Today’s selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30.

Composed in 1896, the tone poem is one of Richard Strauss’s most intellectually ambitious works., emerging as it did out of Strauss’s encounter with Friedrich Nietzsche’s "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Nietzsche's book was a humorous--albeit heavy-handed--attempt at writing an anti-religious tract in a religious style. Nietzsche mocked the New Testament by presenting his "Death of God" message via prophets, apostles, pseudo-moral sayings, liturgical speeches, sermons, parables and hymns. Zarathustra was a religious teacher advocating against religion.

Intrigued by Nietzsche's book, Strauss became fascinated with the idea of using music to address the philosopher's ideas about humanity in a Godless universe. He wanted to see whether music could be used to explore ideas rather than events or characters.

By the mid-1890s, Strauss was one of Germany's most celebrated orchestral composers. Don Juan (1888) had announced his arrival as a modernist. Tod und Verklärung (1889) had explored philosophical ideas: death, transcendence, artistic fulfillment. Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1895) had demonstrated orchestral wit and virtuosity.

Strauss was clearly the master of the symphonic poem, and critics increasingly regarded him as Wagner’s true heir in orchestral music.

At the same time, Strauss was growing restless with purely narrative tone poems. He began searching for subject-matter that could sustain a large-scale, non-narrative musical structure.

Strauss read Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra in the early 1890s. He was immediately struck by the book’s rhetorical grandeur, its prophetic tone and its challenge to religious and moral absolutes. Strauss was inspired by Nietzsche’s rejection of metaphysical consolation, his critique of Christian morality and his celebration of limitless human ambition.

Strauss later wrote that Zarathustra represented “the development 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.”

Strauss composed Also sprach Zarathustra in 1895–1896 while residing in Munich. He worked quickly but carefully, refining orchestration and formal balance. The work is scored for a massive orchestra, including organ, extra brass and a large percussion section. This scale was deliberate: Strauss wanted a sound world capable of cosmic suggestion rather than human drama.

Strauss prefaced the score with the opening lines of Nietzsche’s book: “When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains.”

The tone poem unfolds in nine connected sections, each titled after chapters in Nietzsche’s book, including: Einleitung, oder Sonnenaufgang (Introduction, or Sunrise); Von den Hinterweltlern (Of the Backworldsmen); Von der grossen Sehnsucht (Of the Great Longing); Das Tanzlied (The Dance Song); and Nachtwandlerlied (Song of the Night Wanderer).

These titles serve as conceptual signposts, not narrative cues.

The famous opening presents one of the most striking symbolic gestures in orchestral music. A low C in basses, organ and contrabassoon, and a rising trumpet motif outlining the natural harmonic series. Strauss intended it to represent nature, cosmic order and primal being.

In contradistinction to that dramatic opening, Strauss later introduces complex chromatic harmonies and restless modulations. Strauss intended these to represent human consciousness, doubt and striving. Throughout the work, C major (nature) and B major (humanity) exist in tension. The piece ends without any resolution to this conflict.

Though Strauss, in the public’s mind at least, came to be identified with Nietzsche, the composer was careful to maintain a critical distance from the philosopher’s ideas. He denied that the tone poem was an attempt to “set Nietzsche to music.”

He rejected Nietzsche’s virulent hostility toward Christianity. While Strauss was not religious, he was culturally conservative and disliked polemics. Strauss cultivated official respectability, accepted court positions and valued institutional success. He preferred ambiguity over provocation, even when working with provocative material.

Strauss was less interested in asserting doctrine than in dramatizing intellectual struggle. This is one reason why Zarathustra ends unresolved — no triumphant Übermensch ruling the Earth.

Strauss also rejected Nietzsche’s often-intemperate attacks on Wagner, whom he revered. The influence of Wagner’s harmonic language and orchestration was unmistakable in Strauss’s compositions throughout his career. Nietzsche’s late writings (The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner) are scathing personal and aesthetic attacks, portraying Wagner as decadent, pathological, moralistic, Christian and corrupting. Strauss rejected this wholesale. In private correspondence, Strauss dismissed Nietzsche’s Wagner polemics as “excessive” and “unmusical.”

Strauss’s musical practice contradicted Nietzsche’s aesthetics. Nietzsche famously championed fast music, Mediterranean lightness, anti-Romantic restraint and opposition to German musical “heaviness.” Strauss did the opposite. He went with giant orchestras, extreme chromaticism, emotional excess and late-Romantic sensuality. Had Strauss followed Nietzsche's instructions, he would not have gone on to write Salome, Elektra and Die Frau ohne Schatten. Those were exactly the kinds of works that Nietzsche would have excoriated.

The premiere of Zarathustra took place in Frankfurt on Nov. 27, 1896, with Strauss himself conducting. It immediately provoked intense debate. Some hailed it as the future of orchestral music. Others denounced it as bombastic or nihilistic. Those of a religious bent objected to its Nietzschean associations. Yet its technical mastery was undeniable, and it quickly entered the international musical repertoire.

Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op.30, is a unique composition in that it strives to use music to address philosophical questions about existence, humanity, God and the cosmos. The work depicts ambiguity, conflict and unfulfilled aspiration. The work does not proclaim the arrival of the Übermensch; it dramatizes the human ambition to become one.

Strauss lived a long life and came to experience tragedy coming to his beloved Central Europe. Not surprisingly, therefore, he would soon lose interest in the whole idea of the Übermensch.

In this performance from Dec. 31, 2024, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra.