The Strauss Dynasty and Habsburg Vienna 1009276476, 9781009276474

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The Strauss Dynasty and Habsburg Vienna

The music of the Strauss family – Johann and his three sons, Johann, Josef and Eduard – enjoys enormous popular appeal. Yet existing biographies have failed to do justice to the family’s true significance in nineteenth and early twentieth-century musical history. David Wyn Jones addresses this deficiency, engagingly showing that – from Johann’s first engagements in the mid-1820s to the death of Eduard in 1916 – the music making of the family was at the centre of Habsburg Viennese society as it moved between dance hall, concert hall and theatre. The Strauss industry at its height was, he demonstrates, greater than any one of the individuals, with serious personal and domestic consequences including affairs, illness, rivalry and fraud. This zesty biography, spanning over a hundred years of history, brings the dynasty brilliantly to life across a large canvas as it offers fresh and revealing insights into the cultural life of Vienna as a whole.

david wyn jones is Emeritus Professor of Music at Cardiff University. He has written extensively on music and musical life in Vienna, including biographies of Haydn (2009) and Beethoven (1998). The relationship between music and society in three different epochs is explored in Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 (2016).

‘Kaiser-Walzer’, watercolour by Anton Kapeller, after 1890. © Wien Museum, 61.186

The Strauss Dynasty and Habsburg Vienna david wyn jones Cardiff University

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009276474 DOI: 10.1017/9781009276450 © David Wyn Jones 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 Printed in the United Kingdom by CPI Group Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-009-27647-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

In memory of my mother, Rhianwen Jones

Contents

List of Figures [page ix] List of Boxes [x] Preface [xi]

Eingang [1] The Depth of The Blue Danube [1] Presenting a Biography of the Strauss Family

1

[3]

1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition [7] Childhood in Leopoldstadt [7] To the Dance: Vienna [12] To the Dance: The Young Johann Strauss [16] Tobias Haslinger and Johann Strauss [20] Escapism and the Environment [25]

2

1833–1849. Father and Son: Travel and Revolution

[35]

Vienna in Europe, Europe in Vienna [35] ‘Gute Nacht, Lanner; Guten Abend, Strauss Vater; Guten Morgen, Strauss Sohn’ [45] Celebrated Master and Estranged Journeyman [54] Marching and Dancing in the Revolution [67] 1849: The Wanderer’s Farewell [76]

3

1850–1870. Three Brothers: Johann, Josef and Eduard

[80]

Assuming the Mantle [80] Sharing the Burden [88] Vienna and St Petersburg: Two Imperial Capitals, two Musical Cities ‘The Business Comes First’ [104] Broadening Musical Horizons [111] One Cause, Three Destinies [123]

4

[97]

Dance and March: Music and Culture [130] Works, Structure, Style [131] Venues and Publication [136] Mirroring the Times [140]

5

1871–1899. Two Brothers: Johann and Eduard

[159]

Two Futures [159] World Peace Jubilee (Boston) and World Exhibition (Vienna)

[166]

vii

viii

Contents

Challenges and Opportunities, Personal and Professional [177] Austrian and German: Competing and Complementary Identities Repossessed by Vienna [197]

6

Staging Comedy: Operetta and Opera [212] Time and Place: Then and Now [215] Performance and Dissemination: Theatres and Publishers From the Theater an der Wien to the Court Opera House

7

[188]

[224] [229]

1900–1916. One Brother: Eduard [235] A Disenchanted Brother and a Disinherited Son Memories, Monuments [239] Eduard’s Reminiscences [244] The End of Two Dynasties [247]

[235]

Appendix: Strauss Family Tree [250] Bibliography [252] Index of Works by Johann Strauss (Father), Johann Strauss (Son), Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss [261] General Index [266] The plate section can be found between pp. 148 and 149

Figures

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Hanns Gasser, Das Donauweibchen, public monument. © Wien Museum, 16.643 Johann Strauss (Father), Wiener Damen-Toilette-Walzer (Op. 40, 1830), title page. © The British Library Board, e.285.h.(4) Johann Strauss (Father), Souvenir de Baden (Op. 38, 1830), title page. © The British Library Board, e. 285.h.(9) Johann Strauss (Father), Oesterreichischer National-Garde-Marsch (Op. 221, 1848), title page. © The British Library Board, h.900.r.(6) Lithograph of Johann Strauss (Son) by Joseph Kriehuber, 1853. © Wien Museum, WZ Oil painting of Josef Strauss, artist unknown, c.1865. © Wien Museum, 29.064 Johann (Son), Josef and Eduard Strauss, Trifolien-Walzer (1865), title page. © The British Library Board, e.285.i.(9) Josef Strauss, Künstler-Gruss (Op. 274, 1870), title page. © The British Library Board, h.991.a.(15) Johann Strauss (Son), Verbrüderungs-Marsch (Op. 287, 1864), title page. © The British Library Board, Hirsch M.1228.(22) Josef Strauss, Ungarischer Krönungsmarsch (Op. 225, 1867), title page. © The British Library Board, h.991.c.(13) Josef Strauss, Günstige Prognosen (Op. 132, 1863), title page. © The British Library Board, e.348.d.(4) Johann Strauss (Son), Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Op. 325, 1868), title page. © The British Library Board, e.285.i.(1) Eduard Strauss, Ausser Rand und Band (Op. 168, 1878), title page. © The British Library Board, h.3209.f.(23) Eduard Strauss, Wien über Alles! (Op. 172, 1879), title page. © The British Library Board, g.230.yy.(1) Oil painting of Eduard Strauss by Julius Hamburger, 1881. © Wien Museum, 49.280 Johann Strauss (Son), Die Tauben von San Marco (Op. 414, 1883), title page. © The British Library Board, h.3193.b.(48) ix

Boxes

2.1

Tours outside Vienna and environs undertaken by Johann Strauss (Father) [page 40] 2.2 Tours outside Vienna and environs undertaken by Johann Strauss (Son), 1846–9 [63] 3.1 Tours outside Vienna and environs undertaken by Johann Strauss (Son), Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss, singly or severally, 1850–70 [85] 3.2a Johann Strauss and Haslinger: fees, income and profit margins [87] 3.2b Consumer expenditure: price of representative items [88] 4.1 Offenbach operettas in Vienna referenced in quadrilles by the Strauss brothers, 1860–70 [155] 6.1 Johann Strauss (Son): operetta and opera. Premieres, theatres, librettists and derivative published works [213]

x

Preface

When Johann Strauss (Father) and his orchestra visited the German town of Heilbronn in the autumn of 1835 a Viennese newspaper commented that they were sure to be received with ‘open ears and nimble feet’, an observation that references sensibility as well as physical movement. It is easily extended to the music of his three sons, Johann, Josef and Eduard, their many waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and, for Johann, his operettas too. From 1827, the year of Beethoven’s death, to 1901, the year when Mahler resigned as the conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the four members of the Strauss family had been a constant presence in the musical life of the city, a dynastic achievement without parallel in the history of music, perhaps without parallel in any art form. It had never been confined to ‘nimble feet’, in the sense of utilitarian music for dancing, but had reflected and shaped wider societal outlooks in Habsburg Vienna – cultural and political, as well as musical. ‘Open ears’ indicates the challenge that faces the biographer who wishes to trace the history of that wider presence. Since this was the shared achievement of four individuals, it readily suggests a collective biography rather than the familiar one-person biography. Family tensions are certainly part of the story – infidelity, embezzlement and much more – but the broader canvas is important too, including the role of commerce and international politics. The structure of the biography is a simple one, built around the five stages of participation of the four protagonists, singly and together: Chapter 1, Johann Strauss (Father); Chapter 2, Johann Strauss (Father) and Johann Strauss (Son); Chapter 3, the three sons, Johann, Josef and Eduard; Chapter 5, two sons, Johann and Eduard; and, finally, Chapter 7, Eduard. The biographical narrative is paused twice. Chapter 4 discusses the broader characteristics of the dance output of the three sons in the 1860s, arguably its most resourceful decade; and Chapter 6 considers selected aspects of the younger Johann Strauss’s stage works. The preliminary chapter, the Eingang, explores in more detail the impulses that inform the biography. xi

xii

Preface

My first debt of gratitude is to existing Strauss scholarship, in particular to those authors of reference material fundamental to any biographical exegesis – letters, documents, collected editions of the music and thematic catalogues. These are listed in the Bibliography and, with two exceptions, in the footnotes too. References to thematic catalogues of the output of the younger Johann Strauss (the Strauß-Elementar-Verzeichnis) and Josef Strauss (compiled by Wolfgang Dörner) are not included in the footnotes; to do so would have increased their number to an impracticable degree. Since opus numbers are included in the Index of Works and are cited in the text too, the source of bibliographical material for those two composers is easily traced. Many individuals have contributed willingly to the preparation and content of the volume, formally and informally, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge their support here: Erica Buurman, Charity Dove, Christopher Gibbs, Annika Gray, Jessica Kelly, Alison Latham, Balázs Mikusi, Alessandra Palidda, Rupert Ridgewell and Clair Rowden. At Cambridge University Press, the senior commissioning editor for music, Kate Brett, has always been especially supportive of this project; she is of Viennese heritage, and I hope she finds the book a historically sympathetic one. Her colleague, Abi Sears, guided the book through the production process with patience and good humour, while Virginia Hamilton was a scrupulous and untiring copy-editor. My mother died during the preparation of this biography. Always keen to know about its progress, she would often ask in her north Walian Welsh, ‘Sut mae’r llyfr yn mynd, David, tipyn o waith mae’n siwr?’ (‘How’s the book going, David, it’s a lot of work, I’m sure’). Yes, Mam, it was a lot of work, and I am sorry you did not live to see the finished product on your shelves. It is with gratitude and love that I dedicate it to her memory.

Eingang

The Depth of The Blue Danube One of the most instantly recognizable openings to any piece of music is that of the Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss: a gentle andantino in 6/8, tremolo violins and an evocative call on solo horn that is answered by two detached chords in the woodwind. As the music gathers more instruments to the cause, expectation leads to the first of five waltzes, where the horn call becomes the principal melody and the woodwind chords the second and third beats of the pervading rhythm. Strauss’s Blue Danube dates from 1867, roughly halfway through his career, but the compositional matrix of introduction (Eingang), five numbered dances and a coda that revisits and summarizes earlier content had been fundamental to the waltz from the early years of the nineteenth century, including works by Strauss’s father, Johann, and his two brothers, Josef and Eduard. Across the decades there had been one crucial change to the dance form, alluringly evident in The Blue Danube. Waltzes by the three sons were now much more likely to be written as concert pieces rather than primarily for dancing, though the nodding heads and tapping feat of seated audiences brought them close to the dance hall and remained a crucial part of their appeal. Originally, the Eingang constituted an invitation for couples to prepare themselves for the dance, as evoked in Weber’s Invitation to the Dance from 1819; over time, many waltzes included one or more shorter, perfunctory introductions later in the sequence to allow dancers to regroup for the next dance. Johann Strauss, too, was happy to include this subsidiary aural reference point in his Blue Danube, with brief introductions to the fourth and fifth dances. This sense of The Blue Danube being a remembrance of a dance rather than an actual dance is complemented by its proper full title, a subtle and poetic An der schönen, blauen Donau (By the beautiful, blue Danube), an evocation of shared feelings about the river rather than a description or a narrative, closer to Beethoven’s (and Schiller’s) ‘An die Freude’ than to Smetana’s Vltava. Yet, this, too, is not the whole story. The first performance of the work was as a choral work, sung by the sturdy male voices of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, with a light-hearted text by a member of

1

2

Eingang

that choir, Josef Weyl, for each of the five numbered dances, urging representative listeners to put their concerns to one side: the Viennese in general (Waltz No. 1), the impoverished peasant (No. 2), the struggling landlord (No. 3), the idealistic artist (No. 4) and the troubled politician (No. 5).1 Social and political concerns were particularly vexing at the time. The state finances were stretched; there had been an outbreak of cholera; and imperial self-confidence had been severely dented the previous summer by the loss of territories in northern Italy and in Germany, due as much to the failure of international diplomacy as to military weakness. The year 1867 was to see the resolution of another festering crisis, Hungary’s status within the Austrian monarchy. A new constitutional arrangement was agreed, the so-called Ausgleich (compromise). The empire was to be divided into two parts, Cisleithania (west of the river Leitha) and Transleithania (east of the river Leitha), with both parts sharing allegiance to a new entity, the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. A much larger river, the Danube, symbolized that new unity, a river that flowed through both capitals, Vienna and Budapest. Strauss’s waltz became a symbol of this new settlement, one that was to survive until the end of the First World War. Even before Strauss’s waltz, the Viennese had a good deal of inherited affection for the Danube, with the past informing the changing attitudes of the present. While the river itself flowed well to the north of the city, one of the busiest open spaces in the inner city, the Neuer Markt, had a familiar and much loved representation of its significance, a large granite fountain, first erected in 1739 and re-erected in 1801. The central feature of the fountain is the sculpted figure of Providentia, the Roman goddess of forethought, who is surrounded by recumbent figures representing the four main rivers – the Traun, Ybbs, Enns and March – that feed into the Danube, represented by the basin of the fountain. Generations of marketgoers had worked their way around this object in the square. Four years after Strauss’s waltz was composed, it was in the news because its original lead figures were rapidly decaying and had to be replaced by more durable bronze ones.2 There was a second Danube sculpture that played into the topicality of Strauss’s waltz. In 1865, two years before it was composed, a new marble statue of the graceful Donauweibchen by Hanns Gasser had been unveiled 1

2

Full text given in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), p. 129. Some of the original figures are on display in the Lower Belvedere Museum, Vienna; details of the monument and its history are taken from the associated caption.

Presenting a Biography of the Strauss Family

in the Stadtpark (Figure 1), a water nymph deeply embedded in folklore as someone who would miraculously guide fishermen and other travellers through the treacherous waters of the river as long as they showed their trust in her powers.3 Although boats had been carrying goods and people along the Danube to Vienna for centuries, it was not until the first half of the nineteenth century that it became a trading river on an industrial scale, boosted by the invention of steam and the ambition of individual companies. However, because the river split into several tributaries north of Vienna, its latent commercial capacity was severely compromised and, with that, the development of the city itself. Also, this network of tributaries on a flat plain was prone to flooding, with sometimes devastating consequences on the everexpanding suburbs to the north of the city, including Leopoldstadt, where members of the Strauss family were born and bred. In 1867, the same year as Strauss’s waltz, a commission was set up to deal with the problematic, not so beautiful, not so blue Danube. By the middle of the following decade, the various tributaries had been channelled into one broad, very straight river that could support larger craft; at the same time, the existing Danube canal that led to the inner city was improved, further reducing the danger of flooding.4 Even with these changes the new physical depth of the river was never going to match the depth of Strauss’s Danube.

Presenting a Biography of the Strauss Family An der schönen, blauen Donau is certainly rich in its cultural, political and social resonances, as well as its narrowly musical ones, but it is not unique. In varying degrees, the above contextual exercise could be applied to any number of waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and marches by the Strauss family and, in the case of the younger Johann Strauss, to his operettas, too. Indeed, an encyclopaedia of their collective works – over 1,300 in number – that probed the associations of individual titles, actual and subliminal, would be a fascinating volume, a summation of an unmatched cultural achievement. But the lure of biography remains: how was this accomplished and at what 3

4

Wolfgang Kos (ed.), 100 x Wien: Highlights aus dem Wien Museum Karlsplatz (Vienna, 2011), pp. 160–61. Peter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll (eds.), Wien. Geschichte einer Stadt, vol. 3, Von 1790 bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 2006), p. 196. Robert Shields Mevissen, ‘Meandering Circumstances, Fluid Associations: Shaping Riverine Transformations in the Late Habsburg Monarchy’, Austria History Yearbook, 49 (2018), pp. 23–40.

3

4

Eingang

personal cost to the protagonists? In terms of raw evidence, scholarly material is particularly rich for the younger Johann Strauss, including a ten-volume edition of letters and other documents, a complete edition of his music and an ongoing thematic catalogue;5 for his father and two brothers, however, it is less comprehensive.6 In sheer practical terms, therefore, a biography of Johann Strauss the younger would have all the advantages of a single-person biography, a defined focus and apparently clear boundaries. However, any author of such a project would soon be confronted with the reality that the younger Strauss’s career would not have been possible without the example of his father and was continually dependent on the contributions of his brothers, Josef from 1853 to 1870 and Eduard from 1862 to 1899. This was a family concern, with an interweaving of personalities and attendant tensions that often led to irreconcilable differences, but somehow managed to maintain an active presence for the Strauss name for some eighty years, from the third decade of the nineteenth century to the first decade of the twentieth century. To use a modern commercial analogy, the Strauss brand was more important than any one individual, also a force that could not always be controlled or directed. This sustained collective achievement is a compelling one for any biographer. Indeed, it is difficult to think of an equivalent contribution in the history of Western music. From the previous century one could cite the familiar example of J. S. Bach and three of his sons, Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, but their adult careers were very much as individuals, in different towns and cities, and in the case of Johann Christian, in a different country. The base of the Strauss family was always firmly in one city, Vienna. At the same time the music travelled widely, from the father’s first tours in Germany and England in the 1830s, through to Eduard’s tours of Russia and America between 1890 and 1901, with the abiding characteristic that this was music from Vienna, not one individual adjusting to new surroundings, even when those surroundings were politely alluded to in individual works. As a product of a tradition that

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6

Franz Mailer (ed.), Johann Strauss (Sohn): Leben und Werk in Briefen und Dokumenten, 10 vols. (Tutzing, 1993–2007); Neue Johann Strauss Gesamtausgabe, 25 vols. (Vienna, [1999–2018]); Strauß-Elementar-Verzeichnis is (SEV): Thematisch-Bibliographischer Katalog der Werke von Johann Strauß (Sohn), vols. 1–8 (Tutzing, 1990–2013), vols. 9– (Vienna, 2017–). Notable recent scholarly works include a thematic catalogue of Josef Strauss’s output and a pioneering biography of Eduard Strauss: Wolfgang Dörner, Josef Strauss. Chronologischthematisches Werkverzeichnis (Vienna, 2021); Leigh Bailey, Eduard Strauss: The Third Man of the Strauss Family (Vienna, 2017).

Presenting a Biography of the Strauss Family

was grounded in one environment, the music became an international phenomenon. There was a fundamental paradox at the heart of this popularity, which came to trouble some commentators in the second half of the century and has bedevilled Strauss reception since. Whereas this was apparently simple music, it was also contemporary, in a very specific sense. The familiar structures and processes of the waltz, the polka, the quadrille and the march were endlessly and effortlessly filled with a musical imagination that was fed by daily life, from actual dancing, through evocation of landscape such as the Danube and the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods), new inventions such as the railway and the telegraph, particular events such as birthdays and international exhibitions, and, indeed, human frailties such as gossip and drinking champagne. It also interacted with the successes and travails of the Habsburg dynasty, from the post-Napoleonic period onward, three emperors (Franz, Ferdinand and Franz Joseph), the reshaping of Habsburg territories, the balance of power in German-speaking Europe, revolution and attempted assassination. Often overlooked, too, is the fact that this mirror on contemporary life included music itself. The music of any number of composers is referenced – Auber, Balfe, Beethoven, Bellini, Haydn, Liszt, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Rossini, Wagner and others. Anyone wanting a revealing and unfolding conspectus of Viennese life and mores in the nineteenth century need only listen to and absorb the music of the Strauss family. Composers such as Mahler and Richard Strauss, whose adult careers began towards the end of the century, were in this very position, and many of their works – symphonies and operas, respectively – reflect that aesthetic and musical background. One of the unfortunate ironies of music history is that this sense of engagement between the music of the Strauss family and the wider cultural and political environment began to wane even in the lifetime of the youngest member of the family, Eduard – a decline that coincided with that of the Habsburg empire itself. The music continued to be performed, but its appeal was now shorn of context and increasingly sentimentalized. At the same time, it became an unfortunate victim of an increasingly pernicious divide in music historiography between serious and light music, Ernstmusik and Unterhaltungsmusik. Not only did this division misrepresent the musical outlook of the four members of the Strauss family, whose concerts (often balls too) included music by Beethoven, Berlioz, Schubert, Wagner and others, it also was at odds with the musical enthusiasms of many of the hailed celebrants of serious music, from Brahms to Wagner, Berlioz to Webern. The twenty-year-old Alma

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Eingang

Schindler (Mahler’s future wife) typified this outlook. On hearing of Johann Strauss’s death in 1899, she wrote in her diary: ‘I place him alongside Schubert and Brahms, he was a Classic.’7 Faced with changing outlooks, it is not surprising that Strauss scholarship became rather introspective in the twentieth century, ploughing its own furrow, convinced of the merits of the music, endlessly fascinated by details of its production and tireless in documenting its course, but reluctant to contest inherited viewpoints and reclaim a historical presence. It is also true that much scholarship devoted to ‘serious’ nineteenth-century music has been happy to go along with this outlook, amounting to a passive acceptance that members of the Strauss family do not have a place alongside Beethoven and Brahms, Chopin and Liszt, Mendelssohn and Schumann, Verdi and Wagner. The task, therefore, is a challenging one: four lives, one phenomenon and nearly a hundred years of reclaimed historical presence. 7

Diary entry quoted in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, p. 208.

1

1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

Childhood in Leopoldstadt In the early months of 1804 Ludwig van Beethoven was nearing the completion of one of his most celebrated works, the Eroica symphony, still with the firm intention of dedicating it to Napoleon. He was living in an apartment in the Theater an der Wien, to the south of the city, contemplating his next major work, an opera called Leonore (the first version of Fidelio), to be performed in that theatre. Two miles away, in Leopoldstadt, a suburb to the north of the city, a married couple in their thirties, Franz Borgias Strauss and Barbara Strauss, who ran a busy inn, ‘Zum heiligen Florian’, were expecting their third child. On 14 March a baby boy was born, Johann Baptist Strauss. Two generations of the Strauss family had lived in Vienna since the middle of the eighteenth century, when Johann Baptist’s grandfather, Johann Michael, had left his native Ofen in Hungary (that is Buda, later part of Budapest). Johann Michael (1720–1800) worked as an upholsterer and in order to marry a Viennese woman, Rosalia Buschin (1729–85), had converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Franz Borgias (1764–1816) was their second child; unlike his father, he never learnt a trade as such, instead working as a barman-cum-waiter before running ‘Zum heligen Florian’. At the age of thirty-three he married Barbara Stollmann (1770–1811), the daughter of a coachman. Their first child, Ernestine, was born in 1798 and lived until 1862 – someone who, as a sister and aunt to four musical members of the Strauss family, lived long enough to witness their unprecedented careers. A second daughter, Anna, had died of consumption at the age of eight months in 1802.1 It is worth pondering why the third child, Johann Baptist, was given those names. It was certainly a common combination – John Baptist – but the choice does not seem to have been prompted by the long-standing

1

For comprehensive genealogical tables, see Hanns Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, der Walzerkönig und seine Dynastie: Familiengeschichte, Urkunden (Vienna, 1965), pp. 33–6.

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

Catholic practice of naming children after proximate saint days; the feast of John the Baptist was celebrated on 24 June, over three months after Johann Baptist Strauss was born. However, there was a family tradition, with an uncle as well as a grandfather called Johann; more recently, it had become a Habsburg name for the first time since the Middle Ages, given by Emperor Leopold II (1742-92) to his sixth son, Archduke Johann (1782– 1859), brother of Emperor Franz (1768–1835), a young man who was already beginning to figure in public life as a military leader. Alongside the newly fashionable name of Johann, Baptist may have been added as a gentle affirmation of the Christian identity declared by Johann Michael over fifty years earlier. Very little is known about Johann Strauss’s childhood, with only one anecdote handed down through the generations. Eduard Strauss was to write in his memoirs, published in 1906, that when itinerant fiddlers played in his grandfather’s inn the young Johann would crawl under a table in order to listen to them.2 It seems to have been a dispiriting childhood, on occasions a tragic one, largely the product of immediate family circumstances. The death of three further siblings – Franz, Josefa and Antonia – before Johann was five years old was followed by the death of his mother when he was seven years old. His father had moved from the ‘Zum heiligen Florian’ to another inn, ‘Zum guten Hirten’, in 1808, only to relinquish the job in 1812. The following year he married for a second time, to one Katharina Theresia Feldberger, originally from Linz, a stepmother to the nine-year-old Johann and his thirteen-year-old sister, Ernestine, though nothing is known about their personal relationship. The father acquired debts, seemed increasingly feckless and, in 1816, when Johann was just twelve years old, fell, drunk, into the Danube and drowned. For much of Johann’s childhood the wider environment in Vienna was an unsettled and unsettling one, too. When he was born in March 1804, there was a lull in the Napoleonic Wars, but by the summer there was increasing tension between France and Austria, exacerbated by rival declarations of imperial authority: Napoleon had declared himself emperor of France – the event that caused Beethoven to erase Bonaparte’s name from the title page of a manuscript of his third symphony – and, in retaliation, Emperor Franz II, the head of the increasingly meaningless Holy Roman Empire, gave himself a new imperial title, Emperor Franz I of Austria, a much more defined 2

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1906), p. 6.

Childhood in Leopoldstadt

territorial responsibility that went with a new sense of patriotism. In September 1805 France declared war on Austria; two months later French troops occupied the city. A humiliating peace treaty, the Treaty of Pressburg, was signed on St Stephen’s day in December. Over the next few years the same inescapable pattern of peace, increasing tension and declaration of war was repeated, leading to a second invasion of the city in May 1809. Vienna became an occupied city for six months, until the signing of the Treaty of Schönbrunn in October, when Emperor Napoleon and his troops left the city. In the suburb of Leopoldstadt the five-year-old Johann might not have witnessed any actual fighting, since the invasion had come from the south rather than north, but the consequences of military occupation – billeting, curfews, troops on horseback and in marching formation – must have created an uncertain environment. Across the period of occupation, civilian life gradually returned to normal and, presumably, inns like the ‘Zum guten Hirten’ profited from the presence of French troops. Much worse than the physical presence of the French, however, was the increasingly pernicious financial consequences of the Napoleonic Wars. Inflation had been rising steadily since the beginning of the century, ruthlessly exploited by Napoleon, who distributed fake currency during his march towards Vienna, and further compounded by the Treaty of Schönbrunn, which required Austria to pay war reparations of eighty-five million francs. By 1811 inflation had moved to hyperinflation, making the currency worthless and forcing the government to declare the state bankrupt and to devalue the currency by 80 per cent. Food and rent were affected most directly, though innkeeping in a busy suburb like Leopoldstadt may have been one of the more resilient of business activities.3 One of the oldest of the Viennese suburbs, Leopoldstadt was an attractive, bustling area, with a clear sense of identity, one that contrasted with that of the inner city to the extent that it seemed a different place. Located between the Danube River to the north, then a network of tributaries, and the Danube Canal to the south that separated it from the inner city, Leopoldstadt was an extensive, flat area that, for the most part, presented a greater sense of space than the walled inner city. From the single wooden bridge that connected the inner city and the suburb, the Schlagbrücke (today Schwedenbrücke), two main thoroughfares radiated outwards, 3

For a detailed description of the course of the economic crisis, see Julia Moore, ‘Beethoven and Musical Economics’, PhD dissertation, University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign (1987), pp. 119–36.

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

leading to two former imperial parklands that had become public spaces. The more central of the roads, the Taborstrasse, led to the Augarten (literally meadow garden), a large green space criss-crossed by wide alleys, home to the celebrated porcelain factory and a small palace that for over twenty years had offered summer concerts; Mozart, his wife and children are known to have frequented the gardens. The second thoroughfare was to acquire the rather unimaginative name Praterstrasse in 1862; in Johann Strauss’s time it bore the much more evocative name Jägerzeile (huntsman’s lane), as a long straight road that led to the former imperial hunting ground and the zoological gardens of the Prater. Covering over 4,000 acres, the parkland was traversed by a seemingly endless central alley flanked by deciduous trees, leafy in spring and summer, colourful in autumn, stark in snowy winter. Most visitors walked in the parkland, but those who could afford it went by coach and horses. To the east of the Taborstrasse and between it and the Jägerzeile, there was a network of streets whose inhabitants were notably different from those of the inner city, predominantly artisan and working class rather than aristocratic and wealthy. Located close to various Danube waterways, yet near the city, Leopoldstadt was a natural destination for visitors and immigrants to the city anxious to make a living, temporary or permanent. For several centuries it had a strong Jewish community (including Johann Strauss’s grandfather), though it did not become predominantly Jewish until the second half of the nineteenth century. The inns in which Johann Strauss lived as a child not only catered for the local population but also provided accommodation and recreation for travellers arriving in Vienna by boat or by long-distance coaches and wagons. There were three Catholic churches, one of which had a hospice ran by the Order of St John of God (the Barmherzige Brüder) that dispensed medicines to the local community; the slender spire of its church on the Taborstrasse gave it a visual presence too, a comforting, human counterpoise to the imposing gothic spire of St Stephens in the inner city. Five minutes away, where the Weintraubengasse branched off the Jägerzeile, there was a theatre, the Theater in der Leopoldstadt. Built in 1781, it was the first private theatre in Vienna, had a permanent orchestra of some twenty-five players and offered a popular diet of comic plays and operas in German, with, in Johann Strauss’s youth, a veritable craze for stories featuring magical characters performing improbable tricks.4 4

Csendes and Opll, Wien, vol. 3, pp. 47, 52, 62. Franz Hadamowsky, Wien, Theatergeschichte: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs (Vienna, 1988), pp. 482–3, 490–1, 496–7.

Childhood in Leopoldstadt

There is no evidence that the young Johann Strauss attended any of the churches in Leopoldstadt or went to its theatre, and since the inner city was socially and musically very different, he is unlikely to have visited its theatres and churches too. As for the two great parks, on the other hand, the Augarten and the Prater, Strauss must have frequented them from early childhood onwards. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars they were the venues for two large-scale public celebrations, attended by all ranks of society, unlike the many exclusive events in the palaces of the inner city and the even more exclusive Habsburg summer palace of Schönbrunn. As well as rejoicing in the peace, the beginning of a healing process that pushed the two invasions of 1805 and 1809 into the past, the organizers of the events promoted a newly energized patriotism. On 6 October 1814, as international delegates at the Congress of Vienna began shaping the post-war settlement, the Augarten was the venue for a Volkfest – acrobatics, dancing, fireworks, illuminations, regional costumes, sport, all filtered through the perspective of Habsburg identity: national in nature, international in its intended wider impact. That it was also occasionally chaotic, with adverse weather, poor crowd control and opportunistic thieving, only added to the sense of a city letting its hair down. A couple of weeks later, on 18 October, a much more organized mass celebration took place in the Prater to commemorate the first anniversary of the decisive victory over Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig. Two Austrians had played crucial roles in that campaign: Prince Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg as a diplomat and commander-in-chief of the allied armies, and General Count Josef Radetzky (1766–1859) as chief of staff for the allied forces. Appropriately, this celebration had a strong military feel. Witnessed by thousands of spectators, there was a review of 14,000 soldiers followed by a banquet on miles of specially erected tables, all rather grimly surrounded by trophies of war, French cannons, rifles and banners; Habsburg banners, by contrast, flew proudly in the air, also on barges and pontoon bridges on the Danube.5 For any ten-year-old boy like Johann Strauss, these public celebrations would have been a blur of sensations, beyond comprehension in their scale and impossible to articulate in their symbolism. Yet here, clearly, were many 5

Brian Vick, ‘The Vienna Congress as an Event in Austrian History: Civil Society and Politics in the Habsburg Empire at the End of the Wars against Napoleon’, Austrian History Yearbook, 46 (2015), 109–33, pp. 111–13; Brian Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA, 2014), pp. 30–42. For a revisionist view of Austria’s contribution to the defeat of Napoleon and the roles of Schwarzenberg and Radetzky, see Alan Sked, ‘Austria, Prussia, and the Wars of Liberation, 1813–1814’, Austrian History Yearbook, 45 (2014), 89–114.

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of the key elements of Strauss’s later fame and that of his sons: dancing, eating and drinking, fireworks, illuminations, Austrian identity, willing patriotism, militarism, national heroes and massed public participation. Some of these individual characteristics were long-standing ones, now brought together with particular force. In particular, dancing and the dance already had a distinctive place in the collective psyche of the Viennese.

To the Dance: Vienna Twenty year earlier, in 1794, when Austria had first begun to feel nervous about the wider impact of the French Revolution, a political scientist named Ignaz de Luca (1746–99) produced a survey of the capital, Topographie von Wien.6 In twenty fact-packed chapters the coverage is exhaustive – geography, climate, population, physical layout, structure of the imperial court, commerce, finance, education, religion, the military and the police. One chapter is devoted to what would now be called the arts: architecture, draughtsmanship and engraving, music and painting, together with associated institutions, such as the Hofkapelle for music. For the art form itself, de Luca expands the traditional three categories of chamber, church and theatre to five: ‘I divide music as follows: 1) church music, 2) concert music, 3) military music, 4) theatre music, and 5) dance music.’7 He then goes through each category in turn, outlining its main characteristics. By far the longest section is on dance music. With the practised eye of a social scientist, he notes its wide appeal: ‘Dancing is a ruling passion of my people; the general populace, of both sexes, take dancing lessons’ (‘Das Tanzen ist eine Hauptleidenschaft meiner Landsleute; die gemeinsten Personen beyderley Geschlechts nehmen Unterricht im Tanzen’). There are several dance schools; the number of dance halls is considerable (ten venues in the inner city and the suburbs are named); he comments that the minuet is danced very correctly by people of distinction, but that the German dance (‘der teutsche Tanz’) is favoured by the Viennese in general, and that a vigorous variant of this dance, the waltz, is even more favoured.8 The presence of dances and dancing in Viennese society at the turn of the eighteenth century is even more vividly evident in the business activity of the most important music dealer in Vienna at the time, Johann Traeg 6 7

Ignaz de Luca, Topographie von Wien (Vienna, 1794; facsimile edn, Vienna, 2003). De Luca, Topographie, p. 381. 8 De Luca, Topographie, pp. 383–5.

To the Dance: Vienna

(1747–1805). From his premises in the Singerstrasse, a side street that went from the Kärntnerstrasse down a slight incline towards the city wall and the nearby Stubentor, Traeg sold all kinds of music, especially instrumental music, concertos, quartets, sonatas, symphonies, trios, wind music and so on. In 1799 he issued a cumulative printed catalogue of his holdings, 233 pages detailing over 14,000 items, divided broadly into genres. Section 26 is devoted to ‘Tanz-Music’, subdivided into minuets (45 collections), German dances (‘Deutsche’, 61), Ländler (23) and contredanses (17).9 But documenting the total number of sets of dances in his store had clearly defeated Traeg; at the end of the Ländler list he notes that there are ‘also a few hundred for one violin by various masters’; likewise, at the end of the contredanse section that ‘still more contredanses, cotillions and quadrilles are available’; and at the end of Section 26 as a whole he indicates other miscellaneous dances that are available: ‘Cosak Hungar, Polon, Strassburg, Zingaresi &., &.’. The dances were sold as manuscript parts in sets of six, twelve or occasionally more, to be played by a variety of forces, from one violin, two violins with bass (three parts) through to an orchestra of strings, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets and timpani (sixteen parts). As for composers, the names of many of Vienna’s leading figures are included: Beethoven (1770–1827), Gyrowetz (1763–1850), Haydn (1732–1809), Krommer (1759–1831), Mozart (1756–91) and Vanhal (1739–1813), alongside many that are less known, such as Bock, Haydenreich and Schwanenberg. A particular feature of the alphabetical lists, not as evident in other sections of the catalogue, are the many collections of dances by anonymous composers; it is clear that while dance music by known individuals had a certain cachet, that outlook existed alongside a more utilitarian one that privileged the commercial product over its creator – an outlook that dance music was not entirely to overcome until well into the following century. An even more important characteristic of dance music that was to be crucial to the local and international careers of all members of the Strauss family is revealed in another, very large portion of Traeg’s catalogue: ‘Clavier-Music’. Occupying approximately a quarter of the volume, it lists concertos, chamber works with piano, solos, duets, variations, preludes and, finally, dances; as earlier in the catalogue, dances are then divided into minuets (30 items), German dances (71), Ländler (14), contredanses (12) 9

Facsimile: Alexander Weinmann, Johann Traeg: Die Musikalienverzeichnisse von 1799 und 1804 (Handschrift und Sortiment), Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alt-Wiener Musikverlages, vol. 2/17 (Vienna, 1973), pp. 115–24.

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and miscellaneous (25).10 Purchasers of keyboard music were predominantly amateur, mainly women, with skills that ranged from basic to the equal of professional men, and arrangements of dances served two purposes: individual pleasure or actual accompaniment to private dance parties that occurred in larger homes and palaces. The entries in Traeg’s catalogue reveal considerable overlap between dances for instrumental ensemble and piano arrangements, including works by Haydn and Mozart, but there were some dances that were available only as piano music – the beginning of a practice that was to yield a distinctive part of nineteenth-century piano repertoire, from Chopin and Schumann to Brahms and Liszt. Three years before the publication of Traeg’s catalogue, a publisher named Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld had issued a Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag, an account of musical life in those two cities that mixes broad description, dictionary entries for individuals and lists of personnel in various theatre orchestras. He includes the following paragraph on dance music in Vienna, the venues that were served by Traeg’s shop: The most popular dance hall in the city is on the first floor of the Mehlgrube in the Kärntnerstrasse, also the dance hall [‘Kassino’] of Herr Otto in the Spiegelgasse, where balls are given during Carnival, and which are attended by officials, shopkeepers and other respected members of society. In the suburbs, the most wellknown dance rooms are in the Leopoldstadt, ‘Zum Sperl’; on the Landstrasse, ‘Zu den drei Königen’; on the Wieden, the ‘Mondschein’; on the new Wieden, the ‘Blauen Bock’; in the Mariahilferstrasse, ‘Zwei Lämmern’; in upper Neustift, the ‘Schaf’; and in Rossau, ‘Zum grünen Thor’. For the aristocracy, the Redoutensaal and the dance hall of the restaurant owner and caterer Jahn in the Himmelpfortgasse, No. 991, are the public venues.11

Schönfeld identifies three different clientele: a middle class of officials and shopkeepers; a lower class that frequented dance halls in inns; and the aristocracy. This broad division into three social classes is superimposed on a topographical division, already mentioned, between the inner city and the fairly self-sufficient suburbs. In practice, there was considerable migration between venues, especially from the inner city to the suburbs, from Jahn’s restaurant to ‘Zum Sperl’ in Strauss’s Leopoldstadt.12 10 11

12

Weinmann, Johann Traeg, pp. 166–72. Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld, Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag (Vienna, 1796; facsimile ed., Munich, 1976), p. 100. His account is taken verbatim from the much longer section on dance music in de Luca, Topographie, pp. 383–5. On dance halls and their clientele at the turn of the century, see Erica Buurman, The Viennese Ballroom in the Age of Beethoven (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 13–16; Monika Fink, Der Ball: Eine

To the Dance: Vienna

It was also a changing picture. While the Mehlgrube in the inner city was losing some of its fashionable status as it began to attract a less desirable clientele, a brand-new, purpose-built venue, the Apollo-Saal, was opened in the Zieglergasse to the south-west of the city in time for the 1808 Carnival season. This soon became the most fashionable venue for dancing in Vienna. It was modestly named – more a sumptuous palace than a Saal and, for modern readers, rather akin to a large indoor entertainment complex. One person who attended the opening night on 10 January was Joseph Carl Rosenbaum (1770–1829), formerly an official in the service of Prince Nicolaus Esterházy and a lifetime friend of Haydn, who lived just outside the inner city, near the Schottentor. He recorded his impression in his diary, overwhelmingly positive but with some ritual moans about prices and the practicalities of travelling to the suburbs. At about six o’clock people were already driving to the ball. I ordered a fiacre at about eight o’clock and went by myself to the Apollo-Saal. One has to alight from the carriage in the open air. The entrance is elegant and guarded by a porter. One goes through a cloakroom and two rooms into the hall, which is magnificently illuminated. From there . . . to the ballroom . . . an avenue of pine trees surrounds the dance floor. At the far end of the hall is a grotto on top of which the orchestra sits, in the middle a waterfall, to the left and right are entrances to the circular dining room, which is very splendid but seats only 250 people. It’s all so beautiful, so new, that taste, art and splendour vie for excellence. The dust and the smoke from the lamps are unbearable, the prices considerable, the distance great, and for those reasons this undertaking won’t sustain itself in the long run. . . . Food and drink are expensive, but enjoyable.13

Rosenbaum’s prediction that the Apollo-Saal would not last was to prove correct. It managed to survive the economic pressures of the Napoleonic period, but a period of decline set in from 1819, the lavish contents of the building were sold, the dining room closed, the spaces used as an emergency hospital during the cholera outbreak of 1830 and, finally, it was converted into a candle factory. It never, therefore, featured in the working lives of the Strauss family, but the fundamental idea of hundreds of people dancing in large spaces watched by hundreds of onlookers was to be replicated in other venues, outdoor as well as indoor, providing a collective experience that surpassed anything that a theatre or concert room could provide.

