Richard Strauss, Die Moderne, and the Concept of Stilkunst

Although Richard Strauss was viewed as the main exponent of modern music for almost two decades between 1890 and 1910, the contrast between his musical language and that of the emerging avant-garde caused almost all of the composer's oeuvre to be retroactively inscribed into music history as late romanticism. Kristiansen proposes an adaptation of the term Stilkunst to describe Strauss's use of multiple styles both between and within works which represent his musical response to die Moderne or the psychological movement of the era.