Richard Strauss at 150 …

… Boorish, venal but brilliant | Standpoint.

Death, he would say on his deathbed, "is just as I composed it in ‘Death and Transfiguration'". Strauss was a man who gave much and learned little. If he had emotional or intellectual depths they remain, after many biographies, well hidden.

I confess to being partial to artists whose lives are undramatic.