Word: strauss
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Author of this melodramatic opera was, and remained, the most talked-about composer of his time, Germany's great bad boy of music, Richard Strauss. Composer Strauss, who had had somewhat similar results with his hair-raising opus in several of the world's important operatic centres, might have been chastened by this experience. But he was not. Before two years were out, he and his librettist, the late Hugo von Hofmannsthal, had turned out another grisly melodrama, a Freudian version of the Greek tragedy Elektra. In this second blood-curdler, the hag-ridden heroine danced gleefully while...
Meanwhile, Composer Strauss continued to startle and scandalize staid concert audiences in more subtle ways. He flouted time-honored symphonic proprieties by writing naturalistic musical descriptions of mundane scenes and events. In his symphonic poem, Don Quixote, he made the brass instruments of the orchestra bleat like sheep. In his later Symphonia Domestica, an enormous orchestra of 108 players was set to work imitating the sound of a baby in a bathtub. He boasted that he could depict anything in music recognizably, even a glass of water. Critics deplored his vulgarity, but they had to admit that Composer Strauss...
Five years ago when Nazis came to power in Germany, 69-year-old Composer Strauss had left most of his musical scandals behind him and settled into a highly respected position as musical Germany's No. 1 composer. Friendly at first to the new regime, he accepted an official post as head of the German Reichsmusikkammer (State Chamber of Music). But independent-minded Strauss soon found himself in conflict with Nazi ideas of musical propriety. Nazi authorities regretted that his favorite librettist, von Hofmannsthal, had been a Jew, but agreed to let bygones be bygones if he would abjure...
...told that while the opera was being written, Librettist Zweig, worried by Nazi growls, suggested that they call the whole thing off, that Strauss get himself another librettist acceptable to the German authorities. In reply to Librettist Zweig's suggestion, white-haired Strauss wrote a long letter. In it he expressed his contempt for the Nazis, and his hunch that by the time the opera was completed they would be out of power anyhow. The letter was addressed to Zweig in Vienna, but Zweig did not receive it. At the Austrian border, Nazi officials opened the letter and read...
Died. Berthold Neuer, 57, vice president and general manager of William Knabe & Sons (pianos), authority on musical history, friend & adviser of many world-famed musicians (Richard Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Kirsten Flagstad, Friedrich Schorr); of heart disease; in Manhattan...