13

Kulturgeschichte des Gesellschaftstanzes (Innsbruck, 1996); Joonas Korhonen, Social Choreography of the Viennese Waltz: The Transfer and Reception of the Dance in Vienna and Europe, 1780–1825 (Helsinki, 2014), pp. 49–70. Translation (slightly amended) from Else Radant Landon, ‘The Diaries of Joseph Carl Rosenbaum 1770–1829’, Haydn Yearbook, 5 (1968), 7–158, p. 141.

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One has the impression that Rosenbaum, aged fifty-seven and someone who had gone unaccompanied to the Apollo-Saal, did not dance and had just savoured the overall experience. Being present and being seen were as much part of the attraction as actual dancing, and while Rosenbaum did not comment on the music itself, there is evidence that part of the enjoyment, even at the turn of the century, was listening to the music rather than dancing to it.14 This was the beginning of a process that, ultimately, in the hands of Strauss family and others, led to waltzes, polkas and marches not only being performed as concert pieces (with no dancing or marching) but also being first composed as concert pieces.

To the Dance: The Young Johann Strauss At the age of twelve Johann Strauss had lost both his mother and his father. Although Strauss and his sister Ernestine had a stepmother, Katharina Strauss, Austrian law required that their interests were represented by a nominated male guardian, someone who was capable of supervising their education and financial well-being.15 A respected tailor, Anton Müller, who lived and worked in Leopoldstadt undertook the role. Although next to nothing is known about him, it is clear that he acted conscientiously. As a skilled artisan himself, he sought to secure a future for Johann as a bookbinder. At the age of thirteen, Strauss was taken on as an apprentice (Lehrling) by a local master bookbinder, Johann Lichtscheidl – a five-year period that Müller and Lichtscheidl hoped would lead to the next stage, a journeyman (Geseller) and, eventually, to Johann becoming a master bookbinder (Meister). As was often the practice, he went to live with the Lichtscheidl family, an environment that provided a degree of social stability. He was now receiving violin lessons from an experienced orchestral player, Johann Pollischansky, who also lived in the Leopoldstadt, acquiring sufficient skill to play with the dance orchestra of Michael Pamer, including at the local inn ‘Zum Sperl’. Over time, it became increasingly evident that Strauss was more interested in music than bookbinding – Eduard Strauss was to write in his memoirs that his father had little time for ‘glue and covers’16 – and by 1822 he had given it up.

14 15

16

Buurman, Viennese Ballroom, pp. 25–30. Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach, ‘Psychoanalysis and the Historiocritical Method: On Maynard Solomon’s Image of Beethoven (Part 1)’, Beethoven Newsletter, 8–9 (1993–4), 84–92, p. 89. Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 6.

To the Dance: The Young Johann Strauss

One member of Michael Pamer’s orchestra, a violinist named Joseph Lanner (1801–43), was to play a part in Strauss’s life for the next twenty years, first as a colleague and mentor, then a professional collaborator and, finally, a rival who, nevertheless, remained on friendly terms with his former protégé. Although not quite three years older than Strauss, his career was more advanced. Lanner invited him to play the viola in a quartet that provided dance music, which then became a quintet, before blossoming into a small string orchestra. For six months Strauss’s increasingly busy life as a player was interrupted by conscription into the army as a member of the Fourth Infantry Regiment, ‘Hoch- und Deutschmeister’ – a formative experience that may have built on his boyhood experience of the victory celebrations during the Congress of Vienna, but certainly instilled that typically Austrian quality of absolute respect for the military. However, this period of service, from September 1824 to February 1825, had also thrown up a pressing, personal issue. He had met the daughter of a well-connected coachman, Maria Anna Streim, three years older than Strauss, who was now expecting his child. They had decided to marry, but there were legal complications that had to be worked out. The age of consent in Austria at the time was twenty-four: with a birth date of 30 August 1801, Anna was short by a few months, while Johann Strauss fell short of it by a full three years. Anna was able to gain permission from her father, but Johann Strauss had first to have the personal approval of his guardian, Anton Müller, and then seek permission from the municipal court. Ever supportive, Müller submitted his case on behalf of Strauss early in April.17 To present his ward in the best possible light, as someone who was able to support Anna Streim, there was some glossing of evidence. Rather than a violinist, Johann Strauss was described as an educated musician acquainted with persons of rank, someone who could be expected to earn the respectable sum of 400 gulden per annum. During a forthcoming absence from Vienna, Anna would live and earn some money from her needlework (a craft, incidentally, she had learnt from Franz Schubert’s aunt, Magdalena Schubert).18 Johann Strauss had, indeed, planned a visit to Graz, though it never took place. Whether it had already been cancelled or was conveniently cancelled after the petition had been submitted is not clear. Permission was finally granted on 24 June; on 11 July, Johann and Anna were married at the parish church in Lichtental, 17 18

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 113. Rita Steblin, ‘Neue Fakten zu Johann Strauß und Joseph Lanner: Die Frauen-Freundschaft zwischen Magdalena Schubert, Therese Grob und Anna Streim’, Wiener Geschichtsblätter, 65 (2010), 265–79, pp. 273–6.

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

a couple of minutes’ walk away from where Anna lived in the Thurygasse. Husband and wife moved to rented accommodation in the Lerchenfeldstrasse to the west of the city, where, on 25 October 1825, a baby boy was born. Following a practice that was not uncommon, the boy was named after his father, Johann Baptist. In a clear response to the demand for his services, Lanner had divided his ensemble for the oncoming winter season into two groups, one directed by himself, the other by Johann Strauss. This was complemented by a second notable development, the beginning of a business relationship between Lanner and the music publisher Anton Diabelli (1781–1858), which was to lead to the publication of fourteen sets of dances by Lanner in two years.19 Strauss, too, benefited from that development. On Monday, 21 November 1825, the Wiener Zeitung contained a substantial advertisement for the Newest Dances for the Piano for the 1826 Carnival (Neueste Tänze für das Pianoforte zum Carneval, 1826), available from Diabelli’s shop in the Graben. Altogether, sixteen sets of dances by eleven different composers are listed, headed by Schubert’s Valses sentimentales (D779) and his Galop and Ecossaises (D735), followed by dances by Kapellmeister Röth, Kapellmeister Riotte and Lanner (four sets). There are also several unfamiliar names: Johann Faistenberger, Count Janus Ilinsky, a woman composer by the name of Eleonore de Contin (née Förster), Adolph Müller and E. J. Schra, to which one could add the then unknown Johann Strauss, listed as the composer of seven waltzes for piano, priced at one florin (‘7 Walzer für das Pianoforte. 1 fl.’). This one advertisement exemplifies the general practice evident in Traeg’s catalogue of 1799 – namely, the importance of the domestic piano-playing market for dances, whether originally written for the instrument (as in the Schubert items) or arranged from instrumental dance music (as in the items by Lanner and Strauss). Lanner, Strauss and others were violinists rather than pianists and their natural environment was very different – public dance halls rather than the salon or drawing room. But they also made the journey from the former to the latter, nurturing a popularity that was both public and private. The voracious appetite for piano music in Vienna – and, increasingly, in other European towns and cities – helped to further the careers of the Strauss family in ways that history has undervalued. Whereas large quantities of dance music issued by Diabelli have survived to the present day, no exemplar of Strauss’s early seven waltzes for 19

Wolfgang Dörner, Joseph Lanner: Chronologisch-thematisches Werkverzeichnis (Vienna, 2012), p. 100.

To the Dance: The Young Johann Strauss

one florin is known. The earliest surviving publication of music by Johann Strauss dates from six months later: a collection of eight waltzes, each sixteen bars in length, all in E major except for the fifth, which is in A major. First performed in an inn situated east of the city, whose name, ‘Zu den Zwey Tauben’ (the two doves), informed the title of Diabelli’s publication, Täuberln-Walzer, here signalling two dancing and cooing sweethearts rather than an inn. Strauss’s increasing presence as the director of the second Lanner orchestra and growing confidence as a composer, together with the promise of wider popularity that followed publication, led inevitably to the next stage, which was to leave Lanner and set up an ensemble of his own, marking the beginning of a non-stop career as manager, violinist, director and composer that was to last over twenty years. There was a sense that, aged only twenty-two, Johann Strauss had rather swiftly put his difficult upbringing behind him, a personal achievement that was complemented by the birth of a second child the following August. The baptismal record gave the boy’s name as Joseph (possibly a gesture of thanks to Lanner); in later life it was habitually spelt Josef.20 A feat of engineering and a change of publisher added further momentum to Strauss’s fledgling career. The year 1828 saw the opening of a new footbridge over the Danube canal, the Kettenbrücke (today Salztorbrücke), the first suspension bridge in the world to be made of steel, an elegant walkway from the inner city to Leopoldstadt.21 A nearby inn at the northern end of the bridge capitalized on the new sense of mobility between city and suburb by building a spacious new dance hall, the Kettenbrücke-Saal. Slender pillars divided the central dance floor from adjacent seating areas that provided refreshment and gossip in equal measure; as in the ApolloSaal and other venues, the instrumentalists sat in a gallery overlooking the scene, perfectly placed to ensure that sound and movement were coordinated. From 1827–28 onwards, Johann Strauss’s ensemble performed regularly in the hall. As Traeg’s catalogue from 1799 shows – as well as Strauss’s earliest compositions announced in the Wiener Zeitung – dance music was usually advertised and distributed with generic titles such as waltzes and Ländler, reflecting the basic utilitarian need of something to dance to, and with no defined extra-musical associations. When descriptive titles (or nicknames) did arise, they were of two types: dances that included musical quotations, such as the war song ‘Der Sieg von Helden Coburg’ in Mozart’s Contredanse in C (K587), or simple pictorialism, 20

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 115.

21

Csendes and Opll, Wien, pp. 142–3.

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

such as the sleigh bells in his well-known German dance ‘Die Schlittenfahrt’ (K605/3). The six waltzes composed for the fashionable Kettenbrücke-Saal were almost certainly not initially called that; it was just another set of waltzes. Only when they were subsequently published did they acquire the title of Kettenbrücke-Walzer, literally waltzes that had recently been played in the Kettenbrücke-Saal. The waltzes themselves did not attempt to present a musical image of a bridge – an impossible musical task that would have defeated even Richard Strauss – but that association was embedded in the consciousness of the purchaser and performer by the neatly engraved image of a suspension bridge that is printed across the oblong format of the title page.22 In this subtle way, six straightforward waltzes with no pictorial content acquired overlapping extra-musical associations: a wondrous new feature of the local environment, the suspension bridge, and the new dance hall from which it had benefited. Celebrating the Viennese environment became a key part of the aesthetic of the music of the Strauss family. In the formative years of the 1820s, while the young Johann Strauss could be relied upon to compose any number of carefully crafted dances and to direct them in a communicative and memorable way, the promotion of wider resonances of the environment was usually the work of another person, a music publisher by the name of Tobias Haslinger (1787–1842). In many ways, he was the man who created ‘Johann Strauss’.

Tobias Haslinger and Johann Strauss Born in Linz – another Danube town – in 1787, Haslinger was a proficient composer and instrumentalist who in 1810 had moved to Vienna, where he was able to develop his interest and aptitude for the commercial side of musical life. Vague plans to set up a music-hire business were put to one side when he joined the leading firm of Steiner, becoming a partner in 1815 before taking over as sole owner in 1826. Steiner’s catalogue covered the full range of music, from variations and dances by Gelinek (1758–1825) to sonatas and symphonies by Beethoven. Although commercial success was clearly a basic consideration, Haslinger also sought to define and promote the status of composers and their works, rather than just benefiting from them. As a close friend and admirer of Beethoven, he underwrote a largely 22

Title page reproduced in Frank Miller, Johann Strauss Vater: Der musikalische Magier des Wiener Biedermeier (Eisenburg, 1999), p. 79.

Tobias Haslinger and Johann Strauss

forgotten project: a complete edition of his music – sixty-two volumes copied by one professional scribe – that eventually landed up in the possession of one of the composer’s most important patrons, Archduke Rudolph. A year after Beethoven’s death, he embarked on an even more definitive public project: a printed complete edition of the composer’s music; seventy-three volumes were to appear before it was abandoned a few years after Haslinger’s death in 1842.23 To appreciate the impact and presence that Haslinger had on the musical society in Vienna, and in Austria more generally, it is worth looking at a contemporary encyclopaedia, the Oesterreichische National-Encyklopädie, a six-volume work (plus a supplementary seventh) that appeared in the 1830s, a few years after the publisher began working with Strauss. This was an encyclopaedia that prioritized the newly confident Austria established by Emperor Franz and Prince Metternich (1773–1859) in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. It had a clear sense of objective detachment, ‘prepared in the spirit of impartiality’ (‘Im Geiste der Unbefangenheit bearbeitet’), as the title page puts it. Its reach was a wide one, including ‘culture and knowledge, literature and art’ (‘Bildung und Wissenschaft, Literatur und Kunst’).24 Haslinger is given an entry of three packed pages, presented in two clear stages: an account of his career, followed by a summation of his contribution to contemporary Austria. He is described as the most significant music publisher in the Austrian monarchy, particularly for original works, someone whose total stock now ran to over 7,000 items. These publications were produced by fifty workers working on fourteen presses and were distributed throughout Europe. In recognition of ‘his tireless endeavours on behalf of the industry of the Fatherland’ (‘sein unermüdetes Streben für vaterländische Industrie’), he was awarded an imperial warrant in 1830, ‘k. k. Hof- und priv. Kunst- und Musikalienhändler in Wien’ (Imperial-Royal Court and Privileged Art and Music Dealer in Vienna). Altogether, Haslinger ‘has shown what one can achieve with knowledge and industry, strength and courage, earnestness and perseverance’ (‘hat gezeigt, was man mit Kenntniß und Thätigkeit, Kraft und Muth, Ernst und Ausdauer vermag’).25

23

24 25

Barbara Boisits, ‘Haslinger’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, Personenteil, vol. 8 (Kassel, 2002), cols. 775–8; Alexander Weinmann, Vollständiges Verlagsverzeichnis Senefelder, Steiner, Haslinger, vol. 2: Tobias Haslinger (Wien 1826–1843) (Munich, 1980). Oesterreichische National-Encyklopädie, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1835). Oesterreichische National-Encyklopädie, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1835), pp. 521–3.

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It was during the summer of 1828 that Haslinger approached Johann Strauss with a proposition that he should become his nominated publisher. While no details of the nature of the discussion are known, it is likely that the appeal of that offer was primarily based on what the publisher could do to promote Strauss’s wider career, rather than simply the traditional element of the size of any one-off fee. For that one-off fee per publication, Haslinger acquired exclusive rights to Strauss’s music, its publication and its distribution, signalled on title pages by the standard statement ‘property of the publisher’ (‘Eigenthum des Verlegers’). Strauss accumulated prestige and fame; Haslinger gathered the profits. In September 1828, Strauss wrote a very polite letter to Diabelli, explaining that he had been in discussion with Haslinger, that a contract had been signed, that he could no longer offer Diabelli his dances, that this development should not be regarded unfavourably and that he was returning a recent honorarium of fourteen florins.26 Not only did Haslinger become Strauss’s preferred publisher but effectively his artistic manager and agent, too. Over the next two years, Haslinger issued over two dozen works by Strauss, publications that placed the composer into a virtuous circle of composition, performance, publication and popularity. Haslinger took great care over these publications. Very few were issued in orchestral parts and none in score, which effectively gave Strauss a monopoly on the prime version. Instead, they were issued in a wide variety of arrangements, mainly for piano, but also piano duet, three performers on one piano, violin and piano, violin duets with bass, solo guitar, solo flute and the very fashionable csakan (a low recorder-like instrument pitched in A flat). As a trained musician himself, Haslinger, together with his associates, prepared full scores from the sometimes rather disorderly orchestral parts that the comparatively untrained Strauss gave him; these scores served as the basis for the various arrangements.27 Printed dance music had always had the appeal of the new: the latest offerings as recently experienced in the dance hall, topped up by the allure of a named director-composer. Haslinger not only continued to strengthen the appeal of those features but promoted their permanence, too: this was music that was to be collected and kept in much the same way as that of other composers who figured prominently in Haslinger’s catalogue: Beethoven, Czerny (1791–1857), Hummel (1778–1839) and Schubert (1797– 1828).28 As well as having sequential opus numbers – itself a signal of value – most title pages had attractive, well-executed engravings of an image 26

27 28

Norbert Rubey, Des Verfassers beste Laune: Johann Strauss (Vater) und das Musik-Business im Biedermeier, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2004), pp. 47, 52. Rubey, Des Verfassers beste Laune, pp. 47–8. See summary list in Weinmann, Haslinger, pp. 171–93.

Tobias Haslinger and Johann Strauss

associated with the given title. Over the next few years, the new suspension bridge for the Kettenbrücke waltzes was followed by engravings of ceremonial natural trumpets with pennants on the title page of the Trompeten-Walzer (Op. 13), raised champagne glasses for the Champagner Walzer (Op. 14), a dance hall located in woodland for Fort nach einander! (Onwards in Order, Op. 16) and a military camp with visiting civilians and children in Lust-LagerWalzer (Pleasure Camp Waltzes, Op. 18). Particularly evocative is the engraving on the cover of Op. 40 from 1830, the Wiener Damen-Toilette-Walzer. It shows a Viennese lady at her dressing table, reflected in a full-length mirror and with a piano clearly visible in the background (Figure 2); opera-goers of the day might have been reminded of the Countess at the beginning of Act 2 of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, and it was an image that was to inform the richly resonant Viennese ambience that Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss created in Der Rosenkavalier. Some of these title pages were offered in two formats: the basic black and white engraving for thirty kreutzer or a coloured version (prepared in-house by Haslinger) for forty-five kreutzer. With these titles and images Haslinger clearly wanted to supplement the standard bibliographical display of composer, genre, instrumentation and opus number on his title pages. Particularly characteristic are titles that reflect the increasing number of venues in which Strauss and his orchestra were appearing in Vienna and its environs. As well as the Kettenbrücke salon, there is the garden salon of the Josefstadt theatre (JosephstädterTänze, Op. 23), the outer suburb of Hietzing just beyond Schönbrunn palace (Hietzinger-Reunion-Walzer, Op. 24) and the fashionable summer spa of Baden (Souvenir de Baden, Op. 38; see title page in Figure 3). Back in the suburb of Leopoldstadt, the ‘Zum Sperl’ became a focus for Strauss’s activity following his appointment as music director in 1829 in succession to Lanner; it is likely that Haslinger played a role in that appointment, since the contract was a favourable one that gave Strauss an annual salary of 600 gulden, two benefit concerts and, crucially, the freedom to accept invitations to perform elsewhere – conditions that benefited Haslinger as much as Strauss.29 The previous year, 1828, had seen the presence in the city of a very different kind of violinist-composer, the sensationally gifted virtuoso Nicolò Paganini (1782–1840) who, at the age of forty-five, had embarked on a European tour that would last six years. Encouraged by Prince Metternich, Paganini began that tour in Vienna, where he stayed for four months. Through his government contacts he was granted the use of the 29

Contract in Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 93.

23

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

Grosser Redoutensaal for a sequence of six concerts, an unparalleled event in the history of that concert space. Many Viennese would have remembered the performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the venue in 1824 – a concert that helped to fashion the composer’s status in the last few years of his life. Three days after Beethoven’s death on 26 March 1827, his funeral was witnessed by a devoted public that, according to some reports, numbered several thousand. Paganini, who is said to have wept on hearing of Beethoven’s death, gave his first concert in Vienna on the anniversary of that memorable public occasion, 29 March 1828. The concert began with a performance of the overture to Fidelio, before moving on to blatantly virtuoso music of a kind that Beethoven would have despised. As well as his own concertos and a popular set of variations on a Neapolitan song, ‘The Carnival of Venice’, Paganini was careful to woo the Viennese with music well known to them: ballet music by Süssmayr (1766–1803), numbers from operas by Rossini (1792–1868) and, most audaciously, a set of variations on the national anthem, Haydn’s ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’, played entirely on the G string. The technical side of his showmanship was audacious: a bowing action that was a visual whirl, complemented by an unerring mastery of double trills, left-hand pizzicato and natural and artificial harmonics. Johann Strauss, Lanner and Haslinger must surely have attended one or more of concerts, and they certainly would have been aware of the splurge of idolatrous consumerism that resulted: Paganini’s image appeared on snuff boxes, walking sticks and fans; men wore Paganini hats (a top hat); women requested a Paganini hair style (long, curly and slightly unruly); and bakers prepared Paganini bread (loaves in the shape of a violin).30 Within a month of Paganini’s first concert, Haslinger had advertised two works by Lanner and Strauss that tapped into this wider social and musical sensation: Lanner’s Wiener Quodlibet, Op. 22 (advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung, 18 April) and Strauss’s Walzer à la Paganini, Op. 11 (Wiener Zeitung, 19 April), both available in the usual wide variety of arrangements. The advertisements carefully note that each work features ‘the little bell’ (‘mit dem Glöckchen’) – that is, the high harmonic that characterizes the main theme in the finale of Paganini’s First Violin Concerto. The swiftness of this musical response, largely driven by Haslinger, is striking: within a month of Paganini’s first concert, Lanner and Strauss had composed the music, Haslinger had made several arrangements, the plates of the title page and the music were engraved and the music advertised. 30

Eduard Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna, 1869), pp. 241–4; Leslie Sheppard and Herbert Axelrod, Paganini (New Jersey, 1979), pp. 245–6.

Escapism and the Environment

As an eager and imaginative businessman, Haslinger would have noted the impact this extraordinary performer had on the Viennese public. Johann Strauss was never going to rival Paganini as a violinist, yet, in a little over four years he had grown from being an anonymous jobbing violinist to the leading figure in dance music in the city, eclipsing his former colleague and friend, Joseph Lanner. They had different personalities: Strauss was comfortable with the part he was playing in Haslinger’s unfolding plans; the slightly older Lanner was more conservative. In the autumn of 1829, Lanner changed his allegiance to a less ambitious publisher – Mecchetti – a move that allowed Haslinger to focus his attention on Strauss.31 It coincided with Strauss becoming the music director at ‘Zum Sperl’. Haslinger moved quickly to promote the new director. Strauss’s first benefit concert took place on Wednesday, 25 November, St Catherine’s Day, one of the highlights of the social as well as the church calendar. Lanner had provided new dances the previous year, duly published as the Katharinen-Tänze, Op. 26. With Strauss at the helm, Haslinger shifted the focus from the occasion to the new music director. A new set of six waltzes performed were rather cryptically titled Des Verfassers beste Laune (The Creator’s Best Humour, Op. 31), but with a reassuring French-German subtitle that Haslinger knew would appeal to a certain stratum of polite society: Charmant-Walzer. The associated image is of the composer himself. Youthful, with black eyes and dark hair, and elegantly dressed in a fashionable high collar and cravat, he also looks a little reticent.32 But Haslinger’s intention is clear: message and messenger were completely aligned. Johann Strauss was to be at the centre of the appeal of the music, a position which he must have accepted and which he certainly fulfilled, becoming a much more animated figure than is evident from the image.

Escapism and the Environment The rapid rise of Johann Strauss in the late 1820s was followed by a couple of years of consolidation. The year 1830 saw a marked reduction in the number of publications of new dances by Haslinger, just seven compared with eleven in 1829 and fourteen the year before. Wider disruptive circumstances were at work, including flood, disease and politics. It began with the Danube. In 31 32

Dörner, Joseph Lanner, p. 101. Title page reproduced in Rubey, Des Verfassers beste Laune, p. 64; and Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 94.

25

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

a notable development in the history of the river as a transporter of people and goods, two Englishmen, John Andrews and Joseph Prichard, founded the Erste österreichische k. k. privilegierte Donau-DampfschiffahrtsGesellschaft (First Austrian imperial-royal privileged Danube Steamship Company) in 1829 to provide a regular service between Vienna and Pest.33 If that signalled the growing confidence in modern engineering and associated international co-operation, the Danube itself soon provided a reminder of its devastating natural power. The winter of 1829–30 was a particularly cold one, with temperatures below freezing for weeks on end. The various branches of the Danube to the north of Leopoldstadt were frozen solid for over three months. With the arrival of a sudden thaw, the ice flow broke and unleashed sudden flooding on that suburb and other areas that lay between the river and the inner city. Countless buildings were damaged from the cellars upwards and seventy-four people were killed, including nineteen children. Strauss did not compose any dances for ‘Zum Sperl’ or the Kettenbrücke-Saal that season, and the two publications by Haslinger that included a place or a venue in their title referred to localities well to the south of Vienna – namely, the spa town of Baden (Souvenir de Baden, Op. 38; see Figure 3) and the Tivoli pleasure garden in Meidling (Tivoli-Rutsch-Walzer, Op. 39).34 A year later, in February and March 1831, a revolution broke out in the Habsburg territories in northern Italy, prompted by the July Revolution in Paris the previous year, which had overthrown Charles X. Austria felt it had no choice but to act militarily in its own territory; with Josef Radetzky as commander-in-chief of the Austrian army in Italy, the revolution was eventually suppressed.35 This year of political tension may not have directly affected daily life in Vienna, but it ran in counterpoint with something that spared no one: a cholera epidemic that had spread from the east, an alarming and highly contagious disease from which the city was not to be entirely free until 1832, by which time some 2,000 people had died.36 At the time of the flood and the cholera outbreak, the Strauss family had returned to live in Leopoldstadt; the elder son, Johann, was now four years old and Josef two; in addition, there was a baby girl, Anna, born on 22 December 1829; Strauss’s sister, Ernestine, also lived with the family.37 33 35 36

37

Mevissen, ‘Meandering Circumstances’, p. 28. 34 Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, pp. 96–8. Alan Sked, Radetzky: Imperial Victor and Military Genius (London, 2011), pp. 78–80. The poet, novelist and dramatist Karoline Pichler (1769-1843) wrote a vivid account of the epidemic in her memoirs: Denkwürdigkeiten aus meinem Leben, 1769–1843, modern edn (Berlin, 2014), pp. 421–34. Steblin, ‘Neue Fakten’, pp. 271–2.

Escapism and the Environment

All managed to survive this uneasy and apprehensive period. As for Strauss’s music, at the point when the cholera epidemic was receding and the uprising in Italy had been defeated, two sets of waltzes were published with titles that assuaged public concern: Heiter auch in ernster Zeit (Calm Even in Serious Times, Op. 48) and, more uplifting, Das Leben ein Tanz, oder Der Tanz ein Leben! (Life Is a Dance, or Dance Is a Life, Op. 49). As was often the case, the musical content of these two sets of waltzes is not noticeably different in nature from many other sets of dances. That tone reflected a wider characteristic that many visitors to the city commented upon: collective well-being through escapism rather than through stoicism or resistance. Forty years earlier, it was something that had struck the young Beethoven, when French revolutionary fervour threatened to spread to Austria in the summer of 1794. He was sceptical that it would, however: ‘We are having very hot weather here; and the Viennese are afraid that they soon will not be able to get any more ice cream . . . I believe that so long as an Austrian can get his brown ale and his little sausages, he is not likely to revolt.’38 Indeed, the twenty years of intermittent warfare that followed seemed to legitimize the need for an absolutist state in the eyes of the Austrian people, whose largely quiescent attitude allowed Metternich to establish what has often been termed a police state in the postNapoleonic period. Not all its citizens were content. Karl Anton Postl (1793–1864) was one such. Born in Moravia, he had trained as a priest, became interested in progressive democratic politics in Germany and elsewhere, offended Prince Metternich and the Austrian authorities in some unspecified way and fled the country in 1822, first to America, where he assumed a new name, Charles Sealsfield, before returning to Europe to live, mainly in Switzerland. While in London in the late 1820s, he wrote a sustained critique of the Austrian state, written anonymously in English and entitled Austria As It Is: ‘There is not a less popular government in Europe; one where people, and government and its officers, are more virtually separated’; and as for Emperor Franz, he ‘thinks himself and his family secure as long as his subjects are dancing and singing’.39 Similar sentiments had been recorded by John Russell, a Scottish lawyer and travel writer who had visited Vienna in the early 1820s as part of an 38

39

Letter to Nikolaus Simrock in Bonn, 2 August 1794. See Emily Anderson (ed.), The Letters of Beethoven (London, 1961), vol. 1, p. 18; Sieghard Brandenburg (ed.), Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe (Munich 1996–8), vol. 1, pp. 25–6. [Charles Sealsfield ], Austria As It Is: Or, Sketches of Continental Courts, by an Eye-Witness (London, 1828), pp. 188–9.

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

extensive tour of German-speaking Europe. Perturbed by the consequences of Habsburg rule on the wider curiosity of the Viennese, he is nevertheless much taken with their sociability: There are no more devoted friends of joviality, pleasure, and good living, and more bitter enemies of every thing like care or thinking, a more eating, drinking, goodnatured, ill-educated, hospitable, and laughing people than any other of Germany, or, perhaps, of Europe. . . . It is difficult to bring an Austrian to a downright quarrel with you, and it is almost equally difficult to prevent him from injuring your health by good living.

A few pages later he returns to his theme, in a tone that is more exacerbated than critical: In Vienna, there is not presented to the public eye the slightest memorial of the greatest men, (excepting Joseph II), to teach the people what no people more easily forgets than the Viennese, that there really is something in the world more respectable than mere eating and drinking, and waltzing.40

Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49) was in Vienna during the cholera epidemic, from November 1830 to the following July. His correspondence mentions the epidemic, but it also reflects a good deal of frustration with musical life there, which he regarded as unambitious; Haslinger was reluctant to publish his music, preferring instead to focus his attention on Johann Strauss. Here, waltzes are called works! And Strauss and Lanner, who play them for dancing, are called Kapellmeistern. This does not mean that everyone thinks like that; indeed, nearly everyone laughs about it; but only waltzes get printed.41

A year later, a slightly younger musician, the nineteen-year-old Richard Wagner (1813–83), was in Vienna. He, too, was worried about the cholera but was altogether more enthusiastic about its musical life, especially opera. The theatrics of a Johann Strauss performance of a waltz also captured his imagination: I shall never forget the enthusiasm, bordering on derangement, generated in that extraordinary figure Johann Strauss whenever he played, no matter what the piece was. This demon of the Viennese musical spirit shook like a Pythis [an Apollonian priestess] on her tripod whenever he began playing another waltz, and veritable whinnies of pleasure from the audience, indubitably attributable more to his music 40

41

John Russell, A Tour in Germany, and Some of the Southern Provinces of the Austrian Empire in the Years, 1820, 1821, 1822, 3rd edn (Edinburgh, 1828), vol. 2, pp. 154–5, 165. Letter of 26 January 1831. See E. L. Voynich (trans. and ed.), Chopin’s Letters (New York, 1988), pp. 136–8.

Escapism and the Environment

than to the drinks that they had enjoyed, whipped up the ecstasies of this magician of the violin to heights that nearly frightened me.42

Despite Chopin’s reluctance to acknowledge Strauss’s music as ‘works’ and his status as a ‘Kapellmeister’, both he and Wagner recognized the impact of the public event, different from any other kind of musical entertainment. As an aural and visual spectacle, it shared something with opera, while the focus on a single commanding performer was akin to that found in the concerts of the greatest virtuosi, such as Paganini the violinist and Liszt the pianist. But, as well as witnessing the spectacle, Strauss’s public were often active participants. At ‘Zum Sperl’ and the Kettenbrücke-Saal, formal participation occurred indoors in the newly built ballrooms, but events also spilled out into the surrounding gardens, especially during the summer months, where behaviour would have become even less restrained. Wagner does not indicate where he witnessed Strauss directing his music. He was there in the summer of 1832 and could have gone to the new, very popular outdoor venue, the Tivoli. Located in the countryside in Meidling, not far from the grounds of the Schönbrunn Palace, it was a purpose-built pleasure garden, which had been open for two seasons, with some eighty buildings, including a music pavilion.43 Firework displays were given on summer evenings, but the real novelty was a large toboggan run (Rutsch), suitable for adults as well as children; two people sat side by side in wooden carts that careered at breakneck speed down a wooden track. Strauss wrote two sets of waltzes for the Tivoli. The first, the Tivoli-Rutsch-Walzer (Op. 39), was published by Haslinger with an engraving of the gardens, including the Rutsch; the second, the Tivoli-Freudenfest-Tänze (Op. 45), has a very different, seemingly inappropriate, image: the imperial crown located within a glow of surrounding beams. This was prompted by the name of the dedicatee of the Tivoli-Freudenfest-Tänze, Archduchess Sophie (1805–72), wife of Emperor Franz’s youngest son, Franz Karl (1802–78). Both still in their twenties, the couple had married in 1824 and their first child, the future emperor Franz Joseph, had been born in 1830. They may have frequented the Tivoli and even tried the Rutsch, but Haslinger’s dedication and associated image pointed to a very different environment, the Hofburg itself. The archduchess was an enthusiastic dancer and in February 1831, some six months before the publication of the waltz, Strauss had made his debut at court, directing music for two balls hosted by the archduke and archduchess.44 42 43 44

Richard Wagner, My Life, trans. Andrew Gray, ed. Mary Whittall (Cambridge, 1983), p. 63. For the Tivoli, see Dörner, Joseph Lanner, p. 34; Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, pp. 101, 103, 108. Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 117.

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‘Zum Sperl’, Kettenbrücke-Saal, the spa town of Baden, the Tivoli and the Hofburg evidence the ever-widening social appeal of Strauss, director, composer and performer. There was one further milieu to be added: the military. In 1832 Strauss was formally appointed kapellmeister of the First Citizen Regiment (1. Bürger-Regiment), a civilian unit that would see active service if Vienna were ever to be attacked. Within a hierarchical structure that was as characteristic of the military as it was of court bureaucracy, Strauss was fifth in the pecking order, following the commandant, adjutant, equipment inspector and regimental doctor. He was also given a uniform: a dark-blue coat with yellow buttons and bright-red collar, lapels and tails; a black neck tie with white edging; a pair of pale-grey cloth trousers with red stripes; and a pair of yellow leather gloves.45 If this was a new honour for the twenty-seven-year-old Strauss, it was an accolade shared with other dance musicians, including Joseph Lanner and Philipp Fahrbach (1815–85), who looked after the musical requirements of other citizen regiments. Their performing forces were very similar to those encountered in dance music – a full complement of string instruments as well as wind instruments and percussion – and their main role at public functions was to foster loyalty to the monarchy and to the city. As well as dance music, Strauss composed (or retitled) several marches for the regiment, which showed the same easy appeal as his waltzes. For the twenty-eight-year-old Strauss, it marked the final element in a balanced civic, imperial and national identity: the juxtaposition of the military with the dance, the open air with the ballroom, the informal with the formal and the public with the private. One of Strauss’s fellow kapellmeisters, Philipp Fahrbach, was also a flute player in Strauss’s orchestra, from 1827 to 1835. Like Strauss, he had been born in Vienna, came from a lowly background and showed an early aptitude for performing, first playing the csakan and later the flute. He began to compose his own dance music, published in significant quantities by Haslinger, and was to form his own orchestra in 1835. In 1847 he wrote an article for a Viennese music journal, the Wiener allgemeine MusikZeitung, which looked back over the development of dance music in the city during the previous twenty-five years.46 Unlike the vivid, very personal impressions of Chopin and Wagner, it is a measured and informative account by an insider of some of the practices of the business. 45

46

Franz Joseph Kolb, Die Fahnenweihe des k. k. Corps der bildenden Künstler in Wien (Vienna, 1843), p. 112. Philipp Fahrbach, ‘Geschichte der Tanzmusik seit 25 Jahren’, Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, 20 March and 23 March 1847, pp. 137–8, 141–3.

Escapism and the Environment

Fahrbach notes that in the early days of the Strauss orchestra, waltzes were composed straight onto the orchestral parts, sometimes with the assistance of the players who knew the intentions of their director and, since Johann Strauss directed from memory, glancing as necessary at a violin part, there was little need for a written-up score. Fahrbach generously acknowledged that Strauss’s instinctive musicianship set him apart from all of his contemporaries – someone, as he put it, who composed ‘for the listener as well as for the feet’ (‘sogleich für’s Gehör und für die Füße’). Melody was the prime ingredient, crucially melody that curved across a four-bar phrase rather than a short-winded two-bar phrase. In that way, the old standard formal unit of sixteen bars was expanded to larger structures, always an accumulation of four-bar phrases and with a clearly marked binary structure with repeats. One highly distinctive feature of Strauss’s melodic capacity is not mentioned by Fahrbach. From his very first waltzes, his melodies reveal a natural expressive preference for the sixth degree of the scale towards the end of a phrase; this inevitably led to an equally distinctive harmonic colouring, a dominant ninth chord, a sonority that was to become as much a marker of Strauss’s style, and that of his three sons, as the diminished seventh in Weber or whole-tone harmonies in Debussy. Fahrbach reported that at the beginning of his career in the 1820s a standard dance orchestra consisted of ten to twelve players, with no violas or cellos: three separate violin parts (one player per part, sometimes two), one double bass, one flute, one clarinet, two horns, one trumpet and timpani. In response to larger performing spaces, indoors and outdoors, Strauss’s orchestra grew closer in size and internal balance to theatre orchestras in Vienna: first and second violins, violas, cellos, double bass, double woodwind, as many as three trumpets, plus one trombone to emphasize the all-important bass part; additional percussion instruments, particularly bass drum, usefully delineated the ebb and flow of the phrasing patterns. In terms of orchestral sonority, Fahrbach points to a crucial difference between Lanner and Strauss: the former liked a strong, imposing sound (‘vollstimmig und rauschend’); Strauss was more charming and ringing (‘lieblicher und schallhafter’). When Strauss began his career in the mid-1820s, a collection of waltzes might consist of as many as twelve short dances, each sixteen bars in length. But alongside the expansion from within each dance that Fahrbach mentions, the progressive trend was to reduce the number of dances, usually to five, and also to begin the set with an introduction (the Eingang) that allowed the dancers to assemble and follow it with an

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expansive coda, still in four-par units, that repeated one or more of the main waltz themes, piano as well as forte, before ending with a rousing conclusion. One salient feature of Strauss’s Op. 1 from 1827, the Täuberln-Walzer, was to remain constant throughout his career: a distinct preference for E major as the home key for a set of waltzes. Given the broader tradition in Viennese music of presenting public music with trumpets and timpani in C major or D major, as in any number of symphonies, masses and operatic finales, the favouring of E major is surprising. Its origins may well reflect Strauss’s limited musical training. He was not a pianist but someone whose tactile, as well as aural, experience of music was through the violin, left hand on the fingerboard, right hand with the bow. Doodling on the instrument or, more constructively, finding an appealing melody that could feature in a new waltz was done most naturally on the top string, the E string, which led to that pitch being favoured as tonic; its lower dominant, B major, was also easy to access in first position on the A string. Viennese dance culture had a long tradition of repeating the final dance in a waltz collection at an accelerated speed, so as to provide an exhilarating conclusion, particularly if it was the last dance of the night – a feature that occasionally found its way into art music, such as the minuet in Beethoven’s Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4.47 This popular practice led to the composition of a new brisk dance, appropriately titled Galopp (or Galoppe), usually in 2/4 and in ternary form, plus the occasional introduction and coda, too. After the gentle, graceful steps of a waltz cycle danced by couples, the galop placed all the couples in a whirling circle, the man placing his right hand on the waist of the woman, while his left hand grasped her right hand to lead the charge. If individuals stumbled, that was part of the appeal; its excitable, overexuberant nature even led doctors to warn that it could precipitate a heart attack.48 One of Strauss’s earliest examples, the ChampagnerGaloppe (Op. 8) from 1828, requires the instrumentalists to shout ‘Sauf aus’ (‘Drink up’) to the principal musical motif. A year later, Vienna saw the first performance in the city of Rossini’s opera Wilhelm Tell; Strauss included its most popular number – conveniently in E major as well as in the requisite 2/4 – as the main theme of his latest galop, the Wilhelm TellGalopp, Op. 29b, published by Haslinger in November 1829. 47

48

For the likely complementary performance practice of a gradual quickening of tempo in coda sections, see Buurman, Viennese Ballroom, p. 146. Dörner, Joseph Lanner, pp. 53–5.

