Program Notes: Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks

FRANZ LISZT
Les Préludes 
BORN: October 22, 1811, in Raiding, Austria 
DIED: July 31, 1886, in Bayreuth, Bavaria 
WORK COMPOSED: 1845–1854 
WORLD PREMIERE: February 23, 1854, in Weimar, Germany, with the composer conducting. 

In 1848, Franz Liszt settled down in Weimar, withdrawing from the rockstar life of “Lisztomania,” which had surrounded his lengthy concert tours of Europe. He made his home there working as the royal court’s honorary Kapellmeister. In this role, his genius as a composer could evolve. He was able to spearhead a new kind of music, with both symphonic and poetic aspirations, embracing non-musical ideas from nature, literature and art. His new harmonies and orchestrations would blaze a trail for Wagner (his future son-in-law) and Strauss.  

Les Préludes was groundbreaking in that it was the first-ever orchestral work to be labeled a “symphonic poem.” But it was also enigmatic: to have one prelude was already common, even a prelude to an imaginary work. What did the title’s plurality mean? Liszt offered several explanations, settling on the poetic quote that he finally placed at the front of the score: “What is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song of which the last solemn note is sounded by death?”  

This music depicts the struggles and triumphs of life itself, with all the emotional intensity of a soul as romantic as Liszt’s. The piece comes in five sections: Question, Love, Storm, Bucolic Calm and Battle and Victory. A three-note motif, heard in the first moments, serves as the framework from which each section evolves.  

Notoriously, Nazi propagandists chose Les Préludes to accompany wartime radio bulletins and newsreels. This stain of association, no fault of the composer, rendered Les Préludes almost unperformable for many years. Its power to thrill led to it being deployed as soundtrack music for early television serials, including Flash Gordon and The Lone Ranger. Only recently have audiences been able to hear this innovative piece taking its proper place in the repertoire.  

Raff Wilson © 2025 

FRANZ LISZT
Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major 
WORK COMPOSED: 1830–1856 
WORLD PREMIERE: February 17, 1855, in Weimar, Germany, with Liszt at the keyboard and Hector Berlioz conducting. 

Franz Liszt was in many ways the quintessential musician of the 19th century, one whose work and personality embodied the Romantic spirit of his era. A pianist of legendary ability, Liszt cut a dashing figure and enjoyed several flamboyant love affairs. As a composer, he initiated many significant innovations. His extraordinary mastery of the keyboard allowed him to wrest sonorities from the piano that had not previously been heard, and he championed a unified conception of large-scale musical works, with tangible connections linking various movements and sections. 

Liszt made initial sketches for his Piano Concerto No. 1 as early as 1830, when he was not yet 20 years old. During the next quarter-century, he wrote no fewer than four drafts of the piece before at last arriving at one that he felt was worthy of performance. The work was heard for the first time in February 1855, at the Ducal court at Weimar, where Liszt served as music director. The composer played the solo part, while the orchestra was directed by Hector Berlioz, who was visiting Weimar at Liszt’s invitation. Even then, Liszt was not entirely satisfied with the score, and he revised it one last time in 1856 before committing it to print.  

The First Piano Concerto partakes of many of the expressive and formal innovations that distinguish Liszt’s music. In view of the composer’s well-known virtuosity, it is hardly surprising that the solo part offers instances of dazzling keyboard technique. Yet the work’s chief interest lies as much in its innovative approach to the concerto form as in its displays of pianistic skill. Its four sections — which correspond to the opening, slow movement, scherzo and finale of a symphony rather than the traditional three-movement format of a concerto — flow seamlessly, one from the next, to form an uninterrupted stream of music. Further unity is gained through Liszt’s famous procedure of “thematic transformation,” in which melodies recur in various guises repeatedly in different sections of the composition. 

Paul Schiavo © 2009, revised 2026 

ZOLTÁN KODÁLY  
Suite from Háry János 
BORN: Kecskemet, Hungary, December 16, 1882 
DIED: Budapest, March 6, 1967 
WORK COMPOSED: 1926–1927 
WORLD PREMIERE: December 15, 1927, in New York, with Willem Mengelberg conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

The two compositions that constitute the second half of our program were inspired by characters from popular European folk legend. The first is a familiar figure in the folklore of the world: the teller of tall tales, the performer of fabulous deeds. In America, he appears as Davy Crockett, who rode a comet and fought with a bear when he was only 3 years old. In Norway, he is Peer Gynt, immortalized by the playwright Henrik Ibsen. And in Hungary, he is Háry János, whose alleged exploits have made him that nation’s most popular folk hero. 

