Aus Italien (From Italy), Op. 16, is a tone poem or program symphony for orchestra by Richard Strauss, described by the composer as a "symphonic fantasy". It was completed in 1886 when he was 22 years old. It was inspired by the composer's visit to Italy (encouraged by Johannes Brahms) in the summer of the same year, where he travelled to Rome, Bologna, Naples, Sorrento, Salerno, and Capri. He began to sketch the work while still on the journey.
The full score of the work, Strauss's first tone poem, was completed in Munich on September 12, 1886. The work is named by the composer as "Symphonic Fantasy", and is dedicated to his mentor Hans von Bülow. It is the only work by Richard Strauss for which he himself wrote a specific program. The entire work takes over forty minutes to perform.
Strauss incorporated the tune of "Funiculì, Funiculà" into the symphony's fourth movement, "Neapolitan Folk Life", thinking it was a traditional Italian folk song, when it was in fact a piece written by Luigi Denza in 1880. Denza filed a lawsuit against Strauss and eventually won.
The first performance of the work took place in Munich on March 2, 1887, by the Court Orchestra, which was conducted by the composer himself. As Richard Strauss's sister Johanna later recalled, the first three movements were received with applause, but the last movement was not well-approved and derisory whistles came from various quarters. Norman Del Mar's biography of the composer tells a different story: the first three movements were not well received, and the final was accorded booing and applause. Strauss himself found the work itself as new and revolutionary, and he was satisfied despite the critical responses for the première.
The first performance in the United States was given on March 8, 1888, with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra (Theodore Thomas conducting) at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
Aus Italien is more similar in form to a conventional symphony than Strauss's other tone poems in that it follows the traditional four-movement symphonic structure. However, the pictorially descriptive quality of the music sets it apart from a conventional symphony, which is absolute music.
Aus Italien is scored for the following orchestra:
Performances of the full score only
| Conductor | Orchestra | Recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Artur Rother | Symphony Orchestra of Radio Berlin | 1949 |
| Clemens Krauss | Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra | 1953 |
| Henry Swoboda | Vienna Symphony Orchestra | 1953 |
| Otakar Trhlík | Ostrava State Philharmonic Orchestra (Janáček Philharmonie) | 1971 |
| Rudolf Kempe | Staatskapelle Dresden | 1974 |
| Neeme Järvi | Scottish National Orchestra | 1988 |
| Vladimir Ashkenazy | Cleveland Orchestra | 1989 |
| Riccardo Muti | Berliner Philharmoniker | 1989 |
| Zdeněk Košler | Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra | 1990 |
| David Zinman | Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich | 2000 |
| Fabio Luisi | Staatskapelle Dresden | 2008 |
| Franz Welser-Möst | Cleveland Orchestra | 2020 |
There is also a recording of the two piano version, with the duo pianists Begonia Uriarte-Mrongovius and Karl-Hermann Mrongovius recorded in 1985.
Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer and conductor best known for his tone poems and operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term Tondichtung appears to have been first used by the composer Carl Loewe in 1828. The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt first applied the term Symphonische Dichtung to his 13 works in this vein.
Karl Goldmark was a Hungarian-born Viennese composer.
Program music or programmatic music is a type of instrumental art music that attempts to musically render an extramusical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience through the piece's title, or in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music. A well-known example is Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.
Vítězslav Augustín Rudolf Novák was a Czech composer and academic teacher at the Prague Conservatory. Stylistically, he was part of the neo-romantic tradition, and his music is considered an important example of Czech modernism. He worked towards a strong Czech identity in culture after the country became independent in 1918. His compositions include operas and orchestral works.
Luigi Denza was an Italian composer.
George Whitefield Chadwick was an American composer. Along with John Knowles Paine, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, and Edward MacDowell, he was a representative composer of what is called the Second New England School of American composers of the late 19th century—the generation before Charles Ives. Chadwick's works are influenced by the Realist movement in the arts, characterized by a down-to-earth depiction of people's lives.
