German composer Richard Strauss was born in the wrong place at the wrong time and took up the wrong profession. He should have been a Chicano muralist in South Tucson.
His music, like today's murals, vibrates with color, alludes to philosophical and cultural movements and popular and mythic characters, and smacks the observer with riotous force.
Strauss wrote his first works in provincial Munich under the stern gaze of his father, a professional hornist who despised the innovations of Wagner. So early Strauss - the Violin Concerto, above all - sounds a lot like music of Mendelssohn and Schumann, composers who had died before Strauss was born in 1864.
But such music got Strauss noticed by famed conductor Hans von Bulow (an ancestor of Claus von Bulow of ``Reversal of Fortune'' fame). Von Bulow gave Strauss a job in 1885, not as a composer but as a conductor, and that is how Strauss supported himself for the next four decades.
As a young conductor, Strauss came into contact with musicians far more progressive than his father. Soon he fell under the spell of Liszt and Wagner, and began writing grandiose orchestral works inspired by literature and philosophy.
Liszt had pioneered the so-called symphonic poem, a type of orchestral composition that more or less followed a story or expressed a certain philosophical concept or series of emotions. Whether for orchestra, piano or kazoo, the general name for this is program music.
Liszt was a virtuoso pianist who, aside from his baker's dozen symphonic poems, wrote mainly virtuoso piano music. Now here was Strauss, not a virtuoso composer-pianist, but a virtuoso composer-conductor who concentrated on his favored instrument, the orchestra.
From 1886 to 1903, Strauss worked mainly on extravagant symphonic poems that were lavishly orchestrated and sometimes quite lengthy. His first, rarely performed today, was inspired by Shakespeare's ``Macbeth.'' Next came two of his most enduring - and briefest - works, ``Don Juan'' and ``Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.''
``Don Juan'' is really a mood piece, while ``Till Eulenspiegel'' actually narrates in music several adventures of the medieval troublemaker, right up to his trial and execution.
Next came a series of longer works. ``Also sprach Zarathustra,'' now associated with the film ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' is a 35-minute meditation on philosophical concepts of Friedrich Nietzsche. ``Death and Transfiguration'' follows a thin plot, which is not much more elaborate than the title.
``Don Quixote'' is an odd hybrid, part splashy symphonic poem, part cello concerto. It graphically depicts several adventures of Cervantes' befuddled would-be knight.
At one point, several instruments bleat nastily in imitation of sheep. At another, when Quixote is blindfolded and duped into believing he is astride a flying horse, Strauss provides sweeping airborne music complete with wind machine.
Woven through all this is an important part for solo cello, which most of the time represents Don Quixote himself. There are also critical passages for solo viola, whose reluctant, rather whining lines are meant to represent Quixote's sidekick, Sancho Panza.
After this, Strauss turned insufferably autobiographical. ``fin Heldenleben'' ostensibly follows the life, loves and struggles of a hero. The hero, it turns out, is Strauss himself. The enemies - represented much as were the sheep in ``Don Quixote'' - are Strauss' nattering critics. And the section entitled ``The Hero's Peaceful Deeds'' is a medley of themes from earlier Strauss works.
This string of symphonic poems ends with the ``Symphonia Domestica.'' It describes a day in the Strauss household, with a theme for each of the family members, a rapturous love scene, and a domestic squabble in the form of a double fugue.
It's important to realize that these bombastic, sometimes tasteless but always dramatically effective symphonic poems are not formless rhapsodies.
``Symphonia Domestica'' roughly follows the tried and true symphonic form used by Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, except the four movements are all connected. ``Macbeth'' and ``Don Juan'' follow classic sonata form.
Each adventure in ``Don Quixote'' is really a variation on the theme announced at the beginning. And ``Till Eulenspiegel'' is a rondo, a piece in several sections that is held together by the periodic appearance of the main theme. All these forms had been used since the time of Mozart, a century before.
At the turn of the century, Strauss the opera conductor finally began writing great operas of his own. Like Wagner, Strauss wrote operas in unbroken stretches of music, not in individual numbers with convenient pauses to accommodate applause.
Strauss' symphonic poems had been so tied to literature that they were almost operas without words.
And now his operas seemed like massive symphonic poems into which singers had accidentally wandered.
The operas required huge orchestras, the music was shockingly dissonant for its time, and the singers needed great vocal power and stamina if they were to survive all this.
The first two Strauss operas of the new century - and, stylistically, they really did usher in a new period - were ``Salome'' and ``Elektra.'' The characters were taken from the Bible and Greek myth, but were reworked into Freudian case studies in abnormal psychology - rather like the screwed up anti-heroes in today's movies.
Next, in 1911, came an about-face: ``Der Rosenkavalier.'' For this comedy set in 18th century Vienna, Strauss provided music that was far less tense and dissonant; in fact, the score is full of waltzes worthy of the Waltz King himself, Johann Strauss II (no relation to Richard).
During the next two decades, Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal - Strauss' librettist, the man who wrote the operas' words - worked to death many of the artistic themes already explored in ``Salome,'' ``Elektra'' and ``Rosenkavalier.''
Strauss clung tenaciously to the musical style he had used since the turn of the century, while other composers were writing things that were more abstract, more dissonant, and more leanly scored. Once a fearsome innovator, Strauss had fallen behind the times.
Not only that, but his new work seemed to be only a weak imitation of his old work. None of the music he wrote between the beginning of World War I and the end of World War II has become popular.
Then in 1945, with much of Europe leveled and an old way of life destroyed forever, old Strauss' music began to seem not merely nostalgic, but unbearably poignant.
His very last works have become classics: ``Metamorphosen,'' a long dirge for strings based on a theme from Beethoven's ``Eroica'' symphony; a gentle, backward-looking oboe concerto; and his moving farewell, logically titled ``Four Last Songs.''
Strauss listening suggestions
Finding good Strauss performances on compact disc is often a matter of finding old Strauss performances. Many of the finest were recorded in the 1950s and '60s.
For people who don't mind clear mono, recordings by conductor Clemens Krauss are among the most sympathetic Strauss ever. In the early stereo era, Fritz Reiner on RCA and George Szell on CBS produced outstanding versions of many of the symphonic poems.
The operas may be too daunting for someone new to this composer. A perfect introduction is a disc with soprano Inge Borkh, Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in stunning excerpts from ``Salome'' and ``Elektra.''
Among more recent recordings, you're safest with conductors Rudolf Kempe on EMI, Bernard Haitink (especially his ``Zarathustra'') on Philips and Herbert von Karajan on Deutsche Grammophon. Compulsive collectors may be attracted to Neeme Jarvi's good series of all the symphonic poems on Chandos.