Which composer's piece 'Also sprach Zarathustra' opens 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Richard Strauss composed Also sprach Zarathustra, the piece whose opening fanfare accompanies 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Strauss wrote the tone poem in 1896, drawing inspiration from Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Its opening section, often called “Sunrise,” begins with a powerful three-note motif that rises from low orchestral sonorities into a monumental brass statement.

Stanley Kubrick used a recording by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan. The music appears at the opening and returns at key moments associated with transformation, including the ape’s discovery of the tool and Bowman’s transformation into the Star-Child.

The alternatives are connected with the film but are not the answer. Johann Strauss II wrote “The Blue Danube,” which accompanies the spacecraft-docking sequence; György Ligeti supplied several unsettling avant-garde works; and Aram Khachaturian’s music also appears in the film’s classical soundtrack.