and Israel/Palestine. She takes ruins as iconic, allegoric, and reverberating; partially resisting the ravages of time, enshrining sounds and memory. She deems rubble as formless, plain, and voiceless, devoid of identity, transient, and forgetful. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ce by the Romans is her starting point, and the currently occupied East Jerusalem by Israeli armed forces is where she ends. The imaginary soundscapes she unfolds resonates forlorn heavenly voices, Nazi youth's ditties, Israeli pop songs, operatic voices, and redemptive and subversive German and Israeli oratorios.

Zusammenfassung: Die Methoden und Analysekategorien des Orientalismus, der postkolonialen Theorie und des Strukturalismus werden auf R. Strauss’ Oper „Salomé“ angewandt. Das Werk erweist sich in dieser Lesart als paradigmatisches Beispiel für die Aneignung und Nutzung eines Orient-Bilds zur Postulierung und kulturellen
Affi rmation einer doppelten Vorherrschaft: der Vorherrschaft des „Westens“ über den Orient sowie der Vorherrschaft einer spezifi sch männlichen Identität.

Abstract: The methods and categories of analysis of Orientalism, postcolonial theory and structuralism are applied to the opera „Salomé“ of R. Strauss. A reading of the work is developed that fi nds two separate but interrelated postulates, namely those of Western (cultural and political) dominance as well as of male dominance.

The aim of this paper is to reconsider the representation of Menelaos in light of the overall narrative of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Despite being the hero responsible for the Trojan effort, Menelaos’ role and his function in the Homeric epics have often been considered secondary and studied only in relation to the other characters: he is the betrayed husband of Helen, the weak brother of Agamemnon, the antimodel for Odysseus, but seems to lack his own specific personality. One of the causes lies in Menelaos’ problematic characterization: he lacks the martial virtues belonging to Achilles and to other warriors, but he also lacks Odysseus’ wisdom, thus appearing to be out of the place in both poems. I argue that Menelaos presents an exceptional case within the broader spectrum of epic characterization and that his distinctive status is a deliberate choice in both poems. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, Menelaos is portrayed as warlike, yet, whereas we might expect to see him presented as dominant and triumphant in his victory at Troy and his successful νόστος, the two epics instead emphasize his awareness of the suffering he has caused, his grief, and his sense of regret. I intend to show how Menelaos emerges as a complex and nuanced character—in some ways at odds with the ethos of Greek epic. My aim is to show that both the Iliad and the Odyssey prove to focus on Menelaos’ emotions and sensibility and to depict the portrayal of a remarkably different grieving character, who might be considered the anti-hero of πένθος.

Second part of a two-section article that analyses the extensive reinterpretation of Daphne’s myth in the opera Daphne (1938) by composer Richard Strauss and librettist Joseph Gregor, who used
the version of the myth by Parthenius of Nicaea better than that by Ovid. Its ultimate aim is to examine Strauss’ statement about his new opera’s meaning and if the authors managed to achieve their objective by means of manipulating the mythical storyline.
Segunda parte de un artículo dividido en dos que analiza la profunda reinterpretación que del mito de Dafne llevaron a cabo, a partir del relato alternativo de Partenio de Nicea más que del relato canónico de Ovidio, Richard Strauss y su libretista Joseph Gregor en su versión operística Daphne (1938). El objetivo final es someter a examen la declaración expresa de Strauss sobre el significado de su nueva ópera y si a través de la manipulación del argumento mítico los autores
lograron alcanzar su objetivo.

The word "melodrama" has accumulated a vast range of uses and definitions. It is the name given to the technique of combining words and music (as in the nineteenth-century musical genre); it is also used to name a mode of expressivity that is exaggerated, excessive, sentimental. These definitions appear unrelated, yet the melodramatic mode also seems to emerge frequently in musical contexts, such as opera and film--raising the question of whether the joining of words and music as such already tends toward, or attracts, a melodramatic impulse. This article first sketches the features of the melodramatic mode as they are described in writing on theater, film, and the novel before turning to a close reading of Richard Strauss's Enoch Arden, op. 38, a melodrama for speaker and piano. I aim to show that not only the themes of Enoch Arden's narrative but also the form of its narration, the meaningful it draws from the facts or conditions of narration as such, provide its claim to the melodramatic mode. Keywords: Enoch Arden, Richard Strauss, Tennyson, melodrama, narration, silence.