Escapism and the Environment

Quoting music by other composers within a dance was to be an attractive, opportunistic resource in the careers of all four members of the Strauss family. Less frequently commented upon are those works whose entire raison d’être was quotation, the potpourri. Between 1829 and 1833 Johann Strauss composed four such works, featuring familiar music by other composers alongside rewarding self-quotation. Instead of dancing, they provided a different kind of entertainment: passive and intermittent listening while continuing to eat, drink and talk. The appeal lay in recognizing the familiar and taking delight in some of the incongruent juxtapositions of musical quotations. Haslinger’s titles for these works were appropriately allusive, occasionally even selfdeprecating. The one for Strauss’s first potpourri was a tongue twister, Der unzusammenhängende Zusammenhang (The Incoherent Coherence, Op. 25, 1829), and was followed by Wiener-Tagsbelustigung (Daily Diversion of the Viennese, Op. 37, 1831) and Musikalisches Ragout (Musical Stew, Op. 46, 1831). By far the most extravagant was a potpourri that had the name of its audacious creator embedded in a punning title, Ein Strauss von Strauss: Aus Ton-Blumen (A Bouquet from Strauss: With Flowers of Sound, Op. 55, 1832). Haslinger’s print preceded the title page with a preliminary engraving of a large bouquet of flowers. In the piano version the potpourri occupies twenty-seven printed pages, lasting some twenty minutes in performance. Altogether, over twenty musical flowers are presented, some cultivated by Strauss himself (including Das Leben ein Tanz, oder Der Tanz, ein Leben! and Heiter auch in ernster Zeit), most taken from the gardens of other composers or from the wild. There are extracts from popular operas recently given in Vienna (all in German) – Auber’s Masaniello, Bellini’s La straniera and Hérold’s Zampa – an extract from Fahrbach’s Hungarian March, the sound of a post horn in the distance and a comic item described as a ‘Solo from the pantomime, The Magic Mandoline, played by the bass trombone’ (‘Solo aus der Pantomime Die Zaubermandoline vorgetragen mit Bass-Posaune’). But two other sections are wholly unexpected in these surroundings. The potpourri begins arrestingly with the opening thirty-two bars of Beethoven’s overture to Fidelio (in E major!), a work that was often played in concerts, though the opera itself was a rarity. Towards the end of the potpourri the sound of a wind machine heralds a storm, which inexplicably becomes an earthquake – an extended passage of music in C minor headed ‘Erdbeben’ but with no identified composer. It is, in fact, the final movement of Haydn’s Seven Last Words, ‘Il terremoto’, a depiction of the earthquake that convulsed Calvary following Christ’s crucifixion. The strict censorship rules would not have tolerated the identification of a religious work, but Vienna’s many quartet players would have recognized it immediately. All this terror is

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1 1804–1832. Johann Strauss and the Making of a Tradition

overcome by a ‘Feyerlicher Einzug’, a ‘festive entrance’ accompanied by the sound of bells, cannon shots and trumpet fanfares, all culminating in a much more familiar work by Haydn, one that did not need to be labelled: the national anthem ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’. Set alongside the allure of several sets of waltzes and the hyperactivity of a short galop, the broad, rather ramshackle appeal of this potpourri is very different: a large canvas, quickly filled with random colours and shapes. It also raises pertinent questions about how it was composed and the nature of Strauss’s wider musical interests. How did Strauss source the music, especially works that were only recently composed? Did he have the assistance of others, such as Fahrbach, or was the selection wholly or in part determined by Haslinger? Certainly, the latter is more likely to have had access (legitimate or otherwise) to musical materials. Given Strauss’s limited musical education and the indifference of his parents towards his musical interests, there has always been a natural tendency to assume that his musical experience was a wholly circumscribed one, restricted to dance music in suburban halls and in the open air. While there is no record of him ever attending the performance of an opera, an oratorio or a concert in Vienna, the contents of the potpourris suggest that his musical interests were broader than might be assumed. Later in the century, Eduard Hanslick was certainly of the view that his musical significance was a broad one, ‘as a composer and as a conductor of the music of others’, and noted that his concerts regularly included works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Spohr, Weber and others.49 Obviously, the appeal of the potpourri relied on the musical knowledge of the audience, too; individuals could identify extracts and laugh at the incongruence of their presentation. In the same way that Strauss’s career now embraced a wide range of venues and easily crossed social boundaries, the music, too, was fully engaged with the broader musical environment rather than separated from it. All this had been achieved in less than five years, a tribute to Haslinger’s marketing as well as Strauss’s creative imagination. He already stood apart from his former mentor, Joseph Lanner, as someone who embodied a wider culture rather than merely serving it. That dynamism would continue.

49

Ludwig Eisenberg, Johann Strauss: Ein Lebensbild (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 34–5.

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1833–1849. Father and Son: Travel and Revolution

Vienna in Europe, Europe in Vienna On 13 February 1833, a week before the end of the busy Carnival season, a ball was held at ‘Zum Sperl’ for Johann Strauss’s benefit, at which a new set of waltzes was to be premiered, comprising the customary five dances plus an introduction and a coda. Haslinger and Strauss came up with the idea that it should be named by the public rather than by them. Entrance tickets to the benefit ball were available from Haslinger’s shop in the Graben and ticket-holders were encouraged to write their suggested title on a piece of paper, always remembering that it would have to pass the censor. Immediately after the premiere, the winning ticket would be drawn in a lottery. The title that emerged was Tausendsapperment; the second element, ‘sapperment’, was a common expression of excitable delight, so a modern idiomatic translation of the title would be ‘A Thousand OMGs’. Since it did not easily suggest a specific visual image, Haslinger, with typical commercial imagination, explained its origins on the reverse of the title page of the subsequent piano arrangement, using a rhyming couplet: ‘Was frag’e ich mich um Titel an/Wenn man nach mir nur tanzen kann’ (Why did I ask for a title/When one can only dance to me?).1 Over the next few months Haslinger and Strauss continued to prick the imagination of the public. A set of waltzes premiered in the open air in the Tivoli, when thousands of balloons were released, was given the title Der Frohsinn, mein Ziel (Happiness, My Goal, Op. 63), engraved on the title page across an image of a balloon, while avid opera-goers were rewarded with a set of waltzes, Robert-Tänze, that used musical ideas from the most important premiere of the season, Meyerbeer’s Robert der Teufel (Robert le diable). This pattern of imaginative and topical titles that appealed directly to a local Viennese audience was one that could easily have continued, maintaining a presence for Strauss the performer-director-composer and 1

Tausendsapperment-Walzer, Op. 61 (Haslinger, [1833]); Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, pp. 123–4.

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financial reward for Haslinger the publisher. But 1833 was also the year that saw the first steps in the skilful presentation of Strauss beyond his native city – a process of accelerating popularity that was to shape not only his reputation but also the careers of his three sons, cumulatively fashioning a presence in social and musical society in Europe and America that was to endure to the end of the century. Apart from the suggestion that Johann Strauss might have travelled to Graz in 1825, the year of his marriage, there is no record of him leaving Vienna until his late twenties. In one sense, there was no need for him to do so, as the city and villages in the surrounding countryside, like Baden, Hinterbrühl, Meidling and Mödling, provided a conducive environment that varied across the seasons while sharing a wider Viennese identity of town and countryside. Yet though Strauss stayed in his own environment, his music had already travelled widely thanks to the increasing internationalization of the music publishing industry and Haslinger’s ready engagement with that process. From the earliest publication of Strauss’s music, Haslinger’s title pages had consistently included, alongside the claim ‘property of the publisher’, a second statement worded ‘Entered in the Archive of the United Dealers of Music’ (‘Eingetragen in das Archiv der vereinigten Musikalienhändler’). This register of mutually supporting publishers was designed to prevent the risk of pirated editions in Germanspeaking lands, which had plagued the industry for decades. Early in 1833 Haslinger signed a new contract with Strauss that attempted further to thwart piracy; the contract was reproduced in many subsequent publications of the composer’s dance music, where it is described as a Declaration (Erklärung).2 Once more, Haslinger claimed ownership of Strauss’s works (as well as the many lucrative arrangements) and announced a new partnership with the firm Trautwein in Berlin, which was given the rights in Prussia. Johann Strauss signed the contract on 13 January in the presence of two witnesses, Joseph Edelbauer and Johann Traeg (Son); for the purpose of asserting its legal authority in the Austrian territories, it was then signed by individuals on behalf of the City of Vienna, Lower Austria and the State Chancellery. On 10 February the contract was duly signed by Trautwein, together with an official from the Prussian embassy. If the music was travelling with a new degree of artistic legitimacy, then the obvious next stage was for its creator to travel, too. The practice of individual performers criss-crossing Europe to enhance their careers was a familiar one, from singers in the eighteenth century to 2

For instance, Erinnerung an Berlin, Op. 78 ([1835]).

Vienna in Europe, Europe in Vienna

pianists like Chopin, Liszt and Moscheles (1794–1870) early in the nineteenth century and, to a lesser extent, violinists like Spohr and Paganini. But Johann Strauss did not fit with existing practices. He was not a virtuoso violinist, and, though he was certainly a composer-performer, he did not have the musical self-sufficiency of the composer-pianist; he needed an orchestra, preferably one that was fashioned in his own image and which he also directed. It was this third element of his musical make-up that proved decisive – that is, his physical presence as a director, the Napoleon of the dance, as he was often called. The combination of composer, violinist, director and ensemble was a neat one, but it was largely untried as a touring enterprise. The chosen destinations often reflected the reach of Haslinger’s business, which for Strauss and his players must have mitigated any sense that they were travelling into wholly unreceptive cities and towns. Strauss and his players left Vienna and its environs for the first time in November 1833 – a visit of some ten days or so to Pest, an increasingly prosperous and culturally active town on the eastern bank of the Danube, across the river from the much older area of Buda, and one that may have been regarded as a trial run for later, much longer tours. Haslinger’s advertisements of his music in Viennese newspapers had often indicated that it was available in Pest, at Károly Lichtl’s shop. Two years earlier, Lichtl had joined forces with Vince Grimm, a copper engraver and lithographer originally from Vienna (where he may well have known Tobias Haslinger) to form the new firm of G. V. és Tarva (V. G. and Co.), which, like the Haslinger firm, functioned as a publisher and a retailer.3 There had always been a shared sense of musical culture between Vienna and the two districts that were to form the future Budapest: Haydn had travelled there in 1800 to direct the first performance outside Vienna of Die Schöpfung; while Beethoven made at least two visits to Budapest and wrote the incidental music to König Stephan and Die Ruinen von Athen for a theatre in Pest. A few years before Strauss’s visit, the Viennese playwright Karoline Pichler (1769–1843) had visited Buda and Pest, subsequently recording her impressions in her memoirs. Johann Strauss might well have agreed with them, especially the first sentence: Pest appeared to me to be like our Leopoldstadt. Here, too, lay modern, elegantly built houses on the bank of the river, upstream and downstream, including on the 3

I am indebted to Balázs Mikusi for the information on Lichtl and Grimm (private correspondence).

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left side, a Diana spa, much nicer than the one in Vienna, and on the right side the theatre, in which Count Mailáth immediately secured a box for me. As regards the general atmosphere that is present in Pest, I would say it is much more like Vienna than Prague. Everything appears cheerful, vivacious. The people one encounters on the street seem happy; on beautiful summer days they sit in front of inns and coffee houses on the streets and in the squares, drinking and feasting, surrounded by the animated sound of joyful music . . .4

Pichler’s passing reference to a theatre and her evident pleasure in being granted a box signal a cultural environment that was predominantly German-speaking; like Strauss (and Haydn and Beethoven before him), Pichler did not speak Hungarian. But incipient Hungarian identity was already moving from patriotism towards nationalism, fuelled by economic reasons and a tense linguistic schism; the aristocracy favoured German and French, as in Vienna, while the peasantry spoke Magyar, with little or no German or French. To bridge that divide, the Hungarian Diet had already decreed that the Magyar language should be taught in all schools and knowledge of it compulsory for public office.5 Strauss and his orchestra presided at two balls in Pest on 7 and 9 November, with a mixture of the old and obliging (including Ein Strauss von Strauss) and the new and alluring (a set of dances with a Hungarian flavour). Although the style hongroise had long been a familiar and popular characteristic of the Viennese tradition, from the Menuet alla Zingarese in Haydn’s Quartet Op. 20 No. 4 to Schubert’s Divertissement à la hongroise (D818) for piano duet, this was the first time it had featured in Strauss’s music, albeit casually rather than pervasively. Unusually for this dance composer, the introduction is in a minor key, sufficient to set up some Hungarian-sounding sonorities; later, there are allusions to the well-known Rákóczki March, a piece associated with the prolonged, ultimately futile, Hungarian insurrection against Habsburg rule waged by Prince Ferenc Rákóczki in the first decade of the previous century and now officially banned by the Habsburg state. It might have caused a frisson of excitement, but neither it nor the quotation of ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’ at the end of Ein Strauss von Strauss seems to have been contentious. When Strauss returned to Vienna, this new set of waltzes was performed at ‘Zum Sperl’ on the occasion of the St Catharine’s Ball on 27 November, again without any repercussions. When Haslinger published 4 5

Pichler, Denkwürdigkeiten, p. 398. Steven Beller, The Habsburg Monarchy 1815–1918 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 43–5; Miklós Molnár, A Concise History of Hungary (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 164–73.

Vienna in Europe, Europe in Vienna

the work, it was, as always, with a German title: Erinnerungen an Pesth (Reminiscenses of Pest, Op. 66); the dedication ‘to the Noble Hungarian Nation’ was also in that language (‘Der Edlen Ungarischen Nation Geweiht’). With diplomatic sensitivity, however, the main title was preceded by the same dedication in Magyar, ‘Emlék Pestre à nemes magyar Nemzetnek ajánlva Strauss Jánostól’, printed above the Hungarian flag. On what was a very crowded title page, the customary list of towns and cities where Haslinger’s publication was available included Grimm’s business in Pest, but, more unusually, it also named a shop in Pozsony, the Hungarian name for the long-standing capital Pressburg (now Bratislava). This was not the last time that the Strauss family were to seek a musical accommodation between Vienna and Budapest, the Austrian and the Hungarian. More widely, that diplomatic sensitivity to new surroundings, using a product that was perceived as Viennese but which was easily linked with other identities, was to be repeatedly demonstrated over the next few years, as Strauss undertook visits to more distant towns and cities. As Box 2.1 documents, four further tours were made during the 1830s, becoming longer in duration, from one month to three months to fifteen months, taking Strauss away from Vienna for a total of twenty-three months between 1834 and 1838. Also evident from the table is a natural process of expansion: from largely German-speaking Pest; to the German states of Prussia and Saxony; to Bohemia, Bavaria and the Rhineland; then to the Netherlands and Belgium; and finally, and most extensively, to France and Britain. In a narrow commercial sense, the decision to begin the German tour in the Prussian capital, Berlin, was motivated by the recent agreement between Haslinger and Trautwein; the eight concerts or balls that were given in the city in a space of a fortnight in November 1834 would have given a real boost to Trautwein’s sales of Strauss’s music. There were, too, broader socio-political aspects at work, though less selfconsciously applied than in the case of the Pest trip. While the 1830s had seen a gradual rise in the standing of Prussia in international diplomacy, at the expense of Austria, both states, together with Russia, were wary of the progressive democratic politics of Britain and France. Two of the concerts in Berlin, given by the Austrian Strauss, were hosted by two members of the Prussian royal family – Prince Karl and Prince Wilhelm – with the Russian ambassador attending a third.6 As acts of cultural mediation, the concerts managed to be both Viennese and German.

6

Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 144.

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Box 2.1 Tours outside Vienna and environs undertaken by Johann Strauss (Father) November 1833 Budapest November–December 1834 Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Prague September–December 1835 Munich, Augsburg, Ulm, Stuttgart, Heilbronn, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Hanau, Offenbach, Darmstadt, Würzburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Passau September–December 1836 Prague, Leipzig, Halle, Magdeburg, Braunschweig, Hanover, Bremen, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Bremen, Osnabrück, Münster, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Düsseldorf, Elberfeld, Cologne, Antwerp, Brussels, Liege, Aachen, Düren, Bonn, Koblenz, Regensburg October 1837–December 1838 Munich, Ulm, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Strasbourg, Paris, Rouen, Le Havre, Amiens, Lille, Antwerp, Brussels, Louvain, Ghent, Malines, Tirlemont, Liege, Aachen, London, Cheltenham, Bath, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Dublin, Leamington, Clifton, Southampton, Brighton, Portsmouth, Isle of Wight, Boulogne, Abbeville, Reading, Worcester, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Halifax, Leeds, Huddersfield, York, Hull, Newcastle, Carlisle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bradford, Wakefield, Calais May 1842 Pressburg November 1844 Troppau, Teschen, Neutitschein October–November 1845 Prague, Reichenberg, Zittau, Dresden, Magdeburg, Berlin October–November 1846 Brünn, Breslau, Ratibor October–November 1847 Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover, Magdeburg January 1849 Prague, Olmütz March–July 1849 Munich, Augsburg, Ulm, Heidelberg, Heilbronn, London, Reading, Oxford, Brighton, Cheltenham Principal source (amended): M. E. Sullivan, ‘The Life and Works of Johann Strauss the Elder, 14 March 1804 – 25 September 1849: A Chronology’, Tritsch-Tratsch, 77 (1999), pp. 4–12, 14–16.

Vienna in Europe, Europe in Vienna

Although Haslinger, the astute and ambitious business man, may have determined the initial choice of destination and ensured that the publishing network was primed for the visit and could respond to the consequent demand for the printed music, there is circumstantial evidence that diplomatic networks played a part too, especially in the major capitals, and that these networks then facilitated further contacts in their respective countries. For instance, in London in 1838, as society prepared for the coronation of Queen Victoria in July, Strauss played at a court ball in Buckingham Palace in May, followed by two further balls organized by the Austrian embassy: the first hosted by Prince Paul Anton Esterházy (the long-serving Austrian ambassador and son of Prince Nicolaus, Haydn’s last employer) and the second by Prince Felix Schwarzenberg (a diplomat at the Austrian embassy and the son of Prince Joseph who had been a leading figure in Vienna’s musical life at the turn of the century).7 Another influential network that may have facilitated contacts between Vienna and Paris and London, in particular, was the Rothschild banking family. Salomon Mayer Rothschild lived in Vienna; one brother, Jakob Mayer, in Paris; and another brother, Nathan Mayer, in London. In advance of the 1837–8 journey, Salomon Rothschild had granted Strauss a bill of exchange, enabling him to access a fixed sum of money while on his travels.8 Jakob Mayer was the host of a ball in Paris in January 1838 and Nathan Mayer the host of a ball in London in July 1838. The real nitty-gritty of organization, both before and during the journeys, seems to have been down to Strauss himself.9 With great confidence he established a second, travelling orchestra of players, leaving other players to continue performing in Vienna. As well as selecting players, he prepared the applications for the group passport necessary for journeys outside the Austrian monarchy. Several such applications have survived;10 they list the players by name – between thirteen and twenty in number – mainly young unmarried men in their twenties and thirties. Although there was some turnover of players from one visit to the next, a few names crop up regularly. A particularly faithful member was one Karl Fux (1805–59), a violinist a year younger than Strauss, born in the inner city but now living in Leopoldstadt, and by 1836 burdened with a weak right foot. In the 7

8 9 10

Norbert Linke, ‘“Mit seinem eigenen Orchester-Personale”: Johann Strauß Vaters erstes ReiseOrchester der Welt’, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, special issue Sträuße für Strauß [1999], 59–69, p. 67. Stanley Weintraub, Charlotte and Lionel: A Rothschild Love Story (New York, 2003), p. 63. Linke, ‘“Mit seinem eigenen Orchester-Personale”’, pp. 59–60. See Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 122, 127, 128–9, 132–3, 161.

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same year he became a member of the Strauss family when he married Johann’s sister, Ernestine. He looked after the library of orchestral parts and kept in touch with Haslinger.11 Detailed day-to-day itineraries seem not to have been determined in advance, and Strauss had to arrange travel, accommodation, most venues and most publicity, as well as being the focus of the performance as the violinist-cum-director. Apart from the occasional surviving piece of evidence, such as a letter to the celebrated Gewandhaus in Leipzig in 1834 asking to hire two double basses, a cello, timpani and a bass drum, and a printing bill for programmes, posters and newspaper advertisements in Bonn in 1836, little detail is known.12 A rare letter from Strauss to his wife, Anna, written in November 1834, gives an indication of the administrative demands: [M]y head is so full of everything and I have so much to do since arriving in Berlin that I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. All day from seven in the morning my room is never empty, every day seven to ten letters from around Leipzig, Dresden, etc. that I need to answer. For that reason you must excuse me for not having written to you before now.13

Even with the assistance of one or more of his colleagues, plus willing individuals in the various towns and cities, it was clearly a time-consuming and wearisome process. Personal acclamation was always assured from the public; on the longer trips in particular, that would have kept the treadmill in motion, resulting in a mindset that believed the finances would, indeed, look after themselves. Only once did Strauss’s players become restless. The 1837–8 trip to France and Britain was supposed to end in September 1838, after featuring over 200 appearances in nearly 40 different towns and cities, including over 30 in Paris and over 50 in London. Homeward bound, Strauss and his players crossed the channel on the evening of 13 September, arriving in Boulogne in sufficient time to give a concert. Perhaps the ensuing journey would have included further concerts en route, but the clear intention was to be back in Vienna in time for Carnival. However, while in Boulogne, news reached Strauss that a further series of engagements back in Britain was possible. Many of his players were understandably reluctant, having been absent from Vienna for eleven months and already looking forward to their return. Strauss overruled his players, and by 26 September they had crossed the Channel again to embark on a tour that took them from Reading and Worcester northwards to 11 12

Linke, ‘“Mit seinem eigenen Orchester-Personale”’, p. 62. Rubey, Des Verfassers beste Laune, p. 28. 13 Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 27–8.

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Glasgow and Edinburgh, then back south via Bradford and Wakefield. They left Britain for a second time on 8 December, arriving back in Vienna in a couple of weeks, just in time to prepare for the forthcoming Carnival balls in ‘Zum Sperl’.14 One unexpected aspect of Strauss’s absences from Vienna was the degree to which he was still a topic of curiosity and interest in his native city: rather than becoming a forgotten figure, Strauss enhanced his image during the absences. A key role was played by a long-standing, widely read journal, the Wiener Theaterzeitung. Its founder, editor and publisher was Adolf Bäuerle (1796–1859), who had written many comic plays and librettos for the Theater in der Leopoldstadt with titles such as Die Bürger in Wien (The Bourgeoisie in Vienna), Ein Tag im Prater (A Day in the Prater) and Der Fiaker als Marquis (The Horse Cabby as Marquis).15 The journal did not restrict itself to spoken theatre, but also covered art, literature, music, fashion and social life. Amending its title several times, by the mid-1830s it had the confident and comprehensive title of Allgemeine Theaterzeitung und Originalblatt für Kunst, Literatur, Musik, Mode und geselliges Leben. The ‘Kunst’ coverage regularly referenced other elements of the title, including well-executed coloured engravings that celebrated or poked fun at public entertainment.16 At the same time, its outlook was not an indulgent, inward-looking one focussed on Vienna, but included regular reports of artistic life from elsewhere, especially German-speaking Europe. By the mid-1830s it appeared five times a week, each issue comprising four pages, and represented an attractive counterpoise to the staid official state newspaper Wiener Zeitung. It celebrated Vienna in a way that also nurtured a confident understanding of the standing of the city in a wider European context. Accordingly, the course of Strauss’s travels was regularly summarized in its columns, typically under the heading ‘From the World of Music’ (‘Aus der Musikwelt’). For instance, during the short tour of Germany in 1835 the journal reported systematically on the visit to Stuttgart. The issue dated Thursday, 29 October, noted that Strauss had just arrived; five days later, on Tuesday, 3 November, it gave a full, informative account of a concert to a packed audience at which the orchestra of twenty-six players performed Ein Strauss von Strauss alongside two more recent sets of waltzes, Huldigungs-Walzer (Homage Waltz, Op. 80) and PhilomelenWalzer (Philemon Waltz, Op. 82); finally, on Thursday, 12 November, 14

15 16

Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 193–5; Peter Kemp, The Strauss Family: Portrait of a Musical Dynasty (Tunbridge Wells, 1985), pp. 31–2. Hadamowsky, Wien, Theatergeschichte, pp. 496–7. Many are reproduced in Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, passim.

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the journal informed its readers that Strauss had now left Stuttgart, having given three concerts (one in nearby Ludwigsburg) and appeared in one subscription ball and one court ball (presumably in the presence of the king, Wilhelm I). It reports that Strauss was very pleased with his reception in the town and with the takings, and that he had promised to return (a promise that was fulfilled in October 1837). The next destination was nearby Heilbronn, ‘a rich, lively town’ (‘eine reiche, lebensfrohe Stadt’) that was enjoying its wine harvest season (‘Weinlese’), and one where Strauss was sure to find ‘open ears and nimble feet’ (‘offene Ohren und flinke Füße’). Altogether, Vienna was given a vivid, even dewy-eyed, picture of what they were missing that year. Regular accounts in the Wiener Theaterzeitung that enhanced Strauss’s international status in the eyes of its readers were supported by a second, entirely independent process: the publication by Haslinger of sets of waltzes that deliberately referenced this wider geographical presence, but in a way that made it clear that Vienna and Austria, not any other town, city or state, had artistic and emotional ownership. The first visit to Pest had yielded an Erinnerung an Pesth (Op. 66), a ‘remembrance’ by a visitor from Vienna. Further remembrances followed: an Erinnerung an Berlin in 1835 (Op. 78) and an Erinnerung an Deutschland a year later (Op. 87). The lastnamed had an engraving on its title page that affirmed the Strauss-German presence: a map of German lands denoting twenty-one towns and cities that he had visited in two tours, including Berlin, Dresden, Heilbronn, Leipzig, Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart.17 But no city was allowed to outdo the adulation of the Viennese, and on Strauss’s return from Berlin in 1836 Haslinger immediately exploited that sentiment with a publication entitled Heimath-Klänge (Homeland Sounds, Op. 84). Below a hovering image of an angel, the title page prints a couplet familiar to all Viennese: ‘Es ist nur ein’ Kaiserstadt/Es ist nur ein Wien’ (There’s only one imperial city/There’s only one Vienna). Appropriately enough, this was a maxim that had been coined by Adolf Bäuerle as part of the text of a comic opera by Wenzel Müller, Aline, oder Wien in einem anderen Welttheile (Aline, or Vienna in Another Part of the World), first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1822. It soon became a favoured catchphrase, with that distinctive Viennese mix of the self-regarding and the self-deprecating, a comfort blanket and an excuse. Strauss had already used the second line, ‘Es ist nur ein Wien’, as the title of a set of waltzes in 1829 (Op. 22). In HeimathKlänge, he pinpoints its musical origins in a way that enhances the sense of 17

Reproduced in Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 160.

‘Gute Nacht … Guten Abend … Guten Morgen …’

belonging: in August of the previous year Wenzel Müller (1767–1835) had died in Baden at the age of sixty-seven; his setting of the couplet is quoted in the coda, an Erinnerung of someone who had contributed extensively to the Heimath-Klänge of the city.

‘Gute Nacht, Lanner; Guten Abend, Strauss Vater; Guten Morgen, Strauss Sohn’ As Johann Strauss (the elder) became Vienna’s best-known citizen at home and abroad in the 1830s, and certainly its best-known living musician, his family life followed the opposite trajectory, from contentment, through strain, to near breakdown. Shortly after the flood and the typhoid epidemic, the family moved to a spacious apartment on the Taborstrasse in Leopoldstadt, the ‘Hirschenhaus’, close to ‘Zum Sperl’ and within walking distance of the inner city in one direction and, within a few years, Vienna’s first purpose-built railway station, the Nordbahnhof, in the opposite direction. One of the abiding musical memories of the two young boys, Johann and Josef, recounted by a third, Eduard, was of rehearsals of the Strauss Orchestra in a large room that doubled as a study and bedroom, with other instruments such as double bass, trombone and percussion joining in from an adjacent room.18 The sons, too, may have gone with their father to musical performances during the summer months in outlying towns and villages, such as Baden and Mödling, and the entire family is known to have spent several summers, from July to early September, in a small house with a garden in Salmannsdorf, a village to the north-west of Vienna, characterized by small holdings devoted to wine-making and dairy produce. It was a comfortable existence, sustained by the father’s endless commitment to his career, one barely imaginable when Johann and Anna had hastily married in 1825. Indicative of their raised social status was the view, shared by both parents in the early 1830s, that Johann and Josef should have professional careers in any field except music. The two sons had been joined by two daughters, Anna (named after her mother), born in 1829, and Therese, born in 1831, as well as a baby brother, Ferdinand, born in January 1834 but who died the following November. Anna was to prove a steadfast and protective mother, living in the ‘Hirschenhaus’ until her death in 1870; Johann, by contrast, soon became a disloyal husband and, gradually, a rather distant

18

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1906), p. 11.

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father, the product of a relentless, increasingly itinerant lifestyle. Matters reached a crisis in 1835. When he and his thirty or so musicians left Vienna for Berlin in the autumn, Ferdinand was already very ill, and in the letter Johann wrote to Anna from Berlin on 19 November 1834 he enquires about Ferdinand’s health in a genuinely concerned manner; Ferdinand had, in fact, already died of hydrocephalus a fortnight earlier.19 He may also not have known that Anna was already pregnant with her fifth child; certainly the letter makes no reference to it. On his return to Vienna in December, Strauss resumed his customary schedule, performing at the ‘Zum Sperl’ dance hall and the Dommayer Casino in Hietzing. By then he would certainly have known of Anna’s pregnancy. But there was a new complication: sometime the previous summer, before the Berlin trip, he had met a young twentyyear-old maid living in Vienna, Emilie Trampusch, who was now bearing his child. Anna gave birth to a baby boy, Eduard, on 15 March, and Emilie gave birth to a baby girl, Emilie Theresia, on 18 May. Anna seems not have become aware of the illegitimate child until the following year; by May of that year there was a second illegitimate child, Johann Wilhelm. With Anna reluctant to give up her spacious family accommodation in the ‘Hirschenhaus’ and Johann refusing to give up his relationship with Emilie, a rather strained modus vivendi was agreed. Anna maintained the existing apartment for herself and her five surviving children, aged ten and under, and Johann moved to another apartment in the same building, no doubt equally suited to musical rehearsals. Emilie, meanwhile, had her own accommodation in the inner city. This arrangement lasted for eleven years, until Anna was granted a divorce and Johann left the ‘Hirschenhaus’ to live permanently with Emilie.20 During those eleven years the unmarried couple had six further children. Only three children from this second family survived to adulthood to witness the fame of their stepbrothers: Emilie (1835–after 1865), Johann (1836–64) and Clementina Emilia (1837–after 1878).21 Alongside the unfolding domestic drama of the Strauss family, a poignant and dignified national event had occurred. In February 1835, Emperor Franz fell ill and took to his bed. Wiener Zeitung gave daily reports on his deteriorating condition through to his death on Monday, 2 March.22 He had ruled for forty-three years, navigating the difficult 19 21

22

Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 144. 20 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 29. Michael Lorenz, ‘Familie Trampusch – geliebt und totgeschwiegen’, Jahrbuch des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, 62/63 (2006–7), 135–49, pp. 4–8, 18, www.academia.edu/29588813. See successive issues of Wiener Zeitung from Saturday, 28 February to 7 March 1835.

‘Gute Nacht … Guten Abend … Guten Morgen …’

Napoleonic period, repositioning Austria as an empire in its own right following the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, presiding over the Congress of Vienna and creating a largely unified empire in the post-war period that belatedly embraced the benefits of the industrial revolution. While his prime minister, Prince Metternich, was increasingly unpopular, Franz maintained a benign presence, summarized in the opening line of the national anthem that had been created for him: ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, unser guten Kaiser Franz’ (God preserve Franz the Emperor, our good Emperor Franz). Between Wednesday, 4 March, and Saturday, 7 March, from seven in the morning onwards, the public filed past his body in the Hofburgkapelle, before his funeral on the Saturday. Official court mourning was to last six months, but for the first few weeks there was little direct impact on Strauss’s activities, largely because the period coincided with Lent, when venues were routinely closed. Following the standard pattern, he was able to resume his busy life after Easter at three venues: ‘Zum Sperl’, Dommayer Casino and an entirely new dance hall, the ‘Goldene Birne’, in the Landstrasse. The question of whether Strauss’s private life affected his public life is easily answered: it did not. At the same time, it does raise the question of whether, in fact, there was much awareness in Vienna of that private life, as opposed to the professional life. Contemporary newspapers and journals rarely reported tittle-tattle of any kind – a consequence of the censorship laws – but that did not stop gossip from circulating, especially in the social whirl of dance venues. It only needed a casual remark from one person – one of Strauss’s musicians, one of Haslinger’s employees or the owner of Dommayer’s Casino – for a story to circulate to hundreds of people in a matter of days, and to get distorted in the telling. Some of these stories featured in later accounts of the Strauss family, even ones written by members of the family, becoming part of a corporate mythology that to a unique degree characterizes their legacy. As for any moral judgement about the conduct of Johann and Emilie, there was indifference, the same quality that allowed the culture of the dance to push to one side the more repressive side of Metternich’s Vienna. Escapism via the waltz, the quadrille, the galop and the march was a social condition, one that allowed its creators, as well as its consumers, to avoid any kind of censure. It was not the last time that destabilized relationships within the Strauss family occurred without in any way affecting their continuing popularity. In fact, such events were often to prove formative for their careers. As a parent, Johann Strauss had inherited some of the authoritarian attitudes of his father, including the firm view that his two sons, Johann and

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Josef, should not become musicians, despite displaying innate talent. From the age of about seven, each of the two eldest boys, Johann and Josef, were pupils at the parish school of St Johann of Nepomuk in the Praterstrasse, where the curriculum gave priority to the Catholic religion, followed by reading, handwriting, German grammar, German spelling, arithmetic and essay writing.23 At the age of twelve and ten, respectively, they transferred to the school attached to the Schottenstift, a Benedictine monastery located in one of the grandest squares in the inner city, the Freyung. Here, the education was even more rigorous: moral behaviour, religious doctrine, Latin, Greek, geography and history, and arithmetic.24 Josef thrived in both environments, showing an aptitude for academic learning, while the younger Johann’s interest and progress were average. As was the general practice, music was not a taught discipline as such, but at the Benedictine school both boys were expected to sing in the services of the associated church, the Schottenkirche, where rudiments of music, basic singing technique and familiarity with a broad repertoire of liturgical music would have been acquired. Both teenage boys received piano lessons from Wenzel Plachy and violin lessons from Franz Amon, a regular member of the first violins in the Strauss Orchestra. In old age, Johann (Son) remembered that Amon insisted that he should practise in front of a mirror in order to develop an elegant manner and a pleasing bowing action, fundamental to cultivating a captive presence on the director’s podium.25 The remainder of the story seems to have improved with the telling. One day, the door opened and in came his father, exclaiming with astonishment: ‘You’re playing the violin!’ As pianists, the brothers were also said to have surprised their father with a very competent duet performance of one his waltzes. Neither event altered his firm stance that their professional education should continue and that they should not become musicians. Both were enrolled in the commerce section of the Polytechnic Institute. Josef once more flourished in the environment, studying technical drawing and mathematics before changing to the modish new discipline of engineering.26 After graduating in 1846, he pursued a successful career as a draughtsman and engineer. The father wanted his eldest son to work in the banking industry, but Johann left the Polytechnic Institute in his second year and, urged on by his sympathetic mother, continued to develop and broaden his musical skills. He benefited from the varied 23 25 26

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 130. 24 Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 137. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 7–8. Franz Mailer, Josef Strauss: Genius against His Will, trans. Philip G. Povey (Oxford, 1985), p. 12.

‘Gute Nacht … Guten Abend … Guten Morgen …’

musical skills and experience of Joseph Drechsler (1782–1852), formerly kapellmeister at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt, but now pursuing a career as a musician at the Kirche zu den neun Chören der Engel, more familiarly known as the Kirche am Hof because of its location in the largest open space in the inner city, Am Hof. Drechsler taught figured bass to the seventeen-year-old, who very likely played the violin in the orchestra for church services, as well as the organ. Under Drechsler’s guidance, the teenager wrote his first extant composition, an offertory in G major, ‘Tu, qui regis totum orbem’ (Thou, who rulest the entire earth), first performed on 4 August 1843.27 Marked ‘Maestoso’, it is scored for four-part chorus accompanied by a traditional wind ensemble of two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three trombones (alto, tenor and bass), trumpets and timpani. It is very much a cautious, slightly gauche work, just sixty-five bars, entirely homophonic, with some dutiful dynamic contrast promted by the text alongside the occasional harmonic awkwardness, including some nasty-sounding consecutive fifths in the final bars. If, in a less didactic moment, Drechsler talked to Strauss about his early career at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt, when he wrote comic stage works such as Gisperl und Fisperl (a hapless comic couple in the tradition of Papageno and Papagena), Sylphide, das See-Fräulein (Sylphide, the Mermaid) and Die Wiener in Bagdad (The Viennese in Baghdad), he would have fed his enthusiasm for the dance, perhaps even dance music as part of a stage work. Equally formative were the violin lessons he received from Anton Kohlmann, who worked in the Theater an der Wien as the ballet répétiteur as well as a member of the orchestra – that is, someone who was closely involved with ensuring that physical movement and music worked in tandem. Through a mixture of accident and design, Johann, the eldest son, was preparing himself for a musical career as a violinist and composer. His musicianship was more broadly based than that of his father: an experienced singer of liturgical music, a capable pianist, an increasingly assured violinist, someone with a reasonably sound theoretical base and with an awareness of musical theatre in addition to the inherited one of dance. Given these attributes, the young Strauss could have pursued a reasonable existence as a jobbing violinist in theatres and in churches, one that might have led to opportunities to compose. Within a year of writing ‘Tu, qui regis totum orbem’, Strauss had embarked on a wholly different career, as 27

Modern edition: Johann Strauss, Tu qui regis totum orbem, ed. Otto Biba (Altötting, [1995]). Performance date from Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), p. 30.

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a rival to his father. The catalyst for this change was a wholly unexpected one. Joseph Lanner, who was only three years older than Johann’s father, was at the height of his popularity in Vienna – a career that had been consistently based in that city, unlike that of his former colleague and rival, Johann Strauss. He and his musicians travelled outside the city and its environs very rarely, doing so mainly in short visits to Brünn (Brno) and to Pest, plus a slightly longer one to Milan in 1838 as part of the celebrations that accompanied the coronation of Emperor Ferdinand as King of Lombardy; at the time Johann Strauss (senior) was touring the south coast of England, visiting Brighton, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton. In reality, their rivalry was more perceived than actual, and certainly of mutual benefit, as their sharing of annual duties at the imperial court during Carnival suggests. The year 1843 was a typically busy one for Lanner. After a two-day visit to Brünn, Lanner directed the music for a charity ball in the Redoutensaal, provided the music for the court balls, appeared in various musical events in Josefstadt and, most frequently of all, presided at the balls in the Dommayer’s Casino in Hietzing, a venue with which he was particularly associated. It was here that he made his last appearance on 21 March. Shortly afterwards he became ill, cancelled already advertised appearances and died three weeks later on Good Friday, 14 April, probably from typhoid. A public funeral followed on Easter Monday. Lanner’s orchestra walked silently ahead of the bier; an honorary guard was provided by members of the Second Citizen Regiment (Lanner was their kapellmeister), while the ensemble of the First Citizen Regiment, directed by Kapellmeister Johann Strauss, provided the music for the procession.28 It seems likely that one or more of his sons were among the several hundred onlookers who turned up to witness the procession, which reflected a distinctive civic tradition that, for musicians, went from Beethoven to Brahms, and was to include three members of the Strauss dynasty in turn – Johann, Johann and Josef; Eduard’s funeral in the middle of the Great War attracted fewer onlookers. Over the summer months the young Johann Strauss, with the active support of his mother, began to evolve tentative plans for a second Strauss to replace Joseph Lanner – an ambitious plan that they knew would also irk the first Strauss. The son was still very young, not yet eighteen, unproven in any musical community and unknown to the public at large. There was also 28

Otto Brusatti, Joseph Lanner: Compositor, Entertainer & Musikgenie (Vienna, 2001), pp. 178– 82.

‘Gute Nacht … Guten Abend … Guten Morgen …’

a bureaucratic process to go through, which involved seeking the permission of the Vienna magistrates and furnishing assurance of his good name and suitability. Wisely, they began that process a year later, in the summer of 1844. References were provided by those musicians who knew the young Strauss best: Joseph Drechsler and Anton Kohlmann.29 Drechsler was positive, if a little reluctant; he had taught him figured bass, he testifies to Strauss’s diligence as well as his innate talent, mentions that he wants to progress but, very deliberately, refers to him as a Jüngling (a young man, youth). Kohlmann’s reference is shorter, but much more spontaneous in its support; he identifies his pupil as the son of the famous Johann Strauss, says he is a good violinist, that his compositions reveal much talent and that he has the necessary qualities to lead a body of musicians. Kohlmann concludes: ‘By the way, I have known the above-mentioned as a modest, unassuming, genuine and morally refined young man.’ After an appearance in person before the Vienna magistrates and a consequent police check, Strauss made a formal written application to the authorities in a skilfully constructed letter.30 After first stressing his Viennese upbringing and the helpful fact that he has lived in his present accommodation in Leopoldstadt for eleven years, he moves on to his formal education consisting of four years at the gymnasium and two years at the Polytechnic Institute; he then moves swiftly to his long-held ambition to be a musician, indicating that he has studied figured bass and, more vaguely, already composed ‘many things’ (‘mehrere Sachen’). He writes that up to now he has played the violin in the Kirche am Hof but not in other public places, rather in private and always with the approbation of listeners. With an orchestra of twelve to fifteen players, he intends to play in local inns and Dommayer’s Casino in Hietzing; the latter has already indicated that once he has constituted his orchestra, he will be able to hold musical evenings there. He promises to pay his employment tax of twenty florins per annum, more if he is particularly successful. Finally, musical ambition and upright character are linked in one statement: apart from dance pieces, he predicts that he will present operatic pieces and concert pieces, as the occasion allows, and reassures the magistrates that he has always led an orderly life and has never been in trouble with the authorities. Conspicuous by its absence from the young Johann Strauss’s letter is any mention of his father, either as a formative influence or as a model for his 29 30

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 145–6. Application and response in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 147–9, 151–2.

