With the rise of National Socialism, however, Strauss found himself aesthetically dried up and morally confused. True, at the end of the 19th century, he had been treated as a musical hero for his extroverted post-Wagnerian tone poems like Also sprach Zarathustra and around the turn of the century, he added to his fame by reinventing himself as Germany’s leading (and for a while, most revolutionary) opera composer. Why unexpected? The 1930s had been difficult for the once-acclaimed Strauss. Richard Strauss (1864–1949) wrote the Four Last Songs during the summer of 1948 as the last blossom in an unexpected flowering at the end of his career.
