“Thus Spake Zarathustra,” Tone Poem (Freely After Friedrich Nietzsche), Op. 30
Strauss’s huge “machine” has aged. The opening measures are still stupendous. The “Grave Song” and “Night Song” are not without compelling beauty, but on the whole, Nietzschian philosophy and music do not dwell together in harmony. Dismiss the thought of Nietzsche; consider the music as absolute music, and there is much that is boresome and inherently cheap, if not vulgar, in spite, or by reason of the bombast and pretentiousness.
The full title of this composition is Also sprach Zarathustra, Tondichtung (frei nach Friedrich Nietzsche) für grosses Orchester. Composition was begun at Munich, February 4, 1896, and completed there August 24, 1896. The first performance was at Frankfort-on-the-Main, November 27 of the same year. The composer conducted, and also at Cologne, December 1.
Friedrich Nietzsche conceived the plan to his Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, in August, 1881, as he was walking through the woods near the Silvaplana Lake in the Engadine and saw a huge tower-like crag. He completed the first part in February, 1883, at Rapallo, near Genoa; he wrote the second part in Sils Maria in June and July, the third part in the following winter at Nice, and the fourth part, not then intended to be the last, but to serve as an interlude, from November, 1884, till February, 1885, at Mentone. Nietzsche never published this fourth part; it was printed for private circulation and not publicly issued till after he became insane. The whole of Zarathustra was published in 1892.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is by no means the historical or legendary Zoroaster, mage, leader, warrior, king. The Zarathustra of Nietzsche is Nietzsche himself, with his views on life and death. Strauss’s opera Guntram (1894) showed the composer’s interest in the book. Before the tone poem was performed, this programme was published: “First movement: Sunrise, Man feels the power of God. Andante religioso. But man still longs. He plunges into passion (second movement) and finds no peace. He turns towards science, and tries in vain to solve life’s problem in a fugue (third movement). Then agreeable dance tunes sound and he becomes an individual, and his soul soars upward while the world sinks far beneath him.” But Strauss gave this explanation to Otto Florsheim: “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 my homage to Nietzsche’s genius, which found its greatest exemplification in his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra.”
Thus Spake Zarathustra is scored for piccolo, three flutes (one interchangeable with a second piccolo), three oboes, English horn, two clarinets in B flat, clarinet in E flat, bass clarinet, three bassoons, double bassoon, six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two bass tubas, kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, glockenspiel, a low bell in E, two harps, organ, sixteen second violins, twelve violas, twelve violoncellos, eight double basses.
On a flyleaf of a score is printed the following excerpts from Nietzsche’s book, the first section of “Zarathustra’s Introductory Speech”:
“Having attained the age of thirty, Zarathustra left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. There he rejoiced in his spirit and his loneliness, and for ten years did not grow weary of it. But at last his heart turned—one morning he got up with the dawn, stepped into the presence of the Sun and thus spake unto him: ‘Thou great star! What would be thy happiness, were it not for those on whom thou shinest? For ten years thou hast come up here to my cave. Thou wouldst have got sick of thy light and thy journey but for me, mine eagle and my serpent. But we waited for thee every morning and receiving from thee thine abundance, blessed thee for it. Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath collected too much honey; I need hands reaching out for it. I would fain grant and distribute until the wise among men could once more enjoy their folly, and the poor once more their riches. For that end I must descend to the depth; as thou dost at even, when sinking behind the sea, thou givest light to the lower regions, thou resplendent star! I must, like thee, go down, as men say—men to whom I would descend. Then bless me, thou impassive eye, that canst look without envy even upon overmuch happiness. Bless the cup which is about to overflow, so that the water golden-flowing out of it may carry everywhere the reflection of thy rapture. Lo! this cup is about to empty itself again, and Zarathustra will once more become a man.’—Thus Zarathustra’s going down began.”
This prefatory note in Strauss’s tone poem is not a “programme” of the composition itself. It is merely an introduction. The sub-captions of the composer in the score indicate that the music after the short musical introduction begins where the quotation ends.
“The scene of Thus Spake Zarathustra,” says Dr. Tille, “is laid, as it were, outside of time and space, and certainly outside of countries and nations, outside of this age, and outside of the main condition of all that lives—the struggle for existence.... There appear cities and mobs, kings and scholars, poets and cripples, but outside of their realm there is a province which is Zarathustra’s own, where he lives in his cave amid the rocks, and whence he thrice goes to men to teach them his wisdom. This Nowhere and Nowhen, over which Nietzsche’s imagination is supreme, is a province of boundless individualism, in which a man of mark has free play, unfettered by the tastes and inclinations of the multitude.... Thus Spake Zarathustra is a kind of summary of the intellectual life of the nineteenth century, and it is on this fact that its principal significance rests. It unites in itself a number of mental movements which, in literature as well as in various sciences, have made themselves felt separately during the last hundred years, without going far beyond them. By bringing them into contact, although not always into uncontradictory relation, Nietzsche transfers them from mere existence in philosophy, or scientific literature in general, into the sphere or the creed of Weltanschauung of the educated classes, and thus his book becomes capable of influencing the views and strivings of a whole age.”
Zarathustra teaches men the deification of Life. He offers not joy of life, for to him there is no such thing, but fullness of life, in the joy of the senses, “in the triumphant exuberance of vitality, in the pure, lofty naturalness of the antique, in short, in the fusion of God, world, and ego.”
There is a simple but impressive introduction, in which there is a solemn trumpet motive, which leads to a great climax for full orchestra and organ on the chord of C major. There is this heading, “Von den Hinterweltlern” (Of the Dwellers in the Rear World). These are they who sought the solution in religion. Zarathustra too had once dwelt in this rear world. (Horns intone a solemn Gregorian Credo.)
The next heading is “Von der grossen Sehnsucht” (Of the Great Yearning). This stands over an ascending passage in B minor in violoncellos and bassoons, answered by wood-wind instruments in chromatic thirds.
The next section begins with a pathetic cantilena in C minor (second violins, oboes, horn), and the heading is: “Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften” (Of Joys and Passions).
“Grablied” (Grave Song). The oboe has a tender cantilena over the Yearning motive in violoncellos and bassoons.
“Von der Wissenschaft” (Of Science). The fugued passage begins with violoncellos and double basses (divided). The subject of this fugato contains all the diatonic and chromatic degrees of the scale, and the real responses to this subject come in successively a fifth higher.
Much farther on a passage in the strings, beginning in the violoncellos and violas, arises from B minor. “Der Genesende” (The Convalescent).
“Tanzlied.” The dance song begins with laughter in the wood-wind.
“Nachtlied” (Night Song).
“Nachtwanderlied” (The Song of the Night Wanderer, though Nietzsche in later editions changed the title to “The Drunken Song”). The song comes after a fortissimo stroke of the bell, and the bell, sounding twelve times, dies away softly.
The mystical conclusion has excited much discussion. The ending is in two keys—in B major in the high wood-wind and violins, in C major in the basses, pizzicato. “The theme of the Ideal sways aloft in the higher regions in B major; the trombones insist on the unresolved chord of C, E, F sharp; and in the double basses is repeated C, G, C, the World Riddle.” This riddle is unsolved by Nietzsche, by Strauss, and even by Strauss’s commentators.