Richard Strauss's "Don Juan"

The literary hero Don Juan has been portrayed by several playwrights and composers over the last few centuries. Among the works created on this subject is Richard Strauss's symphonic tone poem Don Juan. This work is one among several of Strauss's programmatic pieces. Although the work did not have a specific program written out for it, Strauss employed programmatic techniques to create the personalities of the characters in the legend. The means Strauss used to …

…Strauss composed several programmatic pieces with no formal program ever written for them. He was considered by several great musicians to be a genius at portraying these vivid pictures through music without many, or no words. Programmatic music is an important composition type that allows a story to be unfolded before the listener. A composer who can tell a story through these techniques like Strauss is a genius of two arts, musical composition and storytelling.