Also sprach Zarathustra, Tone poem for large orchestra, free after Nietzsche, Opus 30
Richard Georg Strauss was born in Munich, Germany, on June 11, 1864, and died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, on September 8, 1949. He began the composition of Also sprach Zarathustra in Munich on February 4, 1896, and completed it on August 24. Strauss himself conducted the Municipal Orchestra of Frankfurt-am-Main in the first performance on November 27, 1896.
The score of Also sprach Zarathustra calls for 1 piccolo, 3 flutes (3rd doubling 2nd piccolo), 3 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, and bass clarinet, 3 bassoons and contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 bass tubas, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, orchestral bells, a deep bell, 2 harps, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
Surely no major philosopher has ever had a closer relationship to music and musicians than Friedrich Nietzsche, and no work of philosophy has inspired more musical compositions than his Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spake Zarathustra). Nietzsche was an excellent pianist and an amateur composer as well, having turned out a fair number of choral works both sacred and secular, songs, and piano pieces by his thirtieth year. And even as late as 1887, when he was forty-three, he published a work for chorus and orchestra entitled Hymnus an das Leben (Hymn to Life) to a text by the woman he once hoped to marry, Lou von Salome. But the central experience in his musical life, reflected in his writings ever after, was his acquaintance with Wagner, whose music at first overwhelmed him totally, to such an extent that he turned the end of his first book, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872), which had begun as a study of the ritual origin of Greek tragedy, into a paean to Wagner’s work. Gradually, though, he became disillusioned with Wagner and eventually turned into one of his most outspoken opponents. But in addition to being drawn to some of the musical questions of the day, at least as they reflected his own concerns, Nietzsche was also a source for music in others. His best-known work, Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-85), served as the basis for songs by Schoenberg, Delius, Medtner, and Taneyev, as well as larger works by Mahler (Third Symphony), Delius (A Mass of Life), and Strauss, not to mention such lesser-known composers as Diepenbrock, Rezniˇcek, Peterson-Berger, Campo, and Ingenhoven.
Also sprach Zarathustra has an unusually poetic text for a work of philosophy, loosely narrative in character, filled with extraordinary imagery and wordplay. It consists of four parts containing some eighty short sections, each recording the (invented) sayings of Zarathustra (“Zoroaster” to the Greeks) covering all sorts of diverse topics; each section ends with the formula “Also sprach Zarathustra” (“Thus spake Zarathustra”). From the beginning, Zarathustra speaks of the death of God and man’s need to overcome himself, to become the “Übermensch,” to break out of the inertia and cultural conditioning that is so much a part of life that it is considered “human nature.”
(Nietzsche used the German word “Übermensch” for his notion of the elevated being who overcomes the finitude of this life, not through brute power but rather (as the root word “Mensch” implies) through attaining a superiority in those characteristics that are uniquely human. Shaw’s Man and Superman popularized an alternative translation of the term, but these days it is too closely associated in our minds with comic book heroes to be of use when discussing Nietzsche or his ideas.)
Strauss became acquainted with Nietzsche’s work while reading in preparation for work on his first opera, Guntram. What interested him most of all was the philosopher’s criticism of the established church and ultimately of all conventional religion. Strauss was the last composer who could be called an intellectual, but he made the courageous decision to attempt to deal with Nietzsche’s philosophical ruminations as a symphonic poem. Perhaps he was attracted by the beauty of the language in the poem, of which Nietzsche himself said (in his Ecce Homo) that it might well be considered a musical composition. But it is one thing to regard a poetic text as being “musical” in some metaphorical sense and quite another to compose music about it.
Strauss’s approach avoided what is perhaps the fundamental notion of Nietzsche’s philosophy—that the same events will recur eternally on a grand scale—even though that might have lent itself perfectly to a gigantic rondo. He chose, instead, one particular theme of the work, which he described after the first Berlin performance: “I did not intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s great work musically. I meant rather 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 Übermensch.”
For a musical setting of his plan, Strauss conceived one enormous movement that has little in common with the traditional musical forms which, however extended, had been the framework behind such earlier works as Don Juan (an extended sonata) or Till Eulenspiegel (a free rondo). For Zarathustra, Strauss selected a limited number of section titles from Nietzsche’s work and arranged them in a way that made possible musical variety and development of material, quite unconcerned that they were presented in an order quite different from the philosopher’s: Strauss was, after all, creating a work of music and seeking particularly musical means to express the main idea.
The most important of the unifying musical ideas—it comes up again and again—is the use of two keys, C and B, whose tonic notes are as close together as they can be melodically, though harmonically they are very far apart, to represent the natural world on the one hand and the inquiring spirit of man on the other. Time and again these two tonalities will be heard in close succession—or, indeed, even simultaneously. This frequent pairing helps justify the very ending of the work, which has been hotly debated since the first performance.
At the head of the score Strauss printed the opening lines of Nietzsche’s prologue, in which Zarathustra observes the sunrise and announces his decision to descend to the world of mankind from the lonely spot high up in the mountains where he has passed ten years. The opening of the tone poem is a magnificent evocation of the primeval Sunrise, with an important three-note rising figure in the trumpets representing Nature and the most glorious possible cadence in C (alternating major and minor at first before closing solidly in the major). That trumpet theme is the single most important melodic motive of the work.
