Day 24 — Morgen

And so the Richard Strauss Lieder Advent Calendar comes to a close, albeit an open-ended one. Behind the last window is the 1894 Lied 'M...

Day 23 — Weihnachtslied

Strauss was apparently around six years old when he wrote this setting of the 18th-century poet Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart's ...

Day 22 — Im Abendrot (from the Four Last Songs)

The last of the Four Last Songs sets ‘Im Abendrot’ by Eichendorff, a poet to whom Strauss had first turned in 1876 for the texts of his two...

Day 21 — Die Frauen sind oft fromm und still

This is the final song from Strauss's 1887–88 Schlichte Wiesen , comprising five settings of Felix Ludwig Julius Dahn's poetry. Whil...

Day 20 – Blauer Sommer

As well as writing songs to mark his own marriage – the renowned Op. 27 set comprising ' Ruhe, meine Seele ', ' Cäcilie ', ...

Day 19 — Winterliebe

Strauss wrote two 'winter' songs, published together in his 1900 Fünf Lieder Op. 48. Unlike 'Winterweihe' (the fourth in th...

Day 18 — Gesänge des Orients

Strauss was no stranger to Orientalism, not only within Salome (1905), of course, but also in the less celebrated Die ägyptische Helena (192...

Day 17 — Ruhe, meine Seele!

Strauss's 'Ruhe, meine Seele!' is set apart by its staggeringly ingenious simplicity. Nothing is so restful as the slow but cert...

Day 16 — Drei Lieder der Ophelia

By 1918, when Strauss wrote this triptych of Ophelia's songs from Hamlet (in a German translation by Karl Joseph Simrock), he was a high...

Day 15 — Beim Schlafengehen (from the Four Last Songs)

We now reach the third of the Four Last Songs , though 'Beim Schlafengehen' was actually the first of the Hesse poems Strauss set. T...

Day 14 — Freundliche Vision

Strauss begins this 1900 setting of Otto Julius Bierbaum's 'Freundliche Vision' in a distant key, setting up the illusion of a d...

Day 13 — Cäcilie

Heinrich Hart’s poem ‘Cäcilie’ was written for his wife, so it proved a fitting inclusion in the Op. 27 songs, Strauss’s wedding present to ...

Day 12 — Zueignung

There is a great sense of purpose about Strauss's 1882–3 song 'Zueignung'. Fittingly it opened his first publication as a song c...

Day 11 — Malven

This setting of Betty Wehrli-Knobel's poem 'Malven' (Hollyhocks) was the last of Strauss's songs to be published. It was als...

Day 10 — Für fünfzehn Pfennige

It's easy to frame Strauss as a progressive during the early part of his career. Think of the tone poet and the composer of Salome and ...

Day 9 — Waldseligkeit

We return to Richard Dehmel's poetry, following the eerie excursion into the dark with Dehmel's 'Notturno' on Day 3. 'Wa...

Day 8 — September (from the Four Last Songs)

Continuing the Strauss Advent series, which will feature one of the Four Last Songs each Sunday, we move on to 'September', second i...

Day 7 — Schlechtes Wetter

Despite the prevailing trend that Strauss slowly turned away from Lieder once the 20th century had set in, the Op. 69 set of songs was compo...

Day 6 — Wiegenlied

Only Strauss (and Richard Dehmel) could come up with a cradle song so erotic. Rather than focussing on the child – as Brahms does with his f...

Day 5 — Allerseelen

Strauss's Lieder take many forms. Sometimes he emphasises the strophic nature of the text – as well as the music of his forebears. Yet S...