Also sprach Zarathustra is a tone poem by German composer Richard Strauss, composed and premiered in 1896. Musically it is a large-scale, programmatic orchestral work inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel, characterised by expansive orchestration with dramatic brass fanfares contrasted against lyrical string and woodwind passages, and it marks a pivotal point in Strauss's development of late-Romantic orchestral language.
