Also sprach Zarathustra

Richard Strauss’ tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (1896) begins with a fanfare that’s become part of pop culture—whether announcing Elvis’ big entrance at Vegas or heralding the dawn of Man in 2001: A Space Odyssey. For Strauss, though, it symbolised sunrise: the start of Nietzsche’s philosophical novel about the mystic Zarathustra and his vision of humanity’s ascent to a higher consciousness. And that brazen sunburst is just the beginning of a 35-minute sonic adventure for large orchestra, inspired not so much by Nietzsche’s philosophy of the Superman as by the intoxicating poetry in which he expressed it. Strauss said that he intended to depict “the evolution of the human race from its origin”, and after the opening sunrise, the music moves through eight linked sections, from the wistful “Of the Backworldsmen” through the surging emotions in “Of the Great Longing” and “Of Joys and Passions”, to the melancholy “Song of the Grave” and the eerie “Of Science”, in which musical ideas rise effortfully from the very bottom of the orchestra in a vast, creaking fugue. “The Convalescent” seizes the light of the opening sunrise and the whole orchestra dances, ecstatic and free, into the euphoric Viennese waltz of “The Dance Song”. After a shattering climax, a midnight bell heralds the “Night Wanderer’s Song”, and the orchestra whispers a final, unanswered question as the light fades.