Richard Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
Richard Strauss was born in Munich on June 11, 1864, and died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on September 8, 1949. He was not related to the Viennese Strauss family of waltz fame, although he composed some impressive waltzes that are incorporated in his larger works. A brilliant conductor and composer, Strauss first came to public attention as a composer because of his sensational symphonic poems composed during the 1880s. At the beginning of the 20th century Strauss turned his attention to the world of opera, shocking the operatic establishment with the high-powered sexuality and violence of Salomé (1905) and Elektra (1909). Strauss later chose somewhat less scandalous subjects for his operas, beginning with his first collaboration with the Austrian poet and playwright, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier (1911). Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spake Zarathustra), a tone poem “freely after Friedrich Nietzsche,” was composed between February and August 1896 and had its premiere in Frankfurt on November 27 of the same year. The work is orchestrated for piccolo, 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 3 oboes, English horn, clarinet in E-flat, 2 clarinets in B-flat, bass clarinet in B-flat, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns in F and E, 4 trumpets in C and E, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, glockenspiel, bell on low E, organ, 2 harps, and strings.
Those who have seen Stanley Kubrik’s epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), are well familiar with unforgettable and formidable opening minute and a half of Strauss’s monumental tone poem. So ingrained has this opening become in our culture, it has long since been imitated and trivialized by popular and commercial abuse. Such has also been the fate of several other monuments of Western art music (Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies and the opening of the “Dies irae” of Verdi’s Requiem spring immediately to mind).
While aberrations such as these cannot be avoided, it becomes all too easy to lose sight of the cultural contexts that gave impetus to the creation of these works and that leant them such visceral power. In the case of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, the Nietzschean concept of a higher level of human evolution, the Übermensch (Superman), coming upon the heels of Darwin’s theories of biological evolution, came as an immense shock to audiences of the late nineteenth century. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was the most controversial philologist and philosopher of his time, and his philosophical novel (1883-1891) introduced to the world the parable of the “death of God” and the concept of the future “Superman,”ideas that challenged many of the norms of accepted morality. The principle of an emergingsuperior individual opened the way to fascist totalitarianism, to be certain, although Nietzsche, had he lived long enough to witness it, would most likely have recoiled in horror at the rise of an Adolf Hitler. Using the personage of the mythical ancient Persian prophet, Zoroaster, Nietzsche fashioned a prophet for his own era:
For what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. . . His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the “idealist” who flees from reality.
— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Why I Am a Destiny”, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
Strauss translated many of the essential themes of Nietzsche’s novel into a continuous web of musical episodes that uses the names of several chapters taken from the book:
1. Einleitung, oder Sonnenaufgang (Introduction, or Sunrise)
2. Von den Hinterweltlern (Of Those in Backwaters)
3. Von der großen Sehnsucht (Of the Great Longing)
4. Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften (Of Joys and Passions)
5. Das Grablied (The Song of the Grave)
6. Von der Wissenschaft (Of Science and Learning)
7. Der Genesende (The Convalescent)
8. Das Tanzlied (The Dance Song)
9. Nachtwandlerlied (Song of the Night Wanderer)
In a sense, everything in this forty-minute work derives from its famous opening. Its heritage may be traced back to the opening measures of the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony through the beginning of Richard Wagner’s opera, Das Rheingold, which itself marks the onset of the epic Ring of the Nibelung cycle. In each instance, the composer is tapping the elemental force of what physicists and musicians call the overtone series, whereby the acoustical phenomenon of a fundamental low pitch (C in the case of Strauss’s tone poem) gives rise to the higher overtones or partials contained within that fundamental tone. The result, especially in the case of Also sprach Zarathustra, is overwhelming in its elemental power. In each case, we are aural witnesses to what theologians call creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothingness) i.e., the origin of all things.
From these elemental beginnings, Strauss musically traverses the history of human development, with its passage through simple faith (“Of Those in Backwaters,” with its citation of the chants of the Catholic “Credo” and “Magnificat”), to a yearning for higher knowledge (“Of the Greater Longing”), the discovery of reason (“Of Science and Learning;”realized through a slow, dense, and mathematically fascinating fugue starting in the contrabasses), leading ever onwards toward to joy of new revelations in the form of a joyous Viennese waltz (“The Dance Song”), the end of which is signaled by the sound of a deep bellthat marks the onset of the “Song of the Night Wanderer.” The energy of the dance winds down, and after a hint of nostalgia, ends quietly and enigmatically. The central tonality of C Major is placed in opposition to the conflicting center of B Major, leaving the listener to ponder what the future may hold in store.
