Only a musical epitome of the creative processes of the cosmos! The modesty of Strauss is of a Michelangelo-like magnitude. This new Faust of music, Nietzsche-Strauss, who would assail the very stars in their courses, has written some pages in this opus that are of imposing grandeur. There is an uplifting roar at the opening, an effect of sunrise—purely imaginary all these musical pictures, yet none the less startling and credible—as Zarathustra’s trumpets solemnly intone his motive. These tremendous chords in their naked simplicity alone proclaim Strauss a man of genius and give him fee simple to the symphonic heritage of Beethoven and Brahms. The A flat section is notably melodious and luscious in color. The five-voiced fugue is ugly yet masterful, and the dance music furious in its abandonment, corybantic in its revelry. Such laughter has never been heard in an orchestra. The melodic curve is passional. Strauss is here tender, dramatic, bizarre, poetic, humorous, ironic, witty, wicked—simple never. The noble art of simplicity he lacks. This is the vastest and most difficult score ever penned. It is a cathedral in tone, sublime and fantastic, with its grotesque gargoyles, hideous flying abutments, exquisite traceries, prodigious arches, half gothic, half infernal, huge and resounding spaces, gorgeous façades, and heaven-splitting spires,—a mighty musical structure! We go to the rear-world, are in religious transports, are swept on the passional curves of that fascinating C minor theme “of Joys and Passions” and repelled by the fugal aspect of Science. There is “holy laughter” and dancing; the dancing of the midget, man, in the futile, furtive gleam of sunshine that bridges the Past and the Future with the Present. Then those twelve bell strokes—“deep eternity” is heard in the humming of the metal, and the close is of enigmatic tonality. Nothing as audacious was ever penned by the hand of man—in music.
The Nature theme is ingeniously designed. It is, in the most natural of tonalities, C major, and consists of C, the fifth, and the octave above it. The third is missing out of the chord, and this makes the “tonal sex” of the chord variable. It is, says Merian, hermaphroditic, as is Nature itself. Major and minor are not yet divided. And the missing third makes this theme one of the World Riddle: “It is the sphinx Nature, who is staring at us with empty, lustreless eyes, inviting confidence, yet awesome.”
In the midst of the dancing orgy of joy sounds the bell of midnight. This is the final division, The Song of the Night Wanderer. Nietzsche, in the later editions of his book, gave this chapter the heading, The Drunken Song; and on the heavy strokes of Brummglocke he wrote:—
One!
O man, take heed!
Two!
What speaks the deep midnight?
Three!
I have slept, I have slept—
Four!