Artist in Residence Schuller revisits Strauss’s ‘Till Eulenspiegel’

Gunther Schuller, world-renowned composer, conductor and scholar, presents “Revisiting Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel,” a lecture and demonstration on score interpretation featuring the UW Symphony Orchestra.

This free event will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 1, in Mills Hall at the Mosse Humanities Building, 455 N. Park Street.

Schuller will speak about the concept of close study and fidelity to the score advocated in his book “The Compleat Conductor” (1997) and will describe some common errors in score interpretation. He will explain why it is essential that the Symphony Orchestra members studied not only their individual parts, but the full score of Richard Strauss’s “Till Eulenspiegel.” Finally, he will conduct the symphony in a performance of the work, one of Strauss’s most famous tone poems, written in 1894-95.

Schuller is the Fall 2005 UW–Madison Arts Institute Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence and is teaching university courses and participating in public forums and performances from September through December. Schuller’s residency is sponsored by the School of Music and co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Performing professionally since the age of 16, Schuller played with the New York Philharmonic and was principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony. He was also active in the New York bebop scene and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Ornette Coleman, among others. Schuller has written more than 160 original compositions in virtually every musical genre, authored five books, and started his own recording company, GM Recordings, in 1980.

He has been professor of composition at Yale University’s School of Music, president of the New England Conservatory of Music, and artistic director of the Tanglewood Berkshire Music Center. He has also won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur “Genius” Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Music, the BMI Lifetime Achievement Award and Columbia University’s William Schuman Award.

For more information: School of Music (608) 263-1900, email music@music.wisc.edu, or visit the residency Web site.