the start, as I have just said, the double theme of Zarathustra
appears in D major and A minor, but there is quick modulation to B flat
major and C sharp minor, and then to C major and F sharp minor.
Meanwhile the tempo gradually accelerates, and the polyphonic texture is
helped out by reminiscences of the themes of brooding and of
lamentation. A sudden hush and the motive of warning is heard high in
the wood-wind, in C flat major, against a double organ-point--C natural
and C sharp--in the lower strings. There follows a cadenza of no less
than eighty-four measures for four harps, tympani and a single tuba, and
then the motive of waiting is given out by the whole orchestra in
unison:

[Illustration: Musical Score]

This stately motive is repeated in F major, after which some passage
work for the piano and pianola, the former tuned a quarter tone lower
than the latter and played by three performers, leads directly into the
quadruple theme of the sulphur-yellow truth, mentioned above. It is
first given out by two oboes divided, a single English horn, two
bassoons in unison, and four trombones in unison. It is an
extraordinarily long motive, running to twenty-seven measures on its
first appearance; the four opening measures are given on the next page.

[Illustration: Musical Score]

With an exception yet to be noted, all of the composer's thematic
material is now set forth, and what follows is a stupendous development
of it, so complex that no written description could even faintly
indicate its character. The quadruple theme of the sulphur-yellow truth
is sung almost uninterruptedly, first by the wood-wind, then by the
strings and then by the full brass choir, with the glockenspiel and
cymbals added. Into it are woven all of the other themes in inextricable
whirls and whorls of sound, and in most amazing combinations and
permutations of tonalities. Moreover, there is a constantly rising
complexity of rhythm, and on one page of the score the time signature is
changed no less than eighteen times. Several times it is 5-8 and 7-4;
once it is 11-2; in one place the composer, following Koechlin and Erik
Satie, abandons bar-lines altogether for half a page of the score. And
these diverse rhythms are not always merely successive; sometimes they
are heard together. For example, the motive of disaster, augmented to
5-8 time, is sounded clearly by the clarinets against the motive of
lamentation in 3-4 time, and through it all one