Page 194 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained
P. 194
192
A SYMPHONY MUST BE
LIKE THE WORLD. IT MUST
CONTAIN EVERYTHING
ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA (1896)
RICHARD STRAUSS
he period after Richard traditional symphonic form. Gustav
IN CONTEXT Wagner’s death in 1883 Mahler expanded the form even
T was a time of uncertainty further, employing an orchestra of
FOCUS for German music. Some composers unprecedented size in symphonies
From Romanticism sought to emulate Wagner in their that incorporated programmatic
to modernism
own operas; others avoided opera elements and vocal parts.
BEFORE altogether and applied Wagner’s
1849 Franz Liszt completes innovations to music composed for New forms
his first tone poem, Ce qu’on the concert hall. Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Mahler’s great
entend sur la montagne for example, brought Wagnerian contemporary, took a different
(“What one hears on the grandeur, dimensions, and route with the tone poem—a
mountain”), after the poem harmonic adventurousness to the musical form that seeks to capture
by Victor Hugo. the story or atmosphere of a
nonmusical work, such as a
1865 Richard Strauss’s father, poem or painting. The genre
Franz, plays the horn in the was pioneered by Franz Liszt
premiere of Wagner’s Tristan and formed the basis for Strauss’s
und Isolde in Munich. early reputation as a firebrand.
Strauss’s breakthrough was the
AFTER daringly erotic Don Juan (1888), and
1903 Gustav Mahler conducts in the next decade he produced a
the first full performance of his series of works that combined his
100-minute Third Symphony, virtuosity as an orchestrator with
which he completed in 1896. formal innovation—eschewing,
for example, the need for a piece
1917 The premiere is held of to end in the key it begins in.
Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Controversial at the time, Strauss’s
A Florentine Tragedy, an opera works were not written to be
based, like Strauss’s Salome,
on a work by Oscar Wilde.
The prophet Zarathustra’s
(or Zoroaster’s) writings about Ahura
Mazda (god) form the basis of the
Zoroastrian faith. This portrait of him
hangs at a fire temple in Yazd, Iran.
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