Full Description
Richard Strauss's long life spanned nearly a century, from the consolidation of Wagner's fame in the 1860s to the age of post-serialism and the dawn of electronics when he died in 1949. For 79 of his 85 years he composed - songs, chamber music, a series of brilliant tone-poems, and the great ballets and operas which he created for the legendary stars of Dresden and Vienna. He was also one of the outstanding conductors of his time, dircting opera companies in Weimar, Munich, Berlin, and Vienna. In his youth, Strauss was regarded as the leader of the dissonant avant-garde, but by middle age his refusal to follow in the footsteps of Schoenberg and the modernists led to his being written of as a reactionary. Michael Kennedy challenges this verdict, regarding him as an important figure in the history of the last hundred years of music, misrepresented and misunderstood, particularly in his relationship with the Third Reich, and he contradicts the received opinion that Strauss's genius declined after Der Rosenkavalier. In this new edition, Kennedy has considerably expanded both the biographical section and his discussion of Strauss's music.
