Risqué business!
Sensual dancing, bawdy tales... Richard Strauss pushed the boundaries of decency in his work, and the public loved it
We join him in 1884 in Berlin, as a 20year-old conductor recently taken under the wing of Hans von Bulow, the finest conductor of his generation.
18 NOVEMBER 1884 Tonight I am to stand on a podium for the first time and conduct a piece I have written for Hans von Bulow’s orchestra. His appreciation of my talent is moving.
1 AUGUST 1886 I’m back in Munich after spending four months in Italy. I travelled from Bologna to Naples, and on to Rome then the charming island of Capri. I’ve sketched out a symphonic fantasy that incorporates the sounds and folk tunes of Italy: Aus Italien. It’s a timid experiment at a tone poem, the sort that Liszt wrote.
2 MARCH 1887 I conducted the premiere of Aus Italien in Munich. Someone told me there were catcalls and jeering from the audience but I didn’t hear any; I thought it a grand success.
24 JANUARY 1888 The Berlin audience is much more appreciative than in Munich. I had to take a bow at the end of each movement of Aus Italien, it was remarkable. Glorious. The difference between North German intelligence and South German philistinism!
6 FEBRUARY 1892 Music critic Otto Neitzel has called me the ‘outstanding living composer’. Well, who else is there? Bruckner? Tchaikovsky? Are they as interesting? I think not.
12 MARCH 1894 Rehearsals today for my first opera, Guntram, were eventful. I had to keep interrupting Heinrich Zeller, the tenor, who just cannot nail the final scene of Act I. He says there are too many notes. In the afternoon, the soprano, my pupil Pauline de Ahna, complained that she had not been interrupted. I told her she was perfect and did not need interruptions. She replied, ‘But I want to be interrupted!’ then threw the piano score at me, stormed off the stage and locked herself in the dressing room. I had to chase after her. Once I returned, the musicians asked if I had reprimanded Pauline; I replied, ‘I’m going to marry her!’ That shut them up.
I’ve been in love with her for some time. She’s very complex, a little perverse, a little coquettish but I think we shall be very happy together.
10 SEPTEMBER 1894 Today, I married my beloved Pauline. She has told me she will not be a housewife; I don’t want her to be. I wish her to remain my harshest critic, my musical soulmate, a voice for whom I write great music. 18 APRIL 1896 I’m working hard on
Thus Spake Zarathustra, a tone poem based on the philosophy of Nietzsche. I hope my prologue, Sunrise, captures his idea of the individual entering the world, or the world entering them. If you can’t achieve that with an orchestra, why are you writing music?
27 NOVEMBER 1896 The premiere of Zarathustra tonight in Frankfurt was an event of great importance – and a glorious triumph. It is the most perfect of my pieces, rich in content, and individual in character. It deserves to be heard in America and across Europe. Germans are only interested in light and agreeable pieces. I don’t want to compose for that miserable bunch, but for people who understand great art.
9 FEBRUARY 1903 I’ve returned to Berlin again to see Oscar Wilde’s play
Salome, about the woman who demanded John the Baptist’s head on a plate. Decadent Berlin adores Wilde, particularly since he was jailed for indecency; his death three years ago has only made him more of a star here, unlike in buttoned-up Britain, where his name isn’t mentioned in polite society – ludicrous!
This is a play that needs music and I am the man to discover that music. It has everything: sex, death, lust, decapitation, dance, drama. What an opera it would make – oh, how it would shake audiences to their core!
15 NOVEMBER 1904 Rehearsals of my Salome are going well, except Marie Wittich, in the title role, refuses to perform the Dance Of The Seven Veils, saying it is indecent. She’s so bourgeois. We’ll have to get a dancer in.
10 DECEMBER 1905 After months of delay, Salome premiered last night, in Dresden. The audience was ecstatic, completely scandalised, engrossed – 38 curtain calls. The greatest artistic creation Europe has seen this decade. I’ve changed opera for ever.
20 FEBRUARY 1911 Special trains are being laid on to take audiences to Der
Rosenkavalier [The Knight Of The Rose] in Dresden. It’s my new opera, a fine comedy, that some say is a pastiche of Mozart. Yes, it’s set in old Vienna, yes it’s bawdy, but it’s a wonderful showcase of the female voice, and a clever work on sex and class. Isn’t the best art about sex and class?
