"Die Gottin Im Putzzimmer" by Richard Strauss: A Performance Analysis

207 p.Thesis (Educat.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1986.The choral compositions of Richard Strauss remain virtually unknown and unperformed, mostly because of their extreme diffi- culty, and the controversy surrounding their musical merit. One of the motivations of the study was to determine whether a represent- ative work by Strauss lies within the capability of a university-level choral group. This study contributes to comprehensive knowledge concerning one of those compositions and the problems involved in its performance.The present study involved an exhaustive analysis of the un- accompanied choral work Die Gottin im Putzzimmer, by Richard Strauss who used as text a poem of the German poet Friedrich Ruckert. The procedure involved the following steps: (1) investi- gation of the lives of Ruckert and Strauss and their relationship to the artistic climate of their respective periods; (2) rehearsal and six performances of the work; (3) identification of rehearsal and performance problems; (4) determination of the opinions of the singers regarding the work, its difficulty and its worth.The conclusions of the investigator were: (1) The extreme difficulty of the work makes it inaccessible to the typical non-professional choir; (2) The rehearsal procedures, which relied heavily on sectional rehearsals and section leaders, was effective; (3) The musical worth of the work is beyond question; (4) The reaction of the singers was highly positive.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD