Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel

Abstract

Abstract Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel is unquestionably one of the composer’s most popular works, and has been so since its premiere under Franz Wtillner’s direction in 1895. Indeed, both Till and Don Juan, that wondrously exuberant, slightly earlier 1889 masterpiece, were not only outrageously popular right from the start with audiences and critics alike, but had a profound impact on the course of music in that both works, having more or less abandoned the classical sonata and variation forms, successfully explored the new freer narrative form of the ‘tone poem.’ While Liszt was the real inventor of the tone poem and Wagner contributed-for all his respect and love for Beethoven’s symphonies-enormously through his operas to the break-up of the classical symphonic forms, it was Strauss, in Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, and some of his other tone poems, who brought this literary-oriented genre to world center-stage. The tone poem clearly stood in direct opposition to Brahms and his classical forms, and led the revolution, along with other brilliant break-through works, like Debussy’s L’Apres-Midi d’unfaune (1892-94), and the virtual decimation of the symphonic form(s) by Mahler in his symphonies and Das Lied van der Erde, that eventually brought down the entire house of classical forms.