Milan, Rome, Vienna: all clamouring to put it on. A huge success!
31 JULY 1914 I’m absolutely convinced there will be no ‘World War’. There’s talk of delaying my opera Die Frau
Ohne Schatten [The Woman Without A Shadow], but that would be most tedious. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, my long-term librettist, has been called up as a reservist. This is intolerable. Just because an archduke has been shot.
11 DECEMBER 1919 I’ve accepted a job at the Vienna State Opera. It’s a poisoned chalice, but I need the money after losing all my savings in the war. I’d invested heavily in Great Britain and the enemy sequestered it all. Fortunately, I’m being offered 80,000 krone a year [about €50,000 today], plus 1,200 krone [€800] for each opera I conduct. The staff have signed a letter to say my salary is exorbitant and ask if I have no sensitivities about the poverty in Vienna. Of course I do, but if they want talent, they’ll have to pay for it.
5 MARCH 1933 The Nazi party have won the election. I find them contemptible. Joseph Goebbels, the propa-
ganda minister, is a disgrace to German honour and the talk of Jews being worse than rats makes my skin crawl. Franz, my son, is married to Alice, the daughter of a Jew. And Stefan Zweig, who is writing the libretto of my next opera, Die
Schweigsame Frau [The Silent Woman], is a Jew too. It will be a bright and breezy comedy, with a serious message about music being under threat. Apt for now.
18 MARCH 1933 The authorities have asked me to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, because my Jewish colleague Bruno Walter is blacklisted – his concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on the 16th was forbidden. I said yes. I hate to see concerts cancelled. Zweig says I don’t appreciate the greatness of my position, as the father of Germany’s musical soul, and I shouldn’t give the Nazis respect.
12 NOVEMBER 1933 Goebbels has appointed me the president of the Reich Music Chamber. I didn’t have a choice in the matter, but if I can do good by being in charge of Germany’s musical life, is it so bad?
11 JUNE 1934 My 70th birthday. Goebbels and Hitler have sent me signed photographs. The Fuhrer wrote on his: ‘To the great composer Richard Strauss, with deepest veneration, Adolf Hitler.’ He’s an ass, but at least he still appreciates musical talent.
26 JUNE 1935 The authorities have insisted on taking Zweig’s name off the posters for Die Schweigsame Frau. I have said, ‘Under no circumstances’. He’s written a fine libretto.
30 JUNE 1935 After just three shows, the opera is now banned. I’ve appealed, but they are ignoring me. I daren’t kick up too much fuss, for fear that Franz and Alice will be in trouble. My dear grandsons Richard and Christian have already been beaten up for being ‘half-breeds’. I want to protect my family.
10 MARCH 1942 Pauline and I have settled in Vienna, where Nazi governor Baldur von Schirach promises he will keep Franz and Alice safe if I help restore Vienna’s cultural glory. What can I do with bombs falling and so few musicians able to perform?
3 OCTOBER 1943 Munich has been bombed and the opera house, where I started my career, is destroyed. This is the greatest catastrophe of my life.
11 JUNE 1944 My 80th birthday. I have fallen out of favour with the Nazis. Everything is collapsing. We have decided to return to our villa in Garmisch- Partenkirchen in Bavaria.
30 APRIL 1945 American soldiers tried to requisition our villa. I told them I was the composer of Der Rosenkavalier and
Salome, and they have kindly agreed to leave us alone.
7 OCTOBER 1945 Pauline and I are subject to a ‘de-Nazification’ tribunal, to determine whether we helped the Nazis. We’re exiled to Switzerland until this whole thing blows over.
10 JUNE 1948 We have been exonerated. I’m now very old, but I have my music and my wife. Some things are untarnished from all the chaos of recent years. I’m working on songs, based on works by the poet Hermann Hesse. They will go well with the setting of Im Abendrot [At Sunset] that I composed in May. These four songs are my final work. And what is more apt than one called When Falling Asleep? They are a farewell to life, and a thank you to Pauline for her love. I’m a tired soul longing to take flight into the night. Soon after Strauss’s 85th birthday he began suffering heart failure and died. Pauline died eight months later.