You super-men, learn to laugh!"[175] And the dance dies away and is lost
in ethereal regions, and Zarathustra is lost to sight while dancing in
distant worlds. But if he has solved the riddle of the universe for
himself, he has not solved it for other men; and so, in contrast to the
confident knowledge which fills the music, we get the sad note of
interrogation at the end.
[Footnote 174: Composed in 1895-96, and performed for the first time at
Frankfort-On-Main in November, 1896.]
[Footnote 175: Nietzsche.]
There are few subjects that offer richer material for musical
expression. Strauss has treated it with power and dexterity; he has
preserved unity in this chaos of passions, by contrasting the
_Sehnsucht_ of man with the impassive strength of Nature. As for the
boldness of his conceptions, I need hardly remind those who heard the
poem at the Cirque d'ete of the intricate "Fugue of Knowledge," the
trills of the wood wind and the trumpets that voice Zarathustra's laugh,
the dance of the universe, and the audacity of the conclusion which, in
the key of B major, finishes up with a note of interrogation, in C
natural, repeated three times.
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