Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part I Background
- Part II Works
- Part III Perspectives
- 11 Strauss's place in the twentieth century
- 12 Musical quotations and allusions in the works of Richard Strauss
- 13 Strauss in the Third Reich
- 14 Strauss and the business of music
- 15 Kapellmeister Strauss
- 16 Strauss and the sexual body: the erotics of humor, philosophy, and ego-assertion
- 17 Strauss and the nature of music
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
14 - Strauss and the business of music
from Part III - Perspectives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Part I Background
- Part II Works
- Part III Perspectives
- 11 Strauss's place in the twentieth century
- 12 Musical quotations and allusions in the works of Richard Strauss
- 13 Strauss in the Third Reich
- 14 Strauss and the business of music
- 15 Kapellmeister Strauss
- 16 Strauss and the sexual body: the erotics of humor, philosophy, and ego-assertion
- 17 Strauss and the nature of music
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
Many people have thought a love of money the cause of Strauss’s decay …
paul rosenfeld, the dial (february, 1920)Strauss was the first composer to adopt the gesture of the idealized big industrialist.
theodore adornoWith the words of a now forgotten journalist from the composer's own day and the more lasting condemnation by perhaps the twentieth century's most influential music and social critic, we are easily reminded of the image of Richard Strauss as a “money grubber,” which held for much of the last 100 years and only recently has begun to fade. Given a twentieth-century popular culture obsessed with every facet of the lives of celebrities, especially professional athletes, actors, and musicians, it is not surprising that so many people in Strauss's day were curious to know the details of his finances. For several decades – from the mid 1890s to at least the 1920s – he was the undisputed leading figure in serious music for Europe and America. With his audacious tone poems and scandalous operas, he and his music commanded headlines in ways that later composers of art music could only envy.
A longer view of history reveals, however, that Strauss is hardly the first significant composer to be placed in a less-than-flattering light where music and money were connected. In the late Middle Ages, there is evidence of priest-composers angling for multiple benefices, with little work to support themselves. In the Renaissance, Josquin des Prez was known for both his high fees and his lack of deference to his employer's wishes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Richard Strauss , pp. 242 - 256Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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