Richard Strauss

He made his name in his twenties with a run of tone poems — Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, Also sprach Zarathustra — and nobody has really surpassed his ability to use an orchestra as a narrative instrument. He was also one of the best conductors of his generation.

Salome in 1905 and Elektra in 1909 pushed harmony to the edge of collapse, and then he turned around and wrote Der Rosenkavalier, back to waltzes and tonality; the avant-garde never forgave him for it. His position in Nazi Germany was complicated — briefly president of the Reichsmusikkammer, then forced out over his Jewish daughter-in-law and his collaboration with Stefan Zweig. At eighty-four he wrote the Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra, his farewell to the whole Romantic century.