When Richard Strauss took up this composition, he began as a committed classicist but soon discovered that the musical language was too confining for his fertile mind. After immersing himself in the music of Richard Wagner and the late Romantics, he soon found his voice through his unique development of the tone poem, or symphonic poem, a purely instrumental rendition of a text, usually poetic or narrative in nature. The anecdotes about his attempts at literary music are many: “I want to be able to describe a teaspoon musically,” he is said to have commented. In the ten years between 1888 and 1898, he produced a string of tone poems, beginning with Don Juan (1888-89), that made him famous.
In between the continuing series of weighty tone poems – Death and Transfiguration (1888-89), Thus Spake Zarathustra (1896), and A Hero’s Life (1897-98) – Strauss allowed himself an outlet for his ironic and humorous side. Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, composed in 1894-95, recounts in music the exploits of a well-known character from German folklore, a practical jokester and general troublemaker. As he was run out of one town after another, Till lived by his wits, traveling and passing himself off as everything from handyman to priest. He was apparently based on a real figure, a fourteenth-century peasant from Brunswick named Tyll Eulenspiegel. And while the real Till apparently died of the Black Death, Strauss makes his anti-hero swing from the gallows.
The music opens with four introductory bars (“Once upon a time” Strauss wrote on the score) followed by two musical motives representing Till Eulenspiegel. His energetic first theme is a virtuoso horn solo familiar to many concertgoers. The clarinet then introduces a mischievous theme. Strauss intricately weaves and transforms these two themes into the fabric of the musical narrative of Till’s antics. Although the composer was uncharacteristically vague when describing all the details of the story, when his biographer Richard Specht wrote a blow-by-blow description of Till’s mischievous adventures, Strauss signed off on Specht’s storytelling.
Till first creates havoc galloping through the market near the city gate and upsetting the stalls, he then reappears, masquerading as an unctuous priest. He flirts with the village girls but soon falls truly in love, only to be rejected. Furious, he swears vengeance on the world. Till goes on to mock some pompous professors from a local university, portrayed by four mocking bassoons and a bass clarinet.
Till is now in full tilt, the orchestra bouncing his theme from one instrument to the other. His pranks end in a noisy chase, and his arrest Till is hauled into court, where his interrogation by the judges is heard in by four ominous orchestral blasts. Till’s replies grow more and more insolent until the court announces his sentence: death. He is hoisted by the hangman and dies. After that gruesome scene, Strauss’ epilogue begins with a reprise of the “once upon a time theme,” as if to say, “Don’t be frightened. It’s just a story.” But Till gets the last laugh.
