Richard Strauss was born in Munich, Germany, on June 11, 1864, and died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, on September 8, 1949. The first performance of Don Juan took place in Weimar, Germany, on November 11, 1889, with the composer conducting the Court Orchestra in the Grand Ducal Theater of Weimar. 

Don Juan is scored for three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, glockenspiel, cymbals, suspended cymbal, harp, and strings. Approximate performance time is seventeen minutes.

The legend of Don Juan seems to have originated in the 16th century. The tale of the libertine nobleman who is damned for his numerous seductions and unwillingness to repent has found expression in numerous works. The Austrian poet and philosopher Nikolaus Lenau (1802-50) offered his own perspective in the 1844 poem Don Juan:

"My Don Juan is no hot-blooded man eternally pursuing women. It is the longing in him to find a woman who is to him incarnate womanhood, and to enjoy, in the one, all the women on earth whom he cannot possess as individuals. Because he does not find her, although he reels from one to another, at last Disgust seizes hold of him, and this Disgust is the Devil that fetches him."

When Lenau’s Don Juan is unable to find his womanly ideal, he allows himself to be killed in a duel, exclaiming: “My deadly foe is in my power, and this, too, bores me, as does life itself.”

Richard Strauss was 24 when, in 1888, he first read Lenau’s Don Juan. Strauss quickly began to compose an orchestral tone poem based upon the Lenau work, completing his score in 1889. That same year, Strauss was appointed assistant conductor in Weimar.  On November 11, 1889, the 25-year-old Strauss conducted Don Juan’s triumphant premiere.

Don Juan opens in bracing fashion with an upward orchestral flourish and the strings’ introduction of the vaulting theme associated, throughout the work, with the protagonist. A series of episodes follows that depict the Don’s numerous conquests. 

Just when it appears that Don Juan will conclude in triumph, Strauss reminds us of the hero’s fate, particularly as related in Lenau’s poem. The flurry of activity slams to a halt, with the ensuing troubled repose pierced by the trumpets’ dissonant interjection. Three pianissimo chords seal Don Juan’s demise.