Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra.* Also Sprach Zarathustra, Richard Strauss's tone poem to Nietzsche's clanking clank n. A metallic sound, sharp and hard but not resonant: the clank of chains. intr.v. clanked, clank·ing, clanks To make a sharp, hard, metallic sound. "philosophical" work, is a rousing piece of music, and one more example of Strauss's inquiries into polyharmony, polyrhythm pol·y·rhythm n. Music The use or an instance of simultaneous contrasting rhythms. pol  y·rhyth , and polytonality-as well as his Germanic
Expressionismus. If there is a Nietzschean "program" I fail to
find it. The tone poem is good bravura bra·vu·ra n. 1. Music a. Brilliant technique or style in performance. b. A piece or passage that emphasizes a performer's virtuosity. 2. A showy manner or display. adj. 1. music, with much brass and kettledrum-perfect to wake up an audience too full of martinis and dinner. This is not said pejoratively, for there are lovely passages in which Strauss does not wear his Teutonic spurs. And let us be grateful to this Richard for rescuing the opera from the Wagnerian Richard's hands. Though for a time a disciple, Strauss in his own operas put an end to Wagner's practice of forcing beefy beefy, beefyness 1. in dog conformation, used to describe overdevelopment of musculature in the hindquarters. 2. in cattle, used to designate the desirable physical conformation of a beef animal, but an undesirable character in dairy cattle. tenors and sopranos to milk their fingers or tell their beads for ten minutes while the orchestra "explains" what they have just sung. This is no problem in the Zarathustra, which does not succumb to musical elephantiasis elephantiasis (ĕl`əfăntī`əsĭs), abnormal enlargement of any part of the body due to obstruction of the lymphatic channels in the area (see lymphatic system), usually affecting the arms, legs, or external genitals. . Its juices are stirringly extracted from the score by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Cleveland Orchestra (London 425 608-2). |
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