Don Juan (tr Patterson)

From Wind Repertory Project
Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss (trans. Merlin Patterson)


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This work bears the designation Opus 20, TrV 156.


General Info

Year: 1888 /
Duration:
Difficulty: V (see Ratings for explanation)
Original Medium: Orchestra
Publisher: Mwrlin Patterson
Cost: Score and Parts (print) - $550.00


Instrumentation

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Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Notes

Don Juan, Op. 20, is a tone poem in E major for large orchestra written by the German composer Richard Strauss in 1888. The work is based on Don Juans Ende, a play derived from an unfinished 1844 retelling of the tale by poet Nikolaus Lenau after the Don Juan legend which originated in Renaissance-era Spain. Strauss reprinted three excerpts from the play in his score. In Lenau's rendering, Don Juan's promiscuity springs from his determination to find the ideal woman. Despairing of ever finding her, he ultimately surrenders to melancholy and wills his own death. It is singled out by Carl Dahlhaus as a "musical symbol of fin-de-siècle modernism", particularly for the "breakaway mood" of its opening bars.

The premiere of Don Juan took place on 11 November 1889 in Weimar, where Strauss, then twenty-five, served as Court Kapellmeister; he conducted the orchestra of the Weimar Opera. The work, composed when Strauss was only twenty-four years old, became an international success and established his reputation as an important exponent of modernism.

- Program Note from Wikipedia


Media


State Ratings

  • Louisiana: V
  • Texas: V. Complete


Performances

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Works for Winds by This Composer


Resources