The Life Of Richard Strauss

Bryan Gilliam

Richard Strauss saw an empire come and go, survived two world wars, witnessed the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic, endured the period of National Socialism, and died the year that Germany was officially divided into two separate states. All the while he enjoyed a successful career as composer, as conductor of international stature, as organizer for the rights of composers, and as colleague of and collaborator with some of the most important composers, writers, and artists of his day. This biography covers Strauss’s early musical development, his emergence as a tone poet in the late nineteenth century, his turn to the stage at the beginning of the twentieth century, the successes and failures of the post-World War I era, the turbulent 1930s, and the period of the Second World War and its aftermath.

Bibliographic Details

18 b/w illus.

Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Musical development and early career
• 2. Onward and away to ever-new victories: Strausss emergence as a tone poet
• 3. The rise of an opera composer
• 4. Between two empires: Strauss in the 1920s
• 5. After Hofmannsthal: personal and political crises
• 6. Now the day has made me tired: the War and its aftermath.