And
Nietzsche had dreamt of music of another sort. He had dreamt of a music
that should be a bridge to the Superman, the man whose every motion
would be carefree. He had seen striding across mountain chains in the
bright air of an eternal morning a youth irradiant with unbroken energy,
before whom all the world lay open in vernal sunshine like a domain
before its lord. He had seen one beside whom the other musicians would
stand as convicts from Siberian prison camps who had stumbled upon a
banquet of the gods. He had seen a young Titan of music, drunken with
life and fire and joy, dancing and reeling and laughing on the top of
the world, and with fingers amid the stars, sending suns and
constellations crashing. He had caught sight of the old and eternally
youthful figure of Indian Dionysos.
And even though Strauss himself could scarcely be mistaken for the god,
nevertheless he made Nietzsche's dream appear realizable. He permitted
one for an instant to perceive a musical realm in which the earth-fast
could not breathe. He permitted one for an instant to hear ringing "the
prelude of a deeper, mightier, perchance a more evil and mysterious
music; a super-German music which does not fade, wither and die away
beside the blue and wanton sea and the clear Mediterranean sky; a music
super-European, which would assert itself even amid the tawny sunsets of
the desert; a music whose soul is akin to the palm-trees; a music that
can consort and prowl with great, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey; a
music whose supreme charm is its ignorance of Good and Evil.
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