Richard Strauss is now beyond question the most prominent figure among the younger composers of Germany. He was born at Munich in 1864. At an early age he mastered the various arts of composition and produced works that showed originality and power. Among such early works may be mentioned a String Quartet produced in 1881, and a Symphony first heard in the following year. Within a few years he also composed a Sonata for 'cello, a Serenade for wind instruments, a Concerto for violin, a Concerto for horn, besides songs and pianoforte pieces. These early works show the influence of classical models, and in three cases--the Sonata for 'cello and the Concertos for violin and horn respectively--the influence of Mendelssohn. At a later period Richard Strauss became a disciple of the Wagner-Liszt school and adopted the Symphonic Poem as his principal medium of expression. His fine Sonata in E flat for pianoforte and violin marks the transition stage. In his later phase Strauss appears as a psychologist and an _esprit fin_. His study of Nietzsche's philosophy appears not only in his "Zarathustra," but in nearly all his "Symphonic Poems." The "Heldenleben" might quite well be labelled with the Nietzschian expression "Der Uebermensch." Strauss thus seems to stand to Nietzsche in something like the relation that Wagner bore to Schopenhauer, and it is a curious point that in each case the musician is found diverging somewhat violently from the taste of his philosophical master. These two philosophers--the only two that have taken a genuine interest in modern music--had both somewhat rudimentary musical taste, though good taste as far as it went. Schopenhauer's preference was for Rossini and Nietzsche's for Bizet, and even as Wagner's style differs _toto coelo_ from Rossini's, so do Strauss's incredible richness of imaginative detail and indifference to rhythmical charm stamp him as something very different from those "Halcyonian" composers whom Nietzsche loved. Strauss is not likely to become popular in England, but two or three of his larger orchestral works, and especially the "Heldenleben," would probably find favour with a section of the English public. To the mandarins and to the majority he is and must remain anathema.