3 - Maturity and indecision in the early works

Summary

Writing in 1931, music critic Max Steinitzer opined, “Under the general title ‘The Unknown Richard Strauss,’ radio broadcasters … would find enough rich and rewarding material for an hour of piano music, as well as lieder, chamber, orchestral, and choral music.” Steinitzer had been a reliable advocate for Strauss, whose stature by the 1930s was downgraded from that of a pioneer of modernism to a figurehead for Germany's late-Romantic musical past. Steinitzer found in the margins of this composer's oeuvre unfamiliar works of surprising variety that stood to off er fresh insights on him – specifically, music from the early part of Strauss's career, before his international emergence with the tone poems Don Juan (1888) and Tod und Verklärung (1888–9).

Steinitzer's proposed radio program never hit the airwaves, and for the most part the diverse music of Strauss's youth and young adulthood has remained little known. Several factors account for the obscurity of Strauss's early works. First, many of them were not published until the last quarter of the twentieth century, and hence were rarely performed or recorded. (Of course, the fact that there were few performances and recordings of this music placed little demand on its publication.) Second, the truism that Strauss's compositions prior to his tone poems were but a training ground is not unfounded: clearly, the young composer cycled through genres, forms, and styles rather than settling into an individual voice.