From Raucous to Breathtakingly Beautiful

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) 
Danse (Tarentelle styrienne) (1890; orch. by Maurice Ravel in 1922)  

Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: First Oregon Symphony Performance 

Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings 

Estimated Duration: 6 minutes

Danse presents listeners with a partnership between two major figures of early 20th-century French music, Debussy and Ravel – so firmly linked in the popular consciousness that one sometimes hears of a composer named Debussyandravel. In actuality, they were completely different animals: Debussy, ever the avant-garde radical who never met an applecart he didn’t want to topple, and Ravel, the fastidious conservative with a penchant for channeling the music of the past.  

For Ravel, dipping into some Debussy piano pieces from thirty years previously was both an homage to a master that he deeply admired (whatever his occasional statements to the contrary) and also a chance to bring some lesser-known repertory to a wider audience. Among those pieces was the Tarantelle styrienne of 1890, a lively little number that elicits thoughts of Italy via the peasant dance that’s all about exercising out the venom from a tarantula bite. Ravel’s practice of orchestrating his own piano works stood him in good stead as he applied his supreme skill to this charming trifle, as popular today as it was at its 1923 Paris premiere.

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) 
Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28 (1895)  

Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: Jun Märkl led the Oregon Symphony on November 6-8, 2021, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall    

Instrumentation: piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings 

Estimated Duration: 16 minutes

We all love tricksters, whether they’re court jesters, practical jokers, Peck’s Bad Boy, or the crew behind TV’s Candid Camera. There’s something elementally appealing about a bad boy who cocks a snook at pompous respectability, and something just as satisfying about watching a bad boy getting his well-earned comeuppance.  

That accounts for the long popularity of the 14th-century German trickster Till Eulenspiegel, a chap who filled such a well-defined role that if he didn’t actually exist, it would have been necessary to invent him. He’s the guy who, admonished by his father to ride obediently behind him on horseback and not cause any trouble, drops his pants and moons everybody as he passes by. He loved nothing better than to cause a fracas in the marketplace or to send a bunch of stuffy professors into a tizzy. Usually harmless, he caused chaos but not injury, although some of his pranks were in appallingly bad taste while others teetered on the edge of legality.  

Over the centuries, Till became the hero of an ever-expanding series of anecdotes and stories. He comes off as a combination of Charlie Chaplin, Monty Python, and Indiana Jones with his bumbling attempts at apprenticeship, quicksilver witty repartee, and spectacular derring-do to get out of tight spots. Whoever he was in real life, Till became a popular literary folk hero who could be massaged into almost any persona the author desired, from Robin Hood to hoodlum.  

Till Eulenspiegel was on hand to cheer up Richard Strauss just when he needed him most. His 1893 opera Guntram had been a sickening failure and Strauss was mad at the world. Originally, he thought to write a revenge opera starring himself as a rebel with a cause who takes on the stolid, art-phobic citizens of an imaginary German town. He clothed it in historical respectability by portraying himself as Till Eulenspiegel. As planned, it was likely to have been edgy, bitter, and unpleasant. Fortunately, he dropped that project in favor of an orchestral tone poem about Till’s escapades. He hadn’t written a tone poem since the metaphysical Death and Transfiguration in 1889. Now it was time for something completely different.  

He wrote it “to give the people in the concert hall a good laugh for once.” He aimed right at the heart of the story and made it big, bright, and brilliant. Not surprisingly, it was a smash hit with audiences and has remained the most popular of his ten symphonic poems to this day. Given a lavish, ear-tickling orchestration, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks presents an episodic catalog of some of Till’s best escapades, such as his wreaking chaos in the town marketplace, his incompetence in all matters courtly, and his mockery of a gaggle of stuffy scholars. Strauss employs a crisp 5-note “Till” theme that burbles insouciantly throughout the work, combined with a “once upon a time” theme that you hear in slow motion at the very beginning. Both themes pop up in various guises throughout the pageant to come, whether it’s about dancing, wild antics, lovemaking, or perhaps most memorably, Till’s trial and execution by hanging. (Apropos that last, Strauss even portrays Till’s neck snapping and his final twitches.)  

Nothing succeeds like success, and Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks got Strauss back on his feet. More fine tone poems were still to come – Thus Spake Zarathustra, Don Quixote, A Hero’s Life, Symphonia Domestica, and An Alpine Symphony. But Till is special, its immediate likeability surely reflecting its rascally hero’s timeless appeal. 