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own career. This was largely due to increasing tension in the family. The divorce proceedings had reached a sensitive stage in the summer when the father’s legal attempts to assume the guardianship of the nine-year-old Eduard were turned down.31 Since his elder son and now would-be rival was still a minor, the father could have asserted his paternal right to thwart his son’s ambition, but the magistrates were happy with the contention that they now led independent and separate lives. Anna’s bitterness towards her husband and ambition on behalf of her son may have motivated the reassurances at the end of the petition about the blameless life of the son, since the father had not always been a model citizen. Nine years earlier, in 1835, he had been fined 9,000 florins by the city magistrates for participating in a forbidden game of cards, macao (played for money), and for the illegal possession of eight fireworks.32 Having taken all the evidence into account, the magistrates formally approved the younger Strauss’s application on 5 September 1844. Over the next few weeks, plans for the debut concert at Dommayer’s Casino on 10 October were quickly put into action. Although the original application to the magistrates had stated that Strauss wished to establish an ensemble of twelve to fifteen players, twenty-two were formally engaged, perhaps aided by the wide experience of the profession that Anton Kohlmann enjoyed. The single formal contract for the players was issued for signature on 8 October. The document emphasized professional conduct as much as musical competence:33 punctuality and commitment were needed at all rehearsals and performances; during any pauses in the rehearsal or gaps between items in performances, absolute silence and physical stillness were to be observed; no deputies were allowed, either in rehearsal or performance, without the express permission of Kapellmeister Strauss; and musical instruments and orchestral parts were to be looked after conscientiously. The contract was for a year; if anybody wanted to leave the ensemble (including Strauss himself), a notice period of fourteen days was required. Repeated neglect of duty, ignoring Kapellmeister Strauss’s instructions and drunkenness in either rehearsal or performance would result in instant dismissal. Throughout the legal and practical process of establishing the new ensemble, the younger Strauss, with the encouragement of his mother, had never sought to profit from the success and status of the elder Strauss: the nineteen-year-old was to stand and fall by his own aptitudes and 31 32 33

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 149, 157–8. Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 124–6. Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 153–5. Also in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 17–19.

‘Gute Nacht … Guten Abend … Guten Morgen …’

actions. That had been easily done up to now; but when it came to the approval of the public, comparison between father and son was inevitable. The son was astute enough to realize that the situation could be diplomatically managed and turned to his advantage. When the debut was announced for 15 October, it was billed as a soirée dansante that contained various overtures and operatic extracts alongside several compositions by the director, billed simply as ‘Johann Strauss (Sohn)’. Although the emphasis was on variety rather than on the debut of one person, at the same time it allowed the public to focus on the latter rather than the former. The publicity worked. The hall, with the customary parallel seating areas on either side, held about 600 people, but it was so full with expectant members of the public that little actual dancing took place: by default, it did, indeed, become a concert that focussed on the new Johann Strauss. The debutant presented his credentials as a conductor of music by three popular composers: two overtures by Auber, a cavatina from Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable and Suppé’s overture Sommernachtstraum. His own compositions showed his mastery of several dance forms: two sets of waltzes, Sinngedichte (Sensory Poems, Op. 1) and Gunst-Werber-Walzer (Goodwill Recruiter Waltz, Op. 4), one quadrille, Debut-Quadrille (Op. 2) and one polka, Herzenlust-Polka (Heart’s Delight Polka, Op. 3). There was also a courteous sense of filial deference: the performance of a recent set of waltzes by his father, Loreley-Rhein-Klänge (Sounds of the Loreley and Rhine, Op. 154).34 The enthusiastic response of the audience to this carefully planned programme was reported and enhanced by subsequent reports in the press. The most extravagant was in Der Wanderer, over three columns, written by an experienced journalist well known for his comic writing, Franz Wiest (1814–47).35 His description was vivid, sometimes eccentric: apparently, the hall was as full as a packed House of Lords in England, smokers could hardly light up their cigars and the heat was indescribable. Expectant rhetorical questions are piled up: ‘Who was Strauss’s son up until now? What did you know about him? Did he even exist?’ (‘Wer war Strauß Sohn bisher? Was hat man von Strauß bis jetzt gehört? Existiert wirklich ein Strauß Sohn?’). The answer was overwhelmingly positive: his physical movements are the same as those of his father; one moment his bow is held aloft, the next it tears across the strings; ‘Yes, this is Strauss’s son, the worthy son of his father’ (‘Ja das ist Strauß Sohn, das ist der 34 35

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 14–15. ‘Kurier durch das Wiener Tag- und Nacht-Leben’, Der Wanderer, 19 October 1844, pp. 1005–6.

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würdige Sohn seines Vaters’). Intoxicated with the occasion and his own prose, Franz Wiest stumbles into remarks that were gratuitously unkind: at the age of twenty-one (actually nineteen), the son may have learnt more than the father had in his career of twenty-one years (that statistic was more accurate), and he is certain to make further progress. That sense of a new era led to a climactic final sentence, where another figure, the recently deceased Joseph Lanner, makes a sudden appearance: ‘Good night, Lanner; Good evening, Strauss Father; Good morning, Strauss Son’. If, within the context of this report, the mention of Lanner was rather opportunistic – useful for Wiest’s time of day metaphor – there was a fundamental truth here. The son was clearly filling the gap left by Lanner’s death in two ways: first, a strong, but not exclusive, association with Dommayer’s Casino; and second, an exclusive publishing relationship with Pietro Mechetti, Lanner’s publisher from 1829 to 1840. Mechetti’s name appears on the advertisement for the soirée dansante as the place in the inner city where tickets could be purchased, and he was to be Strauss’s publisher for the next seven years. Within a year, the sense that the young Strauss was following in Lanner’s footsteps acquired a third characteristic when he inherited the role of kapellmeister of the Second Viennese Citizen Regiment; the father, meanwhile, continued in his role of Kapellmeister of the First Regiment. The sense of two camps, defined by principal venue, publisher and citizen regiment, and, within the family, by fractured relationships, was to characterize the narrative of the rivals for the next five years and was resolved only when the son united the two ensembles in the months after the death of his father. In the autumn of 1844, however, for Franz Wiest to push ‘Strauss Father’ into the evening of his career was premature and unjust.

Celebrated Master and Estranged Journeyman During the summer and autumn of 1844, while Strauss Son was beginning his musical career, Strauss Father had maintained his customary presence in musical society, located mainly in the ‘Zum Sperl’ dance hall in Leopoldstadt. In May, he had written a set of waltzes, Willkommen-Rufe (Calls of Welcome, Op. 168), to celebrate the arrival in Vienna of the newly wed Archduke Albrecht (1817–77) and his bride Princess Hildegard of Bavaria. As a nephew of the former emperor, Franz, and cousin of the current emperor, Ferdinand, the archduke was at the beginning of a distinguished career in the army, which would soon see him working

Celebrated Master and Estranged Journeyman

alongside Radetzky. Whether it is reasonable to infer from the titles of the three consecutive sets of waltzes that were composed and published that year – Frohsinns-Salven (Salvos of Joy, Op. 163), Aurora-Festklänge (Festive Sounds of Aurora (the goddess of the dawn), Op. 164) and Rosen ohne Dornen (Roses without Thorns, Op. 166) – a certain ironic indifference to the ambition of his son is a moot point, regardless of whether the titles were created by the composer or by Haslinger. Certainly, Strauss Father was confident enough to undertake a short tour in the middle of November, northwards to the towns of Troppau (Opava), Teschen (Český Tĕšín) and Neutitschein (Nový Jičín), which were part of the Bohemian crown lands. The younger Strauss’s Opus 1, Sinngedichte, followed the established tradition of dance titles invoking unsullied pleasantry, conducive to orderly, perhaps even trance-like dancing. He followed his father, Lanner and others in using the standard form of introduction, five waltzes and a coda. However, this introduction – his very first – is unusually lengthy, extending to forty-nine bars, with a brusque downward scale in the strings to summon the dancers and listeners, followed by fragments of melody played by solo cello and solo horn over tremolo strings – foreground and background sonorities that were to feature with an accumulated feel of a sensory legacy in An der schönen, blauen Donau, composed over twenty years later. As in contemporary waltzes by Johann Strauss (Father), the coda section is the longest (144 bars). While maintaining the regular phrase patterns of the dance, there is also the typical quotation of earlier waltz melodies and, in this case, the repetition of the flourish from the beginning of the cycle to indicate the end of escapism – another technique that was to feature in An der schönen, blauen Donau. Strauss’s debut concert also included two dance forms that had acquired popularity in Vienna in the preceding few years. The quadrille was an ensemble dance with two opposing rows of couples. Its historical origins are complex, ultimately derived from the English country dance, but filtered through a long French tradition.36 The former established the characteristic metre of two in a bar; the latter the overall sequence of six named sections – ‘Pantalon’, ‘Été’, ‘Poule’, ‘Trénis’, ‘Pastourelle’ and ‘Finale’ – whose inherited titles had long lost any expectation of musical depictions of a foolish old man, summer, a hen or the pastoral. Indeed, the 36

For a history of the quadrille, see Dörner, Joseph Lanner, pp. 56–8; Neue Johann Strauss Gesamtausgabe, Serie II, Werkgruppe 4, Abteilung 4, vol. 1: Quadrillen, ed. Michael Rot (Vienna, c.2009), pp. xi–xv.

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permanent 2/4 pulse, repetitive rondo-like structures and fast tempo give quadrilles a rather short-winded character in comparison with the waltz, even when they reference popular tunes or well-known melodies from operas. The other work in Strauss’s debut was a polka, Herzenlust, much the newest of the three genres. Within the Viennese tradition, it had emerged in the previous ten years or so as a more decorous form of the galop, which it replaced. It was a brisk – rather than hectic – two in a bar, usually with a three-part structure (polka, trio, polka) plus coda, and was danced by couples with continually changing partners and much stepping and hopping.37 Later in Strauss’s career, a number of variants of the original Viennese polka were developed, and with over 130 examples it came to rival the waltz as his favoured dance form. Typically shorter than a set of waltzes, the polka also adapted well to concert use. Over seven miles separated ‘Zum Sperl’ in Leopoldstadt to the northeast of the inner city from Dommayer’s Casino in Hietzing to the southwest, and for a couple of years father and son maintained this sense of physical distance in their musical careers. Yet, this could not in any way be characterized as territorial, in the manner of modern football teams. There is little or no evidence that rivalry was reflected in the make-up of audiences; on the contrary, part of the appeal was to experience the rivalry directly rather than to identify with one Strauss rather than the other. Before the son’s debut in the Dommayer Casino, the father had directed music there for thirteen years, the last time in May 1844. Another venue had become a focus for the father’s appearance, the Volksgarten, tucked in behind the city walls near the Hofburg – walls that acted as promenades in sunny weather and offered shelter in inclement weather. Visitors were charged an admission fee; Strauss directed his orchestra in a bandstand; and informality was further enhanced by the renowned Paradeislgartl café nearby. Apart from a few performances at ‘Zum Sperl’ in 1845, the younger Strauss tended to stay on his side of Vienna in the fortuitously named ‘Zum goldenen Strauss’ (dance halls that were part of the Josefstadt Theatre complex), as well as the Dommayer Casino. Only during the summer of 1846 did father and son appear in the same venue, the Wasserglacis, a strip of land to the east of the city walls that provided a more rustic, sometimes rather damp, outdoor environment than the Volksgarten. 37

For a history of the polka, see Dörner, Joseph Lanner, p. 53; Neue Johann Strauss Gesamtausgabe, Serie II, Werkgruppe 4, Abteilung 2, vol. 1: Polkas, ed. Michael Rot (Vienna, c.2008), pp. xii–xiii.

Celebrated Master and Estranged Journeyman

As the career of the son unfolded in the 1840s, the father not only pursued his career in an unthreatening and unthreatened way but became even more of an establishment figure, benefiting in part from his international status. One of the key musical institutions in Vienna, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde des österreichischen Kaiserstaat, usually held its annual ball in the imperial surroundings of the Redoutensaal. Strauss (Father) had performed at the first-ever ball organized by the society in 1830 and maintained that association through the 1840s, foreign tours permitting.38 This was not just a social occasion for a high-minded society but reflected a broader aspect of its work from day to day. In 1836, its conservatoire had appointed a dance teacher, Franz Reiberger (1783– 1850), who took his place alongside the many teachers of string instruments, wind instruments, singing and the Italian language.39 The much later division of music into two areas, serious and light (Ernstmusik and Unterhaltungsmusik), fundamentally misrepresented musical life in Vienna. If there was an emerging sense of intellectual discrimination, there was certainly little or no sense of division. As we shall see later, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was to play an even greater role in the careers of the Strauss dynasty in the coming decades. As for the first Strauss, he had always been willing to reference the music of Haydn, Beethoven and others in his compositions. The year 1840 marked the seventieth anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. For the annual ball of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Strauss (Father) wrote a new set of waltzes, named after the patron saint of music, Cäcilien-Walzer (Op. 120).40 The first of the customary five waltzes quotes melodies from the second and fourth movements of Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata for piano and violin (Op. 47), transposed from A major to an even more Beethovenian key of E flat and transformed into tripletime melodies; when one of the melodies is recalled in the coda, it is played in tremolo figuration. As often, there was another allusion at work. A few months earlier, the famous Belgian violinist and composer, Charles-August de Bériot (1802–70), had given two concerts in Vienna, featuring his own showpiece composition based on the theme from the slow movement of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, Le Trémolo, Caprice sur un 38

39

40

Thomas Aigner, ‘Die Bälle der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien’, in Ingrid Fuchs (ed.), Musikfreunde: Träger der Musikkultur in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 2017), pp. 75–83. Richard von Perger, Geschichte der k. k. Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien: 1. Abteilung, 1812–1870 (Vienna, 1912), p. 71. Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 214.

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thème de Beethoven, so-called because of its extensive use of tremolo. Strauss’s use of Beethoven’s theme and Bériot’s tremolo flattered the musical interests of those attending the Gesellschaft ball. When Haslinger subsequently published the dances, he referenced the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde on the title page and, more obliquely, Bériot’s composition in the extended title of Cäcilien-Walzer, mit dem beliebten Tremolo (Cecilia Waltz, with the Popular Tremolo); it was left to performers and listeners, however, to discover the Beethoven references. Later in the 1840s, Strauss (Father) composed two quadrilles for the annual balls of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde that quote well-known themes. Saison-Quadrille nach Motiven der berühmten Virtuosen Vieuxtemps, Evers und Kullak (Op. 148) referenced the music of three virtuosi who had performed in Vienna in 1841–2: the violinist Henri Vieuxtemps (1820–81), the pianist Carl Evers (1819–75) and the composer-pianist Theodor Kullack (1818–82);41 while Die vier Haimonskinder (Op. 169) used themes from Balfe’s comic opera of that name performed in three different theatres between 1844 and 1846: Josefstadt Theatre, Theater an der Wien and the Hofoper.42 As well as the welcome topicality of such referencing, there was an increasing sense that the elder Johann Strauss was validating musical events in Vienna, as well as the wider careers of performers and composers who visited the city. It was to take the younger Strauss the best part of twenty years to reach that degree of eminence. Johann’s status as a leading Austrian citizen was formally recognized by the imperial court in 1846. On 7 January he submitted a carefully written petition to the emperor (including the politesse of referring to himself in the third person, ‘er’ (he)), requesting that he be given the title of ‘k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor’ (imperial-royal court ball music director). The petition points out that for seventeen years he has had the honour of providing music for the court balls and that he has worked tirelessly to promote the well-being of the public in his beloved home city, including as kapellmeister of the First Citizen Regiment of Vienna. This was an unusual request, since no such title existed in the court hierarchy and Strauss was, in effect, asking for a new position to be created especially for him. It is likely that there was some prior, behind-the-scenes discussion, perhaps once more involving Haslinger, the ‘k. k. Hof- und privil. Kunst- und Musikalienhändler’. Just over a fortnight later, Strauss received a formal 41 42

Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens, p. 341. Michael Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper von 1836 bis 1848: Die Ära Balochino/Merelli (Vienna, 2004), pp. 237–8.

Celebrated Master and Estranged Journeyman

reply, which again seems to have reflected wider discussion, and perhaps even some reservations. In recognition of his service to the court and his wider work for charitable institutions, he would be accorded the title of ‘k. k. Hofballmusikirektor’, but there was to be no associated emolument and no presumption of automatic engagement for court balls.43 Existing musicians at court and ones in the wider community would also have recognized that he was not a member of the Hofkapelle, the body of musicians largely devoted to provision of church music at the court and headed by Kapellmeister Joseph Eybler (1765–1846), a faithful servant with over forty years of service. Six months later, in June 1846, Strauss directed a performance of a new march, the Oesterreichischer Fest-Marsch (Op. 188), at the public unveiling of a bronze monument to the previous emperor, Franz, in one of the small courtyards in the imperial complex, the Burghof, which amounted to an indirect affirmation of his new status. It is a short march propelled by a rhythmic pattern that was to feature in a number of later marches: ja-da da, ja-da da. The previous winter had seen the first visit to Vienna of Hector Berlioz (1803–69). The elder Strauss and he had already developed a friendship during his visit to Paris in 1837–8. Between November 1845 and February 1846 Berlioz presented seven hugely successful concerts in the Viennese capital – mainly in the Theater an der Wien – which included extracts from the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, Harold in Italy and Benvenuto Cellini. In addition, two performances of the first four movements of his Symphonie fantastique were given; perhaps the concluding fifth movement, ‘Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’, with its mocking quotation of the ‘Dies irae’ plainchant, was omitted, not because of the technical challenges it posed but because the concert organizers knew that its blasphemous nature was unlikely to pass the scrutiny of the censors. Roméo et Juliette, on the other hand, was performed complete. The most frequently performed work was the Roman Carnival overture, a work whose high-tempo energy, distinctive slow cantabile and vivid, unorthodox orchestral colouring would have appealed more to followers of the two Strausses than to devotees of Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven. As a mark of his friendship Berlioz gave the elder Strauss a set of parts to the overture, and it was duly performed at the Volksgarten on 1 January with great success. When the French composer came to write his memoirs a few years later, two musicians in Vienna were singled out for sustained admiration, even veneration. The first was Otto Nicolai (1810–49), the music director at the Kärntnertortheater, a court 43

Petition and reply in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 158–61.

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theatre, and the architect of the plan that its orchestra should give a limited number of concerts each season alongside its work as an opera orchestra, out of which the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was to grow. The second musical figure was Johann Strauss the elder. The younger Strauss is not even mentioned in the memoirs:44 The Redoutensaal takes its name from the great balls frequently held in the hall during the winter season. There the youth of Vienna gives rein to its passion for dancing, a genuine passion and a very agreeable one which has led the Austrians to elevate ballroom dancing into an art . . . I spent whole nights watching these incomparable waltzers whirling round in great clouds, and in admiring the choreographic precision of the quadrilles – two hundred people at a time [a realistic number for the Grosser Redoutensaal], drawn up in two long lines – and the vivid character dances, which for originality and polished execution I have not seen surpassed anywhere except in Hungary. And there stands Strauss directing his splendid orchestra: and sometimes, when one of the new waltzes which he writes for every society ball makes a special hit, the dancers stop to applaud and the ladies go over to his rostrum and throw him their bouquets, and they all shout ‘bis’ and make him come back at the end of the quadrille (since dancing feels no jealousy and allows music its share in the triumph and the fun). This is no more than justice; for Strauss is an artist. It is not sufficiently recognized what an influence he has already had on the musical taste of Europe as a whole by introducing cross-rhythms into the waltz. . . . If the public outside Germany is ever brought to appreciate the extraordinary charm that can on occasion result from combined and contrasted rhythms, it will be owing to him. Beethoven’s marvels in this line are too exalted to have affected more than a small minority of listeners. Strauss, on the other hand, deliberately appeals to a popular audience; and by copying him, his numerous imitators are perforce helping to spread his influence.45

In the summer of 1846 Strauss collaborated with another celebrated travelling musician, Franz Liszt (1811–86). While Liszt and Strauss, along with Berlioz, were the standout concert performers of the day, each with his particular mix of composition, performance and stage presence, the first two shared a further interest: raising money for charitable causes. It was charity that brought them together that summer. For the Viennese, one of the most popular destinations for relaxation was the Brühl valley, some twelve miles south of Vienna, near Mödling, where there was an inn and garden named ‘Sans-Souci’ –in the literal sense of ‘without care’, not an 44

45

David Cairns (trans. and ed.), The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz (London, 1969), pp. 369–84. Clemens Hellsberg, Demokratie der Könige: Die Geschichte der Wiener Philharmoniker (Zurich, 1992), pp. 72–4. Cairns, Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, pp. 376–7.

Celebrated Master and Estranged Journeyman

invocation of the large summer palace in Potsdam – the focal point for fairweather celebrations enjoyed by locals as well as visitors, many of the latter being day trippers taking advantage of the recently built train line from Vienna. On Saturday, 18 July, ‘Sans-Souci’ presented a ‘Ländliches Fest’ to raise money for a new clock tower in the nearby village of Rodaun, at which Johann Strauss and Franz Liszt were the star attractions.46 The event began with Strauss and his orchestra performing familiar works by him, plus the first performance of a march by Liszt, Der ungarische Sturmmarsch. Liszt the pianist appeared towards eight in the evening, playing an instrument specially transported from Vienna. A few weeks after this joint event, Strauss completed a new work as a tribute to his friend, the Fantasy on Liszt’s Hungarian Dances. First performed on 30 August, the music was never published by Haslinger, which suggests that it might not have been a success, and it has not survived in manuscript. Notwithstanding this single apparent failure, it is clear that the elder Strauss had nothing to fear from the developing career of his son: Wiest’s view that the father was now in the evening of his career was fundamentally wrong. The younger Strauss was carving out an identity sufficiently different in nature for there to be no fear of constant comparison; the distinction between father and son was more pronounced than that which had existed between Lanner and Strauss. Direct comparison between the works of father and son was most likely to occur in quadrilles rather than in waltzes and polkas, given that part of their appeal was the quotation of melodies from stage works that were currently popular in Vienna. During the 1840s the operas of the Irish composer Michael Balfe (1808– 70) enjoyed considerable success in Vienna, being performed in three different theatres – the Kärntnertortheater, the Theater an der Wien and the Josefstadt Theatre – always translated into German rather than presented in the original French or English.47 The earliest was Der Liebesbrunnen (Le puits d’amour), from which the younger Strauss drew a quadrille (Op. 10); the second was Die vier Haimonskinder (Les quatre fils Aymon); from which the father created a quadrille (Op. 169). In the summer of 1846 a third opera, Die Zigeunerin (The Bohemian Girl), pitted father and son against each other in a race to compose and publish a resultant quadrille; the son won the race by about ten days. A few months 46

47

Advertisement in Wiener Zeitung (17 July 1846), reproduced in Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 298. Hadamowsky, Wien, Theatergeschichte, p. 527; Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper, pp. 237–8.

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later a fourth opera by Balfe was given in Vienna, Die Belagerung von Rochelle (The Siege of Rochelle); this time there was only one quadrille, by the son (Op. 31). As well as playing a part in family rivalry, The Bohemian Girl had other resonances, current and long-term, political and creative. Although the libretto drew ultimately on a novel by Cervantes and was set in the eighteenth century, it reflects many tensions that were emerging in Austrian imperial politics in the 1840s. Set in Pressburg (officially still the Hungarian capital, despite the ever-increasing civic self-confidence of Pest), it opens and closes with homages to the Austrian emperor. The eponymous Bohemian girl is a six-year-old child of an aristocrat, Count Arnheim; she is kidnapped by gypsies and brought up as one of their own (hence the German title of Die Zigeunerin); twelve years later she falls in love with a renegade Polish soldier, Thaddeus; in the ensuing struggle, the leader of the gypsies is killed, the Bohemian girl is reunited with her Austrian family, and the Polish soldier thanked and forgiven for his previous disloyalty. The central theme affirming that the Austrian monarchy was capable of containing and resolving internal nationalist tensions was a political and social dynamic that was to last through to 1914, but this particular tale of a struggle in a gypsy encampment between the high-born and the low-born – one that was resolved through music composed by Balfe and subsequently referenced in quadrilles by both Strausses – is an early indication of the increasing nervousness of that dynamic; it was to inform one of the younger Strauss’s most popular works, Der Zigeunerbaron, composed nearly forty years later. A striking aspect of the elder Strauss’s career in the 1840s is the absence of extended foreign tours like those that had taken him throughout Germany and to the major capitals of Paris and London in the previous decade. They were replaced by much shorter visits, often a few days and never more than a few weeks, and restricted mainly to Austrian and Prussian territories; clearly, there was now no need for him to travel, because his international standing was no longer dependent on his physical presence. The circumstances of the younger Strauss, on the other hand, were quite different. As Box 2.2 suggests, for the first couple of years he concentrated almost exclusively on developing his career in Vienna, making only brief excursions to Raab (Győr), halfway between Vienna and Pest, and then via Styria to Pest itself. If there was an underlying strategy, it was one of avoidance: the father did not visit those towns in the 1840s and, more significantly, the son seems never to have contemplated journeying northwards and westwards from Vienna, where establishing a presence for a second Strauss

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63

Box 2.2 Tours outside Vienna and environs undertaken by Johann Strauss (Son), 1846–8 February 1846 Raab (Győr) June 1846 Styria, Pest October 1847 – May 1848 Pressburg, Pest, Neusatz (Novi Sad), Belgrade, Hermannstadt (Sibiu), Bucharest Source: Franz Mailer (ed.), Johann Strauss (Sohn): Leben und Werk in Briefen und Dokumenten (Tutzing, 1983–2007), vol. 1, pp. 32–3, 35–6.

might have been more difficult than it was in Vienna. That strategy of avoidance is certainly evident in the plans that were made for the first extended tour in 1847–8. Rather than travelling to the north and west, Strauss went in the opposite direction, to the south and east. Pressburg and Pest were familiar and congenial destinations but far-flung Neusatz (Novi Sad), Belgrade and Bucharest constituted a journey into the comparative unknown; indeed, the original plan was to go even further south and east to Constantinople (Istanbul), capital of the Ottoman empire, 800 miles from Vienna, but that leg of the tour had to be abandoned. The sense of an exploratory expedition by a group of musical pioneers was magnified by the modes of transport – horse and carriage, and boat, rather than the everbroadening rail network that Strauss senior was using for his journeys; the expeditions were made almost unbearable by the wintry weather that the pioneers encountered. For the young Strauss, still in his early twenties, his lengthy trip through south-eastern Europe would have strengthened an existing casual, but distinctive, interest in the diverse inheritance and political loyalties of its peoples, whether currently under Austrian rule, previously under Ottoman rule, quasi-independent or aspiringly independent. He had already directed music at several balls for the Slav community in Vienna, led by the exiled Prince Miloš Obrenović (1780–1860): the Serben-Quadrille (Op. 14, 1847) quoted national Serbian melodies; the Alexander-Quadrille (Op. 33, 1846) was dedicated to the prince and was to be followed by a Slaven-Potpourri (Op. 39, 1847). Meanwhile, Hungarian identity had been foregrounded in the Pesther Csárdás (Op. 23, 1846) and the Zigeunerin-Quadrille (Op. 24, 1846). During the 1847–8 tour Strauss wrote a fantasy on Serbian national

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melodies, Erinnerung an Neusatz, for the cultural centre of Serbian patriotism, Neusatz. Finally, in Bucharest he composed three patriotic works: the Marien Quadrille (Op.51, 1848), dedicated to the wife of the elected ruler, Gheorghe Bibescu (1804–73); a Nationalmarsch; and an arrangement of the Romanian national anthem for voice and orchestra (with its belligerent opening lines, ‘Wake up, Romania, from the sleep of death/Into which you’ve been thrown by the barbaric tyrants’). Three of these works, the Erinnerung an Neusatz and the Romanian march and anthem, have not survived – testament to their strident local appeal, which would not have been tolerated in the imperial capital. In his early twenties, Strauss was developing interests and sympathies that went beyond the challenges of opportunistic musical characterization to a personal identification with nationalism in the eastern territories of the Austrian monarchy, and with that, perhaps, an incipient view that the imperial government in Vienna was being unwisely antipathetic to these new cultural and political forces. Three years after Johann Strauss (son) had founded his ensemble, a settled pattern of professional co-existence between father and son had emerged: the father was allowed to enhance his status, while the son could develop his own career as he wished. As mentioned above, there was room for both in Vienna, literally so. Between 1800 and 1846, the population of the city had doubled, from over 250,000 inhabitants to over 500,000, largely housed in the ever-expanding suburbs, such as Leopoldstadt to the north and Josefstadt to the south, and hailing from different parts of the Austrian territories, especially Bohemia and Moravia to the north and the Alpine areas to the south. By the 1840s, over 40 per cent of the population had been born elsewhere.48 New dance halls, like Dommayer’s Casino, were built and older ones, such as ‘Zum Sperl’, re-built and extended to cater for everincreasing numbers of dancers in the winter, while open-air spaces like the Volksgarten and Wasserglacis, allowed even larger crowds. Observing Vienna at play was a key component of the Strauss culture, much more so than attending an opera or a concert. There was a familiar pattern, itself almost dance-like, to that experience: a new season in October and November, increased activity in the New Year and Carnival, a comparative lull in Lent, followed by open-air events in the summer. As the population of the city had grown, its dance culture occupied a defined space within a general musical culture that was also expanding. Opera of various kinds could be heard virtually all year round in the Kärntnertortheater, the Theater an der Wien, the Leopoldstadt theatre 48

Csendes and Opll, Wien, vol. 3, pp. 15–18, 22–3, 51–2.

Celebrated Master and Estranged Journeyman

and the Josefstadt theatre. Concert life, too, had expanded and included benefit concerts in theatres for visiting composers and performers (especially pianists and violinists), orchestral and choral concerts presented by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and, in 1842, a much more elitist venture, the first public concerts by the Court Opera Orchestra conducted by Otto Nicolai. Even though the music of the two Strausses continually interacted with this wider music culture, there was also a sense that the various pieces of the jigsaw that made up the picture were not interchangeable. For instance, the Kärntnertortheater had a regular ballet season, but it never systematically embraced the wider dance culture of the Strausses, even when the titles of certain comic ballets, such as Die Hochzeit des Bachus (The Marriage of Bachus) and Der Teufel an allen Ecken (The Devil at All Corners), suggested that they could easily have done so. Occasionally, the pervasive dance culture of the city even distorted appreciation of other genres. For instance, two early operas by Verdi, Nabucco and Ernani, had been enthusiastically received by the Viennese, not least because pleasing Italian cantabile in regular phrase patterns matched similar moments of lyricism in Strauss waltzes, but a third opera, I due Foscari, was a complete flop when it was performed in 1845. Loud laughter had greeted the waltz rhythms of the vocal trio in the prison scene in Act 2 that laments the imminent exile of Jacopo Foscari (the lead tenor role).49 A waltz could be melancholy, but it was never tragic. If public musical life and the place of dance in that environment suggested a continuing untroubled and satisfying existence for the two masters of dance music, personal relationships within the family, too, had reached a degree of accommodation that allowed individuals to live their lives. Johann and Anna’s divorce was finally settled in 1846, and although Anna maintained her anger towards her former husband and a particular hatred towards Emilie Trampusch, her willing promotion of the musical ambition of her eldest son, Johann, was increasingly characterized by matriarchal pride rather than a desire to hurt her former husband. The eldest son was intensely loyal to his mother and still lived in the family home, the ‘Hirschenhaus’, troubled only by a mild condition, scrofula, which meant that he was able to avoid military service.50 He also seems to have maintained a certain civility and respect towards his father, building on the conciliatory inclusion of Loreley-Rhein-Klänge in his debut concert. One unverifiable anecdote relates that the father was touched by 49

Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper, pp. 253–5.

50

Steblin, ‘Neue Fakten’, p. 273.

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a surprise performance of his music presented by his son’s ensemble, gathered underneath the window of his apartment.51 For his part, Josef continued to develop that enthusiasm for learning evident from his early school years, though he, too, had a medical condition that excused him from military service, a hernia.52 Alongside his formal study of technical drawing, mathematics and engineering at the Polytechnic Institute, he took private tuition in artistic drawing. His musical interests were broadening too, nourished by the increasingly varied culture of the 1840s; he regularly attended the concerts of the Court Opera Orchestra directed by Nicolai, which were dominated by the music of Beethoven, as well as piano recitals by Clara Schumann (1819–96) and Liszt and opera performances at the Kärntnertortheater and the Theater an der Wien.53 Eduard, too, was a scholarly type. In 1846, at the age of eleven, he began attending the Akademisches Gymnasium, located in the inner city near the university for which it served as a preparatory school. Although he seems not to have played an instrument as a child, he had begun to attend concerts and the opera, following his brother’s example; in his memoirs he particularly recalls two performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah conducted by the composer.54 If Johann Strauss – the parent who had opposed the musical ambitions of his son – had now come to accept the younger Johann’s success, he would have been quietly pleased with the academic progress of Josef and Eduard, which strongly suggested that both would have careers outside music. But one document stands in the way of the image of a proud, forgiving father, a document that Anna and her three sons, Johann, Josef and Eduard, knew nothing about at the time. In October 1847 Johann Strauss, at the age of forty-three, wrote a short, uncomplicated will.55 His goods and chattels were to be left to Emilie Trampush and their five surviving children (Emilie Theresia, Johann Wilhelm, Clementina Emilia, Maria Wilhelmine and Theresia Karolina); The simple statement to that effect was re-enforced by a brutal one: ‘My children from my marriage to Anna Strauss should be restricted to their lawful share only.’ Just two years were to elapse before that particular narrative would unfold. 51

52 53

54

The story is related in Egon Gartenberg, Johann Strauss: The End of an Era (New York, 1979), p. 132. Steblin, ‘Neue Fakten’, p. 273. Mailer, Josef Strauss, pp. 12–13. For the concerts of the orchestra in the 1840s, see Hellsberg, Demokratie der Könige, pp. 35–41. Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 16, 18. 55 Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 162.

Marching and Dancing in the Revolution

Marching and Dancing in the Revolution The signature on Strauss’s will is dated 10 October 1847. On that very day there was widespread civil unrest in Vienna, prompted by increasing unemployment and food shortages, with bakeries and factories being particular targets. The protest was quelled, but the underlying causes were not so easily dealt with, being part of a wider social and political disenchantment that was to explode into rebellion in March 1848.56 That month and year came to be regarded as one of the most significant in the history of Austria, on a par with the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683 and Napoleon’s two occupations of the city in 1806 and 1809, and embedded in historical discourse which divided the nineteenth century into two parts, the first labelled ‘before March’, Vormärz. In comparison with the earlier siege and occupations, the revolution of 1848 was more complicated in its origins and, because of that, more protracted in its unfolding, with local and particular concerns constantly interacting with wider national and international developments in ways that were at times idealistic, at times impulsive. It was never a clear-cut, us-and-them revolution, as both the adversaries and the imperial court showed themselves to be a shifting, sometimes divided, target. For a few weeks in May 1848 it seemed that the very future of the Austrian monarchy was at stake. That it survived was partly a matter of luck as well as diplomacy, helped by a collective feeling that it should be allowed to do so. The actions of the three adult members of the Strauss family reflect this complexity. Some were borne of a generational divide, some were idealistic, some contradictory and some even accidental but, in the end, there was to be a common acceptance of the resolution that emerged. They had been products of the Vormärz era. They now turned to shaping the new era. All three adult members of the Strauss family had been beneficiaries of a living and working environment that had changed greatly since the 56

Information on the historical background in this section draws on the following sources: Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 66–76; Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA, 2016), pp. 162–217; Sir Horace Rumbold, The Austrian Court in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1909), pp. 116–47. The musical commentary draws on the following essays: Wolfgang Häusler, ‘Marseillaise, Katzenmusik und Fuchslied als Mittel sozialen und politischen Protests in der Wiener Revolution 1848’, in Barbara Boisits (ed.), Musik und Revolution: Die Produktion von Identität und Raum durch Musik in Zentraleuropa 1848/49 (Vienna, 2013), pp. 37–89; Thomas Aigner, ‘Tanz auf dem Vulkan: Wiener Ball- und Marschmusik im Revolutionsjahr 1848’, in Barbara Boisits (ed.), Musik und Revolution: Die Produktion von Identität und Raum durch Musik in Zentraleuropa 1848/49 (Vienna, 2013), pp. 399–415.

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Congress of Vienna. The railway network had expanded considerably in the 1840s, to Brünn in Bohemia, Raab in Hungary and Gloggnitz deep in the mountains to the south-west of Vienna, linking peoples and goods to the capital. Steamships similarly plied a passenger and goods service along the Danube, westwards to Linz and Passau, and eastwards to Pressburg and Raab. The associated engineering expertise that was developed and proudly displayed, though often indebted to British practice, nurtured a similar interest in Austrian citizens, including Josef Strauss. The year 1843 had seen the arrival of gas lighting on the streets of Vienna and 1847 saw the opening of a telegraph line between Vienna, Brünn and Prague, the first long-distance line in Europe. Much of this had been achieved despite the weakness of the central government under the new emperor, Ferdinand. Mentally enfeebled and, like many Habsburgs, prone to epilepsy, he was nevertheless liked by his people and gained the affectionate nickname ‘Ferdinand der Gütige’ (Ferdinand the Benign). For musicians, the fact that he was a capable pianist added to his appeal, continuing a musical inclination that had run through the family for generations. But he had no political nous and was incapable of strategic thinking. Power was devolved to ministers, particularly Prince Metternich, now in his seventies. Undermined and compromised by court politics that resulted from a weak emperor, Metternich was no longer able to run the government with the despotic authority and devious flare of earlier years. There was an emerging sense that Austria could not keep up with changing times. Italy and Hungary, meanwhile, were becoming increasingly assured in their nationalist identity, compounded in the case of the latter by identities within identities. As Johann Strauss (Son) would have found out on his journey to Hungary and Romania in the winter of 1847–8, Romanian speakers in Hungary resisted the imposition of the Magyar language, finding themselves at odds with rulers in Pest, who, in turn, were at odds with their German-speaking rulers in Vienna. Whether it was the growing pains of industrialization or the tensions of nationalism, the certainties of earlier years were fast receding. At the beginning of 1848 the two Johanns were miles apart, politically as well as geographically. While the son was in Bucharest responding enthusiastically to Romanian patriotism, the father was in Vienna pursuing his normal annual routine, preparing sets of dances for the Carnival season. The Tanz-Signale waltzes (Op. 218) open with a trumpet call, not a call to arms but to the dance; for a ball organized by medical students he provided a set of waltzes that referenced a new form of anaesthetic, diethyl ether, titled Aether Träume (Op. 225); and while Sorgenbrecher (Op. 230) – literally,

Marching and Dancing in the Revolution

Breaker of Concerns – might be thought a reference to troubled times, it was, in fact, a standard term for a glass of wine, a pick-me-up, one of several compositions by the Strauss family that celebrated modest – and sometimes not so modest – intoxication. When these latest waltzes by Strauss were published by Haslinger, they all carried appropriate images on their title pages, escapist projections of an apparently contented society. In January there was one, very respectful, reminder of an earlier troubled era: the formal interment in the Kapuziner Gruft of Marie Louise (1791–1847), Napoleon’s second wife and Ferdinand’s elder sister, who had died at the age of fifty-six. In 1848 Carnival ended on 7 March. Six days later radical students and disaffected workers marched to the palace of the Lower Austrian Estates in the Herrengasse, demanding a broad range of reforms, including public involvement in the legislative process, publication of state finances, trial by jury, establishment of community government, citizens’ rights and the end of censorship. Fearing the increasing likelihood of violence, the Estates decided to send their own deputation to the Hofburg, a few minutes away. In the mounting anger and confusion, the military opened fire, killing five people. Meanwhile, the unrest had spread to the suburbs, with workers attacking factories and destroying machinery, leading to the death of forty-five of their number. The reaction of the imperial court was immediate and decisive: Prince Metternich resigned the same day, left Austria and eventually sought refuge in England. The following day the court announced that censorship would be lifted and agreed to the establishment of a National Guard to help with the restoration of civil order. The elder Strauss’s first composition during the revolution was a march for this new National Guard, the Oesterreichischer National-Garde-Marsch (Op. 221), a work that promoted what many hoped would be a new settlement. Composed by an imperial kapellmeister, it was performed at the Volksgarten on 19 March, within earshot of the Hofburg, at a concert directed by Strauss that also included the national anthem, ‘Gott erhalte’. When the keyboard arrangement was published by Haslinger a few days later, the title page (Figure 4) showed two intertwined banners celebrating the hoped-for settlement, one with the caption ‘Constitution! Freedom of the Press!’ (‘Constitution! Pressefreiheit!’), the other ‘Long live Emperor Ferdinand I’ (‘Hoch lebe Kaiser Ferdinand I’). The course of the next few months tipped the precarious balance of constitutional reform, on the one hand, and loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty, on the other, firmly towards the former as the imperial government was

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forced to make concessions at home and abroad almost as a matter of course. Led by the fervent nationalist Lajos Kossuth (1802–94), Hungary became a nation-state in its own right, with a parliament and a constitution, but still with the Habsburg Ferdinand as king. At the same time, the imperial court also signalled its apparent willingness to consider a pan-German solution by agreeing to elections to the German National Assembly. All the while, the streets of Vienna itself were essentially controlled by armed legions of university students, but there was little or no violence, just a vacuum of troubling uncertainty. It was in this atmosphere that Johann Strauss (Father) wrote a second march, the Marsch der Studenten-Legion (Op. 223), which represented his contribution to the vacuum rather than a declaration of any revolutionary intent. For generations, new university students – freshers or freshmen – had been called foxes and the trio section quotes a popular student song, usually associated with drunken initiation ceremonies, the ‘Fuchslied’. Eduard Hanslick was a student in Vienna at the time, but someone who kept well clear of student politics, as his memoirs make abundantly clear.57 He described the ubiquitous ‘Fuchslied’ as ‘a kind of harmless student Marseillaise’,58 one that indulged dissent rather than articulating a political viewpoint. Two weeks after the first performance of Strauss’s latest march, in April, there was a sudden eruption of unrest, prompted by a mixture of day-to-day hardships and, more idealistically, a particular dislike of the most recent proposals for reform of the Austrian constitution. Emperor Ferdinand and his immediate family fled to Innsbruck, a city for centuries associated with impeccable Habsburg loyalty. His absence from Vienna might well have fuelled the feeling that the imperial family itself was becoming unnecessary, were it not for one, decisive action. Ferdinand’s uncle, Archduke Johann – a popular figure who had married a commoner (the daughter of a postmaster), had served in the army during Napoleonic times and was credited with encouraging the development of the rail network and, by personal example, the increasing popularity of Alpine mountaineering – was given the task of acting as the emperor’s deputy. During the summer of 1848 he led two parallel, but seemingly contrary, initiatives: willing membership of a new pan-German empire based in Frankfurt and the development of a working parliament in Vienna, a Reichstag for the Austrian monarchy. There was also a secret aspect known to only a few confidants: replacement of the inadequate Ferdinand 57 58

Eduard Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, modern edn (Berlin, 2017), pp. 72–7, 81–4. Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, p. 82.

