Note 145 — STRAUSS

Alexander Ritter (1833-1896), composer, violinist, conductor (he married a niece of Wagner, an actress, Franziska Wagner), met Strauss at Meiningen in 1885, during the latter's term there as assistant conductor under Hans von Bülow. The acquaintanceship was of vital consequence to Strauss. "Before I knew Ritter," he himself has said, "I had been brought up in a severely classical school. I had been nourished exclusively on Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; and then I became acquainted with Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms. It is only through Ritter that I came to understand Liszt and Wagner.... Ritter was exceptionally well-read in all the philosophers, ancient and modern, and a man of the highest culture. His influence was in the nature of a storm-wind. He urged me on to the development of the poetic, the expressive, in music, as exemplified in the works of Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz."