(Program)
London Records Inc. recording. Printed in U.S.A. // Richard Strauss (1864-1949) // ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Henry Lewis
Also Sprach Zarathustra:
Introduction (or Sunrise)
Of Those in the Background World
Of the Great Longing
Of Joys and Passions
The Song of the Grave
Of Science and Learning
The Convalescent
The Dance Song
Song of the Night Wanderer
Leave me alone to the books and the radio snow
Leave me alone to the charcoal and the dancing shadow “” Bedouine, ‘Solitary Daughter’
I’ve been starting my Januaries with a good strong healthy ominous timpani roll—prefixed by the low-moaning contrabassoon and famous trumpet call that begins Strauss’s Zarathustra—very befitting of this bonkers start to the year (for sanity’s sake I ought to read and watch the news much less). Thus Spake Zarathustra is without doubt the most famous Strauss’s tone poems—a genre he pioneered out of the symphonic poem—with his Death and Transfiguration at a close second. In it Strauss uses nine passages/sections from Nietzsche’s book of the same name, as the basis of program music.
No book has meant more and done more for me than Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, really; despite that I’m still not able to describe it to satisfaction. It’s a book that’s often used (misused) as a mining field for Nietzscheisms, quoteables, misappropriated aphorisms that make little sense—and at times read like the delirious twitches of a rogue philologist—outside of the very peculiar landscape through which the title character plays out and suffers his unprecedented thought-experiments. Prime amongst these Nietzscheisms is the concept of the Overman—the inadequate english translation of the now-suspect Übermench—that was, for Nietzsche, much less an actual ‘super-human’ entity than an admittedly dangerous escalation of ambition at the scale of the species…not a particular group of people, but the next phase of our collective civilization. Few descriptions do it justice, you’d just have to read it for yourself. It’s the kind of work you’d expect of a self-described posthumous philosopher, almost two centuries later and the book still reads with an unmistakable futurism.
I came about it accidentally, and at that time clutched it like a firehose in a drought. From cafes here in Toronto to a ranch in Arizona and a mountain-top in Mexico—I was inseparable from its pages for a period of five years. It’s an unusual book precisely because it takes place nowhere, and excuses itself from the gaze of any particular ethical tradition. The evaluation of all values—that was Nietzsche’s philosophical mission, and Zarathustra was the quasi-scientist, quasi-mystic and full-fledged humanist invented for that purpose.
Humanity, on the path from ape to super-human, must overcome all its current prejudices, moral limitations and ignorance, and must forge its own values and creative purpose. Only the individual can do this: the masses merely take refuge in superstition and tribalism, and it is up the individual to strive for freedom and the embracing of eternity.“” Robert Philip on Nietzsche’s Übermensch, The Classical Music Lover’s Guide to Orchestral Music
A very adequate description by Philip, not only because it sketches a fairly accurate silhouette of the book’s sky-scraping proportions, but because it also displays, unintentionally, the fundamental contradiction of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: indeed ‘only the individual can do this’—there’s no serious doubt about that—but must not everything worthwhile, everything that lasts, happen at the level of masses? How do you reconcile rugged obstinate individualism with the incomparable machinery of the masses? How do you reconcile the self-determined individual with the vector through which anything categorically human has been achieved: tribalism and a healthy dose of mindlessness? How does the so-constituted individual participate in this ineluctable group-think? How does a lake learn to swim in the ocean and still remain a lake? (Inversely, Nietzsche makes the argument here that one must be an ocean in order to absorb a polluted stream and not be polluted by it). Or, in the strictest sense, how do we align individualism with the good conscience, the herd instinct in all of us?——Zarathustra, in that sense, has his cake and eats it too. And Nietzsche’s Overman is the frightfully optimistic portrait of what a herd of individuals might resemble.
My take away from that book is that any worthwhile revolution in morality takes generations. The test of an ambitious moral project is how well it travels across time, across the broken telephone of generational divide and the fundamentally evasive premise that the core questions of our existence and the personal responsibility therein are no longer relevant just because there’s a brand new millennia at hand. If it really matters, if it is true, then it must survive. In that sense, the truth is merely a form of longevity. And if the retort to that is to point at a particularly successful lineage of lies—here religion takes the cake—then that frightful optimism (frightful because the reasons for so great a degree of optimism are often lacking or at least seem unsustainable) claps back that you merely ought to wait a little longer—embrace a little eternity. I look back and realize that what I sought the most from that book, and found, was the validation that optimism of that kind is not merely a profound stupidity, as can sometimes feel the case.
So what to do in the meantime? While awaiting ‘the new Jerusalem’ as Dostoevsky puts it? Art of all kinds, laughter, dance and so on. Music too.
Back to Strauss: hilariously, when I hear the opening notes on trumpet in the first of these tone poems, Nietzsche is the last thing to come to mind. I’m more likely to think of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, or those Rogers commercials on cable (both of which make use of excerpts from the work’s ‘Introduction/Sunrise’): it begins with a sustain low C across contrabassoon, basses and organ, which end in that famous trumpet call. The rest of the orchestra joins in, beginning in C major and ending in C minor. Here’s where the aforementioned timpani rolls come in. The trumpet repeats its call and the orchestra responds with a passage that begins this time in C minor and ends in C major. Again the trumpet repeats their phrase—the unmistakable rays of an early morning sun, Zarathustra going over a hill and so on—and the orchestra, joined by organ, rise to a deafening swell to usher in the inaugural sunrise of a long and unforgettable journey.
(song of the week: Solitary Daughter - Bedouine)
Azniv Korkejian
Re-turning time-turned words.
Fitting each time-weathered song
To a new-grooved harmony,
They pluck slick strings and swing
A sad heart’s equilibrium.
“” Seamus Heaney, from ‘Folk Singers’ (Death of a Naturalist)
The first time I heard this song I thought ‘Laura Marling’s new album sounds amazing..’— indeed the comparison is a compliment to both Marling and Azniv Korkejian, the Syrian-Ameriican folk musician that goes by ‘Bedouine’ on stage. Though in her case the use of ‘folk’ is attached to even more of a question mark than most folk musicians: what does folk mean to a nomad? Or to an artist who has lived as far as Saudi Arabia and has found home in the music community of LA’s Echo Park? At any rate the music of today’s nomadic artist—whose travels bring new-grooved harmonies to old words—is perhaps a glimpse into the music of the future.
I am a lake
Don't need to be watered
I am an ocean
I don't need to barter…
Like Marling, Bedouine’s guitar style is a lingering pondering listlessness; with poetically introspective lyrics layered on simple instrumentation and delivered in sultry nonchalance. But her musical education has been influenced as well by Arabic and Armenian musical traditions—wherein I’ve found some of the most satisfying melismatic ornamentation-and this influence comes through ever so slightly in ‘Solitary Daughter’, the fifth song on her debut self-titled album from 2017. For years to come, I’ll be pleasurably befuddled by image and sentiment of her ‘radio snow’.
Throwback to: Year 2, Week23
Click here for the full 2019/2020 roster