Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Strauss’s creative process was methodical and angst-free; he compared his need to compose to a cow giving milk. Even in late 1892, when Strauss left Germany to recover from bouts of pleurisy and bronchitis in a warmer climate, he quickly established a regular work schedule. He wrote home from a hotel in Egypt:
My day’s work is very simple; I get up at 8 o’clock, have a bath and breakfast; 3 eggs, tea, “Eingemachtes” [homemade jam]; then I go for a stroll for half an hour by the Nile in the palm grove of the hotel, and work from 10 till 1; the orchestration of the first Act goes forward slowly but surely. At 1 o’clock I have lunch, then read my Schopenhauer or play Bezique with Mrs. Conze for a piastre stake. From 3 till 4 I work on; at 4 o’clock tea, and after that I go for a walk until 6 when I do my duty in admiring the usual sunset. At 6 o’clock it gets cool and dark; then I write letters or work a bit more until 7. At 7 dinner, after which I chat and smoke (8-12 a day), at half past 9 I go to my room, read for half an hour and put out the light at ten. So it goes on day after day.
* Source: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey