It
is true that he falls back on several popular subjects, whose meaning
would be very easily grasped in Germany; and that he develops them, not
quite in the strict form of a rondeau, as he pretends, but still with a
certain method, so that apart from a few frolics, which are
unintelligible without a programme, the whole has real musical unity.
This symphony, which is a great favourite in Germany, seems to me less
original than some of his other compositions. It sounds rather like a
refined piece of Mendelssohn's, with curious harmonies and very
complicated instrumentation.
[Footnote 173: Composed in 1894-95, and played for the first time at
Cologne in 1895.]
There is much more grandeur and originality in his _Also sprach
Zarathustra, Tondichtung frei, nach Nietzsche_ ("Thus spake Zarathustra,
a free Tone-poem, after Nietzsche"), op. 30.[174] Its sentiments are
more broadly human, and the programme that Strauss has followed never
loses itself in picturesque or anecdotic details, but is planned on
expressive and noble lines. Strauss protests his own liberty in the face
of Nietzsche's. He wishes to represent the different stages of
development that a free spirit passes through in order to arrive at that
of Super-man.
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