Richard Strauss. Michael Kennedy. 1976.

Richard Strauss’s life was rich in controversy: the ‘outrage’ caused by the operas Salome and Electra, the stormy years after the First World War, when he was director of the Vienna Opera and, finally, the twelve years of the Nazi regime. His fascinating relationship with Hugo von Hofmannsthal is a main theme of the book.

The biographical chapters are followed by a critical appreciation of Strauss’s music. Mr Kennedy demurs from the generally accepted belief that Strauss’s genius sharply declined in his middle years, and traces the gradual changes and refinements of style from the early 1920s. Among the five appendices are a complete classified list of works, a calendar in which significant contemporary musical events are pinpointed and a list of themself-quotations in the tone-poem Ein Heldenleben.