Sunday Classics preview: The lustiest musical "bad boy" of them all, Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel

The legendary trickster Till Eulenspiegel, remembered in Mölin (in Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost reach of Germany), where he's said to have died. Mölin fashions itself as the Eulenspiegel city.

by Ken

You already know what our business Sunday is: Sunday Classics becomes Sunday Classics Theater as we hear Grieg's Peer Gynt incidental music with some context from the Ibsen play it was written for. Peer Gynt, both the play and the character, encompasses so many dimensions that we'll have a hard time reducing it/him to just a few, but on the simplest level Peer is -- at least in the earlier portions of the play takes him from his callow youth to his not-that-much-less-callow old age, and perhaps even beyond -- a favorite literary and also musical type: the bad boy.

We've already encountered one favorite musical bad boy: Zoltán Kodály's Háry János. Tonight we hear perhaps the lustiest of them all, Till Eulenspiegel, in the form of Richard Strauss's great tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, or Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks. You can read more about Till here. I've had a couple of these sound files hanging around since we took our leisurely look at musical funny business, and somehow never got around to Till. And I've added a couple more.

R. STRAUSS: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Op. 28

[from Wikipedia]

The work opens with a 'Once upon a time' theme, with solo horn bursting in with two repetitions of the first Till theme. The theme is taken by the rest of the orchestra in a rondo form (which Strauss spelled in its original form, rondeau), and this beginning section concludes with the tutti orchestra repeating two notes, along the lines of a child's "ta da!". The clarinet theme is heard next, suggesting Till's laughter as he plots his next prank. The music follows Till throughout the countryside, as he rides a horse through a market, upsetting the goods and wares, pokes fun at the strict Teutonic clergy (represented by the violas), flirts and chases girls (the love theme is given to soli first violin), and mocks the serious academics (represented by the bassoons).

The music suggesting a horse ride returns again, with the first theme restated all over the orchestra, when the climax abruptly changes to a funeral march. Till has been captured by the authorities, and is sentenced to beheading for blasphemy. The funeral march of the headsman begins a dialogue with the desperate Till, who tries to wheedle and joke his way out of this predicament. Unfortunately, he has no effect on the stony executioner, who lets fall the ax. The E-flat Clarinet wails in a distortion of the first theme, signifying his death scream, and a pizzicato by the strings represents the actual execution. After a moment of silence, the 'once upon a time' theme heard at the beginning returns, suggesting that someone like Till can never be destroyed, and the work ends with one last quotation of the musical joke.

Dresden State Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe, cond. EMI, recorded June 1970


Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1975


Dresden State Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Denon, recorded February 1989


Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded c1960


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW

We hear another side of Strauss. [And, in a late-breaking change of plan, still more of the musical depths of Strauss, in Sunday's main post.]


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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