One “Hell” of a Fugue!

“Serious” music is often at its best when it is not taken seriously. Even a composer as iconic as Johann Sebastian Bach was neither afraid nor ashamed to disclose his sense of humor. I am thus not ashamed to admit that one of my favorite pieces of music comes from a Czech opera with a narrative that is too ludicrous to believe.

A 1927 poster by Alexandr Vladimír Hrska for the opera being discussed, showing Schwanda and the Devil each trying to cheat the other (from Wikimedia Commons,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

The opera is Schwanda the Bagpiper, with music composed by Jaromír Weinberger for a libretto (in Czech) by Miloš Kareš. The narrative involves thievery, deceit, and, perhaps most interesting of all, discourse with the Devil. The title character is a scoundrel from beginning to end, which is why he ends up in Hell. There he ends up playing cards with the Devil. It goes without saying that both of them cheat, but the Devil is outdone when Schwanda is the cleverer cheater. He is then escorted to an elevator, which returns him to his home.

Weinberger clearly enjoyed his jokes, which is why he decided that the elevator ride would be accompanied in the orchestra by a fugue. It my day, that was one of the most studied fugues in the literature; and it was a favorite in orchestra concert programs. Sadly, I have yet to encounter it in performance.

Mind you, CBS released a recording of the entire opera in 1981, which is still available (now on Sony) through an Amazon.com Web page. Sadly, the background information on that Web page is practically useless. Fortunately, Wikipedia can be counted on to provide a Web page of its own, which includes an account of all the roles in the opera (with their respective vocal ranges) followed by a synopsis of the crazy plot that entangles those roles. However, my own guilty pleasure is the way I relish referring to the opera by the German translation of the title: Schwanda Der Dudelsackpfeifer. Try saying that five times while listening to the overture!