Frederick Stock was a German conductor and composer, most famous for his 37-year tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Emil Nikolaus Joseph, Freiherr von Reznicek was an Austrian composer of Romanian-Czech ancestry.
An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64, is a tone poem for large orchestra written by German composer Richard Strauss in 1915. It is one of Strauss's largest non-operatic works; the score calls for about 125 players and a typical performance usually lasts around 50 minutes. The program of An Alpine Symphony depicts the experiences of eleven hours spent climbing an Alpine mountain.
Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898. It was his eighth work in the genre, and exceeded any of its predecessors in its orchestral demands. Generally agreed to be autobiographical in nature despite contradictory statements on the matter by the composer, the work contains more than thirty quotations from Strauss's earlier works, including Also sprach Zarathustra, Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Death and Transfiguration.
"Funiculì, Funiculà" is a Neapolitan song composed in 1880 by Luigi Denza to lyrics by Peppino Turco. It was written to commemorate the opening of the first funicular railway on Mount Vesuvius. It was presented by Turco and Denza at the Piedigrotta festival the same year. The sheet music was published by Ricordi and sold over a million copies within a year. Since its publication, it has been widely adapted and recorded.
Siegmund von Hausegger was an Austrian composer and conductor.
The Oceanides, Op. 73, is a single-movement tone poem for orchestra written from 1913 to 1914 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which refers to the nymphs in Greek mythology who inhabited the Mediterranean Sea, premiered on 4 June 1914 at the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut with Sibelius conducting. Praised upon its premiere as "the finest evocation of the sea ... ever ... produced in music", the tone poem, in D major, consists of two subjects, said to represent the playful activity of the nymphs and the majesty of the ocean, respectively. Sibelius gradually develops this material over three informal stages: first, a placid ocean; second, a gathering storm; and third, a thunderous wave-crash climax. As the tempest subsides, a final chord sounds, symbolizing the mighty power and limitless expanse of the sea.
The symphonic poems of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt are a series of 13 orchestral works, numbered S.95–107. The first 12 were composed between 1848 and 1858 ; the last, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe, followed in 1882. These works helped establish the genre of orchestral program music—compositions written to illustrate an extra-musical plan derived from a play, poem, painting or work of nature. They inspired the symphonic poems of Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Richard Strauss and others.
Kossuth, Sz. 21, BB. 31, DD. 75a is a symphonic poem composed by Béla Bartók inspired by the Hungarian politician Lajos Kossuth.
Musical quotation is the practice of directly quoting another work in a new composition. The quotation may be from the same composer's work (self-referential), or from a different composer's work (appropriation).
The tone poems of Richard Strauss are noted as the high point of program music in the latter part of the 19th century, extending its boundaries and taking the concept of realism in music to an unprecedented level. In these works, he widened the expressive range of music while depicting subjects many times thought unsuitable for musical depiction. As Hugh MacDonald points out in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "In the years prior to World War I these works were held to be in the vanguard of modernism."
A Hero's Song, Op. 111, B. 199, also called Heroic Song for Orchestra, is a symphonic poem for orchestra composed by Antonín Dvořák between August 4 and October 25, 1897. It was premiered in Vienna in on December 4, 1898, with Gustav Mahler conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, and was later published in Berlin in 1899. Unlike Dvořák's other symphonic poems, this work is not based upon a specific text, and it may have been intended to be autobiographical. The piece is mostly energetic and triumphant, but it includes a slower section containing a funeral march. A typical performance lasts approximately 22 minutes.
Richard Strauss composed his Symphony No. 1 in D minor in 1880 when he was just 16 years old. It consists of four movements, and lasts about 34 minutes. Although Strauss did not give a number to the symphony, it is often referred to as his First Symphony. It was premiered on 30 March 1881 at the Munich Academy of Music under the baton of Hermann Levi.
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