Richard Strauss's "The Last Four Songs" Study

Richard Strauss(1864-1949)is a prominent conductor and composer in Germany,who has created loads of musical works during his life.As a composer,he mainly focuses on art songs,operas,and symphonic poems.Four Last Songs represents the last vocal works of Richard Strauss and marks the ending time of late Romantic art songs,and therefore,boasts great research value.This paper examines Richard Strauss' s Four Last Songs by interpreting the multiple crisis and complex social environment during which Richard Strauss created it,and concludes the creating background based on an analysis of Richard Strauss' s then state of mind.The paper further explores the late period creating features embodied in Four Last Songs via musical text interpretation and captures the work's spirit from the perspective of lyrics and creating methods.This paper ultimately addresses the reasons for Richard Strauss' s “late style” from a sociology angle,and explains how this feature is enshrined in Four Last Songs.This paper constitutes four parts.Chapter one mainly discusses Richard Strauss' s pressure in the face of career crisis,family crisis,moral crisis and living crisis brought about by the Nazi regime,and the time's footprint on the composer.Chapter two analyzes musical elements features from the perspective of rhythm and poem,tone and harmony,voice and instrument,and orchestra texture.Chapter three probes into the spiritual connotations of Four Last Songs by expounding on music and creating background analysis.Chapter four examines Richard Strauss' s “late style” from a sociology angle,including the reasons that give rise to this style and an in-depth explanation of the features of this style.