Richard Strauss
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50 free Richard Strauss trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Richard Strauss lived from the 1860s to the dawn of the jet age, and his music changed with the times. He made his name in his twenties with orchestral tone poems that told stories in sound, then shocked and delighted opera houses for another forty years. Even people who have never set foot in a concert hall know one of his fanfares. This quiz collects the fun facts behind the music: the family he came from, the mentors and rivals who shaped him, the writers he worked with, and the odd jobs and commissions that came his way. It also covers the hardest chapter of his life, the years he spent working under the Nazi regime while trying to keep his family safe. The questions start with the stories most people can guess at and move on to details for opera and orchestra fans. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the quiz works for a music class, a pub round or your own curiosity.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1968 science-fiction film made the opening fanfare of Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra world famous?
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey kept the fanfare from Stanley Kubrick's temporary soundtrack. Alex North, whose commissioned score was dropped, only found out when he watched the premiere.
Q 02Richard Strauss was no relation to Vienna's Strauss dynasty, whose Johann II wrote which famous waltz?
The Blue Danube
The Blue Danube came from Johann Strauss II, Vienna's Waltz King and no relation. Richard still tipped his hat to that laughing genius of Vienna in the waltzes of Der Rosenkavalier.
Q 03Which rock and roll star took the stage to Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra fanfare throughout the 1970s?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley used the fanfare as his entrance music at live shows from 1971 to 1977. The wrestler Ric Flair later walked to the ring to it for most of a 50-year career.
Q 04Richard Strauss's mother, Josephine Pschorr, came from a Munich family that grew rich making which product?
Beer
Beer made the Pschorrs wealthy, and the name lives on in Hacker-Pschorr, one of the six Munich breweries that pour at Oktoberfest.
Q 05A Karajan recording of Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony was used for the first test pressing of which format?
Compact disc
Compact disc developers pressed their first trial disc from his December 1980 Berlin recording. Herbert von Karajan had been signed up as an ambassador for the new format the year before.
Q 06Which sporting event opened in 1936 with a hymn that Richard Strauss both composed and conducted?
Summer Olympics
Summer Olympics organisers in Berlin had him conduct the hymn himself, with a chorus of a thousand singers dressed in white, moments after thousands of white pigeons were released.
Q 07In Richard Strauss's opera Salome, whose severed head does the princess demand on a silver platter?
John the Baptist
John the Baptist, called Jochanaan in the opera, has refused her a kiss. She takes it from the severed head in a final scene that shocked audiences at the 1905 premiere.
Q 08Which Irish writer's scandalous French-language play did Richard Strauss turn into his opera Salome?
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde wrote Salomé in French in 1891. Strauss set a German translation of it, trimming the text himself until almost half of the play was gone.
Q 09An American soldier who visited Richard Strauss in 1945 asked him to write a concerto for which instrument?
Oboe
Oboe player John de Lancie, a corporal who led the section in Pittsburgh in civilian life, put the question and got a flat no. Strauss finished the concerto that autumn anyway.
Q 10Richard Strauss took the title Also sprach Zarathustra from a book by which German philosopher?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche published Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the 1880s. Strauss named the nine sections of his 1896 tone poem after chapters of the book.
Q 11What does the princess perform for King Herod in Richard Strauss's opera Salome?
Dance of the Seven Veils
Dance of the Seven Veils so alarmed Marie Wittich, the first Salome, that she refused to perform it. A dancer had to stand in for her at the 1905 premiere.
Q 12Richard Strauss's father, Franz, was for over 40 years the Munich court opera's principal player of which instrument?
Horn
Horn playing by Franz Strauss disarmed even a famous composer he openly disliked, who called him a detestable fellow but admitted nobody could sulk once he started to blow.
Q 13Richard Strauss's father played in the first Parsifal yet forbade his son to study which composer's music?
Wagner
Q 21Which Nazi leader, privately called a pipsqueak by Richard Strauss, made him head of the Reich Music Chamber?
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels made the appointment in 1933 without asking him first. In his own diary he called Strauss a decadent neurotic whom the regime still needed for the time being.
Q 22Richard Strauss's dealings with the Nazi regime were driven partly by the need to protect which Jewish family member?
