Ulvi takes off from my post:

>>I love Richard Strauss's music -
>
>Am I the only person who dislikes his tone-poems but loves all the other
>stuff? (if it weren't for the darn tone poems, I would rate Strauss about
>as highly as Mahler).

After the early stuff like Aus Italien and the two symphonies, the only
tone poem by Strauss I truly dislike is Tod und Verklaerung, with the
exception of the genius theme at the end.  Also sprach Zarathustra doesn't
quite work all the way, but it's a damned interesting work.

>>...leaving aside some of the very early stuff and of the occasional music -
>
>Do you include his early chamber stuff in this? Some of it is really
>original.

My favorite is the piano quartet, the only work of Strauss to show the
major influence of Brahms.  It was a brief glitch in Strauss's development,
but he really did have the hang of Brahms.  If he had kept at it, it would
have been an equally fascinating, but very different career.  In general,
Strauss's early work suffers from a conflict between his models (mainly
Mendelssohn and Schumann) and his harmonic idiom, particularly the faster
speed at which modulations in his idiom occur.  He doesn't really
understand the narrative of classical sonata form, except in the piano
quartet.  It takes him, in my opinion, about Heldenleben to get his own
handle on sonata form.

Steve Schwartz