Whether or not one buys into Nietzsche’s philosophical principles, or even if one remained ignorant of Strauss’s attempt to capture its essential elements in sound, Also sprach Zarathustra remains at its fundamental level an exciting and breathtaking adventure of orchestral spectacle, the creation of, along with his contemporary Gustav Mahler (also deeply influenced by Nietzsche, as clearly evidenced in his Third Symphony), one of the masters of late-nineteenth-century post-romanticism.
Program Note by David B. Levy, © 2016/2026
Richard Strauss: Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration)
Richard Strauss was born June 11, 1864 in Munich, and died September 8, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Composition of Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) was completed on November 18, 1889. The work is dedicated to “my dear friend Friedrich Rösch.” Its first performance took place in Eisenach on June 21, 1890 with the composer conducting. It is scored for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani (3 drums), gong, 2 harps, and strings.
It is no accident that the very title of Strauss’s tone poem, Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), evokes the ghost of Richard Wagner’s opera, Tristan und Isolde. Wagner himself had excerpted and joined two parts from Tristan as orchestral pieces, calling them Liebestod und Verklärung (These excerpts are better known as Prelude and Liebestod, but that is another matter). When the young Strauss encountered Wagner’s opera in 1888, it became his obsession for the next several years, with Tod und Verklärung being one direct result of hisexperience.
Where Wagner’s opera addresses issues of love and death, abetted by healthy doses of Schopenhauer and Buddhist philosophy, Strauss’s work is the glorification of the Faustian ideal—a soul that strives toward an imagined goal. Like the title characters of Wagner’s opera, Strauss’s protagonist achieves redemption in death. To get a good idea of Strauss’s program (as well as of the musical content of the piece), one only has to read the poem by Alexander von Ritter—written after the composition was completed, and ready for publication—which is found at the head of the score:
In the small, poverty-stricken room, only dully illuminated by a candle end, lies the sick man on his cot. He has just struggled once again with death in wild desperation. Now, exhausted, he has sunk into sleep, and the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall is all you can hear in the room, in which the fearful silence is a premonition of the approach of death. Around the pale features of the sick man plays a sorrowful smile. At the confines of life, is he dreaming of the golden days of childhood? — But death does not grant its victim sleep and dreams for very long. It shakes him awake cruelly and starts the battle anew. The urge for life and the power of death! What a horrible struggle! Neither one wins the victory, and it becomes quiet once again! — Sinking back, weary from battle, sleepless as if in feverish delirium, the sick man now sees his life, trait by trait and image by image, passing by his mind’s eye. First the dawn of childhood, shining sweetly in untouched innocence! Then the bolder games of the young man, using and trying out his strength, until he has matured for the manly battle, which now blazes forth in hot joy with life’s highest benefits as its stake. To take everything that ever seemed transfigured and to mold it into an even more transfigured shape: this alone is the noble impulse that accompanies him through life. Coldly and scornfully the world places one barrier after another in the path of his efforts. Whenever he believes he is near his goal, he is greeted by a thunderous “Halt!” — “Turn the barrier into a rung by which to rise ever higher and higher!” Thus he strives, thus he climbs, does not abandon his sacred impulse. What he has sought all this time with his heart’s deepest longing, he still seeks while bathed in mortal sweat, seeks–but, alas, cannot find it. Even if he conceives of it more clearly, even if it gradually grows upon him, still he can never exhaust its possibilities, can never consummate it in his mind. Then the last blow of death’s iron hammer rings out, breaks the earthly body in two and covers his eyes with the night of death. — But he hears mightily resounding from heaven that which he sought here lovingly: world-redemption, world-transfiguration!
There are many graphic touches in the score of Tod und Verklärung. At the eginning of the piece, for example, one can almost hear the labored heartbeat of the dying man. Similarly, at the moment of the protagonist’s death, a rising figure, accompanied by a decreasing dynamic, represents the soul escaping the confines of the sick body. The word “transfiguration” tells much about how Strauss treats his thematic material. Throughout the earlier stages of the piece, he hints at his melodies by insinuating their profiles. Only later does he permit these themes to flower into their full—and transfigured—shape.
Toward the end of his life, in composing the last of his “Four Last Songs,” Strauss returned to his noble “transfiguration” theme when setting the following line from “ImAbendrot” by Joseph von Eichendorff:
Wie sind wir wandermüde—Ist dies etwa der Tod? (How weary of travel we have become—could this perhaps be death?)
Program Note by David B. Levy, ©2007/2026