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with a new emperor, Ferdinand’s eighteen-year-old nephew, Franz Joseph. The pan-German solution, which for anyone over fifty was reminiscent of the old Holy Roman Empire (including its ceremonial base in Frankfurt), had considerable public support. In July 1848 Strauss (Father) presented the Marsch des Einigen Deutschlands (March of United Germany, Op. 227) in an open-air concert in the Wasserglacis; no popular songs are quoted, but the title page of the subsequent publication bears a resting soldier, the crests of several royal crowns and the words ‘Heil Deutschland’. To the extent that it is possible to perceive Strauss senior’s own outlook, the united Germany solution might well have appealed to him: he had toured extensively in its territories, written two sets of waltzes with the title Erinnerung an Deutschland and Erinnerung an Berlin, invoked the Rhine in several compositions and would have been conscious that, for many musicians such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Wagner, the label ‘German’ was an embracing one that included Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, too, whereas ‘Austrian’ did not have that reach. Johann Strauss, the father, was always going to be a Viennese composer, but for a few months in the middle of the century he might have become a German one too. About the same time as the march, he wrote a set of waltzes, the only one during the revolution, originally titled Schwarz-RotGold (Black-Red-Gold), the colours of the united German movement. When this was eventually published in February 1849, three months into the reign of Franz Joseph as emperor of Austria, this was toned down to Landes-Farben (Op. 232). The music itself had always been safely apolitical – more the colours of the countryside than those of any Vaterland, as was confirmed by the pastel green colour of the title page.59 There had been nothing ambiguous or nuanced about the attitudes of Johann Strauss Son, which were all the more provocative for being presented in waltzes and polkas, as well as in marches. He had never visited Germany, but had certainly experienced nationalist fervour to the east. The long journey home from Romania in 1848 took him through troubled Hungary, and he arrived in Vienna in May at the point of maximum uncertainty about how political events might unfold. At his first public appearance in the city for nineteen months, on 28 May, he gave the first performance of a set of waltzes that he originally wanted to call Barrikadenlieder (Barricade Songs), but was subsequently published as Freiheits-Lieder (Freedom Songs, Op. 52). A series of overtly revolutionary 59

Title page reproduced in Miller, Johann Strauss Vater, p. 330.

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works followed over the next few months: a re-working of the recent Romänischer Nationalmarsch as the Revolutions-Marsch (Op. 54); a set of waltzes, Burschen-Lieder (Student Songs, Op. 55), which quotes the popular revolutionary song, ‘Gott, der Eisen wachsen ließ’ (God who allowed the iron will to grow), as well as the revolutionary-by-association ‘Fuchslied’; and a new polka with the sarcastic title of Liguorianer Seufzer (Sighing of the Liguornians, Op. 57). Liguornians was the commonly used name for a particular religious order, the Redemptorists, founded by St Alphonsus Maria de Liguori in 1732, whose members were widely believed to have worked as police informers in the Metternich era and whose monastery in the Salvatorgasse in the inner city had recently been the target of noisy protest. The polka is unprecedentedly graphic. The trio section requires the players – the revolutionaries – to sing the words of a satirical song, ‘Liguori, ci guori, gouriani, ani, ani’, about the secret activities of the religious order, a gibberish play on its name, ‘Liguorians, gorians here, more gorians, ians, ians’; this is followed by a depiction of the turbulent sound world of many contemporary protests, so-called Katzenmusik, the caterwauling of banging saucepans, toy trumpets, beer caskets, rattles and any other object that could be used by crowds of men, women and often children, too, to make a deafening racket. Since the term Katzenmusik featured also as the title of a short-lived revolutionary newspaper, it became familiar shorthand for civil unrest in general.60 When these works by Strauss were performed – and it is not certain if they all were – the performing parts could be quickly hidden or, indeed, destroyed. But when they were published – another sign of defiance – they were seized by the police. One of the above-mentioned works, the Revolutions-Marsch, has not survived at all. The son’s instinctive sympathy for the revolutionary cause led him to join the National Guard, now increasingly anti-government, becoming kapellmeister of the Leopoldstadt company.61 One of the published works by Johann Strauss (Son) that was seized by the police was the Pesther Csárdás (Op. 23), composed in 1846, two years before the revolutionary year, a seemingly harmless work and, certainly, a pointless target since it was already widely distributed. But it did reflect a further intensification of the situation in Hungary, where the increasing self-confidence of the central administration in Pest had led to new 60

61

Wiener Katzen-Musik was published regularly between June and October 1848. Rather than two editors, early issues were overseen by a ‘Kapellmeister’ and an ‘Orchester-Direktor’. Early issues also had a subtitle ‘Charivari’ – that is, a disorderly procession accompanied by Katzenmusik. Later issues reverse the title and subtitle. Bailey, Eduard Strauss, p. 18; Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 69–70.

Marching and Dancing in the Revolution

frustrations. Internationally, the new Hungarian kingdom was not recognized, because it still had the Habsburg emperor as its titular head and, within the kingdom, there was welling resentment from territories such as Croatia and Transylvania about Magyar nationalism, to the extent that Croatia signalled its preference to be governed by Vienna rather than by Pest. By September, Austria and Hungary were effectively at war, though the Austrian cause was being fought by Croatians on disputed Hungarian territory. Revolutionary extremists in Vienna sided with Hungary, including many who saw it as means of achieving a very different goal: a new German empire. Renewed street violence erupted in October, forcing the Habsburg court to take refuge for a second time, this time in Olmütz in Moravia. It was during this period of ‘Hungarian’ subversion that printed copies of Strauss’s csárdás were seized by the police. The most familiar musical product of the 1848 revolution, the RadetzkyMarsch (Op. 228) by Johann Strauss senior, was the result of a second national resistance movement, in northern Italy.62 Having previously been reasonably accepting of Austrian rule, Lombardy-Venetia became caught up in the new fervour that sought independence for the Italian peninsula as a whole. The initial, provocative action came not from the Austrian territories themselves, but from the kingdom of Piedmont-Savoy to the west, which declared war against Austria in March 1848. The commanderin-chief of the Austrian army in Lombardy-Venetia was Count Johann Josef Wenzel Anton Franz Karl Radetzky, a Bohemian by birth and, as the bundle of Habsburg first names would have indicated to friend and foe, someone who was fiercely loyal to the empire and served it with distinction from the Napoleonic period onwards, as a leader in battle and a reforming administrator in peace time. Radetzky made the strategic decision to depart from Milan, leaving Lombardy-Venetia under Piedmontese rule, at least nominally, for the next few months – a situation that caused many in Vienna to question the abilities of the now eighty-one-year-old Radetzky. With energy as well as experience, he masterminded a swift response, returning triumphantly to Milan in early August and re-imposing Austrian rule. Back in Vienna, this represented a major statement of Habsburg power, in contrast to the apparent failings of its Hungarian policies, and something that was easily understood by the public at large. Appropriately, it signalled the return of Emperor Ferdinand from Innsbruck to Vienna on 12 August.

62

Sked, Radetzky, pp. 128–48.

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The elder Strauss’s earlier march, the Marsch des Einigen Deutschlands, had promoted the cause of a united Germany; his newest march was to celebrate the victory of the competing identity, the Austrian monarchy. As such, it was readily perceived as the re-assertion of a long tradition of territorial occupation, back to the early eighteenth century, rather than a reactionary thwarting of Italian nationhood. The Radetzky-Marsch, zu Ehren des grossen Feldherrn (Radetzky March, in Honour of the Great Field Marshal, Op. 228) was first performed at the Wasserglacis on 31 August, alongside Beethoven’s Leonore Overture (probably No. 2), a work whose trumpet fanfares and rousing conclusion celebrated the use of military means for personal and universal liberation. Tradition has it that the march was composed quickly on the day of the concert. Certainly, its driving rhythm had been used by the composer in several previous marches (ja-da da, ja-da da, ja-da da) and the trio opportunistically quotes a well-known Viennese song, the ‘Tinnerl-Lied’, named after a popular Austrian songstress. Strauss’s Radetzky-Marsch, along with Haydn’s national anthem, itself now routinely rendered as a grand march rather than a measured hymn, were to figure in Austria’s understanding of itself from 1848 to the end of the empire in 1918, and in certain respects even to this day. As with Haydn’s anthem, the performing tradition became rather more bombastic than Strauss had imagined. Most performances to this day use the bloated orchestration prepared by Leopold Weniger (1879– 1940) in 1914, with its introductory drum rolls and – particularly insensitive – the brazen entry of horns in the second part of the theme (bar 20).63 Emboldened by its military success in Italy, the imperial government acted with a new decisiveness against Hungary. The Croat leader and Habsburg loyalist General Josip Jellačić was appointed commander-inchief of the Habsburg army in Hungary, and the nation’s parliament, not yet seven months old, was dissolved. Outright war broke out between Jelačić’s Habsburg forces and Hungarian nationalists, with the former soon in retreat. When Austria ordered troops from Vienna to march from the city to join up with Jelačić’s troops, there was a hostile reaction from a large crowd and many soldiers deserted. With the streets of Vienna largely controlled by the rebels – students, working men, housewives and children, some acting with extreme brutality – the safety of the court was once again at stake. But it held its nerve. A garrison of troops from Prague joined up with Jelačić’s troops and was ordered to re-take the city from the 63

An edition by Norbert Rubey of the rediscovered original version was published in 2004 as no. 1378 in the series Diletto musicale.

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north. Leopoldstadt was at the centre of the battle, forcing Anna Strauss and Eduard to take refuge in the church of the Barmherzige Brüder. By 1 November the insurrection had been defeated and Vienna reclaimed. At the age of thirteen, Eduard Strauss had not been an active participant, but he nearly became a victim: his schoolboy curiosity led him to join a group of adults moving a few cannons captured from the imperial army; the army retaliated with gunfire and he quickly ran away. Josef, the student, was part of the academic contingent of the National Guard and initially stood firmly in the front line when the invading loyalist troops entered Leopoldstadt, before educated discretion overcame idealistic valour and he, too, went to join his family in the church.64 The victory of imperial forces over the Viennese revolutionaries in Vienna and the Hungarian forces to the east of the city in Schwechat was so decisive that members of the imperial court felt able to enact their still largely secret plan to request the abdication of Ferdinand and the accession of Franz Joseph as emperor. In a carefully choreographed ceremony in Olmütz on 2 December, Ferdinand formally renounced his title and Franz Joseph graciously accepted his predecessor’s typically inadequate, but sincere, congratulations: ‘God bless thee! Be good!’ Rumblings of disaffection continued in Vienna, with the young Johann Strauss once more implicated. On the day after the handover of imperial power to Franz Joseph, he and a few colleagues were performing in the ‘Zum grünen Thor’ in Josefstadt, as part of a largely informal evening that included a spontaneous rendition of the Marseillaise. That melody had always been forbidden in Vienna, but Strauss was probably hoping that the casual nature of the evening would not have any consequences. He was wrong, however. Within days, the performance had been reported to the city authorities and Strauss was interviewed.65 He agreed that the Marseillaise had been played, maintained that the repeat performances were forced on him, that he had not played the student ‘Fuchslied’ and pointed out that he had also played the national anthem rather than ‘Was ist des deutschen Vaterlands’ (What of the German Fatherland), as requested by some in the crowd. Although no action was taken, he once again, rather recklessly, stirred the revolutionary pot at the same venue a few days later. A new polka was performed, Geißelhiebe (Op. 60), literally Whiplash but also a clear dig at a new, loyalist paper, Die Geißel (The Whip), which had reported the earlier incident. As well as the Marseillaise, the polka quotes the ‘Fuchslied’ and the sardonic laughing 64 65

Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 18–20. Strauss’s written defence in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 163–5.

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chorus from Weber’s Der Freischütz, and invokes Katzenmusik. This time, there was no investigation. Neither was the polka confiscated when it was subsequently published. If the elder son was at best incautious, Josef the student revolutionary had come to believe that he should devote himself to his career. Sometime in December his father, the composer of the Radetzky-Marsch, had suggested that he should embark on a career in the Austrian army. Josef wrote a lengthy three-page reply that was respectful, nuanced, yet firm.66 His formal education had prepared him for a career in which he would be able to exercise his independence, which would not be possible if he were a soldier or a civil servant: ‘Let me be where I am, who I am, do not deny me a life that offers manifold delights, a life that is full of hope. . . . I want to serve the people as a human being, the state as a citizen.’ There was no mention of a musical career. It had not even crossed his mind.

1849: The Wanderer’s Farewell While the accession of Franz Joseph held the promise of stability, the year after the revolution saw many aftershocks, especially in Hungary and Italy, and Vienna itself took almost the whole of 1849 to achieve a settled sense of shared security. The careers of the two Strausses reflect that gradual process and helped to promote its eventual success. Sensing a Carnival season that would be rather muted, the father had decided to take the unprecedented step of leaving Vienna for two weeks in January. The two destinations were politically resonant ones, Prague and Olmütz, firmly associated with the suppression of the revolution and the accession of a new emperor. New music for the season largely avoided the celebratory, with only one set of waltzes referring to recent events, Die Friedens-Boten (The Messengers of Peace, Op. 241); unlike the recent Radetzky-Marsch, two marches from the early part of the year, Triumf (Op. 240a) and Manövrir (Column Manoeuver, Op. 240b), were more generic than specific. The response of the younger Johann Strauss was startlingly unexpected. He became a musical cheerleader for the new settlement, composing three markedly patriotic works in a matter of months: first, Einheits-Klänge (Sounds of Unity, Op. 62), a set of waltzes to coincide with the proclamation of a new constitution for the Austrian monarchy and whose title also 66

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 39–40; facsimile in Alexander Weinmann, Verzeichnis sämtlicher Werke von Josef und Eduard Strauss (Vienna, 1967), following p. 66.

1849: The Wanderer’s Farewell

alludes to the motto of the new emperor, ‘Viribus unitis’ (With United Forces); second, the Nikolai-Quadrille (Op. 65), a tribute to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, whose armies had supported Austria in continuing battles in Hungary in the early spring; and, finally, a new march to celebrate the emperor’s birthday on 18 August, the Kaiser Franz Joseph-Marsch (Op. 67). Although at a very basic level it was a pragmatic course of action, designed to ensure a musical career in the new era, it was not a cynical one, since Strauss, like most of the revolutionaries in Austria, had always hoped for political change that would continue to involve the dynastic rule of the Habsburg family. Many Viennese would have brought another adjective to the debate: ‘insouciant’, the carefree attitude that had pervaded the escapist environment of the dance for a quarter of a century. As a civic characteristic, it had flourished during the rigours of the Metternich era and now served to give Franz Joseph a chance to rule. His father would have welcomed the change of outlook, but he was not in Vienna to witness much of it. He had decided, probably for financial reasons, that he would undertake an extended tour of four months, from March to July, to Germany and England, countries that had always extended him an enthusiastic welcome. This welcome was largely to be repeated in 1849, but fallout from the troubled politics of the previous year also reared its head. In Germany, many people, especially students in the university towns of Munich and Heidelberg visited by Strauss, would have lost personal faith in someone who had promoted German unity so beguilingly, only to revert to being a Habsburg loyalist. Britain had played a watching role in the difficult European politics of 1848, yet Strauss was to be reminded of them in London, too. When Prince Metternich had resigned abruptly in February 1848, he travelled quickly to the Netherlands before moving to London in April. After spending a few weeks in rented accommodation in Eaton Square, he moved to Brighton and then back to the outskirts of the capital, to rooms in Richmond Palace. In all these places he was well received by contemporary politicians such as Disraeli and Palmerston, and the oldest of allies, the Duke of Wellington.67 But Metternich was strangely ignored by British royalty, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, a couple who would have provided congenial Germanspeaking company. Johann Strauss, too, was the object of some antiAustrian sentiment, in particular increasing sympathy in British radical circles for Hungarian self-determination, fanned by the presence of recently arrived refugees from the country. Lajos Kossuth himself had 67

Alan Palmer, Metternich: Councillor of Europe (London, 1972), pp. 315–22.

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unsuccessfully sought diplomatic support from Palmerston for his declaration of Hungarian independence in March 1849, applied for British citizenship in August 1849 and was to arrive in Britain two years later.68 Widespread sympathy for Hungary was possibly the reason why Metternich had not been invited to court. Metternich, the Habsburg prince, and Strauss, the Habsburg kapellmeister, did, however, meet in the slightly less grand surroundings of Richmond Palace. At Buckingham Palace Strauss was able to repeat the success of his earlier visit. In 1838 he had honoured the queen with a set of waltzes, Huldigung der Königin Victoria; now, on 30 April 1849, it was a new polka, a particularly dainty one dedicated to Princess Alice, who had celebrated her sixth birthday a few days earlier. When Haslinger came to publish the Alice-Polka (Op. 238), he very cannily explained to potential purchasers where it had been first performed: ‘Expressly composed for the grand court ball of Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of England’ (‘Für den grossen Hofball Ihrer Majestät Victoria, Königin von England eigens componirt’). As well as giving concerts in several public venues in London, including the Hanover Square Rooms, Almack’s and the exceptionally large Exeter Hall in the Strand (capable of holding 4,000 people), Strauss and his musicians visited Brighton, Cheltenham, Oxford and Reading, making use of the railway lines built in the 1840s. The venue for Strauss’s last appearance in London, on 6 July, was an unusual one: the barracks of the Royal Horse Guards in Knightsbridge, where a new march was performed, March of the Royal Horse Guards. Strauss arrived back in Vienna on 14 July and immediately plunged into a summer season of concerts that lasted through to mid-September and numbered up to four a week, including every Tuesday and Friday in the Volksgarten. He may well have thought that Vienna was finally getting back to the familiar annual pattern, disrupted for nearly two years. But there was to be one more reminder of the capability of events elsewhere in the empire impinging on his musical life, this time with a fatal conclusion. Earlier in the year, as Strauss was travelling through Germany on his way to London, the north Italian theatre of war had erupted once more, following a pattern of events that almost exactly reproduced those of the previous year.69 The Piedmontese invaded Austrian territory under Radetzky’s military control; Radetzky retaliated, 68

69

Gregory Claeys, ‘Mazzini, Kossuth, and British Radicalism’, Journal of British Studies, 28 (1989), pp. 244–9. Sked, Radetzky, pp. 152–5.

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triumphing at the Battle of Novara; and a formal treaty, the Peace of Milan, was signed in August 1849. The octogenarian Field Marshal Count Radetzky was once more a national hero. The last open-air event in the Volksgarten directed by Strauss that season was scheduled for Tuesday, 25 September, a soirée given in Radetzky’s honour and in his presence. Meanwhile, for the previous Saturday the city authorities had organized a Festbankett (Celebratory Banquet) in the Grosser Redoutensaal, at which a new Strauss march, his second for the national hero, was to be performed for the first time, the Radetzky-Bankett-Marsch. Strauss began work on the march and had completed twenty-six bars in C major – that is, most of the main section – when he fell ill with scarlet fever, very likely caught from one of the young daughters in his second family. He was unable to complete the march, failed to appear at the Grosser Redoutensaal, and the Volksgarten event was cancelled.70 Johann Strauss died on the day of the planned open-air soirée, at two o’clock in the morning in his apartment in the Kumpfgasse. At dawn, a mutual acquaintance of the divided Strauss family had rushed to Leopoldstadt to inform his wife, Anna, and their children, Johann, Josef, Anna, Therese and Eduard, of the death. Josef was sent to the apartment in the Kumpfgasse, where he discovered that Emilie and her children had fled in panic. The rumour mill began to fabricate a story relating that Emilie had taken everything with her, including the bed on which her husband had been lying, leaving the corpse on some wooden slats from the bed. It was a story the Strauss family chose to remember, recounted without qualification in Eduard Strauss’s memoirs.71 Eduard Strauss’s account of the funeral is more matter of fact: On 27 September 1849 Johann Strauss Father was consecrated in the cathedral of St Stephen’s. His funeral was witnessed by an exceedingly large crowd. The music of the Ceccopieri Infantry Regiment, under the direction of Kapellmeister Reznicek (grandfather of the present court kapellmeister and composer in Germany, [Emil Nikolaus] Reznicek), and the music of the Second Artillery Regiment, under the direction of Kapellmeister Reinisch, accompanied the funeral procession to the cemetery in Döbling. To the sounds of a funeral march arranged by Kapellmeister Reznicek, using themes from my father’s last waltz, Wanderers Lebewohl [The Wanderer’s Farewell, Op. 237], Johann Strauss was laid to rest.72 70

71

As a fragment arranged for piano, the march was published by Haslinger soon after Strauss’s death, when it was given the title Letzter Gedanke von Johann Strauss (The Final Utterance of Johann Strauss). Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 15. 72 Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 16.

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1850–1870. Three Brothers: Johann, Josef and Eduard

Assuming the Mantle The death of Johann Strauss at the age of forty-four after a brief illness was a sudden event, wholly unexpected by his wife, Anna, and their five children, Johann, Josef, Anna, Therese and Eduard. Over the following weeks the eldest son, Johann, barely twenty-four years old, emerged as a mature and dignified young man, quite different from the incautious youth of the revolutionary year. In the process, not only was there a display of public respect for the elder Strauss but also a comforting sense of how his legacy would be developed and honoured. On the day before the funeral, newspaper gossip had already distorted the tale of Strauss’s lonely death, claiming that his two adult sons and their mother had not even bothered to visit him on his deathbed. On behalf of his mother and his siblings, Johann responded immediately with a public letter pointing out that the family knew nothing about the father’s illness and discovered the deeply upsetting circumstances only after his death.1 The following week, on Wednesday, 3 October, the Wiener Zeitung printed a second, much longer letter, a double-column spread addressed ‘to the honourable public of Vienna, an acknowledgement of the display of affection and regard that had been so evident on the day of the funeral and since’. Although it is signed by Johann Strauss alone, its considered mix of the personal and the formal and the way it honours the memory of an individual and how that memory would shape the future may reflect the input of others, especially Josef Strauss, who was more accustomed to the power of the written word than his brother. ‘Not solely for me do I presume the favour of a noble public or their indulgent kindness seek. I seek it for my mother, brothers and sisters, for whose support, particularly, I now have a serious calling following the death of my dear father. I wish to earn that favour which my deserving father richly earned, if only in the smallest part.’2 1

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2

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 60–1. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 62–4.

Assuming the Mantle

Towards the end of the second public letter Strauss thanks members of his father’s orchestra for all the kindness they have shown and pledges his support for their continuing success. In fact, the orchestra had already decided to ask the son to succeed his father as their director, contributing crucially to the emerging narrative of a respectful and ambitious succession, one that left behind the tensions of the past. For members of the senior ensemble there was an element of pragmatism, too. The only other possible candidate was the former colleague of the senior Strauss Philipp Fahrbach, now at the height of his career as a composer of dance music and the director of his own orchestra. The younger Strauss, by contrast, represented the future. It is not absolutely clear whether at this stage the orchestra felt the son could be the director of two independent ensembles, his own and his father’s. By the end of the year, however, they were effectively working as one large pool of players, from which Strauss could select players according to need, from as few as six or seven for private occasions to close to thirty for public ones. The system allowed more than one event per day to be staffed and, in the future, variable participation in concert tours to other cities and countries. On Friday, 7 October, four days after the public statement in the Wiener Zeitung, Strauss presented a concert in the Volksgarten entirely devoted to the music of the late Johann Strauss, including Des Wanderers Lebewohl, Loreley-Rhein-Klänge and the Radetzky-Marsch.3 On 11 October the orchestra participated in a memorial service – a liturgical performance of Mozart’s Requiem in the Kirche am Hof, the church where Johann the teenage son of the deceased had received some of his musical training.4 One further helpful consequence of the merging of the two ensembles was that Strauss inherited venues that had been associated with his father, prompting the end of the broad territorial division between the inner city and the suburbs noted in Chapter 2. Johann Strauss continued to perform at Dommayer’s Casino in Hietzing, where he had made his debut, but now also performed regularly at ‘Zum Sperl’ in Leopoldstadt, a venue that had been associated with his father for the entirety of his career. As well as the Volksgarten, other venues that became consistently identified with the young Strauss included the Sophiensaal in the Marxergasse, a few minutes

3 4

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 69–70. Announcement in Wiener Zeitung, 11 October 1849. Participation of Strauss orchestra from Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, p. 74.

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to the east of the inner city, and, most prestigious of all, the Redoutensaal in the Hofburg complex. Yet it would be misleading to present this wider presence as a comprehensive one implying that Strauss was the master of all that he surveyed. Philipp Fahrbach, whose own tally of dances of all kinds (plus marches) had now reached close to a hundred published works, remained a popular and well-regarded figure. His main base, inherited from Strauss senior, was the Unger Casino to the north-west of the inner city in the Hernals area, a venue that combined a coffee house, a garden and a dance hall. Here, Fahrbach was legitimately described as the ‘Friend of the old Strauss’, a knowing dig at those who may have considered the son’s newfound affection for his father to be less than sincere. Early in 1850 the relationship between the Friend and the Son became a mutually suspicious one. In January Strauss enquired whether he could provide the music for some of the Carnival balls at the imperial court that season, a task regularly undertaken by his father for almost twenty years. Given that the behaviour of the young Strauss during the revolutionary year was still fresh in the memory of the Habsburg court, the request was at best premature, embarrassingly so when it was openly championed in the press. With the typical coldness of imperial bureaucracy through the ages, it was rejected: ‘one is not in a position to grant the petition (‘ist man nicht in der Lage, diesem Gesuche eine Folge zu geben’)’.5 Behind that rejection lay a highly influential figure in the person of Franz Joseph’s mother, Archduchess Sophie, who had fashioned the emperor’s career and remained a protective and powerful figure at court. That year she assumed responsibility for the organization of the imperial halls. As well as remembering Strauss’s troublesome behaviour in 1848, she would have been influenced by a certain Joseph Fahrbach, member of her court and brother of Philipp, who would have pointed out Philipp’s exemplary loyalty over several decades. But the rumour mill persisted, with newspapers suggesting that Strauss and his orchestra had indeed performed at court, prompting Fahrbach to reply that he was the one who had provided the music for all the balls that season.6 Over time Franz Joseph was to prove more forgiving than his mother, but the relationship between Fahrbach and the younger Strauss was to remain a distant one. To establish his status in Vienna as a worthy successor to his father, the son needed to undertake a major international tour. Journeying to distant lands to the south-east of Vienna, as he had done in the 1840s, would not be 5

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 179.

6

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 81–2.

Assuming the Mantle

sufficient, while a short visit to Pest and Buda would have been politically awkward, reminding everybody of his ready identification with Hungarian nationalism in 1848. That particular issue continued to affect the diplomatic relationship between Austria and Britain, perceived as being too sympathetic to Hungarian nationalism. If Johann visited Britain, it would have reminded the Habsburg court of his former outlook, while the musical success Johann would certainly have enjoyed in London would have been tainted by the opposite perception that he, like his father, was indifferent to the Hungarian cause. Extended tours of major cities in Germany, from Augsburg to Munich in the south, to Berlin and Hamburg in the north, had always been artistically rewarding for the late Johann Strauss and were an obvious attraction for his son, but there were political tensions here, too.7 Hohenzollern Prussia and Habsburg Austria had not resolved the question that had figured in the revolutionary year of 1848: whether a new German empire might be created and, if so, what would be the constitutional and leadership roles of Austria and Prussia. Two competing visions had emerged with some flexing of intent: Prussia favoured an enlarged version of the established German confederation and had set up a parliament in Erfurt, while Austria favoured an Austrian confederation based in Frankfurt, the ceremonial capital of the old Holy Roman Empire. It was against this background that the younger Strauss developed plans for an extended visit that would have taken him to the Austrian crown lands first, then to Prussia (including the capital, Berlin) and, finally, to the Russian part of Poland. A collective passport application was submitted on 10 October 1851 on behalf of twenty-five musicians plus an orchestral porter, and the entourage left Vienna six days later.8 During those six days the intention of visiting the crown lands and the Prussian capital was abandoned. Instead, concerts were given in Ratibor, Breslau and Kattowitz – all predominantly Polish towns ruled by Prussia – before travelling to Warsaw, ruled by Russia. Warsaw was already the venue for a summit meeting between Emperor Franz Joseph and Tsar Nicolaus I, with both wishing to tip the balance of power in central Europe away from Prussia. There was a tenuous family link, too, between the Romanovs and the Habsburgs: one of the tsar’s sisters, Alexandra Pawlowna (1783–1801), had been the first wife of Archduke Joseph (1776–1847). Strauss and his musicians arrived in the 7

8

See summaries in Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 80–2; Alan Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs: The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph (London, 1994), pp. 57–60. Transcribed in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 180–1.

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middle of the summit and performed at a concert hosted by the tsar and his wife, during which Johann was formally introduced to his own emperor, Franz Joseph – the occasion was almost certainly their first face-to-face meeting.9 In two years Johann Strauss had gone from being the impetuous composer of Barrikade waltzes to being a crucial enabler of political understanding between two of the oldest ruling dynasties in Europe. For Strauss the musician, the Warsaw visit marked the beginning of a relationship between the composer and Russia that was to be a key characteristic of his career in the 1850s and 1860s. This high-profile concert in Warsaw also yielded a thaw in the relationship between Strauss and the imperial court in Vienna: a few months later, in February 1852, Archduke Franz Karl (Sophie’s husband) engaged Strauss for a single private ball at court, probably with forces of no more than a dozen players, followed by four further balls, including the prestigious court ball on 7 February, when the orchestra consisted of thirty-four players.10 Strauss and his music also played a part in attempts to improve political understanding between Austria and Britain. In 1851 a new ambassador, John Fane, 11th Earl of Westmorland (1784–1859), had been appointed to serve in the Habsburg capital – a shrewd appointment of someone who had pursued a distinguished career in the army before turning to a diplomatic career, including a stint at the Prussian court. Fane was also a lover of music, a proficient violinist and a composer of over forty works, including Italian cantatas, piano pieces and several operas, many of which were published. The British embassy in Vienna was housed in a new, imposing palace partly built on top of the inner wall of the city’s ramparts with a panoramic view across to the Wasserglacis where both Strausses, father and son, had frequently performed. The Palais Coburg, named after the same family as Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert von Saxe-Coburg, became the venue for regular musical events, including appearances by Strauss and his orchestra. In addition to composing two dances that referenced the musical relationship, Albion-Polka (Op. 102), dedicated to Prince Albert, and Windsor-Klänge (Op. 104), dedicated to Queen Victoria, Strauss also performed some of Westmorland’s compositions.11 There was an irony here too, one that would have struck both the diplomat and the violinist-composer. While the musical prowess of the earl appropriately reflected the consuming interest of the Prince Consort, the serving Austrian emperor, Franz Joseph, was the first in over two hundred years 9 11

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 73. 10 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 84. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 77–8.

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who was not musical. In that sense, Strauss was representing musical Vienna rather than a musical sovereign. One final piece of the Strauss inheritance jigsaw remained outstanding: the question of who would be the best publisher for dance music. When Johann Strauss senior died in 1849, Haslinger lost a composer who had been a mainstay of the family business for over twenty years, first under Tobias Haslinger and then, from 1842, under his son Carl Haslinger. Sales of the accumulated catalogue of some 250 works by the elder Johann Strauss would continue, but the vitality of the business had always depended on a constant supply of new works. While the firm also published quantities of dance

Box 3.1 Tours outside Vienna and environs undertaken by Johann Strauss (Son), Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss, singly or severally, 1850–70 October 1850: Ratibor, Breslau (Wrocław), Kattowitz (Katowice), Warsaw; Johann October – November 1852: Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg; Johann April – December 1856: St Petersburg, Moscow; Johann May – September 1857: St Petersburg; Johann May – October 1858: St Petersburg, Moscow; Johann May – October 1859: St Petersburg; Johann May – October 1860: St Petersburg; Johann May – October 1861: St Petersburg; Johann April – August 1862: St Petersburg; Johann August – October 1862: St Petersburg; Josef April – November 1863: St Petersburg, Prague; Johann April – October 1864: Berlin, St Petersburg; Johann October – November 1864: Breslau; Josef April – July 1865: St Petersburg; Eduard July – October 1865: St Petersburg; Johann March – April 1866: Paris; Johann and Josef (no concerts) May – October 1867: Paris, Berlin, Paris, London; Johann March 1868: Pest; Johann, Josef and Eduard March 1869: Pest; Johann, Josef and Eduard April – October 1869: St Petersburg; Johann and Josef May – July 1870: Warsaw; Josef June – July 1870: Warsaw; Johann Sources: Franz Mailer (ed.), Johann Strauss (Sohn): Leben und Werk in Briefen und Dokumenten (Tutzing, 1983–2007), vols. 1, 2; Leigh Bailley, Eduard Strauss: The Third Man of the Strauss Family (Vienna, 2017).

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music by other composers, including Philipp Fahrbach, the death of the elder Johann Strauss was a commercial loss as well as a personal one. In the months after the death of the elder Strauss, Carl Haslinger might have contemplated repeating his father’s bold initiative in 1828 when he had lured Strauss senior from the rival firm of Diabelli. Although the younger Strauss had been well served by Pietro Mechetti, who had published some four dozen works, the firm lacked the dynamism of Haslinger. In the event, a ruthless business grab by Haslinger proved unnecessary. On 25 July 1850 Pietro Mechetti died, aged seventy-three. Within a year the younger Strauss had transferred his allegiance to Haslinger, effectively filling the gap left by his father. Haslinger had long held the imperial privilege of ‘k. k. Hof. u. priv. Kunst- u. Musikalienhändler’, proudly displayed on title pages, and among the first publications of the younger Strauss’s music were two imperial works. The march Viribus unitis (Op. 96) had received its first performance at a concert in the Volksgarten in August 1851 celebrating the twenty-first birthday of the emperor; the title, ‘Strength in Unity’, was the emperor’s personal motto. Two months later, on the eve of the emperor’s name-day and at the same venue, Strauss and his ensemble presented a new quadrille, Vivat! (Op. 103), also published by Haslinger. The nine clauses of the formal contract with Haslinger dated 8 March 1852 reveal the same balance of power that had characterized the relationship between Strauss senior and the firm.12 Haslinger had exclusive rights to publish the music in its original form and in arrangements, to sell the publications abroad and to work with the composer to ensure that first performances and publication were aligned. Strauss was paid a single fixed fee for each work and was entitled to receive gratis copies – one of the orchestral version, eight of the piano version and two of the violin version – while further copies could be purchased at a discount of 50 per cent. There are some new features too, all designed to boost Haslinger’s business. In order to establish a predictable flow of new waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and marches, the contract stipulated how many of each should be provided every calendar year: five to eight waltzes; three to five polkas; three to five quadrilles; and two to four marches. Recognizing that publishers in London and Paris might offer additional fees for publication in England and France, Haslinger stipulated that any proceeds were to be shared equally between Strauss and himself. The contract also specifies the fees to be paid for each kind of composition, summarized in Box 3.2a.

12

Transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 85–8.

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Box 3.2a Johann Strauss and Haslinger: fees, income and profit margins Standard set fee for five waltzes: 110fl. Sale price: 45kr. Sales needed to cover fee: 147. Standard set fee for a quadrille: 60fl. Sale price: 30kr. Sales needed to cover fee: 120. Standard set fee for quadrille based on opera themes: 40fl. Sale price: 30kr. Sales needed to cover fee: 80. Standard set fee for polka (with trio): 50fl. Sale price: 30kr. Sales needed to cover fee: 150 copies. A potpourri or fantasy: 40fl. No information on sale price. A march (with trio): 20fl. Sale price: 20kr. Sales needed to cover fee: 60. A march (with trio) based on opera themes: 12fl. No information on sale price. Source: Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 86.

Very reasonably, the size of the fee was broadly based on the duration of the work, from 110 florins for a set of waltzes to 24 for a march, though in terms of compositional effort it might be thought that composing a quadrille on existing themes for 40 florins was less demanding than composing a march for 20. Box 3.2a shows also the sale price of the piano arrangements, where Haslinger made no difference between operatic quadrilles and other quadrilles, suggesting that the former were especially lucrative. Since the associated production costs covering title page, music, paper and printing are not known, accurately judging the profit margins is impossible. The last element in Box 3.2a indicates the number of sales of the piano version that were needed to cover the fee paid to Strauss, which varied between 60 and 150; assuming a conservative print run of 1,000, this suggests that Haslinger’s profits were substantial. Net proceeds from the sale of the orchestral original and further arrangements supplemented this main source of income. In order to provide an idea of the music’s affordability for the consumer, Box 3.2b presents a comparative list of prices of consumer goods and services from the same period, drawn from newspaper advertisements. It reveals that Haslinger’s publications were reasonably priced; they were not luxury items. The piano version of a polka or march cost the same as a packet of chocolate bonbons; while purchasing the piano version of two of Strauss’s latest waltzes was only slightly more expensive than a bottle of Hungarian champagne. As for Strauss himself, if he composed two sets of waltzes he could buy a new grand piano. A possible bone of contention emerges in one further stipulation in the contract: it was to run for two years only, from March 1852 to March 1854 – that is, two cycles of prescriptive working and associated payment. Halfway

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Box 3.2b Consumer expenditure: price of representative items Entry to a standard Strauss soirée in ‘Zum Sperl’ and the Volksgarten: 12kr. Packet of chocolate bonbons: 20kr. Packet of coffee beans: 26–48kr. Packet of tablets for fever, catarrh, cough, sore throat: 40kr. Bottle of Hungarian champagne: 1fl. 10kr. Bottle of French champagne: 2fl. 36kr. Book, Franz Brendel, Geschichte der Musik: 3fl. 36kr. Train ticket from Vienna to Pest, second class: 7fl. New grand piano: 200–350fl. Source: Advertisement pages in Wiener Zeitung, 1852–1853. Abbreviations: fl. = florin (also known as gulden); kr. = kreutzer. One florin = 60 kreutzer.

through this period Haslinger announced the availability of a new lithograph image of Johann Strauss, aged twenty-seven, in much the same way that Haslinger senior had promoted the career of the composer’s father in 1829. Compared with that of his father, the young Strauss looks more assured, even dapper in his elegance, with penetrating eyes, a mop of black hair with a clear parting, and a small moustache (rather than the large moustache and beard of later years) (see Figure 5). In fewer than three eventful years, from the autumn of 1849 to the spring of 1852, Johann Strauss had transformed his status and standing. With a larger group of players at his disposal, he was performing in an increasing number of venues in central Vienna; had undertaken a successful foreign tour; composed about eighteen waltzes, eleven polkas, eight quadrilles and six marches; gained a new publisher; and tempered the nervous suspicion of the imperial court. At the same time, he had honoured the memory and achievement of his father. In thought and deed he was now an appropriate heir.

