Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30

Program notes

About the Work

Richard Strauss was thirty-two when he wrote Also sprach Zarathustra, and already the most talked-about composer in Germany. His earlier tone poems, Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration and Till Eulenspiegel, had made his name as a master of the modern orchestra. With Zarathustra, completed in 1896 and first performed in Frankfurt on 27 November of that year under the composer’s own direction, he took on something far more ambitious: Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical prose-poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85), in which the ancient Persian prophet comes down from his mountain to preach the coming of the Übermensch, the “superman” who will go beyond the old morality.

Strauss was careful to say that he had not set out to write philosophy in music. The title page reads “tone poem, freely after Friedrich Nietzsche”, and he later explained that he had meant “to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman”. The score is divided into nine sections, most of them headed with chapter titles from Nietzsche’s book: “Of the Backworldsmen”, “Of the Great Longing”, “Of Joys and Passions”, “The Song of the Grave”, “Of Science”, “The Convalescent”, “The Dance Song” and “The Night Wanderer’s Song”.

The work is built on a basic conflict between two keys. C major, the key of the famous opening sunrise, represents nature, the elemental world; B major and B minor, a semitone away and about as remote as keys can be from C, represent humanity and its striving. The whole piece plays out the tension between them, and Strauss refuses to resolve it: the last bars famously leave the two keys hanging side by side.

The orchestra is enormous, with quadruple woodwind, six horns, four trumpets, organ, two harps and bells, and Strauss uses it with extraordinary imagination, from the thunderous unisons of the sunrise to the thin, eerie fugue of “Of Science”, to the Viennese waltz that erupts in “The Dance Song”, led by a solo violin. That opening, of course, became one of the most recognisable pieces of music in the world after Stanley Kubrick used it in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The remaining half hour is less well known and much stranger, and hearing it after the Brahms, a work that also wrestles with the heaviest questions, is the best way to understand why Zarathustra is far more than its first ninety seconds.

What to Listen For

Introduction (Sunrise). It begins almost below hearing: a low C held by the organ pedal, contrabassoon and double basses, with a faint rumble on the bass drum. Then four trumpets rise through C–G–C, the “nature” motif, answered by a major and then a minor chord from the full orchestra and pounding timpani. Listen for the third statement, which reaches a blazing C major, crowned by the organ.

Of the Backworldsmen / Of the Great Longing. The mood changes completely. Muted cellos and basses murmur in B minor, and horns intone a fragment of plainchant (Credo in unum Deum): these are the “backworldsmen”, people who seek consolation in another world. The divided strings then spread out into a warm, lush hymn in A-flat. In “The Great Longing” listen for the orchestra pulling against that religious calm: the organ sounds a Magnificat, but the strings surge away from it.

Of Joys and Passions / The Song of the Grave. Passionate, restless music with a vehement trombone figure (sometimes called the “disgust” motif), which then dissolves into the funereal “Song of the Grave”, led by oboe and a solo violin.

Of Science. One of the most remarkable passages Strauss ever wrote: a slow fugue begun by the low strings, whose subject uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. It is dry, grey, deliberately learned music, science as cold reason. Listen for how it gradually breaks down.

The Convalescent. The fugue gathers into a furious climax and a shattering return of the nature motif, followed by a long general pause. Zarathustra recovers slowly; listen for the chattering woodwinds, trumpets and a kind of laughter in the orchestra as he regains strength.

The Dance Song. A solo violin leads off a lilting, slightly tipsy Viennese waltz, Strauss’s image of the liberated “dancing” spirit that Nietzsche celebrates. It grows into a whirling orgy of sound.

The Night Wanderer’s Song. At the height of the dance a single bell starts to strike midnight: twelve strokes, as the music collapses. What follows is a quiet, glowing epilogue in B major, with high violins and woodwinds floating ever upward. But listen to the very end: while the high instruments hold a soft B major chord, the cellos and basses pluck a low C, three times. Nature and humanity are left unreconciled. It is one of the most famous question marks in music.