Strauss was not a man driven by inspiration. He composed music because it was his job. He could be quite lazy.

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1 RICHARD STRAUSS AND HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL - An unlikely partnership Graham Billing Probus: 1 st July 2010 When we think about well-known operas (Madame Butterfly, the Magic Flute, La Traviata, etc) we think immediately about the composers of the music rather than those who wrote the words. The only partnership where the composers of the music and the lyrics are well-known to us is that of Gilbert and Sullivan - where the writer of the words, Gilbert, claimed greater import than Sullivan who wrote the music. Graham Billing feels that this is to do with Gilbert s ego rather than actual parity between the two. Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote the words to 6 of the operas of Richard Strauss (opposite). The first was not strictly a collaboration between them because Strauss wrote the words to a play that Von Hofmannsthal had already written. The next four, though, were definitely a collaboration between the two. Music is one of the only ways of getting time to stand still. The poem Experience was written, in 1892 by an 18 year old school boy yet is insightful in the extreme. Hofmannsthal chose the pseudonym Loris to write under then. He spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria where he was born in 1874 and wrote the poem in He is unthinkable without Vienna in the same way as Daphne du Maurier is Cornwall! He was very refined, elegant, reclusive, over-educated. His ancestors included eminent citizens of many different nationalities. He was extremely cultured very very different from Strauss who was big, brash and loud. Strauss was German coming from Munich. He was not one of the Strauss family (Johann, Josef). Strauss is a common surname in Germany and means ostrich that bird having been very common in the country in the Middle Ages. His father was a horn player and indeed Strauss came from a very musical family. He wrote a lot for the solo horn and horns often feature very prominently in his music. His early music often took the form of a symphonic poem a piece of music telling a story. Strauss was born in 1864 so was 10 years older than Hofmannsthal. His music seemed to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger so it was not surprising that he began to turn his attention to opera it has all the other arts contained in it. He was heavily influenced by Wagner in his early composing but was nothing like as good. Then Strauss decided to write an opera based on a play by Oscar Wilde (Salome). Oscar Wilde wrote it originally in French. Strauss wrote 2 versions one in French and one in German. It was a great scandal including the Dance of the Seven Veils. It was unmistakeable post-wagner German. Strauss was not a man driven by inspiration. He composed music because it was his job. He could be quite lazy.

2 Hofmannsthal, had left school having written the wonderful poem mentioned above and many others. He commanded the attention of the greatest German poet of the time. He found out that Loris was the schoolboy that he was and took a bouquet of flowers into the school, putting them on Hofmannsthal s desk stating that he paid homage to the great talent that would take German poetry onward and replace his own in due time! Fame came too early and too easy for Hofmannsthal and possibly because of the excruciating embarrassment of incidents like this, he stopped writing poetry. He lost faith in the power of words to convey what he wanted. HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL

3 Experience The valley in the dusk was thick with mist Of silver-grey, as when the moon appears Filtered through clouds. And yet is was not night. The darkened valley s mist of silver-grey Ran mingling, blurring with my darkening thoughts, And silently I sank beneath the heaving Transparent sea and ceased to live. What flowers Were there, what wonders, with their calices Glowing with dark! An undergrowth of plants And through them reddish-yellow light, warm currents, As if of topaz, pressed and gleamed. And all Was utterly suffused with a deep swelling Of melancholy music. And I knew, Though without understanding, yet I knew, That this was death. That death had turned to music, Yearning immense and sweet and darkly glowing, Akin to deepest melancholy. Strange, But an unnamed nostalgia wept in silence Within my soul for life, wept, and its tears Were like the tears of one on some great ship With giant yellow sails towards the evening Sailing through dark blue water past the town, His home town. Then he sees the little streets, And hears the rushing of the fountains, smells The scent of lilac trees, and sees himself, A child again and standing on the bank, With anguished child s eyes near to tears, and sees Light through the open window in his room But the great ship is bearing him away, Gliding in silence through the dark blue water, With weirdly-shaped gigantic yellow sails.

4 Hofmannsthal wrote a letter explaining that when he wanted to use a word it disintegrates in my mouth like a mouldy mushroom! He began to write about factual subjects producing a large number of essays and with his great breadth of culture, started to adapt works from other languages into German. He took the English Medieval Morality Play Everyman and translated it into German it is still performed on the steps of Salzburg Cathedral every year. Hofmannsthal founded the Salzburg Festival in fact. He wrote his own versions of the great plays of the past; including the Greek play Electra. This fell into Strauss s hands. He wrote to Hofmannsthal and asked if he could set it to music and was given permission. Little did Hofmannsthal know that for the next 20 years he would be handcuffed to Strauss! They were great opposites in every way. Strauss would sit in the pub playing cards (even writing an opera about himself doing just this) whereas Hofmannsthal was acutely shy. For nearly 30 years they wrote letters to each other which gives us an insight into how they worked together. For well over 20 years everything they had to say to each other was communicated in writing. One of their operas was premiered in Stuttgart (which was looked down upon) and he was appalled to find that Strauss had booked a table for him to meet a lot of locals after the show. He wrote back saying there was no way he would stoop so low! Hofmannsthal s wife would not have Strauss s wife in the house. The former was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish Viennese banker and matched Hofmannsthal s fastidiousness. (They had 3 children). Strauss s wife, Pauline, was the daughter of a General and had been an opera singer. She was rude and a bully and feared by all who knew her. She was the characteristic nagging wife and was even rude to Hitler. She bossed everyone around particularly any conductor who she thought did not do justice to her husband. It is thanks to Pauline, and her impossible behaviour, that we have all the letters because they could not meet at each other s home. Their greatest work: Der Rosenkavalier, suited Von Hofmannsthal immensely and allowed him to pursue his great obsession with how one could stop time. Love at first sight also can stop time as can music and this comes up in Hofmannsthal s work over and over again. Somehow, despite their immense differences, Strauss and Von Hofmannsthal found a common ground which both of them liked. In Der Rosenkavalier, the best of both of them comes out and they wrote 3 more with mixed success. However their fifth and last, Arabella, was an amazing work set in Vienna. The following words come from this opera and were uttered by Arabella who was refuting her sister s contention that she would never find a husband! But if he s right for me, If I m to have a husband in this world, He will one day stand there in my sight, And the expression in our eyes Will mean we have no doubts at all and ask no questions And I shall be in bliss and obedient as a child. They are simple but beautiful words not as overblown as some that he wrote. Strauss gave her a Croatian folk song to sing them to because the one she was destined to marry was in fact Croatian though she did not yet know this.

5 Von Hofmannsthal was diminutive in stature whereas Strauss was a tall, gangly, unco-ordinated man. They were opposites in every way physically as well as in terms of character and background. In 1929, when they were in the midst of writing Arabella, Hofmannsthal s son committed suicide and on the morning of his funeral, Hofmannsthal had a stroke and died himself. Strauss wrote to Hofmannsthal s wife and promised to continue the opera and to set acts 2 and 3 as Hofmannsthal had drafted. He affirmed that he would never find anyone who could do the amazing job that von Hofmannsthal had for him. Strauss continued to write operas after Arabella but none of them came up to the standard of those that he and Hofmannsthal had written together. Hofmannsthal, dying when he did, was spared the 3 rd Reich. He would have been mortified. He himself had Jewish blood and might well have ended up in a concentration camp. Strauss himself did stay in Germany. He was unbelievably naïve politically. He got himself in a lot of trouble in Germany because he did not do all the things the Nazis wanted and he was condemned outside Germany because he did some of the things they wanted!! He was astute enough to transfer all copyright to Boozey and Hawkes in London however!