Sharing the Burden The family, too, was united. All three sons – Johann, Josef and Eduard – together with their two sisters, continued to live with their mother in the ‘Hirschenhaus’ in Leopoldstadt. Recalling this period, Eduard Strauss was to write in his memoirs that his ‘mother maintained a loving home for us in the “Hirschenhaus”. Like the caring hen with her chicks, she had gathered her

Sharing the Burden

children around her and cared and lived for us alone.’13 While Eduard’s memory of his teenage years is understandably focussed on his mother, the wider dynamic of the household was also positive. Josef had continued to develop his career as a draughtsman and engineer, supervising the building of a dam on the Triesting river in Trumau (a village near Baden) to power a spinning mill and providing the city authorities with technical designs for a street-cleaning machine, which in the event were judged to be ingenious but of no use. As a competent pianist, as well as singer, he composed several songs and piano pieces for performance in the network of bourgeois salons in which he moved, and, though there is no direct evidence, he presumably still attended the opera and public concerts on a regular basis.14 Meanwhile, the teenage Eduard brought a different set of interests and capabilities to any family discussion. He was a gifted linguist who knew French, Italian and Spanish and nurtured an ambition, never fulfilled, to be a diplomat.15 In addition, there was an occasional new member in the family circle: Caroline Pruckmayer (1831–1900), Josef’s girlfriend, who also got on well with Johann. By this time – the year 1857 – Josef had long abandoned his preferred career as an engineer in favour of one as a composer and director of the Strauss ensemble. It had been a reluctant move, borne out of fraternal loyalty and a desire to please his mother. In 1851, immediately after an especially hectic Carnival season, Johann had been taken ill. In the absence of accurate information, the press speculated that it might be a simple cold, perhaps the dreaded typhoid, or even cerebral palsy. In fact, it was sheer exhaustion following two years of non-stop activity. Professional commitments were resumed, but much of the direction in the spring and summer was taken over by Franz Amon (1803–64), one of the violinists he had inherited from his father’s ensemble.16 At the time Johann may have thought it was a temporary condition, but it was to occur with increasing regularity through to the 1860s, determining the lives of Eduard as well as Josef and, in the process, causing a good deal of family discord. The year 1852 saw little or no reduction in Johann’s commitments in Vienna during Carnival and the summer months, and they were followed by a five-week tour in the autumn that took him to Prague, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden. On his return to Vienna in late November, Strauss undertook some engagements in the Volksgarten and ‘Zum Sperl’ but had to 13 14

15

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen (Leipzig and Vienna, 1906), p. 29. Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, pp. 31–2; Mailer, Josef Strauss, pp. 18–20. One of Josef’s technical drawings is reproduced in Eduard Strauss, ‘Josef Strauss und sein musikalisches Wirken aus der Sicht der Familie’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1927–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 220–1. Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, pp. 33–4. 16 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 74–5.

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withdraw from a planned appearance in the Sophiensaal in early December. Over the Christmas period it became clear that Strauss would not be able to commit himself fully to the forthcoming Carnival.17 He was reluctant to give up for a mixture of reasons, not least the prospect of considerably reduced income from contracted appearances and benefit evenings, aggravated by a certain self-centredness. Self-centredness and commitment also reflected wider expectations. For dance music, whether for actual dancing or as concert pieces, the two Johann Strausses (Father and Son) and others such as Philipp Fahrbach and Joseph Lanner had established the artistic and public figure of a composer-director, in much the same way that many individuals had created the figure of composer-pianist. Strauss, Fahrbach and Joseph Lanner were routinely described as kapellmeisters, a term that had longestablished associations with performing, composing and administration; there was no meaningful tradition of employing two individuals, one to compose and one to direct. Josef, Eduard and Anna Strauss knew this as well as anybody, but for the time being they were happy with the stopgap of allowing Franz Amon to deputize for Johann. Luckily, the number of private balls at court and aristocratic palaces was considerably reduced in the early months of 1853 following the death in January of Archduke Rainer (1783–1853), Franz Joseph’s great uncle. Within the Strauss family in the ‘Hirschenhaus’ any discussion had to confront the reality that if the occasionally indisposed Johann was to maintain the family tradition that he had worked hard to maintain and invigorate he would need assistance from other members of the family. Disbanding the Strauss Orchestra in the hope that other ensembles would perform new music by Johann was not a realistic option. Josef was certainly musical, a capable pianist who had dabbled in composition, but he had established a clear and rewarding career as an engineer; as for Eduard, he had no musical training whatsoever. One imaginative solution could have emerged, but it seems not to have been considered. In March 1853, August Lanner (1835–55), the son of Joseph, made his debut as a composer-director at the age of eighteen in a beer hall in the western suburb of Fünfhaus, where the evening included two new waltzes by him: D’Ersten Gedanken (First Thoughts, Op. 1) and Frühlingsknopsen (Buds of Spring, Op. 3).18 If the respective families had thought of uniting the two ensembles, several pleasing narratives could have been spun: Johann Strauss, 17 18

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), pp. 78–80, 93. See catalogue of August Lanner’s works in Dörner, Joseph Lanner, pp. 739–45.

Sharing the Burden

too, had made his debut at almost the same age when he was perceived as the successor to August’s father, Joseph; Johann had also succeeded Joseph Lanner as kapellmeister of the Second Civilian Regiment; and Johann had already very publicly and successfully brought two ensembles together. Uniting the August Lanner and the Johann Strauss ensembles could have been presented as something that was historically blessed as well as practical: the younger Strauss would direct when he was able to and the younger Lanner would benefit from the now considerable experience of an established figure. This narrative was never to be fulfilled. Two years later August Lanner died, aged only twenty. In the spring and early summer of 1853 Johann was able to fulfil many of his engagements, particularly at the Volksgarten and ‘Zum Sperl’. Debilitating tiredness began to take its toll, however, and by early July an extended period of rest was unavoidable. But rather than entrusting future engagements to Franz Amon or another experienced violinist from the ensemble, the Strauss family had agreed that Josef would direct, with a baton rather than with the bow of the violin. In a letter to his girlfriend, Caroline (‘Linchen’), Josef wrote, ‘The inevitable has happened, I’m performing for the first time at “Zum Sperl”’, a clear indication that he had reservations.19 He was not a violinist, and though conductors were an established fact of wider musical life at the concerts of the Court Opera Orchestra and at the opera, they were not associated with dance music. More concerning to Josef and Caroline were Josef’s own health issues: he suffered from debilitating headaches that occasionally led to fainting, which could be accommodated in his professional life as an engineer but not so easily in the role of a conductor. He first conducted the Strauss ensemble at ‘Zum Sperl’ on 23 July, and on the following evening in a concert in the Unger Casino, he shared the responsibility with Johann. The following day Johann left Vienna for a period of recuperation, travelling first to the spa town of Bad Gastein in the mountains to the south of Salzburg and then to Bad Neuhaus in Lower Styria (now part of Slovenia), where he stayed until the middle of September. During his absence Josef directed the ensemble on two more occasions and began to attune himself more sympathetically to the task. For a ball in Hernals on 29 August Josef wrote his first set of waltzes, Die Ersten und Letzten (The First and Last, Op. 1), carefully keeping the manuscript away from any publisher.20 Precisely the opposite signal was sent by his decision to have violin lessons 19 20

Letter of 23 July 1823; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 98. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), pp. 98–9.

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from Franz Amon. It seems Josef was genuinely conflicted: as a musician, he was fascinated; as a public personality, he was reluctant. During the 1853–4 season Josef deputized occasionally for Johann and composed a second set of waltzes with the witty title of Die Ersten nach den Letzten (The First after the Last, published as Op. 12), but once again he kept the manuscript parts to himself. There were growing signs of tension between the two brothers, however, with Johann indicating that he was not happy with the way Josef conducted. If this remark revealed more about Johann’s dominant personality than Josef’s musical capabilities, that characteristic had been inflated by a major boost to Johann’s public persona: loyalty to the Habsburg throne. Earlier in 1853, Habsburg Vienna and European politics alike were deeply disturbed by the attempted assassination of Franz Joseph. The emperor had developed the habit of going for a midday stroll on the city walls near the Hofburg and, from there, down to the tree-lined avenues of the Glacis. On Friday, 18 February, that stroll took him to near the Kärntner Gate (close to the later Court Opera House), where a young Hungarian tailor’s apprentice, János Libényi, attacked him from behind with a kitchen knife, wounding him in the neck. A military aide, Count Maximilian O’Donnell, seized the assassin before police guards arrived and took him away still shouting ‘Long live Kossuth’. Despite losing a considerable amount of blood, Franz Joseph survived, but delayed shock confined him to the Hofburg for the best part of a month.21 During that period Viennese society poured out its sympathy for the young emperor, just two years older than his assassin, displaying a loyalty, both personal and national, that united the spiritual practices of the Catholic church with secular tributes to the emperor’s fortitude. At six o’clock in the evening of the day of the attempted assassination, Haydn’s life-affirming setting of the Te Deum in C (Hob.XXIIIc:2), originally commissioned by the emperor’s grandmother, Empress Marie Therese, was performed in the Hofburgkapelle.22 Over the following weeks churches throughout Vienna dedicated Mass services as gestures of thanksgiving, routinely advertised in the press. One publisher printed a single-page leaflet entitled Gebet treuer Unterthanen vor dem Kreuze für ihren geliebten Kaiser (Prayer of Faithful Subjects before the Cross for Their Beloved Emperor); Adolf Bäuerle, the editor and publisher of the Theater Zeitung, sought advanced subscriptions for a commemorative book entitled Gott schütz 21 22

Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 66–7. Richard Steurer, Das Repertoire der Wiener Hofmusikkapelle in neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1998), pp. 393.

Sharing the Burden

den Kaiser Franz Josef (God Preserve Emperor Franz Josef); an eight-stanza poem entitled ‘Gott mit Oesterreich’ (God with Austria) was printed in the Wiener Zeitung; and various art shops offered portraits of Franz Joseph.23 The world of dance music joined in too, with two celebratory events on the same day. At Dommayer’s Casino on Sunday, 6 March, Philipp Fahrbach’s ensemble gave the first performance of a set of dances by one Karl Stein, ‘to celebrate the happy recovery of our universally beloved Emperor Franz I’, though the title of the dances themselves was oddly unfitting, BauernLieder (Peasant Songs).24 Despite his general health, Johann Strauss arranged a special event in ‘Zum Sperl’, described as an ‘außerordentliche Wiener Jubel-Feir’ (Exceptional Viennese Festival of Rejoicing).25 On the ground floor, beginning at 7.30, a military band would play popular pieces; on the second floor, beginning at 9.00, ‘Johann Strauss will have the honour of directing a new march specially composed for this evening, entitled Kaiser Rettungs-Jubel-Marsch’. In the standard format of a march and trio, the march itself is fleet-footed, notwithstanding its full orchestration of piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, four trumpets, bass trombone, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals and strings. The yodelling melody of the trio might be a quotation of a folksong, but it is one that leads to a wholly unexpected event, the triumphant quotation of the climactic phrases of Haydn’s national anthem, ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser/Unsern guten Kaiser Franz’ (God preserve Franz the Emperor/Our good Emperor Franz’). In just eight years Johann Strauss had composed more marches than his father had during his entire working life. Of the fourteen, two had been associated with the wrong side of the revolution, the Revolutions-Marsch (Op. 54) and the Studenten Marsch (Op. 56), but this latest one, the Kaiser Franz Josef I. Rettungs-Jubel-Marsch (Emperor Franz Joseph I. Recovery Celebration March, Op. 126) was the fourth to be directly associated with the emperor, following the Kaiser Franz Joseph-Marsch of 1849 (Op. 67), Viribus unitis of 1851 (Op.96) and the Wiener Jubel-Gruß-Marsch of 1852 (Op. 115, marking the return of the emperor from a diplomatically successful visit to Hungary). At one level, they played into the ever-increasing regard of the Austrian people for the military, constantly promoted by the emperor. At the same time, the marches took their place alongside the portraits, the religious observances, the poetry and the commemorative publications that placed the emperor at the centre of a balanced, contented 23 25

Wiener Zeitung, 4 March 1853; 6 March 1853. Wiener Zeitung, 6 March 1853.

24

Wiener Zeitung, 5 March 1853.

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society.26 None of Johann Strauss’s loyalist marches had been commissioned by the Habsburg court, but there was clearly an element of personal ingratiating, a desire to be noticed, even a desire to be embraced. For close to two hundred years Laxenburg, to the south of Vienna, had been the favoured summer residence of the imperial family, but from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards it was replaced by a very different locale, Bad Ischl, 130 miles to the west of Vienna in the Salzkammergut. Franz Joseph had first been there as a baby in 1831 to avoid the cholera in Vienna; as an adult, he regularly spent July and August in the town, which soon became a favoured venue for fashionable society across the Austrian territories. For the emperor, walking rather than taking the waters was the main attraction, and images of him hunting with a gun in the surrounding mountains, dressed in traditional costume, soon became a subtle counterbalance to those of him as a proud military leader.27 It was in Bad Ischl in 1853 that Franz Joseph met Princess Elisabeth, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. A swift courtship followed and the wedding took place in Vienna in the Augustinerkirche on 24 April 1854, followed by a week of private and public festivities. As a natural extension of his employment at court balls during Carnival, Strauss was asked to appear at a court ball on 27 April, held not in one of the large rooms in the palace itself but in the vast arena of the Riding School. A new set of waltzes was composed, appropriately titled Elisabethen-Klänge; prior to publication it was renamed Myrthen-Kränze (Garlands of Myrtle, Op. 154), the court having expressed a preference for a title that indicated mutual love.28 Musically, the waltz entwined a garland of national hymns, the Austrian ‘Gott erhalte’ and the Bavarian ‘Heil unserm König’ (the latter was one of several German anthems at the time that used the tune of ‘God save the King’). In the following weeks Johann Strauss wrote two further loyalist works: a new polka, Elisen-Polka (Op. 151), that referenced the empress and a march to celebrate the recovery from serious illness (possibly cholera) of a distant relative of the emperor, Archduke Wilhelm (1827–94), the Erzherzog Wilhelm Genesungs-Marsch (Op. 149). During the period in February–March of the previous year when the Viennese public were collectively willing the emperor to recover fully from the failed assassination attempt, Strauss gave a concert at the Volksgarten 26

27

28

For an account of this wider patriotism, see Paula Sutter Fichtner, The Habsburgs: Dynasty, Culture and Politics (London, 2014), pp. 191–201. See, for instance, illustrations in Hans Petschar (ed.), Der ewige Kaiser: Franz Joseph I, 1830– 1916, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2016), pp. 82, 146. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 104.

Sharing the Burden

that included a repeat performance of the Rettungs-Jubel-Marsch. It also featured three works that were billed as first performances in Vienna: the Pilgrims’ Chorus from the end of Act 2 of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, an entr’acte from Lohengrin (presumably the beginning of Act 3) and the overture to a cantata by Franz Lachner (1803–90), Die vier Menschalter (The Four Ages of Man).29 Johann Strauss had always taken an interest in the music of Wagner and, as early as 1847, had planned to perform the overture to Tannhäuser, but the plans were aborted. This interest in the wider musical repertoire was shared with Josef and had been apparent in Johann Strauss senior’s career, too. Nine months later, on 2 January 1854, the overture did, finally, receive its first performance by the Strauss Orchestra at an event in the Sophiensaal billed as a Konzert-Soirée, alongside some unspecified works by Johann Strauss.30 The building opened for food and drink at 4.00 pm and Strauss’s ensemble played between 10 and 11 o’clock. Neither Tannhäuser nor Lohengrin had been performed on stage in Vienna and these orchestral extracts marked the beginning of a Wagner tradition in the city that was to become a dominant characteristic of musical life there. For all three brothers – Johann, Josef and Eduard – 1855 turned out to be a decisive year, mapping out their careers for several years while also bringing to the fore some latent family tensions. As the eldest brother, the most experienced composer and director and the one with the strongest public profile, Johann was inevitably the catalyst for any change that resulted from his ambition as well as from his physical and mental wellbeing. Josef’s perception of his brother’s behaviour was that it was increasingly self-serving, even manipulative. Meanwhile, Eduard’s wish to pursue a diplomatic career had been set aside the previous summer, ostensibly because his mother feared that her youngest son would have to spend long periods of time away from Vienna; Johann felt that Eduard, too, could help with the musical commitments of the Strauss ensemble – an odd perspective given that he had no musical training whatsoever. Johann and Eduard took a long-term view, supported by their mother, that Eduard, at the age of nineteen, should acquire that musical proficiency. That process was to take the best part of six years. The year before, Eduard had embarked on a comprehensive course of harmony, counterpoint, fugue and canon with Gottfried Preyer (1808–1901), one of Vienna’s leading composers of liturgical music, who had been a vice kapellmeister in the Hofkapelle since 1844, a position later supplemented by the more senior one of 29

Wiener Zeitung, 27 March 1853.

30

Wiener Zeitung, 1 January 1854.

95

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kapellmeister at St Stephen’s. He also learned to play the piano and the harmonium and received violin lessons from Franz Amon, which were focussed on violin partitas by Bach and sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven rather than on dance music. In addition, there was a further, very individual choice of instrument: the harp.31 Taught by the harpist at the Court Opera House, Anton Zamara, Eduard made good progress and appeared as one of the two harp players of the Strauss Orchestra in a set of waltzes, Glossen (Comments, Op. 163), performed at a benefit ball for Johann in the Sophiensaal in February 1855. The harp had featured only occasionally in Johann’s Strauss music to date and the part was not particularly demanding; it was rather the combination of a comparatively novel sound in dance music and a new member of the Strauss family playing the instrument that caught the imagination. Over the following years writing for the harp was to become more common in Johann Strauss’s music. Meanwhile, this unusual debut had encouraged Anna Strauss to seek permission for the release of sufficient money from a trust fund that had been set up following her late husband’s death in order to purchase a brand-new harp, the fund not yet being accessible to Eduard because he was still a minor.32 Up until then he had played on a slightly old-fashioned single harp, where the pedal mechanism allowed the strings to be altered to notes a semitone higher. The new double harp allowed a further semitone to be added, enabling harmonic writing for the harp to be much more wide-ranging and requiring of the player a clear understanding of the grammar and syntax of the music as well as a more fluent pedal technique. For Johann, Eduard’s progress in 1855 was a happy development. He was less happy about a major development in Josef’s career. The publisher of the music of the young August Lanner, Carl Anton Spina (1827–1906), had approached Josef to enquire whether he could publish compositions that had already been performed but which Josef still kept to himself, now numbering two sets of waltzes, four polkas, two quadrilles and two marches. Josef evidently shared this information with Johann; instead of responding in a supportive manner, the elder brother allowed it to colour his judgement about two pending decisions he had to make. Johann had been offered a lucrative contract to appear as the conductor of summer concerts in the fashionable countryside resort of Pawlowsk outside St Petersburg, a contract that would take him away from Vienna during the following summer season. At the same time, he was 31 32

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, pp. 32, 34–5. Document and response in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 194–9.

Vienna and St Petersburg

considering reneging on the publishing contract he had with Haslinger, letting it be known that the firm of Schott in Mainz had shown an interest in issuing his music. Although these were two self-contained decisions, Johann became suspicious to the point of paranoia about how they might benefit Josef’s career, especially given the news that Josef was contemplating having his music published. If Johann was not in Vienna in the summer months that could only benefit Josef’s career as a conductor, and if Josef made an agreement to publish his music with C. A Spina that would further undermine Johann’s pre-eminence in Vienna, particularly if he, Johann, were to change to a publisher in Mainz. During a summer break in Bad Gastein, Johann wrote a letter to Josef accusing him of acting entirely selfishly, both as a composer and as a director. That letter is lost but Josef’s reply has survived. It was both systematic and forceful: how could he be selfish if his career as a conductor was always as a substitute for Johann? He adds that he had no particular desire to pursue a musical career, felt no real sense of vocation towards it and, more condescendingly, that his broad love of music ‘does not reveal itself in 3/4 time’. He was perfectly willing to lay down the baton and, as a consequence, to withdraw from any agreement with C. A. Spina.33 This exceptionally frank letter seems to have encouraged Johann to be more accommodating, helped by the fact that final negotiations about the visit to Russia had been suspended because of the ongoing Crimean War. Although Austria was not a participant in that conflict, it found itself uncomfortably caught in the middle – between Russia, on one side, and Britain and France, on the other – to the annoyance of all three countries. A meaningful peace process would not begin until December 1855 and was not concluded until the following March.

Vienna and St Petersburg: Two Imperial Capitals, two Musical Cities In their family truce, Johann and Josef agreed that the latter would continue to direct the Strauss Orchestra as necessary and would accept C. A. Spina’s offer to be his publisher; meanwhile, Johann had decided to remain with Haslinger. While the result certainly suited both individuals, it was also greater than the sum of its parts, benefitting the Strauss presence in general in Vienna: one ensemble, two composer-directors and two local publishers. 33

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 109–13.

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To promote this new understanding, Johann and Josef shared the directing responsibilities at ‘Zum Sperl’ on 29 September 1855. Over the next few months, in that venue and others, Johann and Josef busied themselves with composing an almost equal number of new dances. Josef also made two further gestures of reconciliation. Up till then he had always appeared as a conductor; on 23 April 1856 he made his first appearance directing with a violin and once more revealed a gift for droll titles by presenting a new set of waltzes with the power-sharing title of Die Vorgeiger (The Lead Violinists, Op. 16). Secondly, in the same month Haslinger announced that he had taken over the publication of Josef’s music from C. A. Spina, after only nine opuses. When Die Vorgeiger appeared the following month, its title page bore an image of a dance hall with the orchestra in the background.34 Shortly after his return from Bad Gastein Johann Strauss composed a set of waltzes whose title reflected that locality, Gedanken auf den Alpen (Alpine Thoughts, Op. 172). Either he or Haslinger had the idea of dedicating the set to Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, father of Empress Elisabeth, an enthusiastic musician and lover of the good life in general, outdoors and indoors. His reply on receiving his printed copies is notably informal: Munich, 14 January 1856 Esteemed Herr Kapellmeister! I have received the forwarded copies of your waltz ‘Alpine Thoughts’ with great pleasure. That you have dedicated this work to me pleases me greatly, as this new product of your muse not only constitutes a beautiful collection of waltzes, but is altogether a superior composition of musical beauty, in which the second and the fourth waltzes have particularly appealed to me. . . . 35

At about this time Strauss began to formulate the idea of applying for the post of Hofballmusikdirektor, vacant since the death of his father in 1849. The duke of Bavaria was not in a position to further his cause, but perhaps his daughter, Empress Elisabeth, would be. Since Strauss’s petition has not survived, the particulars of his case are not known.36 The circumstantial evidence suggested it was an appropriate case: he had directed dance music at the imperial court for five of the previous six Carnival seasons and, at his own initiative, had written several marches and a set of waltzes that proclaimed his loyalty to the Habsburg family. Alas, the imperial court had long memories.

34 36

Dörner, Josef Strauss, pp. 15–16, 62–4. 35 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 176. Surviving documents transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 141–5.

Vienna and St Petersburg

Before making its decision, the chancellery asked the head of police to forward a summary of Johann’s career to date, together with an indication of his moral and political reputation. The subsequent report was unhelpful. Following routine details about his family, marital status and domestic circumstances, it mentions that Johann had been kapellmeister in the National Guard in 1848, when he had allowed himself to be carried away on several occasions, producing ‘revolutionary marches’, also a quadrille. Moreover, he had often been seen in the company of members of the Academic Legion, though his sympathies were not investigated at the time. The police report concludes he had been a rash, immoral and prodigal person who, however, had led a more orderly lifestyle in recent times. In the subsequent report to the emperor, the highly influential and experienced senior administrator at the imperial court, Prince Karl Liechtenstein, first pointed out a bureaucratic nicety: that Johann Strauss had applied for a position that did not exist, for his father had been given a title but there was no post as such. Since the son could always be contracted to perform at court, there was no real advantage in creating a position or giving him a title. Lichtenstein then reproduces word-forword the police report on Strauss’s behaviour in 1848. Clearly, too little time had elapsed for the court to be certain that Strauss had changed his views, despite all the musical testimony to the contrary. On 12 June Strauss’s application was formally declined. By this time Johann was a thousand miles away in the Russian capital of St Petersburg. With the end of the Crimean War, Strauss had been able to accept the invitation of a railway company, the Zarskoje-Selo-EisenbahnGesellschaft, to direct a series of summer concerts in Pawlowsk, some twenty miles inland from St Petersburg. For the next five years Johann was to spend the period from May to October in St Petersburg and Pawlowsk, allowing Josef complete control of commitments in Vienna during the summer months; during the winter and early spring the two would share duties in Vienna, sometimes appearing alone, sometimes together. Although this was a reasonable and practicable arrangement, there was no doubt that Johann remained the senior figure. As with the father’s tours in the 1830s, the son’s regular visits to St Petersburg enhanced rather than diminished his popularity at home, with Viennese performances and publication of recent Russian works feeding that curiosity. As ever, much of the negotiating and organizing was done by Johann Strauss himself, facilitated by musical contacts, supported by the Austrian embassy and aligned with the practices of music publishing. St Petersburg had a long history of welcoming music and musicians from western

99

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Europe, from composers of Italian opera in the eighteenth century to composers such as John Field, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz and others in the nineteenth century. Johann Strauss’s achievement was unmatched: eleven extended visits in fourteen years, creating a presence in the musical life of St Petersburg that was akin to that in his native Vienna. Rather than taking a group of musicians from Vienna, Johann had decided to travel with a core group of four colleagues, all single men, leaving the recruiting of other instrumentalists to a piano teacher and manufacturer, Johann Promberger (1810–90), originally from Vienna but now living in St Petersburg. In the following years this pattern of a few key musicians from Vienna supplemented by ones from St Petersburg was altered a little to accommodate musicians that Strauss recruited on short visits to other musical centres such as Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Prague. Effective and quick communication between the composer-director and his musicians may have been part of the reason for employing Germanspeaking musicians, even though that language was widely spoken in St Petersburg. At any rate, Strauss never learned more than a few words of Russian.37 With an orchestra that often approached forty in number and his habitual energetic direction, Strauss claimed the results were excellent: ‘If I only had such an orchestra in Vienna’, he wrote to Carl Haslinger.38 The railway company that supported Strauss’s visits had Austrian origins. In the 1830s, when that country was amassing considerable experience in building railway lines, an engineer and builder named Franz Anton Gerstner planned and built Russia’s first railway, linking the capital to the summer palace (the Zarskoje-Selo embedded in the name of the company) and, from there, on to Pawlowsk, deep in the countryside and a muchfavoured destination for the high aristocracy. To encourage visits to Vauxhall (as it was sometimes called, after the London pleasure garden), a pavilion was erected that offered high-quality eating, card tables and music. Gerstner had even suggested that Johann Strauss (Father) should be approached to perform, but nothing came of the idea. Twenty years later the son was fulfilling that hope. His contract with the railway company was a detailed one as well as a lucrative one.39 Concerts were held every evening, timed to coincide with the train timetable. During the residence of the Russian imperial family in September, further concerts were held in the afternoon. On Fridays, 37

38 39

A brief list of basic vocabulary (‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘good’, ‘slow’, etc.) in Johann Strauss’s handwriting has survived; reproduced in Brusatti, Düriegl and Karner, Johann Strauß, p. 212. Letter from May 1857; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 161–2. Transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 157–60.

Vienna and St Petersburg

Strauss was allowed to depute someone from the orchestra to direct if there was not a special event that called for his presence. As well as putting an orchestra together, Strauss was to choose the repertoire, including ‘classical works’, extracts from operas, ‘garden music’ (outdoor music, that is, easy listening) and dance music. He was guaranteed four benefit concerts and, with permission, could appear elsewhere in St Petersburg and the surrounding area. Strauss and his players were allowed free travel on the railway and he was responsible for their good behaviour. Strauss himself was given free accommodation in Pawlowsk, but his players had to find their own rented accommodation. Strauss was given a total fee of 18,000 roubles, covering payment for himself and his players, plus associated travelling expenses. During the course of a typical visit of five months or so Strauss would make over 120 appearances. Formal ‘classical’ (‘klassiche’) concerts would have included waltzes and polkas alongside well-known orchestral works such as overtures, marches and extracts from operas. Dances, naturally, would have a preponderance of waltzes, polkas and quadrilles; while ‘garden music’ would have an eclectic mix of items that might have encouraged some informal dancing. Between 1856 and 1860 Strauss wrote some twenty new works (waltzes, polkas, marches and one quadrille) for Pawlowsk, a considerably smaller number than he would have written for Vienna. For Russian audiences everything was new and Strauss had a large back catalogue of works to perform, possibly supplemented with works by his father and brother. At the same time, most of his players were new to the repertoire, which conveniently fostered repeat performances. Concert programmes could draw on ‘classical works’ that Strauss had already directed in Vienna, such as Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, Liszt’s Mazeppa, Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and one of the entr’actes from Lohengrin. Strauss also showed himself to be curious about music that was unfamiliar to him, readily performing short works by Glinka (1804–57), Anton Rubinstein (1829–94) and Alexander Serov (1820–71), which he then proceeded to introduce to the Viennese.40 He also readily provided letters of introduction on behalf of musicians in St Petersburg who hoped to further their careers in Vienna, including Johann Promberger – his compositions were soon published by Haslinger – and the celebrated piano teacher Theodor Leschetizky (1830–1915), who later moved from St Petersburg to Vienna.41 40 41

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 296. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 148–51.

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The real sense of cultural exchange that characterized the repeated visits to Russia was complemented by commerce. With the approval of Haslinger, within a few weeks of arriving in St Petersburg Strauss had signed a two-year contract with the city’s leading music publisher – another ethnic German – A. Büttner.42 The firm was just six years old and already sold Haslinger’s publications on commission from its shop in one of St Petersburg’s main thoroughfares, the Newsky-Prospekt. For two years he was Strauss’s publisher in St Petersburg and, since most of the Russian works were also subsequently published by Haslinger, there were now effectively two ‘first editions’ and two one-off fees. With typical resourcefulness, born of his status as the ‘k. k. Hof. und priviligierte Kunst- und Musikalienhändler’, Haslinger saw this bilateral process as an opportunity to promote Johann Strauss as a figure who had an international presence and influence that went beyond music. After the end of the Crimean War diplomatic relations between Austria and Russia remained strained. During his first visit to St Petersburg Strauss wrote three works dedicated to members of the Russian imperial family: a set of waltzes dedicated to Grand Duchess Alexandra Josifowna, the tsar’s sister in law (Großfürstin Alexandra-Walzer, Op. 181); a march to celebrate the coronation of Tsar Alexander II in Moscow (Krönungs-Marsch, Op. 183); and a set of waltzes dedicated to the wife of the tsar, Maria Alexandrowna (Krönungslieder, Op. 184). When these Russian works were subsequently published in Vienna, Haslinger kept the dedications and bolstered the sense of Russian identity on the title page of Op. 183 with an image of St Basil’s cathedral in Moscow, where the coronation ceremony had taken place. A year later Johann Strauss included in his benefit concert in Pawlowsk a new set of waltzes, Telegrafische Depeschen (Wired Telegrams, Op. 195), carefully promoting his Viennese identity with the quotation of the popular song, ‘ʼs gibt nur a Kaiserstadt, ʼs gibt nur a Wien’ (There’s only one imperial city, only one Vienna). When Haslinger came to publish the piano arrangement, it had two adjacent images on the title page, one of St Petersburg and one of Vienna, portraying a musical alliance to go with the political one. The clear artistic, commercial and diplomatic success that Johann enjoyed in St Petersburg added a new dimension to his appearances in Vienna between October and May of each year, further enhanced by the friendly co-operation that had emerged between Johann and his brother. Recent Russian works were given performances in Vienna, directed by Josef as well as Johann, and the public display of unity was signalled by the 42

Contract transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 146–7.

Vienna and St Petersburg

shared composition of some works. The most significant, for family and country, was the Vaterländischer Marsch (March of the Fatherland), performed at a ‘Patriotic Festival Concert’ in May 1859. The two brothers began their jointly written march with an ear-catching quotation of the beginning of the Radetzky-Marsch by their father (Radetzky himself had died in January, aged ninety-one), while the trio section repeated from Johann’s Rettungs-Jubel-Marsch the showy gesture of the climactic quotation of phrases from the national anthem. In the aftermath of the family row Josef had shifted his position from being a reluctant, temporary figure in this rich musical, social and political presence to being someone who was now wholly committed to its furtherance. His personal life, too, was entirely fulfilling. On 8 June 1857 he and his girlfriend of six years were married at the small, recently rebuilt church of St Johann of Nepomuk in the Jägerzeil. The following March a baby girl was born, Karoline Anna, named after her mother and grandmother. She was to be the only child and would live until 1919, always faithful to her father’s part in the success of the Strauss dynasty, particularly when it was in danger of being forgotten (Figure 6). At that time Johann had not had a steady relationship with a woman, and there is some evidence that his fondness for Caroline had acquired a new dimension in the shape of fraternal jealousy, a feeling that he, rather than Josef, should have married her. One letter written from Pawlowsk to Caroline in 1859 is uncomfortably familiar: ‘You are the only woman, that I respect! . . . You do not know with what longing I look forward to the moment when I can receive a kiss from you, that is the only kiss I can get . . .’. He then stirs up what was evidently a bone of contention between husband and wife, namely, the evenings that Josef spent in a local hotel playing cards: he, Johann, would not be joining them again, preferring to spend his time with her. The letter concludes: ‘How’s the little one? Dear Lina [short for Caroline], should you ever need help, don’t ignore the services of your loving brother-in-law.’43 That this was something more than routine best wishes between family members is evident from the postscriptum, which urges her to keep the last comment a secret. In 1858, towards the end of the third visit to Russia, Johann was introduced to the daughter of an ennobled former army officer, Olga Smirnitskaja (1837–1920), a keen and gifted amateur musician. She had composed two short works (probably for piano), which Strauss orchestrated and performed at one of his concerts. The following summer the 43

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 178–9

103

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3 1850–1870. Three Brothers: Johann, Josef and Eduard

relationship blossomed in the pleasure gardens of Pawlowsk. When she had to return to the family home in St Petersburg, Strauss wrote several lengthy love letters to her.44 Their content makes it clear that Olga’s parents did not approve of the relationship and that she did not fully reciprocate his infatuation. Johann frequently declares his love, refers to their hiding places in Pawlowsk and tells her that he has told his mother about their relationship. Because of her short stature and general liveliness, Strauss had a French nickname for her, ‘L’Espiègle’ (The Imp), and he wrote a polka with that name that was performed in Pawlowsk in August 1859. Back in Vienna, Johann reported that it had been performed at a concert in the Volksgarten in November directed by the two brothers, when the audience of 2,000 had demanded an encore; less judiciously, he told her that their romance was the talk of all Vienna. A few weeks later the relationship came to an abrupt end, probably following parental pressure; Olga was now engaged to another man. Haslinger’s publication reflected this reality: the polka has the title in public German, Der Kobold (Op. 226), rather than private French, and while there is an image of a woodland imp on the title page, there is no dedication. The former lovers did not meet during the 1860 season or during any of Johann’s subsequent visits to Russia. Olga did, however, retain the correspondence between them. It resurfaced in Vienna in 1926 when it was presented to Adele Strauss (1856–1930), Johann’s third wife, who arranged for it to be published.

‘The Business Comes First’ Just over ten years after the death of Johann Strauss (Father), the musical presence of the Strauss family at home and abroad had changed markedly, in ways that the father could not have foreseen and in some respects would have disapproved. All three sons were now involved in music-making, two as composer-directors and a third as a harp player who was strengthening his musical understanding in readiness for a similar career. Johann had two interacting careers in two imperial capitals, Vienna and St Petersburg, each with its own Strauss ensemble. Josef had abandoned the professional career that his father would have wished and had established his own musical career in Vienna, not as a rival but as a working colleague. The publishing firm of Haslinger was a rare link to the past, still central to the commercial success of the Strauss family and their wider impact on society after thirty 44

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 181–93.

‘The Business Comes First’

years. Other individuals who had enabled the careers of the Strauss family had died, including the fashioner of public taste, Adolf Bäuerle; the former owner of ‘Zum Sperl’, Johann Georg Scherzer (1796–1858); and the owner of Dommayer’s Casino, Ferdinand Dommayer (1799–1858). In wider society the young Emperor Franz Joseph – still in his twenties – had successfully restored a new sense of stability at home, characterized by the loosening of the old restrictions of the Vormärz years, symbolically laid to rest by the death of their architect Prince Metternich in June 1859, eight months after the death of Josef Radetzky. Within Vienna, the audience for Strauss was increasing not only in size but also in diversity, as the city acted as a magnet for immigrants from Bohemia, Moravia, Lower Austria, the Alpine lands and further afield, attracted by the prospect of employment and helped by the continuing expansion of the railway network. The rate of population growth changed the shape of the city as well as its size, with 90 per cent of its population now living in the suburbs. To counter this urban sprawl and the related increasing sense of detachment between the inner city and the suburbs, the emperor announced on 20 December 1857 that there would be a European-wide competition to re-design the layout of the city. Even before this competition had been announced, it had already been recognized that the greatest physical barrier to integration were the city walls, which now seemed to exclude most Viennese rather than invading forces from Turkey and France. A decision was made that they should be taken down. That process began in earnest in 1859 when the Rotenturm gate, through which the Strauss family had habitually entered the city from Leopoldstadt, was demolished. The winning plan for the city as a whole was published in the following year. In place of the city walls there was to be an exceptionally broad boulevard – the Ringstrasse – sweeping round the western, southern and eastern perimeter of the inner city and designed to open up much larger vistas for existing parkland, such as that of the Volksgarten and the Wasserglacis (the later Stadtpark), and provide breathing space for new, unprecedentedly large buildings, imperial, civic and privately-owned. For the next twenty years, demolition, planning and building were to characterize the city for residents and visitors alike, forming a constant backdrop to the changing careers of the Strauss family.45

45

For complementary perspectives on this defining project, see Csendes and Opll, Wien, vol. 3, pp. 175–90; Michaela Pfundner (ed.), Wien wird Weltstadt: Die Ringstrasse und ihre Zeit, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2015); Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 24–115.

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The year 1861 saw the elevation of Eduard from a harp player to a director, but only for one special event, a ‘monster concert’ in the Sophiensaal that required three orchestras and three directors: For the first time in Vienna. Three balls in one evening in the Sophien-Bad-Saal. A monster concert as a benefit for Strauss, entitled the Perpetuum Mobile of Carnival, or Dance without End. Three large orchestras, one under the direction of Johann Strauss, the other under the direction of Josef Strauss, and a third under the direction of Eduard Strauss. . . .At the end, a Monster Galop [MonstreGaloppade], in which galops by the late Strauss and the late Lanner with the addition of a conclusion by Johann and Josef Strauss will be performed by the assembled forces of all three orchestras.46

The scale of this event gave Johann Strauss the idea for a novel work, not a dance but a ‘musical jest’ (‘Musikalischer Scherz’) that played on the title of the evening, Perpetuum Mobile (Op. 257), a brisk showpiece that demonstrates the capabilities of individual players from piccolo to glockenspiel, giving the impression that it could go on for ever before stopping abruptly in the middle of a phrase. It was first performed at Johann’s farewell concert, shared with Josef, before Johann left once more in April for the summer season in St Petersburg, where it was also played. For his part, Eduard had to wait until the following Carnival for his position as the third person in the hierarchy of Johann, Josef and Eduard to be confirmed. Yet again, circumstances rather than personal ambition were at work. With Johann prone to self-inflicted exhaustion, there was now too much demand for the two elder brothers to accommodate. As ever, Johann was ultimately in charge and at a concert of his music given in the winter garden of the Dianasaal on 6 April 1862 the youngest brother, Eduard, was successfully presented as the director for the evening, performing music by Johann.47 Two days later Johann departed for his seventh summer season in St Petersburg, a period that was to transform the careers of Josef and Eduard. In Vienna they amicably divided between themselves appearances at ‘Zum Sperl’, Volksgarten and elsewhere; for Josef, there was also a pleasing first appearance at the imperial summer palace in Schönbrunn, where he gave two private concerts for Archduke Franz Karl, the emperor’s father. In St Petersburg, Johann’s health deteriorated to the point that no new works were composed and performances of existing works were delegated to the leader, the otherwise wholly unknown Herr Pichard. 46 47

German original of poster transcribed in Bailey, Eduard Strauss, p. 237. Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 29–30.

