If you’ve been to a Gamecock football game, you’ve heard this tone poem

If you’re a South Carolina football fan, you have a favorite tone poem.

It’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” opus 30, by Richard Strauss, of course.

If that’s not ringing any bells, that may be because you know it as the theme from “2001.”

Inspired by a Friedrich Nietzsche philosophical novel of the same name (which translates to “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”), Strauss composed the tone poem in 1896. Then, in 1968, American film director, screenwriter and producer Stanley Kubrick popularized it with his mega-hit film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” And, in 1983, as you know, the Gamecocks began using the selection to amp up the crowd as players ran onto the field – introducing one of the most iconic entrances in college football.

But football season doesn’t start for nearly seven months – so if you’re missing hearing your favorite tone poem, you can hear it Saturday, Feb. 3, when conductor Morihiko Nakahara leads the South Carolina Philharmonic as it pays tribute to the classical music used in Kubrick’s films 50 years after “2001” was released.

Other selections:

▪ Rossini’s Overture to “La Gazza Ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”), featured in Kubrick’s surreal psychological drama “A Clockwork Orange.”

▪ Henry Purcell’s “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary,” also featured in “A Clockwork Orange.” Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky arranged the march, which Purcell composed in 1695 for the procession of Mary II cortège through London to Westminster Abbey.

▪ Johann Strauss’s “Blue Danube Waltzes,” also highlighted in the “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Music for a Cause

Every season since 2011, the S.C. Philharmonic has partnered with a group of Midlands charities, raising awareness for their causes and featuring each charity at one Masterworks concert that season. The cause selected for this performance is the Cure Sanfilippo Foundation, which advocates for and funds research toward a cure and treatment options for patients with the rare, degenerative genetic disease that causes severe disability, irreversible brain damage and, typically, death before adulthood.

Glenn O’Neill – who founded the Cure Sanfilippo Foundation with his wife, Cara, after their daughter, Eliza, was diagnosed in 2014 – says the research his foundation supports also has implications for other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

RELATED: They isolated themselves for 726 days to give their daughter a chance at life

“Ten years from now, hopefully sooner, we’ll have newborn screening and have a proven treatment or cure,” O’Neill told The State last year.

Mention “charity” when you purchase tickets on the phone or in person, and 75 percent of your ticket price will be donated to the Cure Sanfilippo Foundation. (Online purchases are not eligible.)

That a musical event is supporting the cause is special to O’Neill.

“As children go through this dementia, so much of the understanding is taken away, but the connection with music is undeniable,” he said.

Eliza used to enjoy singing songs with her family. Though she’s lost the ability to speak, O’Neill said when he sings James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” to Eliza at bedtime, “She absolutely lights up. She even seems to try to mouth the words.”

To learn more about Sanfilippo syndrome or to find out how to help, visit www.curesff.org.

This story was originally published February 1, 2018 at 12:59 PM with the headline "If you’ve been to a Gamecock football game, you’ve heard this tone poem."