Zarathustra or Zoroaster was a prophet living in ancient Persia. His name was made known to modern man by the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) seminal work, Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1885). In writing his work, as Strauss wrote, “I did not intend to write philosophical music or to portray in music Nietzsche’s great work. I wished to convey by means of music an idea of the development of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of its development, religious and scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman.” The large-scale tone poem explores the gamut of human emotion.