His daughter-in-law
His daughter-in-law Alice, who married his only son in 1924, and her two boys were in danger under Nazi race laws. His influence kept all three out of the concentration camps.
Q 23In 1940 Richard Strauss wrote festival music for the 2,600th anniversary of which country's imperial dynasty?
Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion in the Strauss home, and Richard was 16 before he got hold of a score of Tristan und Isolde. He later said he regretted the family hostility.
Q 14Which prankster of German folklore, hanged near the end, is the hero of an 1895 Richard Strauss tone poem?
Till Eulenspiegel
Till Eulenspiegel goes to the gallows as a clarinet wails his last scream and plucked strings snap his neck. Then the once-upon-a-time opening returns, as if he could never be destroyed.
Q 15Which legendary seducer is the hero of the 1889 tone poem that made Richard Strauss famous at 25?
Don Juan
Don Juan ends quietly rather than in triumph. In the poem Strauss followed, the hero tires of the chase, drops his guard in a duel and lets his opponent run him through.
Q 16In Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, which solo instrument plays the part of the deluded knight himself?
Cello
Cello soloists carry the knight through a set of variations lasting about 45 minutes. A solo viola, tenor tuba and bass clarinet share the part of his squire, Sancho Panza.
Q 17In Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, flutter-tongued brass imitate which animals that the knight mistakes for an army?
Sheep
Sheep bleat in the second variation through flutter-tonguing, one of the earliest uses of the brass effect. In the novel the knight charges the flock, sure it is an emperor's army.
Q 18In Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, the young count Octavian is a male role written for which voice?
Mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano Octavian is a breeches role: a woman plays the 17-year-old lover, who then spends part of the opera disguised as a maid. All three leads are sung by women.
Q 19Which poet and playwright wrote the librettos of six Richard Strauss operas, among them Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier?
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo von Hofmannsthal began with Elektra and ended with Arabella, their sixth and last opera together. He died of a stroke while dressing for his elder son's funeral.
Q 20Richard Strauss lost his official Nazi-era post in 1935 after insisting which Jewish writer be credited as librettist?
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig wrote the comedy Die schweigsame Frau for him. The Gestapo intercepted a letter in which Strauss criticised the regime, and the opera was banned after three performances.
Japan
Japan commissioned pieces from composers of six nations for the celebration. Strauss scored his for 14 tuned temple gongs, while Benjamin Britten's offering was rejected as an insult.
Q 24Richard Strauss's 1924 ballet Schlagobers, set in a Viennese cake shop, is named after which sweet treat?
Whipped cream
Whipped cream is Schlagobers in Viennese German. In the ballet a boy overindulges after his confirmation and hallucinates marching marzipan, amorous liqueurs and a riot of cakes.
Q 25After Der Rosenkavalier triumphed in Dresden in 1911, what was laid on from Berlin for eager opera-goers?
A special train
A special train carried Berliners to Dresden for the Richard Strauss hit. The craze spread further: a brand of cigarettes took the opera's name and costumed rose-bearers rode in a carnival parade.
Q 26Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier is set in 1740s Vienna, early in the reign of which empress?
Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa had only just come to the throne in the opera's Vienna, decades before the waltz arrived there. Strauss filled the score with waltzes anyway, for nostalgia rather than accuracy.
Q 27In which Bavarian Alpine resort did Richard Strauss build a villa with his Salome earnings and live until his death?
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is where American troops found him in April 1945. He came downstairs, introduced himself as the composer of Rosenkavalier, and an Off Limits sign went up on his lawn.
Q 28In which Austrian city did Richard Strauss help to found a festival in 1920 with the director Max Reinhardt?
Salzburg
Salzburg saw the festival's first opera in 1922, Mozart's Don Giovanni with Strauss conducting. The opening event two years earlier was a play staged on the cathedral steps.
Q 29Which card game did Richard Strauss love so much that he wrote a hand of it into one of his operas?
Skat
Skat, Germany's national card game, was a passion that lasted his whole life. In the opera, the hero is in mid-game when a telegram arrives from his furious wife.
Q 30Which conductor, won over by a wind serenade Richard Strauss wrote as a schoolboy, gave him his first conducting job?
Hans von Bülow
Hans von Bülow was unimpressed at first, then made the young composer his assistant at Meiningen. Strauss learned by watching him rehearse and called him his greatest conducting mentor.