The bond that Richard Strauss had with Italy was based on an affinity, both emotional and intimate, artistic and professional, that lasted his whole life. In 1886, at the age of 22, the musician crossed the Brenner Pass for the first time. This first Italian sojourn, “in the footsteps
of Goethe,” can be regarded as the initial impulse to find artistic inspiration again and again in the Mediterranean history and lifestyle. From then on, “the South” took its place regularly in his travel itineraries. In the course of his life, Strauss wrote many compositions based directly and indirectly on his experiences of traveling and living in Italy. His relationship with this country, in art as in private, was a constant throughout his life, involving different spheres and levels.
This publication delves into all of this in an exhaustive manner with  documents (many unpublished) and objects of the time, illuminating little-known aspects, including musical politics.

In 1943 Richard Strauss received an inquiry from the Vienna State Opera Choir regarding the possibility of his composing a work for the ensemble. Strauss used this opportunity to return to the idea of a hymn to the tree Daphne, which he had originally conceived for the mythological opera Daphne six years earlier. The following provides a summary of the close relationship between An den Baum Daphne – for two four-voice mixed choirs a cappella and boys’ choir – and the finale of the opera Daphne: Strauss, in a letter to his publisher Oertel, characterized An den Baum Daphne as an epilog to the opera Daphne. In addition to the idea of the embodiment of nature in Daphne, and of the principles of creativity in Apollo and Dionysus, there is here, in the linking of the Tree Daphne and the symbol of the artwork, an unmistakable key to the composer’s own conception of art. This is not only a further indication of the metaphorical power and efficacy of Strauss’s use of myth in the context of the 20th century, but also the composer’s avowal of the role of art under the National Socialist dictatorship and under the bombs of war: the criminals will pass, but art will remain, despite the destruction; nature is eternal and the tree will greet the new day after the darkness of night. In this sense the symbol is not retrospective, rather forward-looking.

Este artículo explora las razones que pudieron motivar el argumento
mitológico de la ópera Daphne (1935-1938) de Richard Strauss y Joseph Gregor, gestada durante los años inmediatamente anteriores al estallido de la II Guerra Mundial, así como otros factores coyunturales de orden político o cultural que pudieron propiciarlo.
This article deals with the reasons that could explain the choice of the
mythological plot for the opera Daphne (1935-1938) by Richard Strauss and Joseph Gregor during the years preceding World War II. It also covers some possible political or cultural circumstances leading up to the same choice.

A vivid portrayal of Richard Strauss, covering philosophy,
literature, art and history, which emerges from the analysis
of Strauss’s stage productions in his last years.
This volume offers an extensive re-reading of Strauss’s life
and of his latest, more difficult works, harshly criticized for
both his style – which during the tragic context of World
War II became progressively more and more rarefied
and abstract – as well as for Strauss’s more or less direct
involvement with the Nazi regime.
Usually considered as detached from historical events, and viewed as an example of personal reticence (or even indifference), Strauss’s latest works actually reveal a thorough portrait of Richard Strauss and of his complex
and sometimes obscure vision of the world.
The present work focuses on the function of myth, cardinal for Strauss’ s worldview, and tracks its connections to the works of many different authors, from Hugo von Hofmannsthal to Joseph Gregor.
The volume is the result of over a decade of research carried out on original, unpublished documents, mostly in the Strauss Archive in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where the composer lived the last years of his life.

This paper presents initial results from a research based on audiovisual recreation of Heliodorus'Aithiopika. After discussion of the context of the research, the focus is directed to the assumptions and processes of construction of the initial stage of the project, based on an early morning sound representation.

This short paper, presented at the 2014 Music on Stage conference, provides a brief introduction to the relationship between Richard Strauss and the 1926 silent film version of his most popular opera, Der Rosenkavalier. Briefly tracing the process of Strauss's involvement in the project, the paper seeks to oppose the popular notion that Strauss had a very negative response to the project and its outcome. The resulting film is one of Robert Wiene's finest achievements, and one of the greatest silent opera films ever produced.