In her study of the eighteenth-century origins of ballets d'action, Susan Leigh Foster evoked the sculptor as he pines for Pygmalion, comparing this image to “the resurrection of [the] dancing body” that is the task of the dance historian (or of a music historian who studies dance). Indeed, this rich history is generated by dancing and dancers, “the body swayed to music, the brightening glance that the composers themselves witnessed in the course of everyday life and plowed into kinetic memory,” as Marian Smith put it. It is these memories—of Strauss, of his collaborators, and of his contemporaries—that form the foundation of this book, and that I have drawn on in an attempt to recapture and understand this composer's ballet collaborations.

Still, my intention was not to author a definitive study of Strauss's ballets, assuming that such a thing is possible or even desirable. As I ventured to propose at the outset of this book, the material explored herein invites opportunities for further study of music in the context of dance. Regarding Strauss, his ballet collaborations might lend deeper insight into the compositional process, reception, and historical-cultural context of his music, and music by other composers, too.