Author Description

This first publication on their correspondence, which includes twenty-five previously unknown Strauss letters, offers a portrait of two men who were as antithetical in their musical means and goals as in their temperaments and personalities, but who exercised a strong fascination for one another. They present Mahler's energetic support of Strauss's Symphonia Domestica, which Mahler conducted in 1904, and, in turn, Strauss's championing of Mahler's music, especially the Second and Third Symphonies. These letters - sixty-three by Mahler and twenty-eight by Strauss - show both composers advancing in their careers as they battled against adverse conditions in the musical world at the turn of the century. The collection is fully annotated and is supplemented with a major essay by Herta Blaukopf which puts the Mahler/Strauss relationship in historical perspective.