Fifty years after his death, Richard Strauss remains a towering presence in the international concert and operatic repertoire — a firmly established master who remains ever controversial for the role he played as man and artist in the development of German music: as likely to be admired for the radicalism of his early works as to be dismissed for the supposed conservatism of his later ones. But what does this inescapable figure represent to today's composers? Inspiration, irrelevance or awful warning? Are there still fresh lessons to be learned from Strauss? Can he be seen, in any sense, anew? Here seven composers give an idea of what Strauss means to them, either in general or in terms of a single work. Brian Femeyhough's view of Salome was originally written for BBC Music magazine, and is reprinted from there by their permission, while David Schiffs contribution, also reproduced by kind permission of its original publishers, was originally part of a larger article in the New York Times revaluing 20th-century masters and entitled ‘Measuring the Heroes in Music's Valhal’

Richard Strauss is widely believed to have explored, and perhaps to have developed, a new line in ‘conversational opera’, from Intermezzo (1924) to his last opera Capriccio (1942) – with divergences from the path, admittedly, along the way. Yet lengthy consideration has made me conclude that there was never any such path, nor that Strauss ever tried to follow one.

According to David Fielding's eagerly-awaited, tender-hearted Garsington production of Die Liebe der Danae, Semele, Europa, Alkmene and Leda are ballroom queens. In the beginning, three of their four amours with that master of disguise Zeus/Jupiter bore fruit significant for the ongoing sagas of Greek and Roman mythology: Herakles from the three-night stint of Alkmene and the man she believed to be her husband, Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra out of a single egg laid by swan-seduced Leda, and Dionysus out of the ashes of over-reaching Semele, shrivelled by the sight of her god in all his majesty. The biological imperative was discarded by Hugo von Hofmannsthal – perhaps oddly for one so interested in the child-bearing outcome of his own Frau ohne Schatten myth – as he proposed a new operatic legend for Strauss in 1920. His queens (first three, later four) would be ‘bird-like, vain, forgetful, gossiping about everything’, flitting around in a Zerbinetta-like intermezzo to the main business of Jupiter's quest for Danae's love; the featherlight delicacy of the proposal was beautifully mirrored by Fielding's inspired idea. Taking up his long-deceased poet's suggestion just under two decades later, Strauss, as he neared the end of his operatic career, added a further twist. His god had grown old like himself; and on Jupiter's ever more emotional journey towards the renunciation of the woman Strauss decided would be his last love, Danae, the four close-harmony queens would move from Ariadne-style banter to tender acknowledgement of the ageing process, their apogee a canon of bitter-sweet sentimentality.

With Capriccio – completed in August 1941 although not performed until October 1942 – Strauss told his friend and biographer-elect, the Swiss critic Willi Schuh, ‘my life's work is at an end’. It was an exaggeration, true only so far as his operatic work was concerned. Strauss could not live unless he had some work to occupy him, and in the dark days of 1942, when he was living partly in Garmisch and partly in Vienna and knew himself at the age of 78 to be under surveillance by the Nazi régime, he needed the solace of work more than ever. He diverted himself after Capriccio with the idea of a tone-poem with choral finale about the Danube as a centenary offering to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He filled four note-books with sketches for Die Danau, but he was unable to work up much enthusiasm for it. As he told the orchestra, ‘feeling does not turn itself into melodies as quickly as it did with the great old masters’. He told them he would finish it one day, but he never worked on it again.

This interview was conducted in November 1998 in connexion with a concert in the ‘dal niente’ series at King's College, London. The questions were faxed to Mr Lachenmann in English and he responded with written answers in German. A German-language version of the interview was published in the May 1999 issue of the Swiss contemporary music magazine Dissonanz, with however an important omission in the text of Lachenmann's first answer which is rectified here. I wish to acknowledge David Alberman's assistance with the translation of this English version.

• New Strauss biographies Michael Oliver

• Early Schoenberg Catherine Dale

• Austrian Composers encyclopaedized Martin Anderson

• Composition, Performance, Reception Peter Quinn

• Vaughan Williams in perspective John Shand

• Garsington Opera: ‘Die Liebe der Danae’ Martin Anderson

• Salzburg: Berio's ‘Cronaca del luogo’ Graham Lack

• University of Herts: Andrew Hugill's ‘Island Symphony’ Jill Barlow

• Manchester: Anthony Gilbert Richard Leigh-Harris

• Skalkottas and other Greeks Guy Rickards

• Recent Jacob Druckman discs Bret Johnson

• Takemitsu Peter Quinn

• Song-cycles by Krenek and others Peter Palmer

• Egon Wellesz Guy Rickards

• Frederick Rzewski John Pickard

• Ullmann's Lieder Tristan Pugin

• Degeneration, Regeneration (‘Entartete Musik’) Martin Anderson

• Spectrum 1 and 2 Nicholas Hodges

• Johann Matthias Hauer Guy Rickards

• British Women Composers Guy Rickards

• Czeslaw Marek Vocal Works Peter Palme