Before you blow this off as typical "classical" music I wanna share a story. The year this piece was written in (1941) is a time when the world was enveloped in war. Richard Strauss was a German composer who bridged the gap between the Romantic and Modern eras of classical music. H1tler himself recognized Strauss as a musical icon for Germany. Strauss wasn't particularly political, at one point saying "they can all turn their backs on me. I just sit here in Garmisch [his home in Germany] and compose; everything else is irrelevant to me". Nonetheless, he had a Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren giving him an incentive to work for the bad guys, a decision that didn't go without criticism.
In 1933 Strauss was appointed president of the Reichsmusikkammer, a N4zi institution that promoted "good German music". He told his family that "I made music under the Kaiser, and under Ebert. I'll survive under this one as well." Strauss was in no means a model for N4zis despite accepting the honorary position given to him (he wasn't even consulted in the matter). In 1938 he wrote Friedenstag, or "Peace Day", a short-lived opera which promoted peace and was released when Germany was preparing for the war. The opera didn't fair too well. It didn't take long until he had to find a way to protect his Jewish wife and relatives who were under the scrutiny of Gestapo.
But before we get there we have this piece of music. Divertimento aus Klavierstücke von François Couperin. You can look at the piece in several different ways. First of all, Divertimento is a genre of music that is characterized by lighthearted and cheerful melodies. You can listen to this and really feel like there is nothing serious about it. There are of course some exceptions to this rule, skip to 13:06 and you can hear something much more melancholic. All of this is very interesting because if you look up the definition and etymology of the word "divertimento" it's an Italian word and simply means fun, amusement, or entertainment. Its roots are in Latin, of course, "divertere" which means "to divert" or "to separate". Now if we consider all of this in the context of N4zi Germany, our president of Reichsmusikkammer, Richard Strauss, we cannot help but discover a man who is torn between his obligations to country and to his conscious.
He serves the functional purpose of a propagandist by composing a piece of lighthearted, and apparently meaningless music that satisfies the likes of H1tler and Goebbels. But in addition to this the music is entirely inspired from the works of a French composer, a non-German, who composed a great number of pieces for harpsichord. In my opinion, Strauss' ability to balance obedience with nonconformity proves he was only guilty of trying to survive. And while the shit was hitting the fan he was interpreting and composing music that opposes the ideology of the fascists. Dude was a bad ass.
Enjoy.
