Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Introduction to Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), Opus 30

“Where does this Zarathustra really belong?” wondered Friedrich Nietzsche as he toiled over Also Sprach Zarathustra. “Almost, I think, among the symphonies.”   

Richard Strauss agreed. In the space of seven months, he wrote a symphonic poem using Nietzsche’s title, finishing the work on August 24, 1896. Strauss conducted the first performance on November 27 in Frankfurt-am-Main. 

The critics accused Strauss of trying to set philosophy to music. After a performance in Berlin, he wrote: “I did not intend to write philosophical music or to portray in music Nietzsche’s great work. I meant to convey by means of music an idea of the development of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of its development, religious and scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman. The whole symphonic poem is intended as an homage to Nietzsche’s genius, which found its greatest expression in his book, Also Sprach Zarathustra.”    

Zarathustra (Zoroaster to the Greeks) was an actual person, who lived in Persia in the sixth century B.C. He proclaimed himself the prophet of Ormazd, the spirit of light and good. In the Zoroastrian religion, Man is the center of conflict between Ormazd and Ahriman, the spirit of evil and darkness. Nietzsche used Zarathustra as a prop for his ideas on the destiny of mankind. After each discourse, like a refrain, come the words of the title, “Thus spake Zarathustra.” 

Strauss preceded the score with the opening lines of Nietzsche’s book: “When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his homeland and the lake of his homeland and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed, and rising one morning with the rosy dawn,” Zarathustra resolved to return to the world. Strauss depicts this in the famous opening Fanfare, later employed in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Program Notes by Charley Samson, copyright 2022.