Richard Strauss’s contacts with Vienna spanned more than six decades, from the time of his brief stint as a university student in 1882 through the Allied air campaigns of 1944. This chapter focuses on the city of Vienna during the period of Strauss’s tenure as codirector of the State Opera from 1919–24, years defined by the founding of the First Austrian Republic and policies instituted by the Municipal Council in response to ongoing economic turmoil. While the situation was less dire than in Berlin, Vienna was nonetheless a city in crisis when Strauss arrived in early December 1919. Examination of “Red Vienna,” named for initiatives of the ruling Social Democratic Party, serves as context for the cultural life in which he participated as a well-respected and well-paid musical celebrity. Attention then shifts to Strauss’s life and work in Vienna with an emphasis on the institutions and figures comprising his private and professional orbit.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Strauss served at the helm of the oldest and most successful German society dedicated to the performance of new music, the General German Music Society (Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein). The chapter examines Strauss’s contribution to the organization’s revival at a time of decline for the ADMV, as he gazed back at founder Liszt’s legacy and looked to the future through his own music and the work of Mahler, among others. His activity is positioned within the context of affiliated composers and dominant issues throughout the ADMV’s seventy-five-year history, from its establishment by Liszt and Franz Brendel through its dissolution under the Third Reich. This essay lays bare the society’s struggles over German identity, musical modernism, and reactionary politics while recognizing its role in promoting the careers of such important figures as Mahler, Reger, and Schoenberg.

This chapter examines the profession of music composition during Strauss’s lifetime, noting his success relative to that of his contemporaries while highlighting the many professional difficulties and economic hardships faced by aspiring and established composers alike during the period. Limited performance opportunities, unfavorable publishing and copyright terms, disappearing avenues of patronage, and a lack of standardized credentialing processes or conservatory curricula for composers all contributed to a rather bleak state of affairs for the average composer. The figure of the composer was a complex one during Strauss’s long life, trapped between the nineteenth-century ideal of unfettered inspiration and the often-ugly economic and social reality of the twentieth. Led by Strauss, German composers sought to professionalize their discipline – albeit largely unsuccessfully – seeking reforms in music publishing, copyright, and music education that would place them on a more secure economic footing.