" At a first hearing of "Also Sprach Zarathustra," it
seemed as though the very dayspring had descended into the orchestra to
make that famous, brassy opening passage. For here, in the hand of
Strauss, the orchestra begins to round out its form and assume its
logical shape. The various families of instruments are made independent;
often play separately. The shattering brass of which Berlioz had dreamt
is realized. Violas d'amore, hecklephones, wind-machines, are introduced
into the band; the familiar instruments are used in unfamiliar
registers. Through the tone-poems of Strauss, the orchestral composer
for the first time has a suitable palette, and can achieve a brilliance
as great as that which the modern painter can attain.
To-day, it is difficult to realize that Richard Strauss ever incensed
such high hopes, that there was a time when he made appear realizable
Nietzsche's mad dream of a modern music, and that for awhile the nimbus
of Dionysos burnt round his figure. To-day it is difficult to remember
that once upon a time Strauss seemed to the world the golden youth of
music, the engineer of proud orchestral flights, the outrider and
bannerman of his art. For it is long since he has promised to reveal the
new beauty, the new rhythm, has seemed the wonderful start and flight
toward some rarer plane of existence, some bluer ether, the friend of
everything intrepid and living and young, the "arrow of longing for the
Superman.
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