The Musical Rhetoric of Richard Strauss: Towards Setting the Problem

Perhaps the main particular feature of Richard Strauss as a composer is his incomparable gift for musical characterization. He was able to convey literally everything in sounds: both material and concrete things, as well as all sorts of abstract ideas and concepts. An increased attention to the details of the musical text, stage-related situations, and the behavior of various protagonist determines the special mobility and lability of musical presentation in the composer’s opera scores. In his work as a whole, this characteristic feature explains the strong stylistic contrasts between particular musical-theatrical works, depending on the plotline and the chosen mode of its implementation. Taking into account the challenges that arose in each work, Strauss each time created a specific thesaurus of musical means — the particular characteristic figures. The composer himself spoke in this regard about “sound symbols” (Tonsymbole), to which he pertained the design of the melodic line, the characteristic motive, the special rhythmic motion within the confines of a unique timbre, and other elements of musical presentation. At the same time, he could freely turn to already existing musical-historical material containing certain semantic connotations (musical quotations, particular musical styles, topoi, genres, compositional techniques, etc.). Among the characteristic means that Strauss resorted to, the following must be highlighted 1) word-painting (Tonmalerei), 2) leitmotifs, 3) the respective tonality, 4) musical quotations (borrowed from other composers’ works and from his own), 5) genre, 6) the compositional method, 7) style. The article draws an analogy between Strauss’s methods of musical characterization and the use of musical and rhetorical figures in the Baroque era. However, if the rhetorical figures refer to the area of typified content, it follows that Strauss creates an arsenal of special characteristic means for each specific work. The musical “emblems”, which previously possessed a universally significant character, acquire purely authorial traits and require individual decoding.