Listening Guide
The Work
Third Movement: Scherzo
In what strange simplification and falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple! How we have been able to give our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a divine desire for wanton leaps and wrong inferences! How from the beginning we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, lack of scruple and caution, heartiness, and gaiety of life–in order to enjoy life! And only on this now solid, granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so far–the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will: the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but–as its refinement!
– Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche
Tempo: Kräftig, nicht zu schnell. (Energetic, not too fast).
Key: D major with numerous minor-key modulations (f, d, a, e, etc.).
Time signature: 3/4
Rhythm: Ländler and waltz.
Form: Scherzo with two trios