folly governs the world
Click to viewPlease hit "play" and allow this music to run while you read this entry.
So this is pretty much my favorite piece of music right now. I think I've listened to it close to twenty times in the past few weeks. It is my background music for everything, particularly my folklore project, which is centered around the same Till Eulenspiegel named in the title. The music itself is... it's Strauss. It didn't change any lives, create any new paradigms, at the time of its being written. It still hasn't, so far as I know. But there is no piece of music I've heard that better tells a story.
Briefest of backgrounds: Till Eulenspiegel (or Tyll Ullenspiegel, or Master Owlglass, depending on your dialect of choice) is a German/Flemish folk hero and trickster figure. He has lots of stories in which he travels around western Europe in the 1200s and trolls the shit out of the populace, particularly the educated part. You've got to have some chutzpah to walk around trying to make people in medieval Germany laugh, and he is one hell of a fun dude. But even if you've got little or no background knowledge of him and his stories (which I didn't the first time I heard this), you can hear him in this piece - within the first ten seconds of the introduction, he's already laughing at you, this high-pitched, obnoxious laugh. What an asshole! No one even told a joke! You don't know who this bastard is, but he is standing in the meadows of Old Saxony and laughing at you. And damn if he isn't planning something.
Every moment in this piece is its own hilarious chunk of this stupid story. You can read on wiki (WOW APPARENTLY THIS IS A BALLET, TOO?!) what's happening - there's the brief introduction of Till's character, then he (if I recall correctly) rides a horse and cart through a crowded marketplace, then he woos some medieval German ladies, and then he fucks with some academics - and at the end, they execute him, because he's a huge asshole. It's a piece that travels, as Till did, and the transitions are seamless, between the gentle pastoral string sections that are Till's general satisfaction with life, and then the soupy horns that are his pathetic attempts to stop being a goofy loser long enough to win a kiss, and then the thick, pompous baritones of the clergy he spent his entire existence trolling the shit out of.
Just-- listen to it! You can hear them all! Music doesn't often get to be this fun. I mean, fun, yes, fun to play and to hear, I'm not trying to argue for this being superior to Beethoven's 9th or anything, but it's so great that someone told a story this stupid and did it so well. Strauss loves his main character, and the orchestra loves this asshole whose story they're playing, and it shows, and it's fun. I love being able to hear the characters. I love that you can use a horn riff to create a personality. I love the idea of giving an instrument a human voice, or... well, I guess this is more giving a human voice an instrument. You almost want a Dramatis Personae in the beginning of the piece - And today the part of Till Eulenspiegel will be played by the D-clarinet...
My absolute favorite fucking part? The end, with Till's trial and execution. His argument with the clergy starts first at about.... hm... 7 minutes, I think. That's their first entrance, with the sudden minor key equivalent of a bunch of grumpy old men in long robes going "HRMMM HRMMM HRMMM." (Till's the bitchy little clarinet yelling cheerfully back at them.) He gets away this time! He escapes and spends the next few minutes giggling like a loon at his own cleverness (it's in the flutes). But then later, they come back - at about 12:30 - and this time they get him.
And then the clarinet laughs once-- ha ha, guys, you got me, good show--
And then they read his sentence out to him in a burst of low brass--
And the clarinet doesn't quite manage to laugh so hard this time-- no, come on, I didn't do anything, no one got hurt--
And then the hangman appears, and the clarinet leaps into choking-range and squeals, oh, no, come on, you're not serious-- guys-- oh please no don't be serious--! as they drag him off.
And I won't spoil the ending, but oh, it's a fun one. :D
I first heard this piece in the car last summer, driving into Atlanta, and I hopped into the piece right before the aforementioned trial and execution bit. I had no idea what it was, I just heard that laughing horn motif and actually laughed aloud, because it was so goofy. Amry Laughing Alone With Classical Music - I could be a meme. And then they announced the name of the piece, and I was like, oh!! Oh! It's Till! Of course it's Till! Till, you asshole, somebody wrote music about you? And it's been on repeat in my very soul ever since.
Give it a listen, bros. No deep thought, no change in lifestyle required. Stick it on in the background while you clean, or write, or do your homework, or whatever it is you're doing. I hope it makes you giggle a couple of times.
It is like with his entire existence, Till Eulenspiegel asks just one question: You mad, bro?