The old and the new themes of the hero are now in
stirring encounter, and the latter seems to prevail.
The mood all turns to humor and merrymaking. In gay dancing trip serious
subjects are treated jokingly (the great melody of the horns is
mockingly sung by the harp),--in fits and gusts. At the height the
(first) tempestuous motive once more dashes upwards and yields to a
revel of the (second) whimsical phrase. A sense of fated renunciation
seems to pervade the play of feelings of the hero. In the lull, when the
paroxysm is spent, the various figures of his past romances pass in
shadowy review; the first tearful strain, the melody of the first of the
longer episodes,--the main lyric song (_agitato_).
In the last big flaming forth of the hero's passion victory is once more
with the theme of renunciation,--or shall we say of grim denial where
there is no choice.
Strauss does not defy tradition (or providence) by ending his poem with
a triumph. A final elemental burst of passion stops abruptly before a
long pause. The end is in dismal, dying harmonies,--a mere dull sigh of
emptiness, a void of joy and even of the solace of poignant grief.
_TILL EULENSPIEGEL'S MERRY PRANKS_
_In the Manner of Ancient Rogues--In Rondo Form_
Hardly another subject could have been more happy for the revelling in
brilliant pranks and conceits of a modern vein of composition. And in
the elusive humor of the subject is not the least charm and fitness.
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