Chapter 1 - Family and Upbringing

Summary

Strauss’s early life was dominated by his father, Franz, the leading horn player of his day, who rose from poverty to marry a rich heiress, Josepha Pschorr. Franz oversaw his son’s music education, keeping any modern tendencies firmly in check, while Josepha’s family helped to finance Richard’s early publications. Richard’s youthful works show little individuality, but great facility and a systematic approach, as if he were absorbing the repertoire of his Austro-German predecessors in chronological fashion, starting with Haydn and reaching Brahms by the age of twenty. Richard benefitted from the tuition of his father’s musician colleagues and from the excellent local education system, which instilled in him a love of the classics (both Greek and German). Family life was complicated, however, by his father’s violent temper and his mother’s mental illness: from 1885 onwards, she spent her life in and out of clinics.