Immediately there is a drastic change of mood to the section entitled Von den Hinterweltlern (“On the Afterworldly”), the most primitive state of man, which is, to Nietzsche, the condition of those who put their faith in an afterlife rather than seek fulfillment in this life. Gloomy, insubstantial phrases soon introduce an important new theme (heard here in B minor) leaping up, pizzicato, in cellos and basses; this theme is used throughout to depict man’s inquiring mind. Strauss satirizes those inquiries that lead to religion by quoting the opening phrase of the plainsong Credo in the horns and moves into a lush passage of conventional sweetness for the strings divided into sixteen parts.
This leads into Von der grossen Sehnsucht (“On the Great Longing”), a passage that appears much later in Nietzsche’s book; but its title was so apt for Strauss’s plan—to depict man’s yearning to move beyond ignorance and superstition—that he uses it at this point. The section is developmental in character, combining the B minor “inquiring mind” motive with the C major “Nature” motive, while casting further aspersions at religion by quoting the Magnificat melody as well as the Credo. A vigorous new figure rushes up from the depths of the orchestra, gradually overpowering everything else. With a harp glissando it sweeps into Von den Freuden- und Leidenschaften (“Of Pleasures and Passions”). This section, in C minor, links man’s sensual life with Nature (through the key relationship) rather than his spirit. It introduces a passionate new theme followed by an important motive blared out by trombones and heard frequently thereafter, sometimes identified as the theme of “satiety,” representing the protest of those higher elements of spirit against such indulgence. This theme has elements related harmonically to both keys, C and B, and therefore plays an important part in the proceedings. A development of this material, Das Grablied (“The Tomb Song”), follows immediately in B minor and related keys.
It dies away into the depths as cellos and basses begin a passage in strict imitation labeled Von der Wissenschaft (“On Science”). What could be more scientific than a fugue? And this one begins with the notes of the Nature theme, in C, followed immediately by the three notes of the B minor triad, then continuing to all the remaining pitches of the chromatic scale. The imitations work the tonality around to B minor again, and a new developmental section gets underway, climaxing in Der Genesende (“The Convalescent”), in which vigorous statements of the fugue theme, beginning in the bass, intertwine with the “satiety” theme, leading finally to a powerful C major triple-forte for full orchestra, breaking off into pregnant silence. The next chord? B minor, bringing in an extended new development of several of the major ideas, treated with extraordinary orchestral virtuosity.
This comes to an end in an utterly unexpected way—by turning into a Viennese waltz, and a waltz in C major at that! For this section Strauss borrows Nietzsche’s title Das Tanzlied (“The Dance-Song”). Here, for the very first time in Strauss’s life, he seems ready to take on his older namesakes, the other Strausses who were renowned as the waltz kings. And here, already, we can get more than a tiny glimpse of Der Rosenkavalier, still some sixteen years in the future. This waltz begins as an amiable and graceful dance with a theme based on the Nature motive, but it soon builds in energy and vehemence as many of the earlier themes make their appearance, only to be destroyed in turn by the “satiety” motive, which takes over fiercely at the climax of the score (corresponding to a similar climax in the book), as a great bell tolls twelve times.
Strauss marks this passage in the score Nachtwandlerlied (“Night Wanderer’s Song”), though that word is not used by Nietzsche. The equivalent passage in the book is “Das andere Tanzlied” (“The other dancing song”), where a bell peals twelve times and between each of its clangs the poet inserts a line of the poem “O Mensch! Gib Acht!” (“O man, take care!”); the entire poem, which was used by Mahler in his Third Symphony, is recapitulated later in the fourth part of Nietzsche’s book. Strauss treats the passage as purely instrumental; the bell rings every four measures, ever more softly, as the music settles onto a chord of C major, only to slip, with magical effect, into a gentle, bright B major for the coda, in which the violins present a sweet theme representing “spiritual freedom.” It moves delicately up to the heights, in the top strings and woodwinds, to all appearances preparing a conclusion on the B major chord.
Yet this B is softly but insistently undercut by cellos and basses, pizzicato, with the rising three-note “Nature” motive, as if to say: Earth—the natural world—abides in spite of all. Four more times the upper instruments reiterate their chord of B, only to find that the bottom strings repeat the C with quiet obstinacy, finally bringing the work to an end.
Those last measures, almost closing in two keys simultaneously, aroused endless discussion when the work was first performed. One Boston critic, Louis Elson, found nothing to admire in the piece, which he characterized as “chaos.” Referring to the title of the tone poem, he commented: “Zarathustra…did everything but speak; he had an impediment in his speech which caused him to stutter even the most beautiful phrases. At the end of the work there is a modulation from the key of B to the key of C that is unique, for the Gordian knot is cut by the simple process of going there and going back again. If such modulations are possible, then the harmony books may as well be burnt at once.”
But Elson showed no sign of appreciating Strauss’s carefully worked out opposition of the two keys throughout the work, which alone justifies that extraordinary conclusion. Indeed, though Strauss admitted to and even explained the literary program that lay at the back of his mind when composing, his artful musical development—the interaction between two keys that normally have little relationship to one another, the rich thematic progress creating its own unique pattern of statement and recapitulation, the brilliant scoring—produced a work that really does not need its program for support. It is more likely, in fact, that the better one knows Nietzsche’s book, the less useful it is as a guide to the music. At the same time, Strauss’s rich invention, lavish display of sheer technique, and imaginative treatment of a basic formal problem provide quite enough to occupy the attention during the performance of this colorful score.
Steven Ledbetter
Steven Ledbetter, a freelance writer and lecturer on music, was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.
The American premiere of Also sprach Zarathustra took place in Chicago (less than three months after the premiere led by Strauss in Frankfurt) on February 5, 1897, with Theodore Thomas conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The first Boston Symphony performance took place on October 30, 1897, with Emil Paur conducting.
