Richard Strauss, by Matthew Boyden. 1999, Northeastern Univ. Press, 448 pp., 18 photos, index. Hardcover BK #10  US$29.95 "Strauss (1864-1949), the last great composer in a German line reaching back centuries, was an extraordinary mixture of the poetic (creating music of great beauty and technical sophistication right into his 84th year) and the prosaic (regarding his work strictly as a business, for which he expected to be—and was—paid remarkably well). He also came from a long anti-Semitic tradition that his closeness to the Wagner family in Bayreuth did nothing to diminish—and that made the Nazi assault on the Jews late in his life entirely palatable to him (only when a valued colleague like his sometime librettist Stefan Zweig was involved did he raise a murmur of protest). He also had, in the singer Pauline de Ahna, one of the most vixenish wives with whom a great man was ever saddled, though Strauss always insisted her pugnaciousness and public bullying were good for him. Boyden, an English record producer and writer, has worked particularly hard to place Strauss in his cultural context, rightly seeing in him not the musical innovator many of his contemporaries praised but rather a deeply conservative artist with an extraordinary flair for crowd-pleasing melody and effects. As Boyden acutely observes, Strauss can be seen as the progenitor of much of the bombastic music that thunders from our movie screens today. Was he guilty of Nazi collaboration, a subject on which most biographers have given him the benefit of some doubt? Yes, declares Boyden unequivocally, as protection for his wealth and the continuing performance of his music in a land, and a tradition, he had loved all too well."—Publishers Weekly "An unflattering portrait of Germany's most popular modern classical composer, mitigated by hearty appreciation for his musical genius. "Richard Strauss (1864-1949) aspired to follow in the mighty footsteps of Beethoven and Wagner, and this forthright promoter of 'New German' music certainly equaled the former in arrogance and the latter in distasteful (though decidedly intermittent) anti-Semitism. Best known today for the opening chords of 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' (brilliant or bombastic, depending on whom you ask) and several of the very few canonical 20th-century operas (most notably Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, and Ariadne auf Naxos), Strauss won early as a conductor as well as a composer, English music producer and editor. Boyden offers an especially juicy depiction of the rancid infighting in Greater Germany's musical capitals, from Berlin to Vienna, where the young artist made his name while undercutting ostensible friends like Gustav Mahler. The author also convincingly argues that, despite his reputation for shocking subjects and aggressively 'modern' scores, Strauss was in fact the last of 19thcentury romantics, 'an end, not a beginning' (though Boyden also makes a nice case for Rosenkavalier and Ariadne as postmodern works of pastiche and irony). Strauss emerges in this biography as self-absorbed and selfish, the musician-as-businessman more concerned with success than artistic integrity, unable to understand those less effortlessly populist than he. His collaboration with the Nazis, to whom he handed priceless propaganda opportunities by remaining in Germany and even substituting for conductors dismissed for political reasons, is evaluated by Boyden as more a matter of willed blindness than active evil, but nonetheless shameful. Although the author retains his admiration for Strauss as 'one of the great test composers in the history of Western music,' his solid but not especially vivid descriptions of the music may not convince all readers of this claim's justice. "Judicious, well-balanced, and thoughtfully argued, though its readability would be enhanced by a little more passion either for or against the unpleasant Herr Strauss."—Kirkus Reviews

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