Robert Heger

Efforts were made late in its creator's life to revive it, all of them as good as futile.

as recently as june thirteenth nineteen forty two the berlin state opera tried with the help of the conductor robert heger to pump life into it strauss found not a little of the opera still vital lebensfähig and felt sure it would produce a fine effect given a large orchestra he liked particularly in his old age the second half of the second act and the whole of the third the book has been described as revealing the influence of wagner guntram a member of a religious order in the time of the minnesingers esteems the ruling duke but kills himself after renouncing the duchess the object of his affection despite the dramatic resemblances to tannhuser and lohengrin alexander ritter found in the opera a departure from wagnerian influences slowly as strauss labored over the three acts of guntram he spent no such time on the tone poems which now began to follow in rapid succession after the ill-fated opera and a quantity of fine new leader superbly diversified in expressive scope and lyric moods there followed the tone poem which apart from don juan continues even in the present age to address itself most warmly to the public heart Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.

Analysts of one sort and another have provided the work with a program which has long been accepted as standard.

The composer himself declined to supply one, maintaining that the listener himself should seek to crack the hard nut till the folk rogue of ancient tradition had supplied his public.