It is hardly surprising, given Gustav Mahler’s conservative disposition toward literature, that studies of his reception among writers have only marginally featured in an otherwise remarkably wide and sophisticated spectrum of critical engagements with the composer. The poets he set to music were inevitably older figures, usually folk-influenced, and he gave fin-de-siècle Vienna’s vibrant literary scene of coffeehouse intellectuals and salonnières (Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Bahr, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, et al.) a comfortably wide berth. Nonetheless, important examples of his influence on subsequent writers do exist, first among them Thomas Mann, who based the name and physical description of the central character of his 1912 novella Death in Venice, Gustav von Aschenbach, on Mahler. This and subsequent cases are reviewed here, among them Stefan Zweig, Kurt Frieberger, Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Rosegger, and others from the very recent past.

Composers have long engaged with texts, but the extent to which they have consciously constructed a literary cosmos around their work and private lives has radically changed over the last two centuries. For modern composers, it has been increasingly common to read not merely to enrich intellectual horizons or scour for musically settable material, but as a means to tap into a reservoir through which the reception of their music can add a layer of cultural legitimation. Viewed against this wider context, the extensive library that Strauss collected, read, and selectively presented to audiences in various musical formats symbolizes neither the physical legacy of a lifelong bibliophile (Brahms) nor the quiet spiritual refuge of a well-heeled bourgeois (Elgar). Rather, it constitutes the material footprint of an intellectual disposition toward the world that stems from a deeper-held set of beliefs about the cultural mission of literature in Western European history.

Political, social, technical, and cultural changes formed the context when Strauss composed a large part of his Lieder oeuvre between 1887 and 1906. The Liederabend had been established as a new concert format in the 1870s, shifting the genre’s performance environment from the private salon to the public stage, a development not without consequences for the genre itself. Strauss developed a personal style that clearly distinguished him from contemporaries such as Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler, or Max Reger. Seemingly untouched by the changes of his time at first glance, Strauss nevertheless reflected current affairs in some of his Lieder. This is true in particular for the year 1918, the last year of World War I, when Strauss took up composing Lieder after a twelve-year hiatus. When the aged composer later reflected upon his role in his construction of musical and cultural history, the Lied played a significant part within this process of self-affirmation.

A survey of dissertations on Strauss reveals trends that emerged over time in terms of topics and methodologies that captured the interest of emerging scholars as well as the geographic locations and eras that produced the most research. Yet Strauss scholarship is not merely defined by the issues it addresses and questions it puts forward, but also by those it ignores or unwittingly pushes to the margins of discussion. After assessing the past, this chapter proposes topics and approaches largely absent in existing Strauss scholarship, many of which have been more thoroughly explored in related fields. While far from comprehensive, this discussion points to potentially fruitful paths for future research: the Lieder, his influence on contemporaries, his role as Kapellmeister and administrator, his material possessions, and his relationships with figures trusted to construct his legacy.

This chapter deals with Pauline Strauss-de Ahna as a singer and as the wife of a prominent composer and conductor. Her professional career from its beginnings at Munich’s Royal Conservatory and her period of instruction as a pupil of Richard Strauss and Emilie Merian-Genast to her engagements at the opera stages, primarily of Weimar, Munich, and the Bayreuth Festival, is traced and contextualized within the typical structures of professional female singers. Special focus is on the question of how women were able to negotiate the role of a public performer on the one hand and that of a middle-class wife and mother on the other around 1900. Select reviews of her performances help profile her voice and repertory as an opera singer. The chapter also surveys her national and international activities as a Lied singer and examines the "bourgeois comedy" Intermezzo of 1924 with regard to the public image Richard Strauss staged of his wife and marriage.