Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss (German: Richard Georg Strauss, June 11, 1864 - September 8, 1949), German composer and conductor. Strauss was deeply influenced by the "New Germanic School" (Neudeutsche Schule) headed by Liszt and Wagner. He is considered the last inheritor of the German and Austrian musical traditions and a representative composer of late Romanticism. He is often referred to as Mahler. Strauss's early works have typical romantic characteristics; the symphonic poem "Don Juan" written in 1888 uses richer semitones, showing a different "carnival-like" style, and is regarded as a representative work of his late romantic style. After that, he continued to explore the possibility of chromaticism and harmony in his works. "Salome" and "Electra", which were premiered in 1905 and 1909 respectively, were the peak of this trend and laid a considerable foundation for modernist music. Starting with Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, Strauss's operas have returned to their original stability, both in terms of material selection and style. During the second half of Strauss's creative career, his work was often seen as old-fashioned and outdated. Strauss has extremely excellent contrapuntal writing skills and orchestration skills, and the texture of almost all his works is very complex. Strauss served as the director of the Imperial Conservatoire of Nazi Germany in 1933. He later resigned in 1935 due to disagreements between Jewish musicians and the Nazi authorities. After the war, he was under scrutiny and was not officially clarified by the government until 1948. In fact, he had been under surveillance by the Nazi government due to his creation of "Electra" which dealt with the topic of the Electra complex, his collaboration with the Jewish writer Zweig in "The Silent Woman", and his daughter-in-law being Jewish. He has no connection with the Viennese Strauss family, represented by Johann Strauss the Younger, and is sometimes referred to by his full name, Richard Strauss, to distinguish him. He was also godfather and teacher to score composer Max Steiner.