| Abstract |
This is the first full-scale biography of Richard Strauss--composer of Der Rosenkavalier, Salome, Till Eulenspiegel, Death and Transfiguration and other operatic and symphonic masterpieces--to examine with courage and candor the man behind the music. Strauss composed a self-portrait in Ein Heldenleben ('A hero's life'), but the author finds the life anything but heroic. Strauss composed a Domestic Symphony full of sentiment, but Frau Strauss was unquestionably a shrew. He composed a dashing Don Juan, but Strauss remained almost boringly faithful. The most puzzling enigma of all, however, is how Strauss could have established himself, before the close of World War I, as perhaps the greatest of the late romantics, then written a long succession of lesser, self-imitative works, and finally--in his ninth decade--proved that he was not burnt out after all. For, past eighty, he composed some of the most beautiful of all his works. In exploring this central enigma, the author gives a vivid account of the musical life of the times as well as of the personalities and the political life that impinged closely on the composer's. He explores Strauss's relationship with his musically and socially conservative father; his apprenticeship to the great Hans von Bülow; his brilliant career as a conductor; his lifelong passion for Wagner (whose works he always conducted standing, though for all other music, including his own, he sat!); his relationship with Hugo von Hofmannsthal (who considered himself a great man of letters but lives today only through his librettos for Strauss); his long-enduring marriage to a vulgar ex-soprano; his business acumen (he became a multimillionaire from his royalties); and his relationship with the Nazis. The last story is in some ways the most strange and pitiful of all. For Strauss claimed to be uninvolved in politics and to despise the leaders of the Party. Some of his closest collaborators and friends were Jewish victims of Hitlerism, yet Strauss accepted high office from Goebbels and took posts which other conductors--among them Toscanini--refused under the Nazis. Eventually, when the Nazis turned on him, he abjectly apologized. With great insight and impeccable scholarship, the author draws his narrative portrait, describes the greatest of the works, and illuminates the many facets of his strange subject's character with dozens of instructive and entertaining anecdotes. The picture emerges of a non-hero who was nevertheless a towering genius. |
