Editing Richard Strauss (section)

==="Indian Summer", final years and death (1942–1949)===
[[File:StraussFamilyGrave-FriedhofGarmisch RomanDeckert03092024.jpg|thumb|The grave in 2024]]

The metaphor "[[Indian summer]]" has been used by journalists, biographers, and music critics, notably<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.rnz.co.nz/concert/programmes/appointment/audio/2588846/four-last-songs | title=''Four Last Songs'' (Richard Strauss)| author=Peter Shaw |date=9 November 2019 |publisher=[[Radio New Zealand]]}}</ref> [[Norman Del Mar]] in 1964,<ref>{{cite journal | title=Some Centenary Reflections | author=[[Norman Del Mar]]|journal=[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]|date=Summer 1964|number=69, Richard Strauss 1864–1964|pages=2–5|publisher=Cambridge University Press|jstor=942721}}</ref> to describe Strauss's late creative upsurge from 1942 to the end of his life. The events of World War II seemed to bring the composer – who had grown old, tired, and a little jaded – into focus.<ref name="McGlaughlin">[[Bill McGlaughlin|McGlaughlin, Bill]]. ''[[Exploring Music]]'', [http://exploringmusic.wfmt.com/listen-to-the-show/151/strauss-richard Episode 5 of 5 of "Richard Strauss"], first aired 9 January 2004. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240614075617/https://www.wfmt.com/programs/exploring-music/ |date=14 June 2024 |nolink=y}}</ref> The major works of the last years of Strauss's life, written in his late 70s and 80s, include, among others, his ''[[Horn Concerto No. 2 (Strauss)|Horn Concerto No. 2]]'', ''[[Metamorphosen]]'', his ''[[Oboe Concerto (Strauss)|Oboe Concerto]]'', his ''[[Duet concertino for clarinet and bassoon]]'', and his ''[[Four Last Songs]]''.<ref name="g1"/>

In June 1945, after finishing ''Metamorphosen'', Strauss completed his Sonatina No 2 in E-flat major ("''Fröhliche Werkstatt''") for 16 wind instruments, which he had begun in early 1944; at the end of the score he wrote "To the [[Manes]] of the divine [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] at the end of a life full of thankfulness".{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|p=365}} 

Like those of most Germans, Strauss's bank accounts were frozen, and many of his assets seized by American forces. Now elderly and with very few resources left, Strauss and his wife left Germany for Switzerland in October 1945 where they settled in a hotel outside Zurich, and later at the Montreux Palace hotel in Montreux. There they met the Swiss music critic [[Willi Schuh (musicologist)|Willy Schuh]], who became Strauss's biographer. Short of money, in 1947 Strauss embarked on his last international tour, a three-week trip to London, in which he conducted several of his tone poems and excerpts of his operas, and was present during a complete staging of ''Elektra'' by the [[BBC]]. The trip was a critical success and provided him and his wife with some much-needed money.<ref name="g1"/>

From May to September 1948, just before his death, Strauss composed the ''Four Last Songs'', which deal with the subject of dying. The last one, "Im Abendrot" (At Sunset), ends with the line "Is this perhaps death?" The question is not answered in words, but instead Strauss quotes the "transfiguration theme" from his earlier tone poem ''Death and Transfiguration'' — meant to symbolize the transfiguration and fulfilment of the soul after death. In June 1948, he was cleared of any wrong-doing by a [[denazification]] tribunal in Munich.<ref name="g1"/> That same month he orchestrated ''[[Ruhe, meine Seele!]]'', a song that he had originally composed in 1894.<ref name="g1"/>

In December 1948, Strauss was hospitalized for several weeks after undergoing bladder surgery.<ref name="g1"/> His health rapidly deteriorated after that, and he conducted his last performance, the end of Act 2 of ''Der Rosenkavalier'' at the [[Prinzregententheater]] in Munich, during celebrations of his 85th birthday on 10 June 1949. On 15 August, he suffered a heart attack and he quietly died of kidney failure in his sleep shortly after 2 PM on 8 September 1949, in [[Garmisch-Partenkirchen]], [[West Germany]].<ref name="g1"/> From his death-bed, he remarked to his daughter-in-law Alice, "dying is just as I composed it in ''Tod und Verklärung''".{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|p=113}} [[Georg Solti]], who had arranged Strauss's 85th birthday celebration, also directed an orchestra during Strauss's burial.<ref>''Portrait of Sir Georg Solti.'', documentary (1984), directed by Valerie Pitts</ref> The conductor later described how, during the singing of the famous trio from ''Rosenkavalier'', "each singer broke down in tears and dropped out of the ensemble, but they recovered themselves and we all ended together".{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|p=394}} Strauss's wife, Pauline de Ahna, died eight months later on 13 May 1950 at the age of 88.<ref name="Kennedy 1999, p. 395">{{harvnb|Kennedy|1999|p=395}}</ref> 

Strauss himself declared in 1947 with characteristic self-deprecation: "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." The Canadian pianist [[Glenn Gould]] described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century".{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|p=3}}