Souvenirs de Munich is a quadrille on themes from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, for piano, four hands by Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...

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Background

Chabrier’s interest in Wagner dated from 1862, when as a study exercise he copied out the score of Tannhäuser

Tannhäuser (opera)

Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...

. In early 1880 he requested time off from his ministry job to visit Munich that March with Duparc and other friends to go to a performance of Tristan und Isolde as it could only be seen there. The experience was a musical revelation for Chabrier. Chabrier, as assistant to Charles Lamoureux

Charles Lamoureux

Charles Lamoureux was a French conductor and violinist.He was born in Bordeaux, where his father owned a café. He studied the violin with Narcisse Girard at the Paris Conservatoire, taking a premier prix in 1854. He was subsequently engaged as a violinist at the Opéra and later joined the Société...

, helped in the rehearsals for the concert performances in Paris of Act I (1884) and Act II (1885) of Tristan und Isolde.

However, much as he admired the music of Wagner, he was still able to create musical parodies of the German composer. Chabrier regularly improvised works of this kind at the piano; Delage describes a evening dinner at the home of Lamoureux where an improvisation on themes from The Ring enraged von Bülow

Hans von Bülow

Hans Guido Freiherr von Bülow was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. He was one of the most famous conductors of the 19th century, and his activity was critical for establishing the successes of several major composers of the time, including Richard...

. Poulenc

Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...

 described Souvenirs de Munich as "irresistibly funny", where Wagner's principal themes appear with "false beards and fake moustaches".

The exact date of the creation of Souvenirs de Munich is unknown, but it probably dates from 1887. Possibly with Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

's satire Le musicien de l'avenir in mind, it led to Fauré and Messager's 'Souvenirs de Bayreuth' in similar vein.

Music

The five movements follow the traditional layout of a musical quadrille

• Pantalon (C major, 2/4) uses themes of the sailors’ greeting to King Marke (Act 1), the Kareol leitmotif
  Leitmotif
  A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...
  
  (Act III)
• Eté (G major, 2/4) uses themes of Ecstasy, Love call, Love song (Act II)
• Poule (C major, 6/8) uses themes of the shepherd’s joyful tune (Act III), death song (Act II)
• Pastourelle (D major, 2/4) uses themes of Kurwenal’s song
• Galop (F major, 2/4) Sailor’s doleful song (Act I), Kurwenal’s aria (Act I) and Longing for death (Act II)