Identity creator in three-quarter time: On the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss
Freiburg. It's only an A major triad. But when it's played every year at the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert—intoned by the solo horn, embedded in a whispering, high string tremolo—some people get tears in their eyes, while others begin to cheer enthusiastically: The first bars of "On the Beautiful Blue Danube," the Danube Waltz, are iconic. Even the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation's (ORF) news program "ZIB" begins with a jingle borrowed from this waltz theme.
Paul Lindau, travel writer
Its creator is one of the most popular composers of all time, yet remains unknown. Who knows today that it was an entire family that founded a newly established industry in 19th-century Vienna: the music business? That the father of the famous Johann had the same first name, that his most famous work, the Radetzky March, annually closes the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert – after the Blue Danube Waltz. And that his son, Johann, had two brothers: the extraordinarily talented Josef, who wrote veritable waltz symphonies with his "Deliria" and "Sounds of the Spheres." And the dashing Eduard, who, in a state of mental derangement in 1907, nine years before his death, had the entire music archive of the Strauss Orchestra burned – a tremendous loss, especially considering the loss of the numerous autographs.
Legends and anecdotes surround the Viennese Strauss clan, but ultimately, almost all of them culminate in the personality of Johann Strauss II, born on October 25, 1825, in Vienna, and died on June 3, 1899, a symbol of a century and an era that was drawing to a close. This era began to shape identity very early on. In 1883, Paul Lindau (1838-1919), a travel writer, columnist, novelist, and theater figure who was popular during his lifetime, wrote of a trip to the USA: "When I heard Strauss's waltzes, I was overcome by homesickness." The music of this Viennese man creates identity. To this day.
The popularity of Johann Strauss—or, as it has become customary in international music historiography, Johann Strauss II—is rooted in a blend of facts and myths that posterity has diligently woven to this day. For example, the Johann Strauss Monument in Vienna's Stadtpark, unveiled only in 1921 and whose artistic substance is debatable, is one of the city's most visited sights. And it's hard to imagine a better advertisement for Strauss music, admittedly spanning two generations, than the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert, with its gigantic economic impact. This year, it was broadcast worldwide by over 90 television stations and was available on various media just a few days after January 1st. Strauss sells...
The canon of Johann Strauss waltzes, marches, and polkas regularly performed today is ultimately manageable, despite all the excavations and attempts to revive lesser-known works by him. Outside of Austria, Johann Strauss II's work is usually reduced to the Danube Waltzes, the Emperor Waltzes, and his operetta "Die Fledermaus." His catalogue of works includes around 500 dances and 16 operettas, of which "A Night in Venice" and "The Gypsy Baron" are the two most likely to hold their own in repertoires. The operetta "Wiener Blut" (Vienna Blood) consists of Strauss melodies, but was created by the composer Adolf Müller.
In music history, Johann Strauss belongs to the Romantic era, which is evident in many a waltz prelude, such as the one in the tone-painting "Nordseebilder" (North Sea Pictures). But he was no academic. His mother, the innkeeper's daughter Anna Strauss, recognized her son Johann's talent and enabled him to receive a bourgeois musical education – against his father's expressed wishes. The younger son learned harmony and counterpoint from Kapellmeister Joseph Drechsler, the creator of the famous "Brüderlein fein" (Fine Little Brother), and quickly developed into a violin virtuoso. Johann Strauss grew up in a climate of suburban music. The Viennese waltz, which evolved from the Ländler, would only become the dance music of the courts and the upper middle class in the years and decades to come. And through an expansion of the form, particularly the introduction, it would take on semi-symphonic characteristics. Strauss junior played a significant role in this.
"If you can't think of anything, you can't make a waltz – on the other hand, masses and motets have already been written in this state," judged the famous Viennese music critic and Strauss friend Eduard Hanslick, who was prone to polemics, in an 1850 essay on "Dance Music and the Sons of Strauss and Lanner." This statement is not insignificant with regard to Johann Strauss's turn to musical theater, in other words, operetta. For it is above all the waltz that will develop into an integral part of this Viennese form of operetta. Or, better put, it is its nucleus. The fact that Strauss came to musical theater late in life also has something to do with this. His provenance is dance music. Which is not to say that Strauss didn't closely follow the musical developments of his time.
Thus, his catalogue of works contains early evidence of Strauss's reflection on current opera productions: frequently in the form of the quadrille, a multi-movement, contemporary contradance in which he incorporated the most famous numbers from new musical theater works. One could say this was an early form of the now common practice of cover versions. This also included the oeuvre of Richard Wagner. His "Tannhäuser" overture was heard in Vienna for the first time not at the Court Opera, but at an "Extraordinary Concert Soiree" on January 1st in the Sofien-Bad Hall. At the helm was Johann Strauss. In the case of "Tristan und Isolde," fragments from it were even heard by Strauss before the Munich premiere in 1865. Incidentally, this also says something about the quality of the Strauss orchestra, since at that time many considered "Tristan" unplayable.
The path of "Schani" (Viennese for Jean/Johann) to operetta, however, had nothing to do with Wagner. His first stage work, "Indigo and the 40 Thieves," was enthusiastically acclaimed at the premiere on February 10, 1871, at the Theater an der Wien – Strauss's fame was already gigantic at the time – but it was not an overwhelming success. Eduard Hanslick's verdict would henceforth cling to many of the master's stage works: "music to beautiful clothes." Behind this judgment lay a specific shortcoming: the composer's general disinterest in compelling stage material and his lack of experience in musical theater dramaturgy. Although not uninformed, Johann Strauss lacked the instinct for a truly good libretto.
Except in "Die Fledermaus." "Not a stage set, but a small, intimate musical comedy," read a review of the premiere in 1874. And this time it was not a mere potpourri of dance music, but a subtle characterization of the deceitful bourgeoisie, in which all classes—nobles, upper middle class, and servants—are, for a short time, completely equal under the mask of beautiful appearances and under the influence of alcohol. A fairytale world born of reality. The fact that the composer—and librettist—Richard Genée participated in the stage-appropriate sublimation of the score is, first of all, an indication that Strauss, the dance musician, sometimes lacked the instinct for maximum stage effect. As an operetta composer, he was largely self-taught and dependent on assistance.
Nevertheless, anyone who sees "The Bat" as a kind of "The Marriage of Figaro" of operetta is not mistaken. In terms of content, because it holds a mirror to the bourgeois Gründerzeit just as Mozart's and Da Ponte's Commedia per musica does to the late Ancien Régime. And musically, because Strauss so congenially focuses on the zeitgeist of those years, which increasingly presents itself as an unconditional escape into three-quarter time. It is not for nothing that the waltz finale of the second act, with its delicate blend of mockery and sentimentality, is one of the best genre pictures of this era. From a specifically Viennese perspective, of course.
Johann Strauss made suburban music acceptable and established the global success of Viennese operetta, as well as the first pop music era in music history. His guest performances in Europe, Russia, and the USA testify to the growing popularity of a musician who, like no other of his colleagues, was praised by the professional world. Including Richard Wagner.
And when his younger colleague Jules Massenet confessed that he never knew how to dance Strauss's waltzes because Strauss was "the perfume of Viennese music," that was one of the greatest compliments one could pay the "Waltz King." For many Strauss waltzes are indeed far too good to be danced to.
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