Page 195 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

ROMANTIC 1810–1920 193

See also: The Four Seasons 92–97 ■ Faust Symphony 176–177 ■ The Ring
Cycle 180–187 ■ Symphonie fantastique 162–163 ■ Das Lied von der Erde 198–201

the way for his brand of amoral
modernism, epitomized in his
scandalous breakthrough opera
Salome (1905)—based on a play by
Oscar Wilde that featured incest,
I would only believe necrophilia, and blasphemy.
in a God that knows
how to dance. Age of uncertainty
Friedrich Nietzsche Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra
Also sprach Zarathustra (1883–1891) depicts a conflict between nature,
which is represented by the Richard Georg Strauss
trumpet’s simple opening C-G-C
motif, and humanity, whose The son of a famous horn
complex passions and intellectual player, Richard Strauss was
struggles are conveyed by more born in Munich in 1864.
harmonically adventurous writing. After early success with
edifying or morally empowering, as The tone poem includes nine his tone poems and songs
demanded by 19th-century musical sections, named from Nietzsche’s (many composed for his wife),
aesthetics. This aligned him with book, with music that includes a he finally found the operatic
other “modernist” composers, mocking fugue and a light-hearted success he longed for with
whose defining feature was their waltz. Man and nature remain Salome (1905), followed by
emphasis on innovation and unreconciled at the work’s daring Elektra (1909). The latter
progress—redefining composition conclusion, which vacillates marked the start of a 20-year
by challenging formal conventions. uncertainly between the keys collaboration with the writer
and librettist Hugo von
of C major and B major. ■ Hofmannsthal—one of the
Role of the artist greatest partnerships in
Also sprach Zarathustra (“Thus operatic history.
spake Zarathustra,” 1896) was Strauss’s prestige suffered
arguably Strauss’s boldest tone in the 1920s and especially in
poem. The 35-minute work took the 1930s, as his relations
its title from the book by Friedrich with the Nazi Party tarnished
Nietzsche, in which the philosopher his reputation in the English-
used the character of the ancient speaking world. In the 1940s,
Persian prophet to present his however, the elderly Strauss,
philosophy. In Strauss’s own words, heartbroken by the national
he set out “to convey in music an catastrophe, produced a series
idea of the evolution of the human of late works, including the
race from its origin, through the Four Last Songs, composed
just months before his death
various phases of development … in Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Germany, in 1949.
Übermensch” through his tone
poem. This idea of the Übermensch
(superman), a figure unburdened by Other key works
conventional morality or religion, 1888 Don Juan
resonated well with Strauss’s own Also sprach Zarathustra was 1905 Salome
completed in 1896. This frontispiece
vision of the role of the independent from that year, printed in Munich by 1911 Der Rosenkavalier
artist at the dawn of the 20th Joseph Aibl, prefaced the original 1949 Four Last Songs
century. It also helped to pave orchestral score.

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