May Bugs & Spice

In his long and highly successful career as composer and conductor, the late Richard Strauss formed some sharply spiced opinions on music and musicians. Frequently he got a few on paper. Last week Western Europeans were chuckling over a selection of his articles, essays and open letters published by Zurich's Atlantis Verlag under the title Reflections and Reminiscences.

In some "Golden Rules for Conductors" the maestro admonished crustily: "Remember, you are not playing for your own fun, you are playing for the enjoyment of the audience . . . Never let the horns and woodwinds out of your eye; when you hear them at all, they are already too loud . . . The left hand has nothing to do in conducting an orchestra. Keep it in your vest-pocket and use it only occasionally to hush an instrument. . . Don't conduct with your arms, conduct with your ears!"

Strauss was by no means happy with the way conductors handled Beethoven and his favorite, Mozart. "Some so-called wizards of the baton," he wrote, "play Beethoven and Mozart finales as though they were riding a shying horse and had lost the reins." Strauss also felt that he himself had been badly dealt with by publishers, stage directors and actors. His father, first horn at the Munich court opera, had to contribute 1,000 marks ($238) to the printing cost of the F-Minor Symphony. "My fee for Don Juan," Strauss recorded, "was 800 marks ... for Eulenspiegel [one of his most frequently played works], 1,000 marks."

Baron Ochs, the clumsy gallant of Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss thought was consistently misunderstood and misplayed. Instead of "a vulgar monster with a horrible make-up and proletarian manners," as most bassos represented him, Strauss intended him as "a rustic beau, a Don Juan of some 35 years, but nevertheless a nobleman . . . Inwardly he is gross (ein Schmutzian), but outwardly he remains quite presentable . . . Above all, his first scene in the bedroom must be played with extreme delicacy and discretion, it must not be repulsive ... In short, Viennese comedy, not Berlin farce."

One of Strauss's most difficult productions to get on the boards was his Salome, written in 1903. Asked to play the lead, Soprano Marie Wittich at first refused with the explanation: "I can't do this; I'm a decent woman." Even the composer's father had his doubts, the son remembered. "Mein Gott," he exclaimed, "what nervous music! It makes me feel as though my pants were full of grabbling May bugs."

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