This chapter deals with Munich and Garmisch (today Garmisch-Partenkirchen), two central places in the life of Richard Strauss. It focuses not only on the phases during which he lived and worked there, but also the significance of both cities in terms of Strauss today. Munich and Garmisch changed considerably over Strauss's lifetime, which spanned from the reign of Ludwig II and influence of Richard Wagner in Munich to the destruction of World War II and the early post-war period, offers a complex, changeful picture. The chapter focuses on the interpenetration of cultural, social, political, and artistic structures and Strauss's interaction with their representatives. By locating the composer and conductor in different milieus, life and work are to become graspable as part of multi-layered contexts that are characterized by interdependencies as well as tensions and contradictions.

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.