‘The Business Comes First’

Recognizing the importance of a figurehead for the success of the summer season, Johann suggested that Eduard should quickly travel to St Petersburg, motivated by the view that this wholly unknown Strauss would be easier to manage than the more experienced Josef, whose music was already well known in Russia. In Vienna, Anna Strauss, took the opposite view: Eduard should not abandon his career in Vienna during what was effectively his first full season; Josef, on the other hand, was wellsuited to the task. With Anna’s motherly injunction ‘Don’t quarrel’ ringing in his years, Josef left Vienna at the end of July to become the new resident Strauss for the remainder of the season in St Petersburg. On 2 August Johann and Josef shared a successful concert in Pawlowsk before the elder brother began his return journey to Vienna.48 During his two-month stay in St Petersburg Josef wrote a series of letters back to Caroline, clearly missing her company and that of their four-yearold daughter. Nevertheless, the concerts were successful and there was promising talk of a repeat visit. The correspondence also reveals mounting scepticism about Johann’s motives and actions, and in particular the feeling that he abided by his principle ‘the business comes first’ (‘das Geschäft geht bevor’) only when it suited him. With an awareness of family politics and his mother’s crucial role in them, Josef continually reminds Caroline to keep her up to date about his perspective on matters. He comments that Johann had left St Petersburg ‘refreshed and healthy’, worries that he is making deals behind his back and is preoccupied with two things: money and ‘that woman’.49 ‘That woman’ was a retired opera singer, Henriette Chalupetzky (1818– 78), known as Jetty Treffz, born and bred in Vienna, seven years older than Johann and someone who had led a rather unorthodox private life as well as a successful professional one. She had seven surviving children aged between nine and twenty-one, all born out of wedlock, and had been living with Baron Moritz von Todesco for the previous eighteen years. A banker of Jewish-Romanian descent, he, together with his brother, had invested heavily in the development of the Ringstrasse, notably the exceptionally luxurious Palais Todesco adjacent to the opera house.50 Johann had met Jetty sometime during the previous winter and the couple now wished to marry. Hastily arranged and in comparative secrecy, the wedding took

48 49 50

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 203. Correspondence given in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 204–13. Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz (ed.), Ringstrasse: Ein jüdischer Boulevard/A Jewish Boulevard (Vienna, 2015), pp. 26–7, 69, 128.

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place at nine o’clock on the morning of 27 August 1862 in St Stephen’s, with Carl Haslinger as one of the two required witnesses.51 With Josef ensconced in St Petersburg and Eduard looking after commitments in Vienna, Johann and Jetty escaped to Venice, where they remained until late October. Accustomed to opulent living, Jetty had no desire to move into the Strauss family home in Leopoldstadt and the couple first lived in the inner city, in the Weihburggasse, before buying a house on the Glacis, only to sell it a few months later and move to their own apartment in Leopoldstadt. None of Jetty’s children joined their mother and would-be stepfather, and her former partner, Baron Moritz von Todesco, proceeded to adopt two of the daughters.52 Johann and Jetty were well-matched and the marriage was to prove a happy one: she knew the workings of the musical world, had a confident personality and, as a result of her long companionship with Todesco, had become a shrewd business woman, too. She was a new recruit to ‘the business’. When Johann, Josef and Eduard were able to meet again towards the end of October, family tensions, private and professional, had abated to the extent that each brother was able to contribute to a renewed Strauss presence in Vienna. Josef gave performances of three new works, whose titles might have resonated within the family: a fast polka Vorwärts! (Forward!, Op. 127), a set of waltzes Freuden-Grüsse (Greetings of Joy, Op. 128) and a more measured polka Brennende Liebe (Burning Love, Op. 129). Eduard capitalized on his success as a director in the summer, conducting his first compositions, later published by the family firm Haslinger: two polkas, Ideal (Op. 1) and Sonnette-Polka (Op. 3), and a set of waltzes, Die Candidaten (Op. 2). Johann’s first composition for eight months poked fun at the continuing demolition work going on in the city, the Demolirer-Polka (Op. 269). By the New Year Johann’s habitual tiredness had returned. Rather than trying to battle his way through, on the advice of his doctors he took the decision not to compose any new works for the Carnival season but would continue to appear as a director – an odd preference, given that performing in multiple venues, sometimes well into the night, was surely more tiring than composing at home. Once more, a certain insecurity may be detected, a worry that Josef and Eduard would gain a monopoly on public acclaim. It was during this time (from mid-January 1863 onwards) that Johann, with Jetty’s encouragement, re-visited an earlier, more formal 51 52

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 208–9. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 226–7.

‘The Business Comes First’

acknowledgement of public status, the title of Hofballmusikdirektor. This time, Strauss’s petition took a much more tactical approach, consistently comparing his career to that of his father in the hope that the case would emerge as an incontrovertible one.53 To the modern reader this approach might seem eccentric, even desperate; at the nineteenth-century Habsburg court, however, where administrative jobs, also musical posts, were often passed from one generation to the next, it would have been viewed as reasonable. After some preliminary statements about Strauss’s age, religion, marital status and musical education, the plea for musical primogeniture begins. Like his father, he has given many years of service at the imperial court and at the courts of the high aristocracy; like his father, he wishes to continue to do so; building firmly on the tradition established by his father, he has advanced the genre of dance music with a tally of over 270 published works, music that has had a positive influence on the well-being of the Viennese; since the death of his father, he has looked after the welfare of his mother and his siblings, assisted his brothers in their musical development in honour of their prematurely deceased father and has never failed to accept invitations to perform for charitable purposes. The petition concludes with an unexpected declaration, one that seeks to make his career a more socially exclusive one in comparison with that of his brothers: in future he intends to restrict his appearances to the imperial court, the courts of the high aristocracy, institutional balls with invited guests and concerts at the Volksgarten; appearances at other public venues would be transferred to his brothers. As before, the petition was considered by Prince Karl Liechtenstein. Strauss’s dominant position in the musical and social life of Vienna was irrefutable and this time, fifteen years after the event, the police report on his activities during the year of revolution was put to one side. The prince may also have been swayed by the fact that Strauss was a popular figure at the Russian court: it might have been diplomatically awkward for the Habsburg court not to honour someone who was favoured at another imperial court. Whatever the reasoning, the decision was quickly made. On 25 February 1863 Strauss was informed that the petition had been successful. In recognition of his ‘commendable achievements’ (‘belobte Leistungen’), Strauss was to be awarded the title of ‘k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor’.54

53

54

First and supplementary versions of the petition are given in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 237–41. Decree of 25 February 1863; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 242.

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Jetty accompanied Johann to St Petersburg in the summer, where she thrived in the heady social as well as musical environment. The couple were invited to perform at the court of the tsar, himself a keen musician. Accompanied by Johann at the piano, Jetty gave a song recital that included works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and, a particular favourite of the tsar, Schubert’s ‘Am Meere’ from the Schwanengesang collection.55 This event and other highlights of the season were enthusiastically reported in letters to Haslinger and his wife, Josefine, with whom the newly married Strausses enjoyed a friendly relationship. But there was a fly in the ointment, a minor problem that became a major issue of trust. The details are not clear. It arose from a new contract between Strauss and Büttner that gave that firm the right to distribute Strauss’s music in Russia, in itself not controversial since it represented a continuation of the existing agreement. There was a dispute about an unpaid fee from the Russian firm to Haslinger, with the figure of Daniel Rather, an employee of the publishing firm of Büttner, acting precipitously on behalf of the composer. The situation led to increasing mistrust56 and by the time Johann and Jetty returned to Vienna in October it was beyond repair. The decisive event that finally broke the relationship was unrelated: Haslinger’s decision to add a new dance composer to his business, the twenty-year-old Carl Michael Ziehrer (1843–1922). Johann regarded this as a slight, conveniently forgetting that he had once been an eager twenty-year-old looking for a publisher; for his part, Haslinger might also have recalled Johann’s very public threat in 1855 to transfer his allegiance to Schott of Mainz. With long-standing loyalty and personal friendship cast to one side, Johann and Jetty briefly explored another option: setting the composer up as his own publisher. Strauss even registered with the authorities as the traditional ‘Kunst- und Musikalienhändler’ (Art and Music Dealer).57 The prospect of accruing all the profits from the business rather than a one-off fee would have appealed to Johann and Jetty; on the other hand, the work required to set up the firm, run it from day to day and establish international distribution for its publications was considerable and probably explains why the plan was abandoned. The Patrioten-Polka was one of the last works published by Haslinger. By the spring of 1864 Strauss had signed a contract with the rival firm of C. A. Spina, Josef’s first publisher.58 Founded as a fully 55

56 58

As reported in Jetty’s letter of 26 June 1863; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, pp. 258– 60. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 260. 57 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 305. Axel Beer, ‘Spina’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, Personenteil, vol. 15 (Kassel, 2006), col. 1183; Paul Banks, ‘“The Foremost and Unrivalled Music

Broadening Musical Horizons

independent firm in 1851, it apparently paid a higher one-off fee and, as the title page of its first publication, Morgenblätter (Op. 279), reveals, it, too, sold its music on commission to publishers elsewhere in Europe, in this case to Ricordi (Milan), Brandus (Paris), Ewer & Co. (London) and, especially important to Johann Strauss, Büttner in St Petersburg.59 In a decisive declaration of collective will and presence, Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss also transferred publication of their music from Haslinger to Spina, Josef after 150 works and Eduard after just 5. Despite this very public gesture of solidarity, many of the stresses and strains of the family business had been aggravated in the eighteen months since the marriage of Johann and Jetty. Encouraged by Jetty, Johann was increasingly acting independently of his brothers, with Josef and Eduard having to be content with keeping the foundation of that career – the Strauss phenomenon in Vienna – alive and active. Human relationships were subordinate to an abstraction: the musical and social status of the Strauss family in their home city, that is, Johann’s ‘business’. In his successful petition for the title of Hofballmusikdirektor, Strauss had cultivated an image of himself as the leading figure who was nurturing the careers of his two brothers. In reality, convenience rather than philanthropy characterized his actions, guided by his innate ambition but usefully legitimized by bouts of ill health. Josef had been happily married for several years and, in January 1863, Eduard married a local girl from Leopoldstadt, Maria Magdelena Klenkhart (1840–1921); two sons were born from this marriage later in the decade, loyally named Johann and Josef. Even allowing for the practice of Christian names being handed down from one generation to the next, this, too, had the sense of a family business that had to be perpetuated.

Broadening Musical Horizons One of the more unusual musical successes enjoyed by Johann and Josef working together was not a march or a dance but a pasticcio, a musical farce (‘Musikalische Posse’) in forty scenes, Jupiter und Pluto, first performed in the Dianasaal on 29 December 1861.60 The text consisted of

59 60

Engraving Business in Austro-Hungary”: Josef Eberl (1845–1921), Printer, Publisher, and Manufacturer of Manuscript Paper’, Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies (9 December 2020), www.musau.org. Title page reproduced in Brusatti, Düriegl and Karner, Johann Strauß, p. 258. Norbert Rubey, ‘Jupiter und Pluto: Die Jahre 1848 bis 1861 in einer sarkastisch-musikalischen Rückschau’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 183–200.

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a mock formal exchange of views between Jupiter, the ruler of Olympus, and Pluto, the god of the Underworld, on the nature of contemporary life, as explained in the subtitle, ‘How things are here on earth, and what the gods think of it’ (‘Wie es bei uns auf der Erde zugeht, und was sich die Götter darüber denken’). The exchange between the two realms was reflected in the distribution of the players in the Dianasaal: the forces of Jupiter were represented by the Strauss Orchestra placed in the main hall, while the forces of Pluto were represented by a military band seated elsewhere in the building. None of the music was newly composed but was compiled by Johann and Josef from an improbably wide range of sources: popular songs, extracts from operettas and operas, as well as music by Johann Strauss, both father and son, though none by Josef. There were no singers and a key part of the entertainment was to speculate on the allusive meaning of the chosen music. Poking fun at mythological gods was highly topical. Offenbach’s operetta Orphée aux enfers had been given its first Viennese performance in March of the previous year and was a huge success, enhanced by the composer’s residence in the city during the summer. The chorus of the sleeping gods from Act 2 is quoted in Jupiter und Pluto, preceded by a well-known pilgrim’s song and followed by Johann Strauss senior’s Mittel gegen den Schlaf (Remedies against Sleep, Op. 65). The juxtaposition of opera extracts is even more striking. Jupiter’s initial plea to be allowed into Hades features music from Act 2 of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable; the response from Pluto is a world-weary one, Leporello’s grumbling ‘Notte e giorno faticar’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Jupiter and Pluto then exchange views about the state of music: Jupiter summons up a performance of the ethereal prelude to Act 1 of Wagner’s Lohengrin, a work that had received its Viennese premiere earlier that year, and Pluto responds with some well-loved music from the past, the overture to Mozart’s Zauberflöte. Although Jupiter und Pluto has a storyline of sorts, it is an excuse for a potpourri of music, much like Strauss senior’s Ein Strauss von Strauss. It was extraordinarily successful, receiving some twenty performances in the 1861–2 season, with Eduard sharing the directing duties with Josef once Johann had left for St Petersburg. The elaborate scissors-and-paste construction of Jupiter und Pluto is at one with its showy impact, revealing a sense of comic contrast at the service of an implausible narrative – entertainment that was fundamentally different from the progress of a waltz, a polka and, to a lesser extent, a quadrille. For Johann and, possibly, Josef, it led naturally to an interest in composing operetta, amply fulfilled in Johann’s case from the 1870s onwards, thwarted

Broadening Musical Horizons

in Josef’s case by his premature death at the very time when he, too, might have turned to the stage. The Strauss family had always shown an awareness of music beyond the confines of the dance hall, and by the 1860s most of their music was indeed heard not so much in balls but in concerts, where it frequently rubbed shoulders with music by other composers. The brothers were not to be confined by the label of dance composer; they were always scanning broader musical horizons. Johann and Josef shared an unexpected fondness for the music of Robert Schumann (1810–56). During their brief love affair, Johann had told Olga Smirnitskaja that he particularly admired that composer’s heightened sense of melancholy, the Eusebius side of his personality.61 As a honeymoon gift for Jetty, Johann turned to the other side of Schumann’s personality, Florestan, with an orchestral arrangement of ‘Widmung’ from Myrthen.62 Josef, too, responded to Schumann’s melancholy, with an orchestral arrangement of ‘Träumerei’ from Kinderszenen. A shared enthusiasm for the music of Schubert music was perhaps more predictable, given the many dances and marches composed by that composer. Both Johann and Josef directed performances of the Rosamunde Overture, and Eduard wrote a quadrille drawing on tunes from Schubert’s marches and dances, LiederKranz (Garland of Songs, Op. 23).63 But the list of favoured composers is firmly headed by Richard Wagner. Josef was ‘an enthusiastic Wagnerian’ (‘ein begeisterter Wagnerianer’), as Eduard dubbed him in his memoirs,64 and included extracts from Wagner’s operas old and new – instrumental versions of vocal sections as well as self-standing orchestral sections – in the repertoire of the Strauss Orchestra. As well as extracts from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, Josef Strauss directed performances of extracts from Rienzi, Der fliegende Holländer, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tristan und Isolde.65 Wagner had developed the practice of allowing extracts from his newest operas to be performed before the premiere of the work as a whole. Between 1860 and 1864 he was based in Vienna, first as a regular visitor then a resident, overseeing rehearsals for what was intended to be the first stage presentation of Tristan und Isolde, at the Court Opera House. In the 61

62 63

64 65

Johann Strauss’s letter of 30 July 1859 to Olga Smirnitskaja; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 183. See Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 211. Norbert Rubey, ‘Strauß’ in Ernst Hilmar and Margret Jestremski (eds.), Schubert-Enzyklopädie (Tutzing, 2004), vol. 2, p. 274; Dörner, Josef Strauss, p. 469. Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 53 A list of extracts from Wagner’s operas performed at twenty-two concerts directed by Josef Strauss between 1858 and 1868 is given in Dörner, Josef Strauss, p. 470.

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event, that plan collapsed in acrimony, but Wagner had already given the Strauss family access to the work and Josef had presented extracts from it as early as 1860, the first performance anywhere of music from Tristan und Isolde.66 The occasion was a benefit concert for Josef Strauss held in the Volksgarten on 3 July, beginning at 6.00 pm. Four items were described as ‘new’ in the newspaper announcement: extracts from Tristan und Isolde and two works by Josef Strauss (a set of waltzes, Lustschwärmer (Pleasure Enthusiast, Op. 91), and a polka, Mignon (Op. 89)); the concert also included a performance of Schumann’s Julius Caesar Overture. The evening was shared with a regimental band, conducted by their kapellmeister, Johann Swoboda, and ended with fireworks.67 Vienna was not to witness a stage performance of Tristan und Isolde until 1883–4, by which time it constituted a vital component in what had become a consuming Wagner tradition in the city. In one of the most misconceived ironies of musical historiography, two composers of so-called Unterhaltungsmusik, Johann and Josef Strauss, had played a key role in securing a place for this, the most ernst of Ernstmusik. It was, moreover, a regard that was reciprocated. Wagner admired the Strauss family and their music, often listening to waltzes for relaxation, including, on one occasion, alongside his own Siegfried Idyll.68 If performances of Wagner’s music helped that composer’s reputation in Vienna as well as that of the Strauss brothers, performances alongside a regimental band were similarly of mutual benefit. A very different organization, an amateur choir, resulted in a new development in Johann Strauss’s music: waltzes and polkas that were to be sung. The Wiener Männergesang-Verein (Vienna Male Voice Society) had been founded in the suburbs of Josefstadt in 1843, a year after the Court Opera Orchestra had begun its complementary existence as a concert orchestra, later to become the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Like the orchestra, the Männergesang-Verein was to play a distinctive part in the musical life of the city, one that has persisted to this day. With as many as 200 amateur singers, predominantly drawn from the expanding middle class in Vienna, musical standards were combined with sociability.69 From very early in his career Johann Strauss was familiar with the society and its members, 66

67 68

69

Johannes Leopold Mayer, ‘Schmiedelied und Wonnemond im Polka- und Walzertrakt: Josef Strauss und Richard Wagner’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), p. 239. Fremden-Blatt, 3 July 1860. Cosima Wagner’s diary, 2 October 1874; see Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack (eds.), Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, vol. 1: 1869–1877, trans. Geoffrey Skelton (New York, 1978), p. 791. Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, pp. 396–8.

Broadening Musical Horizons

including its annual practice in early summer of Sängerfahrten (singers’ excursions) – trips to the surrounding countryside or along the Danube, often with family members, that mixed merrymaking with impromptu music-making. In 1847 Johann composed a set of waltzes that referenced these trips, Sängerfahrten (Op. 41). Twenty years later, in the Carnival season of 1867, the Männergesang-Verein came up with idea of commissioning a set of waltzes for male chorus and orchestra rather than orchestra alone, initiating a period of collaboration that was to last four years. Escapism was especially welcome that year. The previous summer had seen the humiliating defeat of Austrian troops by Prussian forces in the Battle of Königgrätz. Josef Weyl, a member of the choir and an old friend of Johann and amateur poet, had written a text that was both cynical and life-affirming in a typically Viennese way, ‘Wiener seid froh!’ (Viennese, Be Happy!).70 In contrast, the tender title that was later chosen for the work, An der schönen, blauen Donau, was entirely in keeping with the long-standing enchanted image of that river held by the Viennese. Since Johann and the Strauss ensemble had another engagement on the evening of 15 February 1867 in the Dianasaal, the first performance was accompanied by the military band of the 42nd King of Hanover Infantry Regiment directed by the music director of the choir, Rudolf Weinwurm. Just over three weeks later, on 10 March 1867, the Strauss Orchestra (directed by Johann) performed the instrumental version for the first time as part of a benefit concert for Josef and Eduard in the Volksgarten, where it was well received. Shorn of its text, Johann’s mastery of colour and pace was able to suggest the idealized beauty of the Danube with none of the cynicism of Josef Weyl’s verses. For once, however, the image on the title page of the publication by C. A. Spina is disappointing. A panoramic view towards a distant Vienna with the spire of St Stephen’s just visible, it shows the Danube before it was regulated into one majestic flowing river. Disconcertingly, the principal colour of the image is brown not blue, muddy rather than beautiful.71 The following year, 1868, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein. The society announced that honorary membership would be given to a number of individuals who had shown particular interest in its work, including Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Johann Strauss and Wagner, as well as literary figures such as Franz Grillparzer and Anastasius Grün.72 In the associated concert in the Sophiensaal on 70 71 72

Complete text in Brusatti, Düriegl and Karner, Johann Strauß, pp. 129–31. Title page reproduced in Brusatti, Düriegl and Karner, Johann Strauss, p. 128. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 92.

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12 October, a new choral polka by Johann Strauss was performed, Sängerslust (Singer’s Joy, Op. 328), with a text by Josef Weyl, ‘Fröhlich singt und lustig tanzt’ (Joyously sings and gaily dances), accompanied by Johann and Josef on the piano and a member of the choir, Adolf Lorenz, on the harmonium. A concert in the following Carnival season was a more unbuttoned affair, a popular Narrenabend (fools’ evening), at which members of the choir and the audience turned up in fancy dress – on this occasion, the choir as slaves and Johann Strauss as a pilgrim.73 The new work by Johann was a third set of choral waltzes with a carefree text by Josef Weyl, this time in praise of three subjects especially enjoyed by a male choir even when dressed as slaves: wine, women and song. His text is distributed across the work, beginning with the second, march section of the introduction right through to the coda, where Weyl reveals the inspiration for his text and for the title of the work as a whole, an aphorism attributed – falsely – to Martin Luther, ‘He who dislikes wine, women and song stays a fool [‘ein Narr’] his lifetime long’.74 The fourth and last work in this annual sequence – a third set of waltzes with a text by Josef Weyl – was written for the Narrenabend of 1870. Entitled Neu-Wien (Op. 342), it evokes a sentiment that was slowly becoming ingrained in Viennese society during the years of constant demolition and construction: the feeling that ‘new Vienna’ was not the same as ‘old Vienna’ (‘Alt-Wien’). Josef and Eduard, too, participated in events organized by the Männergesang-Verein, though only one vocal work was written for them: a choral version of Josef’s polka Dithyrambe (Op. 236). Two further polkas for orchestra that allude to the male singers were composed also: Josef’s Die Gallante (The Gallant Ones, Op. 251) and Eduard’s Sängers Liebchen (Singer’s Sweetheart, Op. 50). While the Strauss brothers and their music were at the heart of social and cultural life in Vienna, by the mid-1860s the regular visits to Russia had become increasingly wearisome for both sides, with Johann’s bouts of nervous exhaustion resulting in him having to be replaced at short notice by Josef or Eduard; these ad hoc plans in turn aggravated family tensions. Between 1866 and 1868 there were no summer visits by one or more of the brothers to Russia. Instead, Johann and Jetty sought to promote the elder brother’s career elsewhere in Europe with, once more, Josef and Eduard benefitting by default. Johann had not undertaken a tour of German cities 73 74

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 99–100. Complete text in Brusatti, Düriegl and Karner, Johann Strauß, pp. 151–5.

Broadening Musical Horizons

since the early 1850s and had never visited England or France, in stark contrast to the career of Johann Strauss senior. Balance-of-power politics in Europe also shaped their deliberations. With Austria often assuming a neutral role in international disputes, it increasingly found itself a bystander, even a casual victim, rather than a key player in the tactical deliberations of France, Prussia and Russia. The Austrian ambassador in Paris was Prince Richard Metternich (1829–95), the son of Clemens Metternich; his Viennese wife was the highly eccentric Pauline Metternich (1836–1921), an ardent music lover who recognized the wider capability of that art form to mend and sustain diplomatic relationships. One of her principal charitable projects was a new, dedicated hospital for Austrian and German people living in Paris. At their annual Carnival ball in 1866, held in the Redoutensaal, the monied Verein der österreichischen Industriellen (Society of Austrian Manufacturers) presented Princess Pauline Metternich as its new patron and the occasion was dedicated to raising money for her favoured cause, the new hospital in Paris. Both Johann and Josef were in attendance. A new set of waltzes by Johann was performed, Wiener Bonbons (Op. 307), subsequently dedicated to the princess. Josef directed two new works, also dedicated to her: a set of waltzes Deutsche Grüsse (German Greetings, Op. 191) and, even more personal, a new polka named in her honour, Pauline (Op. 190). With this promising diplomatic connection in place Johann, Josef and Jetty began to formulate plans to perform in Paris during the world exhibition the following year. Existing musical links between the two capitals had tended to be in one direction, from Paris to Vienna. The operatic repertoire in Vienna had always featured French works (usually in German translation) – by Adam (1803–56), Auber (1782–1871), Gounod (1818–93), Halévy (1799–1862), Hérold (1791–1833) and Meyerbeer (1791–1864); during the 1860s there was a particular presence for Offenbach’s operettas (again given in German). Princess Pauline and the Strauss family would have regarded the planned visit to Paris by two of Vienna’s leading musical figures as an opportunity to reciprocate this long cultural export. During the Easter week of 1866 Johann and Josef travelled to the French capital to explore the practicalities of engaging French instrumentalists for the following year.75 But Austria and France, and especially the Austrian ambassador, Prince Richard Metternich, had more pressing issues on their mind. 75

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 22.

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The political relationship between Austria and Prussia had reached a crisis point as a result of Otto Bismark’s clearly signalled desire to reduce Habsburg influence in the German territories. To increase the pressure on the Austrian government, Bismark had entered into an alliance with the Kingdom of Italy in its attempt to be rid of the last remaining Habsburg presence south of the Alps, the Venetia. Austria faced the prospect of revolution to the south and opportunistic invasion to the north. In this tense atmosphere Johann and Josef returned hastily to Vienna. By June war had broken out on both fronts. As the price for French neutrality, Austria eventually agreed to give up its rule of Venetia, but the progress of the war to the north was even more humiliating. Bismark’s troops had invaded Bohemia, inflecting a heavy military defeat at Königgrätz, before persuading Austria to sign a peace treaty in August.76 For the Strauss family, the Austrian ambassador and his wife, the idea of a pioneering musical visit to Paris during the forthcoming world exhibition was put to one side. Yet it had not been forgotten. During the winter months Johann heard from his principal contact in Paris, Count Charles d’Osmond (1829–91), that a visit to the city from early spring onwards might indeed be arranged. Princess Pauline had indicated that she would host a grand ball at the Austrian embassy before the World Exhibition to introduce Strauss to French high society – imperial, aristocratic and financial. This would lay the foundation for a series of concerts during the exhibition itself, which was expected to attract representatives from no fewer than thirty-two countries. Again, there was some discussion of recruiting an orchestra in Paris, but Osmond advised against this, arguing that it would dilute the sense of a characterful Austrian presence. But populating an orchestra of sixty or so with players from Vienna was also difficult given the number of commitments Josef and Eduard would have in that city over the summer months. Johann’s solution was one he knew well from his Russian visits: he would recruit an orchestra from northern Germany. He got in touch with the conductor Benjamin Bilse (1806–1902), whose orchestra he described as the best in Germany for ‘classical music’ (‘klassiche Musik’); since they did not have ‘the chic’ (‘den Chic’) for Viennese waltzes, polkas, etc., he would bring a few players with him from Vienna – a practice that had worked well in Russia. The conducting responsibilities were to be shared: Bilse would present ‘serious music’ (‘ernste Musik’) to the audience, while Strauss would present ‘cheerful music’ (‘heitere Musik’). Meanwhile, C. A. Spina, who already sold his publications on commission to the 76

Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 116–18; Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 141–7.

Broadening Musical Horizons

leading music publisher in Paris, Heugel, travelled to the French capital to discuss how best to maximize sales and publicity. In Strauss’s absence, discussions in Paris were deputed to an old school friend of Strauss’s, Gustav Lewy (1824–1901), an experienced theatre agent, music publisher and retailer.77 Johann, Jetty and Lewy arrived in Paris on 18 May, a mere ten days before the Metternich ball. While Lewy remained in Paris, Johann and Jetty travelled immediately to Berlin, where Johann was introduced to Bilse’s orchestra and participated in two concerts featuring some of the repertoire that was to be played in Paris. By accident or design, the chosen works were diplomatically balanced, featuring music from Austria, France and Germany, a musical alliance to chime with the emerging new political landscape a year on from Königgrätz. ‘Classical music’ was represented by four works: Berlioz’s King Lear Overture; a tone poem, Columbus, by the local composer Johann Joseph Abert; Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture; and the second movement from Haydn’s Quartet Op. 76, No. 3 (the set of variations on the Austrian national anthem), played by the full string section. ‘Pleasant music’ included four items by Johann Strauss: two sets of waltzes (the Bürgersinn waltzes (Public Spirit, Op. 295) and An der schönen, blauen Donau) and two polkas (Leichtes Blut (Blithe Spirit, Op. 319) and ʼS giebt nur a Kaiserstadt, ʼs giebt nur a Wien’, with the title diplomatically shortened to one word, Kaiserstadt).78 Between them, Princess Pauline, Count d’Osmond, Gustav Lewy and C. A. Spina had aroused considerable interest in Strauss’s impending debut in Paris, fanned by several articles in Le Figaro. The ball itself, in the Austrian embassy in the affluent rue de Grenelle, Faubourg SaintGermain, was exceptionally lavish, a cultural triumph to follow the military and political humiliation of Königgrätz. Princess Pauline had converted the embassy into a Parisian version of a Viennese dance hall, with an adjacent garden, flowers and palm trees, fountains and cascades, picture windows and grottos, and candle and electric light. Two parallel queues of guests stretched down the rue de Grenelle, waiting for up to an hour to gain admission. Once inside, the embassy guests mingled in various salons pending the arrival of Emperor Napoleon III and his wife, Empress Eugénie. The dance hall and adjacent garden were opened at 11.00 and the dancing continued until beyond 4.30 in the morning. The five couples in the first quadrille were Emperor 77 78

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 34–8. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 42–4.

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Napoleon and Marie Henriette, Queen of Belgium (a Habsburg, daughter of Archduke Joseph); Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia and Empress Eugénie; Prince Metternich and Princess Mathilde Bonaparte; Prince Albert and Princess Pauline; and Antoine, Duke of Mouchy, and his future wife, Princess Murat. The author of this eyewitness report was the Viennese author and newspaper editor Friedrich Uhl (1825–1906), who noted that the excellent orchestra aroused the artistic interest of the Parisians, on the one hand, and the pride of Austrians, on the other.79 Over the next few days the occasion was reported in newspapers in Berlin and Vienna, as well as Paris. Jetty wrote a letter back to Vienna affirming that Johann, ‘the lion of Paris’, had never experienced anything like it, an unprecedented triumph, with An der schönen, blauen Donau causing a sensation.80 The concerts at the exhibition centre began immediately. Most were held on a daily basis between 3.00 and 5.00, and 8.00 and 10.00, with, as agreed, a repertoire of ‘classical’ works conducted with a baton by Benjamin Bilse, and waltzes and polkas directed by Johann Strauss in his usual animated way, violin in the left hand, bow in the right. One report, in Le Figaro, remarked that Bilse was content to direct, while Strauss electrified the orchestra.81 There were also further concerts sponsored by Pauline Metternich, including one in the Palais Rothschild to raise more money for the Austrian and German hospital. All were outstandingly successful, regularly reported in Le Figaro, and from there back to newspapers in Vienna; the only matters of concern were the associated costs, which were barely covered by income, and Jetty’s indisposition, which prevented her from attending some of the concerts. The repertoire was welcomingly repetitive: recent waltzes and polkas, including An der schönen, blauen Donau, Morgenblätter, Wiener Bonbons, Kaiserstadt, Annen-Polka (a polka for St Anne’s day, Op. 117) and Tritsch-Tratsch, but no music by Josef or Eduard. Piano versions of many these were already available from Heugel; others followed soon after. Only one new work was written for Paris, a polka dedicated to the helpful editor of Le Figaro, Hippolyte de Villemessant, the Figaro-Polka (Op. 320). In a new experience for Strauss, it was first published in a society journal, the Paris-Magazine, and then in the eponymous newspaper itself.82 In this international environment of royalty, bankers and monied businessmen the music of Strauss formed a backdrop to the central purpose of 79

80 82

Friedrich Uhl, Aus meinem Leben (1908), reproduced in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 44–7. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 48. 81 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 50. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol, 2, pp. 51–5.

Broadening Musical Horizons

the exhibition: the promotion of trade and associated pride of countries and empires far and wide. While Austria responded appropriately to the official emphasis of the exhibition on fine art and manufacturing, it was the performing art of music as represented by Strauss that proved to be its most effective export; six years later, when Vienna was the host for the fifth World Exhibition, the organizers remembered this success and vowed to make Strauss a central part of the experience. For Strauss in 1867, there were immediate benefits too. There were rumours of future visits to America and to Spain, but England, specifically the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden, acted quickly and decisively. The seeds may have been sown by Edward, Prince of Wales, a regular visitor to Paris and someone who had particularly enjoyed its social life during the exhibition, but Jetty was in a position to drive the initiative because she herself was already known to Covent Garden as a successful and popular singer.83 During the summer months the theatre presented promenade concerts rather than stage performances, with the orchestra pit raised to the level of the stage so that the audience could see the performers as well as hear them. The concerts were directed by the celebrated Giovanni Bottesini (1821–89), a composer and conductor, as well as a virtuoso double bass player dubbed the ‘Paganini of the double bass’. He had performed in Vienna in 1864, where he may have met one or more of the Strauss brothers. He, more than anybody, would have recognized the appeal of Strauss the animated conductor for London audiences, especially those who had fond memories of the visits of Johann Strauss senior. The arrangements were concluded swiftly, with Johann and Jetty leaving Paris for London on 9 August. There was an unhappy casualty of this unanticipated move: Benjamin Bilse. An understanding that he, Strauss and the orchestra would remain in Paris until the end of the summer season was put aside. As Josef and Eduard had often experienced in Vienna, Bilse was not an equal partner in the relationship. Covent Garden had its own orchestra, and Bilse and his orchestra remained in Paris until mid-September. Between 15 August and 26 October Johann Strauss participated in no fewer than sixty-four promenade concerts at the Covent Garden theatre.84 The bulk of these appearances were shared with Bottesini, with the same marked division of associated repertoire that had characterized the recent 83 84

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 56. Johann Strauss’s detailed list (including number of encores) is transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 57–74.

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concerts with Bilse. At the opening concert Bottesini conducted music by David, Donizetti, Gounod, Rossini and Wagner; Strauss presented three of his own compositions, Morgenblätter, Annen-Polka and Künstler-Leben, all of which were encored, some several times. The promenade concerts already had the complementary practice of named composer evenings, now altered to named composer plus Strauss evenings: five shared with Beethoven, two with Mendelssohn, one with Mozart, one with Verdi, and one with Haydn and Weber. There was one further element. Jetty Strauss appeared as a singer in seven concerts, typically mixing music by Mozart, Reichardt and Spohr with popular songs such as ‘Home, Sweet Home’ and a Scottish song noted in phonetic German in Strauss’s list of programmes as ‘Long sain’. Most notable was one of the Mendelssohn evenings, on 26 October, when the entire first half was a song recital, with Johann accompanying Jetty on the piano. Once more, the Strauss repertoire was extremely repetitive, both within concerts as encores and from one concert to the next. Four polkas were especially popular: Annen-Polka, Bauern-Polka (Op. 276), L’Enfantillage (Op. 202) and Tritsch-Tratsch. One of the most frequently performed waltzes was by Johann’s father – Tanz-Signale, dating from 1848 – and there were four performances of a waltz that was soon to be known in England as On the beautiful Danube, given in both the choral and orchestral versions, but, as in Paris, there was nothing by Josef or Eduard Strauss. As the habitual encores suggest, the fervour that was generated by the performances verged on the ecstatic, though the remarks of one Times correspondent hints at a certain English reserve about the manner in which this was achieved: ‘He conducts the orchestra, like his father, fiddle in hand, and joins in the passages of most importance. This he does with wonderful animation, accompanied by a certain amount of gesticulation which also has something do with the general impression created.’85 To curry even more favour with his audience, Strauss wrote two new works based on popular music hall songs: a Festival-Quadrille (Op. 341) and a Festival Waltz; amongst the tunes quoted in the latter were ‘Home, Sweet Home’, ‘Champagne Charlie’ and ‘The Flying Trapeze’. When the piano version was published by C. A. Spina the following year , the immediate audience was a different one, proudly Austrian rather than enthusiastically English, and the title was changed to Erinnerung an Covent-Garden (Remembrance of Covent Garden, Op. 329); to compensate for the Austrian public’s lack of 85

Quoted in Andrew Lamb, ‘Covent Garden Promenade Concerts, 1867’, Musical Times, 108 (August 1967), p. 692.

One Cause, Three Destinies

knowledge of English music hall tunes, an image of Strauss directing the orchestra on the Covent Garden stage was presented on the title page.

One Cause, Three Destinies Johann and Jetty Strauss returned to Vienna in November 1867, filled with the astounding success experienced in two European capitals. Much earlier in his career, Johann would have plunged straight away into the new season of concerts and balls in Vienna, but the now inevitable swing to near exhaustion was particularly acute after a hectic six months. Johann and Jetty spent some of their time house-hunting in Hietzing, eventually purchasing a property that overlooked the botanic gardens of Schönbrunn Palace – something that reminded them of ‘beloved Albion’.86 Over the next few years Strauss and Jetty were continually re-assessing the nature of Johann’s professional life, albeit in a haphazard rather than a strategic way. Although any change was certain to have an impact on the careers of Josef and Eduard, the three of them, together with their mother and their wives, seemed never to have sat down to discuss their collective future. Instead, patterns of professional commitments emerged and were accommodated, immediately or eventually, willingly or reluctantly. Johann’s claim in his petition to the imperial court for the title of Hofballmusikdirektor that he would nurture the career of his brothers had, in essence, been achieved, with Josef and Eduard now fully established in the affection of the Viennese public. At the same time, all three also managed to establish a presence within the overarching identity of ‘Strauss’, as suggested by the fact that the ensemble was usually referred to as the Strauss Orchestra (‘Strauss Kapelle’), not the Johann Strauss Orchestra or the Josef and Eduard Orchestra. With a certain obligation to what was now an established tradition, all three worked to promote Strauss in general rather than Johann, Josef and Eduard in particular. While Josef and Eduard did most of the conducting and regularly appeared together, the programmes in Vienna routinely featured works by all three brothers; Johann participated too – to the extent his self-diagnosed health problems allowed – especially in benefit concerts for Josef and Eduard where he could assume the role of the senior supportive figure. Composite works also played their part. In addition to a clutch of works from around 1860 – Hinter den Coulissen (a quadrille), Jupiter und Pluto, Vaterländischer 86

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 84, 93.

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Marsch and the Monstre-Quadrille – Johann and Josef came together in 1869 to write the popular Pizzicato-Polka; and all three brothers collaborated on two works: a set of waltzes, Trifolien (Trefoils, 1865), and the Schützen-Quadrille (Marksmen’s Quadrille, 1868). C. A. Spina’s amusing title page for the Trifolien-Walzer suggests that it was Johann who really called the tune (Figure 7). From the early 1860s Johann, encouraged by Jetty, had been attracted by the idea of turning his attention to the composition of operetta – a new artistic challenge, but one that would allow him to be based in Vienna. Moreover, as Jetty would have reminded him, it was financially rewarding, with a system of continuing royalty payments rather than the one-off fees that characterized concert appearances and publication. In this scenario Josef would replace Johann as the leading composer of dance music for balls and concerts, with Eduard remaining in Vienna if Josef were to undertake more journeys abroad. If Johann was initially indecisive about this change of direction, Josef was conflicted. He was certainly attracted by the idea of being the leading Strauss in concert and dance halls, also with the prospect of an international career, particularly if he was able to fashion it according to his own musical interests rather than those of Johann; on the other hand, he knew that he did not have the stage presence of Johann, would miss a happy family life with his wife and daughter and had a cerebral health condition that was potentially more serious than Johann’s exhaustion. For his part, Eduard was slowly establishing his own reputation in Vienna, a dapperly dressed and coiffured man who had already acquired the nickname of ‘handsome Edi’ (‘schöner Edi’); he regularly appeared alongside Josef, deputizing for him when he was unwell, and, like Josef, was irked when Johann’s music aroused greater applause in his absence than the music of Josef and Eduard did in their presence. As well as benefit concerts and benefit balls, the three brothers occasionally appeared together for other reasons. While Johann was in Paris and London in 1867, the Austrian government had negotiated a new constitutional settlement with Hungary, the Ausgleich, accommodating Hungarian nationalism with the desire to remain within an overarching Habsburg empire. In March 1868 and March 1869 the three Strauss brothers made two brief visits to Pest to direct hugely successful concerts of their own music in celebration of the new Ausgleich. In Vienna, to reinforce the public narrative of a shared family inheritance, the three brothers came together on 27 September 1868 in the Blumensäle to present a memorial concert for their father, Johann Strauss (‘Erinnerungen an weiland Johann Strauss’). The programme consisted solely of music by the ‘late Strauss’;

One Cause, Three Destinies

altogether, sixteen works were played, including Heiter auch in ernster Zeit, Loreley-Rhein-Klänge, Ein Strauss von Strauss (described in a newspaper advertisement as ‘not heard for 15 years’) and, to end, the inevitable Radetzky-Marsch.87 Johann’s increasing self-regard was further enhanced by invitations to travel abroad: to France and England once more, and to Spain and to America (Boston). He even began detailed planning for the second England trip, advertising in the Viennese press for a group of nine players who would accompany him and form the core component of a locally recruited orchestra.88 After the extended visit to Paris and London in 1867, only one lengthy visit came to fruition, to the familiar destination of St Petersburg and Pawlowsk in 1869; originally, the return journey to Vienna was to have taken Johann to North Germany, Sweden and Holland, but that was abandoned.89 On the 1869 visit to Pawlowsk, Johann was accompanied by Josef, troubled, as ever, by conflicting responses. On the one hand, he was buoyed up by Johann’s assurance that he would succeed him in later years; on the other hand, he was homesick and irritated by the amount of work he had to do while his brother, encouraged by a watchful Jetty, rested. In reality, the succession was not Johann’s decision to make and the Zarskoje-SeloEisenbahn-Gesellschaft eventually gave the contract to Johann’s former colleague in Paris, Benjamin Bilse. This, in turn, led to Josef being offered Bilse’s summer contract in Warsaw, where he was to direct ‘classical works’ as well as waltzes, marches and polkas. Not surprisingly, he willingly accepted. Johann and Josef’s last appearance together in the 1869 Russian season was to a packed audience, with every item on the programme encored except the last one, the ‘Farewell’ Symphony of Joseph Haydn. Within that composer’s lifetime, performances of the symphony were already enacting the familiar story of homesick orchestral musicians leaving the stage in turn at the end of the last movement, even though Haydn’s score had not indicated that they should do so. It is likely that only this movement was performed in the farewell concert in October 1869, concluding with two solo violins on stage, Johann and Josef. Meanwhile, with increasing self-assurance Eduard had been cultivating his independence in Vienna, keeping Johann and Jetty informed but not Josef. He was planning to make his own tour, while also making commitments on behalf of all three brothers in Vienna. The substance of these plans, as well as the manner in which they were conducted, deeply upset 87 89

Neues Fremden-Blatt, 27 September 1868. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 105.

