November 27, 1896: Composer Richard Strauss premieres his "tone poem" Also sprach Zarathustra, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's 1883 novel of the same title, translated into English as Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Born in Munich in 1864, Strauss was not related to the composing Strauss family of Vienna, Austria. He had previously composed tone poems about Don Juan and Macbeth, and would later do so for Don Quixote. He lived until 1949, and Also sprach Zarathustra remains easily his most familiar composition.
Strauss conducted the premiere himself, at the Saalbau der Museums-Gesellschaft in Frankfurt, Germany. A typical performance lasts 33 minutes. Its opening fanfare, titled "Sunrise," was used by director Stanley Kubrick as the theme song for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
That use led Elvis Presley to use it as the opening theme for his concerts from the start of his Las Vegas run in 1969 until his death in 1977. I'm guessing that Elvis wasn't aware of Nietzsche's statement in the novel, "God is dead," it, or else he probably would not have used the fanfare.
By the time Strauss' composition premiered, Nietzsche was too ill to attend, and no recording of it was made until 1935, when Serge Koussevitzky conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in it. So it is likely that Nietzsche never expressed an opinion on it.
The Saalbau der Museums-Gesellschaft, site of the premiere, opened in 1861, and was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944.
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November 27, 1896 was a Friday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball was out of season, there were college football games played the day before (Thanksgiving) but not the day after, professional hockey did not yet exist, and basketball was still a brand-new sport.
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