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Tomfoolery Podcast

The Fool On the Hill...

Welcome to the Ether Game Weekly Podcast! Everybody plays the fool sometimes, but this week, it's Ether Game's turn. In honor of April Fools' Day, we look at some classic fools in classical music in a show we're calling "Tomfoolery"! To get you started (or for those of you who just cannot wait for Tuesday nights), you can sharpen your skills with our podcast selection. Remember to keep your ears out for a portion of Tuesday night's Teaser selection. And don't forget to tune into the full show on Tuesday, April 4th at 8:00pm for a chance to win a prize!

Richard Strauss (1864–1949): DON QUIXOTE: Theme and Variation I

The MET Orchestra; James Levine, conductor. Strauss: Don Quixote, Tod Und Verklärung (Deutsche Grammophon)



One of the original fools in literature is Don Quixote, a knight prone to delusions of grandeur and the foolish hero of the novel by Miguel de Cervantes. We can thank this novel for adding the term "quixotic" into our vocabularies (a word that means "foolishly idealistic." Heck, we can basically thank it for the term "novel"-Don Quixote is widely considered to be the first modern novel. In the story, our hero loses his sanity when reading stories of the glorious deeds of chivalric knights and their beautiful, yet distressed, damsels. Inspired, he tries the life of knighthood himself, but his active imagination leads him down many wrong paths, until he eventually returns to sanity and dies amidst reflections on the foolishness of his errant knighthood. The story has inspired countless composers, including Richard Strauss, Henry Purcell, Maurice Ravel, Leon Minkus, and the 20th-century musical The Man Of La Mancha.

Music Heard On This Episode

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