Strauss, Richard. Fanfare zum Schauspiel “Die Jäger” für Orchester (1891), TrV 165, Edition Peters, 2008 (full score $35 — parts are rental only)

Duration: 5.5 minutes (according to publisher) / 4 minutes (according to reviewer)
Instrumentation: 2.2.2.2-4.6.3.0-Timp-Strings

Reviewed by Silas Nathaniel Huff

In the spring of 1891, August Wilhelm Iffland’s play Die Jäger was chosen as the centerpiece of a gala celebrating the centenary of the start of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s directorship of the Weimar Court Theater. Goethe is credited with having steered the theater from comparative insignificance to national importance, making the gala an important event. Richard Strauss, the Weimar Court Conductor at the time, was charged with programming appropriate music for the occasion, and that spring he composed his Fanfare zum Schauspiel “Die Jäger.”

About two weeks before the performance, Strauss wrote to his sister that he was instructed to conduct Liszt’s Goethe March as an epilogue to the play, and he was unhappy about it. At a rehearsal, Strauss conducted a Beethoven adagio instead of the Liszt and the Grand Duke was quite pleased. Then, ten days before the gala, Strauss wrote his father, asking for some Mozart symphonies that could be used as entr’actes. He never mentioned composing his own fanfare or incidental music, and it remains unclear whether his Fanfare’s three movements were intended as additional music or in lieu of the Liszt, Beethoven, and Mozart. The gala took place on May 7, 1891, but there is no record of what music was performed. However, we know that Strauss was not present because he was hospitalized with pneumonia, so the Fanfare was likely not performed at the gala, and perhaps never performed at all. Regardless, the manuscript was discovered in 1972 by Strauss biographer Ernst Kraus, and in 2008 Edition Peters published this first printing of Fanfare zum Schauspiel “Die Jäger,” TrV 165 (edited by Alex Schröter).

Fanfare is a quirky little piece. There are three short movements: a brass fanfare, a slow string movement, and a full-orchestra setting of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Each movement has a radically different instrumentation from the others, which creates practical problems for those looking to program the set, and the three movements are so short that they are rather inconsequential by themselves.

The first movement is a fanfare composed for three horns, six trumpets, three trombones, and timpani (two drums). The fanfare consists of nine bars of C major arpeggios in the most rudimentary fanfare style. The only mildly interesting rhythmic feature is triplets in the low brass and timpani against duple eighths and sixteenths in the horns and trumpets. With six trumpet parts, and lasting only 20 to 30 seconds, the fanfare is fairly useless to most orchestras, but high school or college bands may find some use for it, perhaps ceremonial.

The second movement has no title or tempo indication, but is clearly intended as a slow, contrasting movement. Scored for one violin, two violas, two violoncellos, and one contrabass, it opens with the contrabass, pizzicato, playing the trombone and timpani line from the fanfare as the other instruments play a C major chord. A simple and pretty chorale follows for 24 bars before the contrabass brings back the opening motif and concludes the movement. Without a tempo marking, one does not know what to make of the character of this piece, but the movement could reasonably last anywhere from two to two and a half minutes. The sextet is a strange combination, but the first viola part has only one note outside of the violin range, and there are some possible string doublings; the movement could easily be arranged for a traditional string orchestra or quintet, and might make a nice addition to a string quartet gig book with a little more cajoling.

The third movement is an ode to an Ode, and scored for full orchestra [2.2.2.2-4.2.3.0-timp-strings]. After four bars of introduction, the rest of the movement is a direct quote of the “Freude schöner Götterfunken” theme from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (transposed down a whole step to C major). For about 50 bars (from the Beethoven score at rehearsal letter M) the figuration and instrumentation are nearly identical to Beethoven’s score, though Strauss adds clarinets and uses all four horns, matches the winds’ note durations to those of Beethoven’s choir, and makes a few octave transpositions in the string parts. Strauss constructs a 13-bar coda that ends the piece with a bang, cleverly recalling the timpani line from the first movement fanfare. This homage is more of an arrangement of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy than an original Strauss piece, but would have been appropriate for the 1891 gala, given Goethe’s relationship with Schiller. The whole movement lasts about a minute (perhaps as long as a minute and twenty seconds).

Written when Strauss was 26 years old, the three pieces are quite “un-Straussian” in their musical language. Each of the three movements of Fanfare zum Schauspiel “Die Jäger” has some merit, but together they make a very weird suite that lacks any sign of things to come from Strauss, and is, therefore, relatively musically uninteresting and insignificant. This work was probably well-suited to the 1891 event for which it was written—one can imagine the fanfare before the play, the second movement as an entr’acte, and Beethoven’s Ode in conclusion—but it now defies sensible programming. However, Fanfare zum Schauspiel “Die Jäger” may hold some interest for those compelled to learn all of Strauss’ works, or whoever happens to be the conductor in Weimar in 2091.

——————

Silas Nathaniel Huff is the music director of the Astoria Symphony (NYC) and Round Rock Symphony (TX), co-director of the International Conducting Institute (USA and CZ), and was recently tapped to be a U.S. Army Band Officer starting in June 2011.