The story of Háry János, a celebration of the Hungarian peasantry, was a natural subject for one of Hungary’s leading nationalist composers. Even more than his friend and compatriot Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály identified with Hungarian culture and committed his career to forging a distinctly Hungarian musical idiom. “The works of art that exert the most powerful influence,” he declared, “are those that express the national characteristics of the artist.” Like Bartók, Kodály turned to the rich treasury of Hungarian folk music to impart a nationalist flavor to his compositions. In such works as the Psalmus Hungaricus and Dances of Galánta, Kodály adopted the melodic and rhythmic inflections of traditional Hungarian music and used folk tunes in a manner that spoke both for himself and for his country. 

The most ambitious and famous of Kodály’s nationalist works appeared in 1926 with the premiere of his opera Háry János. Its score is imbued with the flavor of Hungarian folk music — not surprising, since Kodaly incorporated a number of authentic Hungarian melodies into it. In 1927, the composer fashioned an orchestral suite from the opera, and it has become one of his best-known compositions. 

The suite recounts six episodes from Háry János. The first constitutes a prologue in which the composer refers to another bit of Hungarian folklore, the belief that a sneeze is evidence of a speaker’s truthfulness. And so, a tremendous, and no doubt, ironic orchestral sneeze precedes the deep, dream-like music of the Prelude, music that, like the opening of Till Eulenspiegel, seems to say “Once upon a time … ” Next, we find Háry in the capital, standing transfixed before a great musical clock. Between its chiming, martial music suggests the passing of military processions and our hero’s enlistment in the imperial army. In the third section, Song, Háry nostalgically thinks on his sweetheart, Örzse, waiting back in his village. 

The most dramatic moment of the suite come with The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon, which Kodály presents in a fantastic and sardonic tone. A strangely angular march tune opens this portion of the work, and hints of “The Marseillaise” (the national anthem of France) can be heard in its climactic central section. During the closing passage, a saxophone presents a mournful variant of the earlier march tune. Háry’s triumph in defeating the French is then celebrated in a series of robust Hungarian dances that form the Intermezzo. Finally, the Austrian Emperor and his entire court gather to pay homage, their pompous and frilly appearance being irreverently caricatured in Kodály’s music. 

Paul Schiavo © 2007, revised 2026 

RICHARD STRAUSS
Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28 
BORN: June 11, 1864, in Munich 
DIED: September 8, 1949, in Garmish-Partenkirchen, Bavaria 
WORK COMPOSED: 1894–1895 
WORLD PREMIERE: November 1895, in Cologne, conducted by Franz Wüllner. 

Till Eulenspiegel is one of the most colorful figures in German folklore. A rogue, a prankster, an impudent mocker of authority, Till sowed confusion and disorder wherever he went. He overturned stalls in the marketplace, caricatured priests and politicians, seduced young girls and deceived old maids. His tricks usually were at the expense of the staidest members of society — the prosperous and the powerful, the pious, the dull and the prudish — and thus provided both entertainment and social satire.  

Accounts of Till’s deeds and misdeeds have circulated in Germany since the 16th century, but his fame has spread abroad largely by way of the musical portrait of him created by Richard Strauss in Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. Completed in 1895, this tone poem is unusual among Strauss’ works in this form for its brevity, humor and lack of a detailed program — that is, an outline of the dramatic ideas embodied in the music.  

On this last matter, the composer wrote: “It is impossible for me to furnish a program for Till Eulenspiegel; were I to put into words the thoughts which its several incidents suggest to me, they would not suffice for the listener and might even give offense. Let me therefore leave it to my hearers to crack the nut the rogue has presented them.” Strauss went on to admit only that the final “scene” of the tone poem represents Till’s capture, trial and hanging. 

Till Eulenspiegel opens with five measures of prologue whose gentle musing seems to say: “Once upon a time ...” Immediately we hear one of the most famous horn calls in the orchestral literature, intruding with the first of two thematic ideas associated with the title character: his brazen audacity. The second, a motif representing his sly impudence, is announced by a solo clarinet and follows shortly after. These two subjects appear repeatedly and in a variety of guises during the episodes that follow, as the orchestra romps with Till through his riotous adventures.  

But just as the proceedings reach a height of exuberance, they are halted by a chilling drum roll. Loud chords now thunder accusations at Till, which he answers with the insolent clarinet motif. A rope is tightened around Till’s neck, and he meets his end. Now the mild music of the prologue returns, as if to assure us that all this has been only a story. But Till may yet have the last laugh: the final remembrance of the horn-call theme suggests his spirit is still alive and at large in the world. 

Paul Schiavo © 2015, revised 2026