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Episode details

Radio 3,19 Oct 2011,20 mins

Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra

Discovering Music

Available for over a year

Strauss's famous sunrise opening of Also sprach Zarathustra is rather better known than the book which inspired it: Nietzsche's dense, philosophical novel of the same name. Stephen Johnson looks at what Strauss made of Nietzsche's deeply complex, and controversial ideas, and how he wielded this philosopher's grand vision for humanity into the questioning, and strangely unresolved musical work that follows.

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