Carl Orff (1895–1982) 
Carmina Burana (1936)  

Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: Leo Hussain led the Oregon Symphony on February 25-27, 2023, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall    

Instrumentation: three flutes (second and third doubling piccolo), three oboes (third doubling English horn), three clarinets (second doubling bass clarinet and third doubling E-flat clarinet), two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celeste, two pianos, and strings with soprano, tenor, and baritone vocal soloists, mixed-voice chorus, and children’s chorus 

Estimated Duration: 60 minutes

“With Carmina Burana my collected works begin” wrote Carl Orff to his publisher. As far as posterity is concerned, that’s also where they ended. Carmina Burana was a socko hit at its premiere and has remained a worldwide favorite ever since, while the remainder of Orff’s catalog languishes in obscurity. Only his groundbreaking pedagogical Orff-Schulwerk has retained any currency.  

The reasons for Carmina Burana’s enduring popularity are clear enough. It’s tuneful, rhythmically straightforward if often propulsive, harmonically clear, and filled with fascinating poems that range from mystic to bawdy. Its opening movement O Fortuna invites being sung in the shower, just as it has spawned a popular Internet game of rewriting its Latin text as delectably misheard English. (“Gopher tuna! Bring more tuna!”) Carmina Burana has proven itself to be remarkably resistant to critical brickbats (“Neo-Neanderthal!”) and the faint whiff of Nazi associations that cling to composition and composer alike. Although there is no definitive evidence of Carl Orff being an official member of the Nazi Party, he was involved in the cultural arm of the regime and benefited both socially and economically from the Party's support. This association has complicated Orff's legacy and is important to reckon with in the context of this piece.  

Orff intended Carmina Burana as a fully-staged work, and the 1937 premiere featured scenery, costumes, lighting, and dance – all a reflection of Orff’s fascination with ancient Greek theater and its synthesis of music, movement, language, and visuals. That multi-sensual quality has rendered the work particularly suitable as scoring for cinema and television alike, including TV commercials. The work is so vivid that its innate theatricality comes across even in the concert performances that are the norm today.  

Orff found the inspiration for the work in a 19th-century edition of medieval poetry titled Carmina Burana, which translates as “Songs of Beuern,” a.k.a. Bavaria. An illustration of a medieval wheel of fortune in the volume led to Orff’s selection of 24 poems, divided into three large sections:  

In Springtime and On the Green – pastoral scenes 
In the Tavern – bawdy drinking songs and the like 
The Court of Love – love in its many facets  

In Springtime begins with O Fortuna, so instantly memorable – and so short – followed by the chantlike Fortune plango vulnera. The three spring-like poems that follow (Veris leta facies, Omnia Sol temperat, Ecce gratum) morph gradually from chant to full-on lyrical song.  

On the Green begins with a fine orchestral dance noted for its intriguing cross-rhythmic accents, then follows the extroverted charm of Floret silva with its alternation of large and small choruses (not to mention abrupt alternations of tempo.) The young girl sallies forth to buy makeup in Chramer, gip die varwe mir, followed by a relatively dignified orchestral dance. Then comes the utterly unbuttoned glee of Swaz hie gat umbe, topped by Were diu werlt alle min – an erotic yearning for no less than the queen of England.  

In Taverna opens with the spectacular solo baritone aria of a vice-soaked youth who, estuans interius ira vehementi (burning inside with violent anger), chooses the pleasures of the flesh over hopes for salvation.

The downright surreal Oli lacus colueram follows, as a roasted swan bewails its unhappy status as dinner entrée. The abbot of Cockaigne now proclaims his credo – and it’s not exactly Christian charity. The boys of the tavern burst in with In taberna quando sumus, an exhaustive laundry list of all the unsavory-but-delectable pleasures to be had in the tavern, many nearly shouted out in what could be interpreted as a parody of the repetitive tones used to sing psalm texts in Gregorian chant.  

Then comes the Cour d’amours, dedicated to that most enduring of all human preoccupations. It all begins sweetly with Amor volat undique (Cupid flies everywhere) piped out in innocent-ish tones, but soon enough steams up with young love (well, young lust anyway) insisting on its prerogatives, issues of modesty notwithstanding. Those fires of springtime love culminate in the glorious Tempus es locundum (This is the joyful time) before a brief exhortation to Blanchefleur and Helen leads to a restatement of O Fortuna. But is it really all that joyous? The last line, so swaddled in its obscuring Latin, offers a stern lesson: sortem sternit fortem (Fate strikes down the strong man), it warns. Mecum omnes plangite! (Everybody weep with me!)