The story of four last songs

• Strauss' Vier letzte Lieder is a set of four songs for soprano and orchestra, composed between 1946 and 1948.

• Last two decades of his life were really troublesome to him and Germany.

• His music became old-fashioned and really depressed with the war situation

• He was really into Eichendorff’s poem, Im Abendrot (In the Evening Glow)

• Within five months it was followed by Fruhlings (Spring), September and Beim schlafen gehen (Going To Sleep)

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In his very last year, Strauss wrote many lied and dedicated to many people until he decided to wrote Vier Letzte Lieder for soprano and orchestra op. AV150 (poem from Joseph von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse). He composed it in may until September of 1948 in Switzerland. ‘Im Frühlings’, ‘September, and Beim Schlafengehen’ was by Hermann Hesse and ‘Im Abendrot’ by Joseph von Eichendorff. Each of these has an individual style. Im Frühlings have a very light-swing character and the instrumentation of the song September made a very different style to the first one. Flute and Horn both play in very main character roles like making the sound of the wind and the sound of the larks. In the third and fourth songs, the song made a solo violin part which makes a very ‘sweet’ sound above the orchestra. All of these songs are resemble the ‘farewell’, especially in September and I'm Abendrot. It’s the farewell of the existence in manhood. We see the life through the pieces which now we do not need to fight for it anymore. No regret left in this body and finally see the truth of immortal soul.

These pieces made a very prominent in French Horn part and soprano which reflected the relationship between his father, Franz, who’s the French Horn players in Munich Court Orchestra for his entire life and his wife, the soprano, Pauline de Ahne. In Beim Schlafengehen some parts are referred to the opera ‘Rosenkavalier’ and also in ‘Abendrot’ that Strauss used the motif from ’Tod und Verklärung’’ (Death and Transfiguration), the piece that he wrote around fifty years ago. There’re always link that connection between the old piece and the new one which represents ‘Strauss’ very clearly.

The piece really shows Strauss’ state of mind in time. For example, the song ‘Frühlings’ which mean ‘spring’ has a very dark opening. But in September, it changes to describe the lives that pass day by day which have lots of emotional change from time to time. Beim Schlafengehen described the way to welcome the ‘sleeping’ (Acceptance). And finally Im Abendrot, the elderly couple rests and enjoy the peaceful place which it might be the ‘afterlife’. This is the way the Strauss use to release his depression through the acceptance of life and death.

As he lay on his deathbed, the composer remarked to his daughter-in-law that dying was just as he had imagined it in Tod und Verklärung. It was only a week before his death that Strauss has a conversation with his friend that: “There is so much I would still have to do—but I believe that some of what I wanted and have begun has fallen on fertile ground.”

One of the last wishes of Strauss was that Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962) to sing this piece

Unfortunately, He died eight months before the premiered Four Last Songs premiered on May 1950

at Royal Robert Hall in London performed by Flagstad the Philharmonia and Wilhelm Furtwängler