His early lyric poems, written under his own name, have important gay references in them
What? Strauss is a composer known for his devotion to the female voice and a who used his own family life as the subject for his work. In 1897 Strauss wrote Vier Lieder Op. 27 as a wedding gift for his wife. The songs include Morgen and Heimlich Aufforderung, songs which have been beloved of sopranos ever since. The opening of Morgen with its long violin melody which is taken up by the soprano is just about perfect. Except of course that Strauss originally wrote it for piano, and when he recorded it himself (which he did twice) he used a male voice. Now, I once heard Dietrich Fischer Dieskau sing the song and frankly, was not completely convinced. So what is going on?
Well, for a start the words of Morgen and Heimlich Aufforderung are by John Henry Mackay. A poet and writer who was born in Scotland of a Scots father and German mother but from the age of two was taken back to Germany by his mother. Mackay was what we would call nowadays a gay activist, but such terms are anachronistic. He was an anarchist, but also wrote important early gay texts under his own name and under his pseudonym. But the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was not founded till 1903, well after Mackay wrote his lyric poems.
It was two of these that Strauss chose to set. Continue reading “So where does gay sensibility come in?”