A Brief Piece about Richard Strauss

On Saturday night we went to see the Hamilton Philharmonic and the theme for the evening was Mozart Meets Strauss. The last piece of the evening was the Strauss “Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24". Before hand, one of the patrons I knew said he was planning on leaving early because he expected this was a dire tone poem and was bound to be a disaster. Nothing could have been further from the truth.


Written as a young man, it focuses on death, and takes a young man’s view. However, it features prominently in his last words, and is an amazing tale. He realizes (in life and not in the story) that what he has dreamed about death at 25, becomes the truth about death at 85.

This piece alone was worth the “price of admission”.

From Wikipedia:

Richard Strauss died at the age of 85 on 8 September 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Georg Solti, who had arranged Strauss's 85th birthday celebration, also directed an orchestra during Strauss's burial. During the singing of the famous trio from Rosenkavalier, Solti described how "each singer broke down in tears and dropped out of the ensemble, but they recovered themselves and we all ended together." Strauss's wife Paulina was inconsolable. She died six months later.


Although Strauss himself declared in 1947 with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer" there are commentators who would disagree with his analysis. The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century." There are certainly few composers in the twentieth century who can compare with Strauss in terms of orchestral imagination, and no composer since Wagner has made a more significant contribution to the history of opera. Strauss's late works, modeled quite self-consciously on "the divine Mozart at the end of a life full of thankfulness", are perhaps the most remarkable works by any octogenarian composer.

Death and Transfiguration (Tod und Verklärung), Op. 24, is a tone poem for large orchestra by Richard Strauss. Strauss began composition in the late summer of 1888 and completed the work on November 18, 1889. The work is dedicated to the composer's friend Friedrich Rosch.

Unusual for a composer of 25 years of age, the music depicts the death of an artist. At Strauss's request, this was described in a poem by the composer's friend Alexander Ritter as an interpretation of Death and Transfiguration, after it was composed. As the man lies dying, thoughts of his life pass through his head: his childhood innocence, the struggles of his manhood, the attainment of his worldly goals; and at the end, he receives the longed-for transfiguration "from the infinite reaches of heaven".

There are four parts (with Ritter's poetic thoughts condensed):

• I. Largo (The sick man, near death)

• II. Allegro molto agitato (The battle between life and death offers no respite to the man)

• III. Meno mosso (The dying man's life passes before him)

• IV. Moderato (The sought-after transfiguration)

In one of Strauss's last compositions, "Im Abendrot" from the Four Last Songs, Strauss poignantly quotes the 'transfiguration' theme from his tone poem of 60 years earlier, during and after the soprano's final line, "Ist dies etwa der Tod?" (Could this then be death?).

Upon Strauss's own death, he remarked that his music was absolutely correct; his feelings mirrored those of the artist depicted within; Strauss said to his daughter-in-law as he lay on his deathbed in 1949: "It's a funny thing Alice, dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung."

Here is a part of that piece: