Daaaa—daaaaa^—daaaaaaa^—dadaaaaa—BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOMmm
Used by Kubrick in his film version of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Strauss’s fanfare to Also Sprach Zarathustra begins quietly with what sounds like a machine humming and progresses through a crescendo capped by powerful vibrations of the tympani. The musical piece builds to a powerful end and a switch to chords on an organ. It’s rather glorious, so Kubrick couples it with the appearance of the Star Child, the next stage in human evolution.
Unfortunately, real life isn’t like that—or, at least it isn’t very much like that very often. Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an example. Putin envisioned his military moving quickly into Kyiv to meet a crescendo of cheers from Ukrainians. Instead, and unlike Strauss’s music, he found not a triumphant BOOM,BOOM,BOOM…, not a fanfare of joy or triumph but a muddy slog, slog, slog. The Russians have had a rough go in Ukraine, where they have lost tens of thousands—if not more than 100,000— of their youth to injury, death, and desertion. Not very glorious. So far, Putin hasn’t had his Thus Spoke Zarathustra moment.
It’s difficult for us humans to live through any prolonged experience at the level of Strauss’s opening section. Even Strauss couldn’t maintain the intensity. In fact, the rest of Also Sprach Zarathustra is rather soapy in my opinion, very much fin de siècle: The fanfare heralding the promise of the coming twentieth century, automobiles, airplanes, and spaceships, but the end of the music looking back to the all-too-fast rise of industrial urban centers smoggy and dirty, built on laborers with dull lives living in rather squalid apartment blocks. Is there a lesson in Strauss's work? Is there a parallel in the history of the 120-plus years since he composed it?
Maybe most ambitious undertakings begin like Strauss’s work, all fanfare and promise of glory. Certainly, Hitler began with a glorious entrance into Austria, in taking the Sudetenland, and in crushing Poland. But then the long-term realities of war occurred, muddy slogs and the counterattacks of the Allies, the bleeding-white of a generation of youth, the betrayals and losses. The triumphant BOOM BOOM of the beginning attacks by Hitler on perceived enemies turning into the BOOM BOOM of the ending attacks that destroyed Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin. And after the war? The slog, the same question: “How did we begin with so much promise of glory for the Motherland (or Fatherland), and end with so much loss?”
Putin grew up in an age of music designed to extoll the glory of the Soviet Union. Maybe he should have listened to Strauss to know that a glorious ambition and fanfare often ends in a progression toward the kind of unmoving trench warfare he finds his troops in one year after the invasion. And the losses of tens to over 100,000 soldiers? Is Putin the latest incarnation of Erich von Falkenhayn, the German general who sent many to their deaths in a battle of attrition that had hundreds of thousands of casualties and that resulted in nothing but loss, 143,000 dead Germans and 163,000 dead French. And Verdun, that place of such death? It wasn't strategic, it didn't have gold and precious metals; it was just a place where needless loss of life was the only accomplishment.
To what avail? All those rockets and shells, all those bullets and drones, and all those dead who will never hear any glorious fanfare. All the promise of a fanfare, but none of the evolution to a Star Child, the war will simply be more of the same, more human suffering that ends a false promise and a blind ambition.
Daaaa—daaaaa^—daaaaaaa^—dadaaaaa—BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOMmm *
*See YouTube for several versions. Strauss's fanfare without the rest of the composition is online under the piece's title and is performed by Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel. Fanfares always leave the audience wanting more. For another fanfare, listen to versions of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, a work that also employs tympani and brass.
Used by Kubrick in his film version of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Strauss’s fanfare to Also Sprach Zarathustra begins quietly with what sounds like a machine humming and progresses through a crescendo capped by powerful vibrations of the tympani. The musical piece builds to a powerful end and a switch to chords on an organ. It’s rather glorious, so Kubrick couples it with the appearance of the Star Child, the next stage in human evolution.
Unfortunately, real life isn’t like that—or, at least it isn’t very much like that very often. Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an example. Putin envisioned his military moving quickly into Kyiv to meet a crescendo of cheers from Ukrainians. Instead, and unlike Strauss’s music, he found not a triumphant BOOM,BOOM,BOOM…, not a fanfare of joy or triumph but a muddy slog, slog, slog. The Russians have had a rough go in Ukraine, where they have lost tens of thousands—if not more than 100,000— of their youth to injury, death, and desertion. Not very glorious. So far, Putin hasn’t had his Thus Spoke Zarathustra moment.
It’s difficult for us humans to live through any prolonged experience at the level of Strauss’s opening section. Even Strauss couldn’t maintain the intensity. In fact, the rest of Also Sprach Zarathustra is rather soapy in my opinion, very much fin de siècle: The fanfare heralding the promise of the coming twentieth century, automobiles, airplanes, and spaceships, but the end of the music looking back to the all-too-fast rise of industrial urban centers smoggy and dirty, built on laborers with dull lives living in rather squalid apartment blocks. Is there a lesson in Strauss's work? Is there a parallel in the history of the 120-plus years since he composed it?
Maybe most ambitious undertakings begin like Strauss’s work, all fanfare and promise of glory. Certainly, Hitler began with a glorious entrance into Austria, in taking the Sudetenland, and in crushing Poland. But then the long-term realities of war occurred, muddy slogs and the counterattacks of the Allies, the bleeding-white of a generation of youth, the betrayals and losses. The triumphant BOOM BOOM of the beginning attacks by Hitler on perceived enemies turning into the BOOM BOOM of the ending attacks that destroyed Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin. And after the war? The slog, the same question: “How did we begin with so much promise of glory for the Motherland (or Fatherland), and end with so much loss?”
Putin grew up in an age of music designed to extoll the glory of the Soviet Union. Maybe he should have listened to Strauss to know that a glorious ambition and fanfare often ends in a progression toward the kind of unmoving trench warfare he finds his troops in one year after the invasion. And the losses of tens to over 100,000 soldiers? Is Putin the latest incarnation of Erich von Falkenhayn, the German general who sent many to their deaths in a battle of attrition that had hundreds of thousands of casualties and that resulted in nothing but loss, 143,000 dead Germans and 163,000 dead French. And Verdun, that place of such death? It wasn't strategic, it didn't have gold and precious metals; it was just a place where needless loss of life was the only accomplishment.
To what avail? All those rockets and shells, all those bullets and drones, and all those dead who will never hear any glorious fanfare. All the promise of a fanfare, but none of the evolution to a Star Child, the war will simply be more of the same, more human suffering that ends a false promise and a blind ambition.
Daaaa—daaaaa^—daaaaaaa^—dadaaaaa—BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOM,BOOMmm *
*See YouTube for several versions. Strauss's fanfare without the rest of the composition is online under the piece's title and is performed by Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel. Fanfares always leave the audience wanting more. For another fanfare, listen to versions of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, a work that also employs tympani and brass.
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