since it represents: moral purification through one's own strength, liberation through work, worship of eternal, magnificent nature. The resulting draft of the work was to be a two-part work titled Der Antichrist: Eine Alpensinfonie; however, Strauss never finished the second part. Instead, he dropped the first half of the title (named after an 1888 book by Nietzsche) and called his single-movement work simply An Alpine Symphony. After so many years of intermittent composition, once Strauss began work on the piece in earnest the progress was quick. Strauss even went so far as to remark that he composed An Alpine Symphony "just as a cow gives milk". Orchestration for the work began on November 1, 1914, and was completed by the composer only three months later. In reference to this, his final purely symphonic work, Strauss famously commented at the dress rehearsal for An Alpine Symphony's premiere that at last he had learned to orchestrate. The entire work was finished on February 8, 1915. The score was dedicated "in profound gratitude" to Count Nicolaus Seebach, director of the Royal Opera in Dresden, where four of the six operas Strauss had written by that time had been premiered. Scoring and structure An Alpine Symphony is scored for a large orchestra consisting of: Woodwinds 1 heckelphone 1 clarinet in E 2 clarinets in B Brass 4 trumpets 4 trombones 2 tubas 12 offstage horns 2 offstage trumpets 2 offstage trombones Percussion timpani (2 players) snare drum bass drum cymbals triangle tam-tam cowbells wind machine thunder machine glockenspiel Keyboard celesta organ Strings 2 harps 18 violins I 16 violins II 12 violas 10 cellos 8 double basses Strauss further suggested that the harps and some woodwind instruments should be doubled if possible and indicated that the stated number of string players should be regarded as a minimum. The use of "Samuel's Aerophon" is suggested in the instrumentation listing. (Strauss probably misunderstood the name – it was originally called the Aerophor.) This long-extinct device, invented by Dutch flautist Bernard Samuels in 1911 to assist wind players in sustaining long notes without interruption, was a foot-pump with an air-hose stretching to the player's mouth. However, modern wind players make use of the technique of circular breathing, whereby it is possible to inhale through the nose while still sustaining the sound by matching the blowing pressure in the mouth. Another oddity with the scoring is that the