Hang Around the World: Music #407

Richard Georg Strauss

(1864 – 1949)

A leading German composer, Strauss was also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria. Strauss and Mahler represent the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner.

Strauss is known for his:

* tone poems (or symphonic poems)

trying to tell a story with music, such as
Don Juan (a full version)
Don Quixote (a full version)
Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche / Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (a full version)
Also sprach Zarathustra / Thus Spoke Zarathustra (a full version) (also see below)

Death and Transfiguration (a full version)
An Alpine Symphony (a full version)

* lieder

especially his Four Last Songs (Spring, September, Going to Sleep, and At Sunset), which have an atmosphere of elegy, as Wagner bids farewell to the world.

* great operas

which include
Der Rosenkavalier / The Knight of the Rose (suite a full version)
Salome (Dance of the Seven Veils, Final Scene a full version)
Elektra (a full version)

* other orchestral works

such as Metamorphosen

Also sprach Zarathustra

/ aka "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
* It is a tone poem, inspired by Nietzsche's philosophical treatise with the same name, in which Zarathustra is the main character.
* Strauss' music piece is divided into 9 sections, named after selected chapters of the book.

"Sunrise", the first section, is the initial fanfare that became particularly well known to the general public due to its use in 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Greek: Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia)

* Timpani

In the movie, a supercomputer on a space station accumulated sufficient intelligence to disobey and overpower astronauts. Its name was HAL, each letter of which comes before IBM.