Score Club - Tod und Verkälung, Richard Strauss

Welcome to Score Club! This time around we will be taking a different approach…

One of the most intimidating parts of learning a new piece of orchestral music can be its sheer size and length. Digesting anything over ten minutes is a difficult task for anyone, let alone trying to interpret a behemoth like Mahler’s 3rd Symphony (which can clock in around an hour and 45 minutes!). So for this score club, we are going to break down one of Richard Strauss’s masterpieces week by week, and talk about how to approach a large scale orchestral work. We will throw in some historical/informational tid-bits and anecdotes along the way, but mostly we will be talking about the music itself. Let’s get started!

Listening week one - 0:00-8:45(ish)

A typical performance of Tod und Verkalung (translated to Death and Transfiguration) clocks in at around 25 minutes. In that 25 minutes, Strauss takes us through a remarkably dramatic and epic journey.

It’s not always easy to find 25 minutes in a day to just listen, and while we will only focus on the first eight minutes or so this week, it would be hugely beneficial to find the time to listen to this piece from beginning to end at least once.

Once you have listened through, spend a lot of time specifically with the first eight and a half minutes or so. It’s about 8:35 in the top video, and 9:00 in the bottom. At that point, there is a moment of great change as the music winds down and calms.

If you were with us for our last score club, you might remember that one of the first things we should do while learning a new piece is to simply listen, and take note of what immediately stands out to you. Significant moments of change, surprise, beauty or calm are all important moments! Try this:

1. We already broke the piece down to the first eight minutes, but we can break this section down even further. This first section can be separated into two extremely contrasting parts. Take note of where this happens.

2. In general, how do these two sections make you feel? There will be variation within these sections, but keep it simple for now and think of a few adjectives that can describe them in general.

3. Now, compare the two sections. How do they work with, or against each other? Do they create some kind of story? What could that story be?

Here are some thoughts from Music Director Eric Mahl to get you thinking:

“To me, the music at the very beginning symbolizes a staggering heart beat, coming perhaps from of our main character who will take the arduous journey that is Tod und Verkalung. It’s almost as if we enter on the last moments of their life as they calmly reflect on their memories, some happy, and some sad. Suddenly, (beginning at around the 5 minute mark) like in a movie, we are taken into their past as we are violently thrown into one of their memories; one full of drama, pain, perseverance and triumph.”

Your interpretation will of course be different, but keep your mind open and be creative!

Welcome to week two with Death and Transfiguration!

Timings for this week: 9:30 - 14:30

This week, most of the content will be presented in video form by our Music Director and Conductor, Eric Mahl. See the video below!

In addition to listening to all the motives throughout this section as Maestro Eric suggests, try to do exactly the same thing we did in the first week for this new section; that is, break this section down into smaller parts.

There are a few smaller and distinct parts within the five minutes of music for this week, and like the music from the first week, they all have very unique emotions and energy. First, identify them, compare them, and put them together to form a story! Try to break it down into three separate parts.

Hint: Imagery helps a lot! Think of a particular place (real or fictional) that the music reminds you of. Any connection will help you internalize the music further.

What part of the music could the image to left represent?

Welcome back for week three!

Timings for this week: ca. 14:00 to 17:00 (timings taken from the first video)

This week is all about organization!

We have spent the last two weeks breaking down this music into smaller sections. By now, you should have 4 or 5 unique sections (but you could have more or less depending on how you hear it!). You can think of these smaller sections as pieces to a puzzle. Our job is to keep them all straight, and figure out how they fit together.

This can be extremely difficult! Without any visual cues to guide us, we have to rely on our own memory to recall musical moments that happened throughout the piece. Not only that, we need remember their exact order and feeling.

But have no fear! Many musicians often make their own visual guides to help them remember.

Below is a simple example of one of these visual guides. It uses a horizontal line (representing time) to break the piece down into our three sections from each week, and vertical lines to separate them. Within each section, there are words that describe the music within each section. This is a great way to visualize the music, and easily recall feelings/emotions from any point.

Most importantly, it can help us start to think about what Strauss might have wanted to say through his music - to find the meaning behind all of the notes!

This week, try using a simple visual guide to organize all the sections of music (go from larger sections to smaller ones) through to the 18th minute, using descriptive words to remember what each section “felt” like.

Then, instead of listening to the music, look at your descriptive words and see if you can find some kind of emotional story unfolding.

Welcome to our last week with Death and Tranfiguration!

It’s time to put this giant together, and examine what it means to you!

Timings for this week: 14:30 to the end.

We would like to focus on an important word from the title of this piece for this week:

Transfiguration -a. change in form or appearance; b. an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change. (Webster dictionary)

Like a butterfly emerging from it’s chrysalis, or achieving some form of enlightenment, music too can show great change, transformation, or transfiguration.

For more on how this can be done through music, our Music Director Eric Mahl is back with a video!

Try to think of the moments that Eric refers to in the video as pure emotion, rather than strictly musical moments: As the inner feelings of a person who, after struggling to find respite, has finally found their place of peace.

What has your struggle been? What does your place of peace look like? Becoming familiar with music like this is invaluable. It provides us with something external and universal to examine, but also gives us something we can relate to our own lives. In this way, we learn more about ourselves, but also about each other.

That’s it for Tod und Verkalung!

Stay tuned for a new piece next week!