Luxury-loving as he is,
Strauss has probably never needed money sorely. Some money he
doubtlessly inherited through his mother, the daughter of the Munich
beer-brewer Pschorr; his works have always fetched large prices--his
publishers have paid him as much as a thousand dollars for a single
song; and he has always been able to earn great sums by conducting. No
matter how lofty and severe his art might have become, he would always
have been able to live as he chose. There is no doubt that he would have
earned quite as much money with "Salome" and "Der Rosenkavalier" had
they been works of high, artistic merit as he has earned with them in
their present condition. The truth is that he has rationalized his
unwillingness to go through the labor-pains of creation by pretending to
himself a constant and great need of money, and permitting himself to
dissipate his energies in a hectic, disturbed, shallow existence, in a
tremor of concert-tours, guest-conductorships, money-making enterprises
of all sorts, which leave him about two or three of the summer months
for composition, and probably rob him of his best energies. So works
leave his writing table half-conceived, half-executed. The score of
"Elektra" he permits his publishers to snatch from him before he is
quite finished with it.
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