88

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 83.

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Josef, whose homesick letters acquired a troubling mix of paranoia and rage.90 Anna Strauss also became involved; exasperated, she came to the conclusion at one point that each of the three sons should go his own way. By October the family conflict had become the subject of newspaper comment and was only resolved by lawyers – a process that went on to the following March when a new contract between Josef, Eduard and members of the Strauss Orchestra was signed.91 Johann’s name is absent from this contract – another indication of his increasing detachment from the family business. There was still, nevertheless, some feeling that the tradition had to be maintained in public. In the middle of the family and legal wrangle the three brothers had organized a second memorial concert for their father on 28 November in the Sophiensaal. Using the term Johann Strauss had encountered in London, it was described as a Promenade Concert. The advertisement also encouraged a sense of historical legacy, indicating that it was to be a chronological survey of their father’s work, divided into four periods, 1826–31, 1831–6, 1836–42 and 1842–9; the only composition that is mentioned is the Loreley-Rhein-Klänge waltz, though it is difficult to imagine that the last section did not include the RadetzkyMarsch.92 The period between May 1869 and January 1870 saw the opening of two major buildings in Vienna devoted to music, the Court Opera House (HofOperntheater), a physical landmark as well as a musical one, and a new building for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde that housed two concert halls, a conservatoire, an archive and library plus an office for the Wiener Männergesang-Verein. As the presence of a conservatoire, a library and the office of a choral society suggests, the new building of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was less exclusive than the Court Opera House, reflecting a wide range of musical activity in Vienna, both amateur and professional. For decades the music for the annual ball of the society had often been provided by members of the Strauss family in various locations in the city.93 Very appropriately, the music now took its place in a programme of events to celebrate the new building. The first concert in the large concert hall was on 6 January, when Johann Herbeck (1831–77) directed the 90 91

92 93

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 105–14, 119–21, 124, 126–7, 131–3. Leigh Bailey, ‘A Tale of Two Brothers: Josef and Eduard Strauss’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 102–4. Neues Fremden-Blatt, 28 November 1869. Documented in Norbert Rubey, ‘“Musik-Verein Tänze”: Sträuße von Sträussen’ in Hartmut Krones (ed.), 200 Jahre Uraufführungen in der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Vienna, 2018), pp. 103–12.

One Cause, Three Destinies

amateur orchestra and choir of the society in music by Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert; the first professional concert in the small concert hall was a piano recital by Clara Schumann on 19 January. Between these two events the annual ball of the society had been held on 15 January, when all three Strauss brothers directed performances of celebratory new works: Johann’s waltz Freuet euch des Lebens (Enjoy Life, Op. 340), Josef’s polka Künstler-Gruss (Artist’s Greeting, Op. 274; Figure 8) and Eduard’s polka Eisblüme (Frost Patterns, Op. 55). One of the unfortunate consequences of the disagreement between Josef and Eduard was the loss of a long-standing contract to provide Sunday afternoon concerts in the Volksgarten. Very swiftly they managed to book the new building of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreude for the concerts, to the disgust of those who viewed this transfer from a pleasure garden to a musical temple as inappropriate. Between 13 March and 17 April the three brothers shared the direction of the Sunday afternoon concerts.94 Their success marked the beginning of a new association with the society that was to last to the end of the century. For their part, the offended devotees of more high-minded music had to wait until the end of the year before the Court Opera Orchestra gave its first concert in the hall, playing a programme with the generic title of ‘symphonic music’ (‘symphonische Musik’) consisting of works by Weber, Beethoven, Ernst Rudorff (18401916) and Schumann.95 Before the short season of Sunday afternoon concerts began, the Strauss family had suffered a bereavement. While the lawyers were still resolving family disagreements, Anna Strauss fell ill with pneumonia. On 23 February she died at the age of sixty-eight. From the time she first met Johann Strauss at the age of twenty-three she had witnessed and often influenced the development of dance music in Vienna, from ad hoc renditions in local inns to formal balls and concerts in the leading venues in the city, and from those its wider distribution throughout much of northern Europe. Even in death, however, the behaviour of her eldest son was oddly insensitive. Johann had made the journey from Hietzing to the family apartment to visit her during her illness but felt unable to attend the funeral because of tiredness. The broad plan for the summer months was a three-way division of responsibility, an arrangement that suited each of the three brothers: Johann had tentative plans to visit Baden-Baden, where he could rest as 94 95

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 145; Bailey, Eduard Strauss, p. 53. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Concert Archive, www.wienerphilharmoniker.at.

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well as direct some concerts; Josef was looking forward to conducting the summer concerts in Warsaw; and Eduard would continue to look after commitments in Vienna. Josef left Vienna on 1 May, accompanied by his widowed aunt, Josefine Waber (his mother’s sister), evidently a family favourite who had accompanied Johann, Josef and Jetty to Russia the year before. At the age of sixty-two, she could also help a little with routine organizational matters. As before, Josef’s wife Caroline remained in Vienna to look after their daughter, now twelve years old. When Josef and his aunt arrived in Warsaw they found that their luggage had not arrived. Josef had never coped well with inconvenience, but worse was to follow. The orchestra was not fully constituted, and he spent the next few weeks scrabbling around looking for suitable players, with his aunt unable to offer any help because of illness. Eventually, with Eduard’s assistance, players were recruited from Vienna. The first concert on 22 May was a modest success, described by Josef as ‘favourable’ (‘günstig’), with four encores, a response that was maintained over the next few appearances.96 On Wednesday, 1 June, Josef appeared for the fourth time. The first half of the concert ended with a potpourri, Musikalisches Feuilleton (Musical Supplement), one of Josef’s most popular works, dating from 1862 but never published and now lost.97 As the performance was about to quote music from Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, Josef collapsed on the podium, badly knocking his head as he fell.98 Unconscious, he was carried back to the apartment, where doctors offered a diagnosis that was clearly related to his long history of troubling headaches: a cerebral haemorrhage. The news reached Vienna by telegraph the next day. Caroline hurriedly made arrangements for her daughter to be looked after by Eduard’s wife, Maria, before making the two-day journey by train to Warsaw, where she arrived on 6 June. While she concerned herself with nursing Josef, Jetty in Vienna assumed responsibility for ensuring that the Warsaw concerts went ahead, for the wider reputation of the Strauss family. A new contract was prepared that gave Johann and, it was hoped, a fully recovered Josef prime responsibility for directing the concerts, with the fallback situation that if Josef was still indisposed they would be directed by a kapellmeister from Berlin who had worked for a while in Vienna, Gotthold Carlberg (1838-81).99 With Josef’s health continuing to deteriorate, Johann and Jetty travelled to Warsaw, where Johann directed 96 97 99

Letter to Caroline Strauss, 26 May 1870; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 150. Dörner, Josef Strauss, p. 455. 98 Recounted in Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 46. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 154–9.

One Cause, Three Destinies

just three concerts before his usual condition of tired nervousness forced him to withdraw. In the middle of this continuing crisis an absurd conspiracy theory about Josef’s illness was circulating in Warsaw and later, with even greater credence, in Vienna: Josef had not collapsed on the podium but had been attacked by drunken Russian soldiers – a sensational tale (with equally bizarre variants) that was to dog the Strauss family through to the twentieth century. In his memoirs Eduard Strauss was to offer a plausible reason why a tale featuring drunken Russian soldiers arose in the first place: the habitual resentment of the Polish people towards the Russian occupation of their land.100 Caroline had decided that the ailing Josef should be taken home to Vienna. In a specially adapted compartment they travelled by train, arriving in the Nordbahnhof on 16 July, from where Josef was taken to the family home in Leopoldstadt. He died six days later at 1.30 in the afternoon. At 4.00 pm on 25 July, to the sound of tolling church bells and funeral music provided by two military bands, the procession left the Church of the Order of St John (Barmherzige Brüder) in Leopoldstadt for the cemetery of St Marx to the west of the city, witnessed by thousands of onlookers.101 One close family member was not even an onlooker: Johann Strauss was at home in Hietzing, too tired to attend. 100

101

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 47; Peter Kemp, ‘Who Killed Josef Strauss?’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 111–23. Fremden-Blatt, 25 July 1870.

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Dance and March: Music and Culture

The death of Josef Strauss in 1870, at the age of forty-two, had dealt an unexpected blow to a well-established partnership that had contrived to project a shared identity while also allowing the continuation and development of individual careers. Although Johann had always been the dominant figure in private and, even more so, in the eyes of the public, Josef had become the most productive composer of dances, with an output of over 200 works in the period 1860–70. By contrast, Johann, with his frequent bouts of exhaustion and intermittent thoughts of turning to the composition of operetta, had composed about half that number, and Eduard, whose active career as a composer did not start until 1863, had composed even fewer, some fifty-seven works. Johann’s flirtation with operetta was to turn to complete engagement in the following decade – seven works in ten years, including Die Fledermaus – leaving little time for the composition of dance music. It was left to Eduard to fill the space left by his two brothers by providing a regular supply of new Strauss dances, waltzes, polkas and quadrilles, plus the occasional march. The 1870s, therefore, saw a considerable shift in the nature of the Strauss presence in the musical life of Vienna, one that was to be maintained through to the end of the century, right up to the death of Johann in 1899. In retrospect, the 1860s – the ten years or so in which the three brothers worked alongside each other – represented a golden decade of creativity, one that is not readily perceived in narratives of Viennese musical history, partly because of the traditional focus on the brothers as individuals rather than as a triumvirate. As well as An der schönen, blauen Donau, the 1860s saw the composition of several other enduring works by Johann: waltzes such as Morgenblätter, Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Woods, Op. 325) and Wein, Weib und Gesang! (Wine, Women and Song, Op. 333), and the polka Unter Donner und Blitz (Thunder and Lightning, Op. 324). Equally individual are works by Josef Strauss, waltzes such as Dorfschwalben aus Oesterreich (Village Swallows from Austria, Op. 164)) and Sphären-Klänge (Harmony of the Spheres, Op. 235), and the polka Die Libelle (The Dragonfly, Op. 204). It was during this period, too,

Works, Structure, Style

that the young Eduard wrote what was to be his most enduring single work, the polka Bahn frei! (Clear the Track! – a railway call – Op. 45). With a combined total of over 300 works composed between 1860 and 1870, it is worth pausing the collective biography in order to survey some of the characteristics of this shared endeavour, variously technical, historical and aesthetic.

Works, Structure, Style One of the abiding impressions of the musical output of the Strauss family was that it was dominated by waltzes, signalled in particular by the contemporary description of Johann (Father) and Johann (Son) as the ‘Waltz King’. By the 1860s, however, the polka was equally popular, both for actual dancing and as a concert work. In that decade Johann composed a nearly equal number of waltzes and polkas (about thirty of each). In Josef’s output there is clear preference for polkas, with a discernible pattern of three or four waltzes per season but double that number of polkas. In Eduard’s output the division is even more pronounced: eight waltzes and thirty-eight polkas. Several factors contributed to this increasing trend: as the least experienced composer, Eduard probably found it easier to write short polkas rather than longer waltzes; Josef had commented that the waltz was not especially popular in Russia compared to the polka;1 the co-existence of concert performances and performances in dance halls encouraged a division between the ambitious waltz, increasingly more at home in the former, while the polka remained closer to the latter; finally, there was the abiding influence of the publishing market, first in the hands of Carl Haslinger and then C. A. Spina, which might well have come to prefer short polkas to long waltzes, particularly when the latter were also coloured by contrasting orchestral sonorities that were difficult to evoke in the piano versions. There were three types of polka in the 1860s, all sharing the basic structure of main section, contrasting trio and repeat of the main section. The oldest was the fast polka (Polka schnell), a brisk dance in 2/4 derived from the notorious galop of earlier in the century; the youngest, the French polka (Polka française), also in 2/4 but in a more leisurely, graceful tempo, imported from France in the 1850s; the third type, the polka-mazurka (Polka mazurka), was also in a moderate tempo but in 3/4 and with 1

‘Walzer geht hier nicht’, in letter to Caroline Strauss, 6 September 1862; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 1, p. 207.

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a tendency to nudge the second or third beat, as in the mazurka proper.2 The Strauss brothers composed all three types; for the most part, C. A. Spina was punctilious about noting the kind of polka on his title pages, Haslinger less so. Eduard was particularly fond of the French polka. Of his thirty-eight polkas composed up to 1870, twenty-four are of this type; Bahn frei!, however, is a good example of a fast polka – in this case, an excitable dash to catch the train. Josef’s Die Libelle is a particularly evocative polkamazurka, with its the nudge on the third beat serving to illustrate the involuntary quiver of a dragonfly in the summer breeze. Johann Strauss’s most familiar fast polka is Unter Donner und Blitz, a good-humoured rush to escape a breaking thunderstorm. As in all of the dance genres used by the Strauss brothers, the polka is not necessarily programmatic; many will have neutral titles, though none will escape instinctive association with physical movement, graceful or hurried. If the polka was the best-represented dance form in the output of the Strauss brothers, the least favoured was the quadrille, numbering no more than forty across the decade. Dancing the traditional steps across the five short movements (‘Pantalon’, Été’, ‘Poule’, ‘Trénis’ and ‘Pastourelle’) remained popular, but as concert works they were musically constrained in comparison with the polka and the waltz, a series of short binary movements dependent on the quotation of pre-existing music, from popular songs to fashionable operas. It might seem odd, therefore, that Josef was the Strauss brother who turned most frequently to this dance form, revealing a willingness to do the routine that contrasts with the more musically inquisitive and ambitious side of his personality. Part of that musical curiosity was engagement with the music of other composers, as Jupiter und Pluto had shown on a much larger scale, and Josef may well have thought that this compensated for the creative limitations of the quadrille. The expressive reach of the waltz in comparison with the quadrille, and to a lesser extent the polka, was a powerful one, sustained across works that often lasted ten minutes or more. With very few exceptions, the structure was still the standard one of introduction, five dances and coda, but at its best this structural norm unfolds with the fluency of the best sonata-form movements in sonatas, quartets and symphonies and with an overall coherence that is often absent in many multi-movement orchestral suites. That sophistication had been in the making for half a century, from the earliest works of Johann Strauss senior onwards – a development acknowledged by his eldest son. In 2

Dörner, Josef Strauss, pp. 22–3; Neue Johann Strauss Gesamtausgabe, Serie II, Werkgruppe 4, Abteilung 2, vol. 1: Polkas, ed. Michael Rot (Vienna, c.2008), pp. xii–xiii.

Works, Structure, Style

a restaurant conversation with Eduard Hanslick in 1873 Strauss remarked that composition of waltzes was ‘obviously an easier skill then than nowadays’,3 before going on to support this view with family anecdotes about waltzes being composed on the afternoon of the scheduled performance. One waltz by Josef Strauss has often been singled out as a decisive stage in the development of the form – namely, Perlen der Liebe (Pearls of Love, Op. 39), described as a ‘Concert-Walzer’ on Haslinger’s title page.4 It was certainly first performed at a concert (in the Volksgarten on 6 July 1857), but the term could have been used for any number of waltzes by the Strauss brothers. That Haslinger never again used the term suggests a commercial motive founded on musical reality: if ‘concert’ implied that the waltz could not be danced, that might have limited sales. As the reported conversation between Hanslick and Johann Strauss (Son) implies, a key part of this increasing sophistication was the growth in orchestral forces, from a handful of players in the 1820s, to an ensemble of fourteen at the beginning of the eldest son’s career in 1844, to thirty or more in the 1860s. At Covent Garden in 1867 the orchestra was even larger, reported in one Viennese newspaper as numbering 100 players.5 Johann (Son), Josef and Eduard all composed waltzes for an orchestra that routinely included one piccolo, one flute, two oboes, two clarinets, four horns, two trumpets, bass trombone (sometimes three trombones), tuba, harp, timpani, percussion (typically snare drum, bass drum, cymbal and triangle) and strings. When additional trumpets were required, the instruments were played by two of the horn players, a practice facilitated by the fact that both instruments were now routinely pitched in F, regardless of the key of the work. Occasionally, there were other, sometimes surprising, sonorities, such as a solo E flat clarinet at the beginning of Josef’s Dorfschwalben aus Österreich, an anvil in Gnomen (Gnomes, Op. 217), a zither in Johann’s Geschichte aus dem Wienerwald, a two-note pipe for the cuckoo calls in the same composer’s Im Krapfenwald’l (Op. 336) and a tam-tam in his Reiseabenteuer (Travel Adventure, Op. 227). A set of five waltzes required a large number of melodies, more than a sonata or symphony movement. Typically, it is not one melody per waltz, but two, presented on either side of the central double bar, with contrast and variety being one of the central challenges of the compositional process. Some melodies will begin on the beat, others with an anacrusis; some will be 3 4 5

Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, p. 262. Title page reproduced in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), p. 203 Fremden-Blatt, 24 August 1867; transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 76–7.

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cantabile, others more crisply rhythmic; some will indulge the basic 1–2–3 pulse, some will distort it with displaced accents on the second or third beats or pull it across two bars (um- -pah- -pah- -, rather than um-pah-pah); some will have an upward profile, some a downward one; some will be presented in single lines, others in luxuriant sixths; some will seemingly float by avoiding the tonic note, while others will emphasize the sixth degree of the scale, complemented by the distinctive sound of a dominant ninth chord. Another clear development from the time of Johann Strauss senior that adds to the expressive range of a waltz was the overall key structure. The waltzes of the elder Strauss hardly ever departed from the pattern of four waltzes in the same key plus one in a contrasting key, but all three Strauss brothers provide more variety, with each successive waltz being in a different key, sometimes enabled by a short link, a new expressive function for the short Eingang originally designed to allow the dancers to reposition themselves for the next waltz. While some sets of waltzes retain the anchor of a home key, present in the first and last waltz and further enhanced by the coda, several by the younger Johann Strauss and his brother Josef articulate a fall of a fifth between the starting point of the introduction (or the first waltz) and the destination of the fifth waltz plus the coda. Johann’s Die Publicisten (Op. 321), for instance, has the following sequence of keys for its five waltzes: D major, A major, F major, D major, G major, with a coda confirming that destination. This sense of a journey is enhanced by the placing of the slow introduction not in the tonic but in A major, which then falls down a fifth into the D major of the first waltz. Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald has a more intricate journey characterized by falling fifths: the first waltz is in F major, the coda in B flat, a fall of the fifth; the second waltz anticipates the destination key of B flat, only for it to fall down a fifth to E flat in the third waltz, a ploy repeated in the fourth and fifth waltzes. All this had been set in motion by an introduction that is in C major, a fifth above the key of the first waltz. But the introduction itself does not begin with a C major chord, but its dominant G – that is, three falling fifths away from the eventual B flat of the coda.6 Without exception, the typical succession of five waltzes has the stylistic and structural characteristics necessary for dancing, even when the work was first performed as a concert work: periodic phrasing, balancing halves and immediate repetition of sections. Modern concert performances that 6

For further observations on musical style in the waltz, see Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The Nineteenth-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (New York, 2008), pp. 123–31; Dörner, Josef Strauss, pp. 19–22.

Works, Structure, Style

impatiently do away with repeats, or, worse, some of the repeats, injure the sense of space and overall coherence of the work in much the same way as the omission of the repetition of the exposition in the first movement of a symphony by Beethoven or Brahms does.7 Often, this extensive musical space – one that manages the magical paradox of projecting stillness as well as movement – acts as a resolution for the ever-expanding role of the anticipatory introduction, particularly in the waltzes of Johann and Josef. These are a long way from a perfunctory summons to the dance floor, revealing an awareness of the workings of introductions elsewhere in musical composition – in sonatas, quartets, symphonies, even operas. The introductions in the waltzes of Josef are especially resourceful, not in duration – they are typically between twenty and forty bars – but in content. Some will anticipate the mood of the forthcoming waltzes, with melodies in regular phrasing patterns in triple time, but many more will offer contrast in tempo (Maestoso, Allegretto, Allegro vivace, Allegro risoluto, for instance) and in metre (2/4, 6/8, 4/4, even 12/8). The circumstances of the first performance of a particular waltz will often determine the content of the slow introduction and reinforce the relevance of the title. For the ball in the Redoutensaal in January 1866 hosted by Princess Metternich to raise money for the German hospital in Paris, Josef’s set of waltzes, Deutsche Grüße, begins with what is effectively a march for full orchestra, allowing Habsburg high-society dancers to gather in readiness for the waltz. This juxtaposition of topics – march and waltz –is found in other works by Josef, such as NeueWelt-Bürger (Op. 126) and Krönungslieder (Op. 226); the first of these is also an example of a slow introduction that anticipates the thematic outline of the first theme of the first waltz. Josef is also a master of slow introductions that begin hesitatingly in a soft dynamic, as in Heilmethoden (Op. 189), composed a few weeks earlier for the medical ball in the Sophiensaal. The 1868 ball of the same society promoted the composition of a notably atmospheric slow introduction in SphärenKlänge, evoking the harmony of the spheres with sustained pianissimo writing in a high register for wind instruments, supported by harp arpeggios, pizzicato strings and harmonic movement that is colourfully static rather than strongly directed; the main theme of the first waltz emerges gradually from this sound world as the introduction moves to the familiar earth-bound certainties of the dance. 7

In a published interview, the Viennese violinist and conductor Johannes Wildner criticizes modern performances – including those in Vienna – that omit repeats: ‘“Der Wacek hast gesagt, das g’hört so”, transcript of interview with Johannes Wildner, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 250–1.

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In a way that suggests one brother learnt from the other, as much as that they learned from the wider musical environment, introductions in Johann’s waltzes from the 1860s, such as Studentenlust (Op. 285), An der schönen, blauen Donau, Künstler-Leben (Op. 316) and Illustrationen (Op. 331), are characterized by the same features – metres other than 3/4, the richest of orchestral palettes from solo instruments to full orchestra and certainty of mood alongside hesitancy of mood. Much the longest slow introduction in any waltz by the Strauss brothers is that to Wein, Weib und Gesang!; at 137 bars, it is three times the length of a typical introduction. With the wry tempo heading of Andante quasi religioso (clearly the subject matter is to be treated with utmost reverence), the introduction is a leisurely exploration of an unfolding theme in 6/8 that almost becomes a movement in its own right before a change of pulse at bar 58 sets up a march in the flattened sixth key of B major, which, in turn, is transformed into a triumphant march in E flat. This far-ranging introduction has consequences for the following waltzes. Rather than the normal pattern of five waltzes, Wein, Weib und Gesang! has only four, with the standard anticipation of thematic material at the very end of the introduction presaging the beginning of the coda rather than the beginning of the first waltz. Thematic integration, rather than thematic profusion, reveals itself in one further way: the leisurely theme in 6/8 at the beginning of the introduction becomes the main theme of the third waltz – a productive technique that Brahms, in particular, would have appreciated. In turn, the juxtaposition of two very different popular styles, march and waltz, as noted above in Josef’s output, presages a key feature of Mahler’s music; this is something that he would have been constantly exposed to in his formative years as a student in Vienna in the late 1870s.

Venues and Publication The oldest of the Strauss venues, ‘Zum Sperl’ in Leopoldstadt, had undergone two major alterations in its history, in 1839 and 1858, each time expanding the area devoted to dancing and convivial refreshment. Despite these changes it was little used by the Strauss brothers in the 1860s, with the venue having gained a reputation for licentiousness. It was demolished in 1873. Instead, two much larger venues in suburbs adjacent to the inner city, the Dianasaal in the Obere Donaustrasse to the north and the Sophiensaal in the Marxergasse to the east, had supplanted ‘Zum Sperl’ as the leading venues for music and dancing. They also shared a rare distinction: the

Venues and Publication

dance floor could be removed to uncover a swimming pool in the Dianasaal and a steam bath in the Sophiensaal. Capable of holding thousands rather than hundreds, the halls were particularly favoured during the Carnival season. More socially exclusive Carnival balls were held in the historical splendour of the Redoutensaal, which actually consisted of two rooms, large and small, and whose history as a public venue reached back to the later decades of the eighteenth century. In the summer months the Volksgarten came into its own. An exceptionally large coffee house in the gardens, the Cortische Kaffeehaus, contained three dance halls, from which the music drifted out into the surrounding area. With the opening of the Ringstrasse – a much more open and quiet space than it is now – the Volksgarten enjoyed a reputation for leisurely and stylish entertainment for all ages. The newest venue for music by the Strauss brothers lay a couple of miles along the Ringstrasse; it was a complex of large rooms that belonged to the Horticulture Society, which used them for flower exhibitions, and was appropriately named the Blumensäle. Built in the shadow of the elevated Palais Coburg, the building occupied a space where the city walls had recently been, from where it looked across the Ringstrasse to the former Wasserglacis, now transformed into an English landscape garden named the Stadtpark.8 There was a reasonably consistent identification of venue with the nature of the event. Balls, especially during Carnival, were held in the largest venues – Dianasaal, Sophiensaal and the Redoutensaal. Many were organized annually by societies such as Concordia (journalists and authors), Hesperus (artists) and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (musicians, including the three Strauss brothers), while the Bürgerball was for the great and good of the city and university students (especially medicine, law and engineering). Benefit balls were regularly given on behalf of the three Strauss brothers, adding considerably to their income even when the proceeds were split three ways. Concerts were more likely to be held in the Volksgarten and in the new premises of the Horticulture Society. There was little differentiation between repertoire, with waltzes and polkas, in particular, played as concert items soon after their first performances as dance music, and vice versa. For instance, Josef’s Fantasiebilder waltzes (Op. 151) were first performed at the annual ball of medical students in the 8

For summaries of dance and concert venues, see Helmut Kretschmer, ‘Strauß-Stätten’, in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), pp. 201, 203, 205; Helmut Kretschmer, ‘Musiktopographie’ in Elisabeth Th. Fritz-Hilscher and Helmut Kretschmer (eds.), Wien Musikgeschichte: Von der Prähistorie bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 2011), pp. 552–3, 559–62, 562–4.

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Sophiensaal on 11 January 1864 and were repeated in the same venue three weeks later at a monster ball and masquerade for the benefit of Josef and Eduard and, then, as part of a retrospective concert in the Volksgarten on 14 February, which featured new works from the immediately preceding Carnival season, once more for the benefit of Josef and Eduard. That new works were a priority for balls in the New Year was a sine qua non, but advertisements for concerts too often emphasized the appeal of the new, notably the ‘Novitäten-Conzert’ (Concert of Novelties). In November 1866, at the Volksgarten, there was a benefit concert at the tail-end of that season for the two directors, Josef and Eduard, a ‘Novitäten-Conzert’ that included no fewer than six new works: a polka and a set of waltzes by Josef, Etiquette (Op. 208) and Friedenspalmen (Op. 207), and a French polka, Colibri (Op. 21), by Eduard. As was often the case, Johann participated, too, directing three new works of his own: a set of waltzes, Feen-Märchen (Op. 312), a French polka, Wildfeuer (Op. 313), and a fast polka, Express-Polka (Op. 311). This continuing, sometimes relentless, expectation that balls and concerts should have new works explains several aspects of the working lives of the Strauss brothers: Johann’s frequent bouts of exhaustion; Josef’s endless toil in the 1860s – over 200 works – that fatefully exacerbated his underlying health condition; and young Eduard’s decision to write so many short polkas, rather than long waltzes, in order to establish a presence in Vienna. A few years later, in 1873, a dinner conversation between Eduard Hanslick, Johann Strauss, Johann Herbeck (the director of concerts at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde) and Nikolaus Dumba (1830–1900, the vice president of the society) considered some of the unfortunate consequences of this constant demand for the new. Hanslick admitted that he had never heard Johann’s earliest waltzes, and others he knew only from their piano versions: ‘As soon as they are two or three years old, why are these beautiful things not played any more?’ he wrote in his recollection of the evening. Moreover, Hanslick pointed out that the situation was peculiar to Vienna: ‘In one summer, one can hear more Strauss [senior] and Lanner in the spa resorts in the German empire than in ten years here.’9 Hanslick, Herbeck and Dumba would also have known that this emphasis on the new was fundamentally different from that found in the subscription concerts of the Court Opera Orchestra, which were overwhelmingly devoted to old repertoire such as Gluck, Mozart, Cherubini, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann, among others. In Vienna, the issue with the music of the Strauss family in the 1860s was not so much that it was popular, but that it was, by default, often transient in its 9

Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, pp. 261, 263.

Venues and Publication

appeal, a victim of its own success. Of the three brothers, only Johann was to achieve continuing popularity for a corpus of works – a process that was to gain considerable momentum in the remainder of the century. Commerce, too, had played a major role in this constant need for new works, as clauses in Johann Strauss’s 1852 contract with Haslinger had indicated. Other aspects of the printing business in Vienna, however, were becoming increasingly old-fashioned, cumbersome and inefficient. While title pages were lithographed, the music itself was still engraved, with both processes subcontracted; more progressive firms, such as Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig and Schott in Mainz, used lithography for both and did everything in-house.10 Nevertheless, having shaped the local market for over forty years, Haslinger and C. A. Spina understood it in a way that Schott (with whom Strauss had flirted in 1855) would not have done. They understood the rhythm of the musical and social season and, for titles and title pages in particular, knew how to project a clear Viennese identity as the capital of the Habsburg monarchy. Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig and Schott in Mainz would have found it difficult to engage directly with this distant environment. C. A. Spina followed the practice of Haslinger in giving absolute priority to producing a piano version as quickly as possible after the first performance (sometimes before) to cater for the domestic market, with print runs of between 1,000 and 2,000; other arrangements and orchestral parts came later. As for the given titles that helped the avid purchase in a way that opus numbers could never do, their authorship was more varied than it had been in Johann Strauss senior’s early career. Some were determined by the circumstances of the original performance, such as Johann’s Studentenlust (Op. 285) written for the 1864 ball of the university and Josef’s Die Industriellen (Op. 158) for the Verein der österreichischen Industriellen (Society of Austrian Manufacturers) in the same year; the titles of many quadrilles reflected the quoted music, while those of choral waltzes first performed by the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, such as Wein, Weib und Gesang!, arose from their texts. In the absence of ready prompts, other works had neutral titles that did not reflect the circumstances of composition and first performance. Here, too, there is evidence of continuing editorial control by the publishers, including the seeking of a recurring personality in the output of individual composers: four polkas by Eduard 10

Paul Banks, ‘“The Foremost and Unrivalled Music Engraving Business in Austro-Hungary”: Josef Eberle (1845–1921), Printer, Publisher, and Manufacturer of Manuscript Paper’, Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies (9 December 2020), p. 2, www .musau.org.

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reference flowers in their titles: roses (Dornröschen, Op. 19), a small flower (Fleurette, Op. 29), carnival flowers (Carnevalsblume, Op. 32) and a particularly appealing floret (Wunderblümchen, Op. 37); and three polkas by Josef refer to concepts and emotions: longing (Sehnsucht, Op. 22), simplicity (La Simplicité, Op. 40) and sympathy (Sympathie, Op. 73). With a combined total of some 350 works published in Vienna in the 1860s, their titles, dedications and illustrations together document an entire society, its mores, politics, enthusiasms and values, at a distinctive time in its development. Towards the end of the period known as the Gründerzeit, it reflected a time of economic prosperity, industrial growth, civic ambition and personal freedom that had been carefully and patiently built from the tribulations of the revolutionary year by Franz Joseph, a young emperor still in his thirties. While the Ringstrasse project was an obvious visual manifestation of the new Vienna, the music of the three Strauss brothers not only reflected change, but enabled it. As well as being new, it was also often topical, and when it was not topical, it was unfailingly of its day.

Mirroring the Times To probe the complex and interacting resonances of the music of the Strauss brothers with wider society in the 1860s, the following discussion is divided into six areas: Habsburg dynasty and politics; commerce, industry and science; student, artists and journalists; Stadt und Land; body and soul; and celebrating music itself. Naturally, many works will embrace more than one thematic area.11

Habsburg Dynasty and Politics: Honouring the Past and Negotiating the Present One of the most impressive visual components of the Ringstrasse project was not a new building but an empty space, the Heldenplatz (Heroes’ Square), an exceptionally large square between the Hofburg and the Ringstrasse. It contains two large monuments honouring two of Austria’s most successful military leaders before Josef Radetzky: Prince Eugen of Savoy (1663–1736) and Archduke Karl (1771–1847). Using the customary heroic pose of decisive leaders seated on a rearing horse, the two 11

Cf. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis, pp. 137–43, providing a summary that uses two categories: ‘Class and the Metropolis’ and ‘Artiness and Seriousness’.

Mirroring the Times

monuments were financed by Franz Joseph himself, as much a hopeful declaration of modern Habsburg prowess as a tribute to notable servants of the dynasty from the past.12 Josef Strauss provided celebratory marches for the unveiling of both monuments – the Erzherzog Carl-Marsch (Op. 86) in 1860 and the Prinz Eugen-Marsch (Op. 186) in 1865 – and another set of waltzes, Helden-Gedichte (Heroic Poems, Op. 87), alludes to the first occasion. A third national military hero, Prince Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg, was honoured with a memorial near the point where the Ringstrasse curves round in a north-easterly direction: another equestrian statue, formally unveiled in 1867.13 Josef had already composed and performed a Schwarzenberg-Marsch; its title was now amended to the more specific Schwarzenberg-Monument-Marsch (Op. 210). When Johann was finally granted the title of Hofballmusikdirektor in 1863, it clearly signalled an individual who was now a willing, dutiful and loyal member of the Habsburg monarchy, a status that was to be reinforced by a series of patriotic compositions. That same year had seen celebrations to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, a turning point in the war against Napoleon. Together, Carl Haslinger and Johann Strauss organized a Patriotic Festival that took place in the Sophiensaal on 19 March, with the proceeds going to a charity for disabled soldiers; it included the first performance of a new polka, the Patrioten-Polka (Op. 274). When the piano version was published a few weeks later, Haslinger was able to include Johann’s new imperial title, reference his part in the organization of the recent Patriotic Festival and project both alongside multiple images of the flags and coats of arms of the Austrian crown lands. Early in the following season, during Carnival, the new Hofballmusikdirektor was commissioned by the court to write a set of waltzes, Hofballtänze (Op. 298), not for one of the annual balls but to mark the visit of the Russian tsar, Alexander II. From the time of Strauss’s first visit to Russia in 1856, when he had composed a march to celebrate the crowning of the new tsar (Krönungs-Marsch), the music of Johann Strauss, together with his engaging personality, had provided the soft diplomacy that helped sustain the relationship between the two allies. This Habsburg ball, given in the presence of the two emperors, was the perfect opportunity to acknowledge that process, further evidenced by a special dedication copy of the music that was presented to the tsar. 12

13

Rolf Toman (ed.), Vienna: Art and Architecture (Potsdam, 2008), pp. 258–61; Angelina Pötschner, Wien, die kaiserliche Residenzstadt (Vienna, 2009), pp. 72–5. Pötschner, Wien, pp. 215–16.

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The music of the Strauss brothers figured in two further defining political narratives of the 1860s: the relationship between Austria and Prussia and, within the monarchy, between Austria and Hungary. In 1863 Franz Joseph presided over a conference in Frankfurt that was to formulate a new balance of power within the German Confederation, now nearly forty years old.14 On the very day that the conference began, 17 August, a commemorative event was held in the Volksgarten to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig (the second one that year), at which combined Austrian and Prussian forces, together with Russian troops, had defeated Napoleon’s army. This calculated evocation of German cooperation was reflected in the titles of two new works by Josef Strauss that were performed: a set of waltzes, Deutsche Sympathien (German Sympathies, Op. 149) and a march, Deutscher Union-Marsch (German Unity March, Op. 146). Although the Frankfurt conference had failed to agree on the nature of the new relationship, early in 1864 Austria and Prussia found a common enemy in Denmark over the question of who should rule the Germanspeaking peninsula of Schleswig-Holstein.15 Austria joined forces with Bismark’s Prussia against the Danes in a conflict that lasted into the autumn. Two new marches promoting the German alliance were composed by Johann Strauss: the Deutscher Krieger-Marsch (German War March, Op. 284) and the Verbrüderungs-Marsch (Allies March, Op. 287). A presentation copy of the first march was given to Franz Joseph, for which Strauss was duly awarded the Gold Medal for Art and Science; the second march was dedicated to the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, for which Strauss received the Prussian Crown Order, fourth class. The title page of Spina’s publication of Op. 287 references the co-operation of the two empires in the Schleswig-Holstein dispute: an Austrian soldier (on the left) shakes hands with a Prussian soldier, respective coats of arms are shown and the names of battle grounds in the recent war are listed (Figure 9). The balance of influence in German-speaking Europe was being significantly tipped in Prussia’s favour, with Otto Bismark forcing the issue through expansion of territories and influence at the expense of his nominal ally.16 When Austria became preoccupied with the outbreak of hostilities in northern Italy in 1866, Prussia brazenly took the side of the Italians while simultaneously signalling its intention to invade Bohemia. This 14 15 16

Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, p. 113; Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 131–2. Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, p. 114; Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 133–4. Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 116–18; Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 143–7.

Mirroring the Times

ruthless pincer movement created the greatest crisis of Franz Joseph’s rule to date. He had little choice but to oppose the invasion of Bohemia by Prussian troops – an honourable move, but a futile one that resulted in humiliating defeat at the Battle of Königgrätz. The subsequent Peace of Prague effectively ended Habsburg influence in German lands, which had been a defining part of the former Holy Roman Empire, exercised since the Middle Ages. Mirroring the course of Habsburg diplomacy, the music of the Strauss brothers in that crisis year went from being unrealistically optimistic to making the best of a humiliating peace. The commanding general of the Austrian army was the incompetent Ludwig August von Benedek, for whom Josef Strauss wrote an implausibly gung-ho march (Benedek-Marsch, Op. 199), which was so quickly overtaken by adverse military events that it was never performed in Vienna. During July, when the armed conflict was at its height, plans were made for a Grand Festival in the Volksgarten to celebrate the thirty-sixth birthday of Franz Joseph, for which Johann wrote a new polka with the entirely escapist title of Tändelei (Trifling, Op. 310); more realistically, half of the proceeds from the occasion were donated to the support of wounded soldiers. A couple of months later, in the wake of the Peace of Prague, Josef composed a set of waltzes with the conciliatory title of Friedenspalmen (Palms of Peace, Op. 207). Much more successful than this German humiliation was Franz Joseph’s negotiation in 1867 of a solution to the status of Hungary within the monarchy, the so-called Ausgleich (compromise), a settlement that was to last until the First World War. Politically, the agreement was reached swiftly in a matter of months, eased by Franz Joseph’s willingness to be crowned king of Hungary (having steadfastly refused in the early part of his reign) – a political judgement that was now in tune with the respect that he and his wife Elisabeth had always shown towards the Hungarian people, including knowledge of the Magyar language. Franz Joseph spoke passable Hungarian; Elisabeth was fluent, using it informally in Vienna as well as in Pest. She was also a skilled horsewoman, who spent much of her time in the countryside surrounding Pest. The Ausgleich, therefore, was not so much a comprehensive solution – plenty of ambiguities remained – as a shared ambition for the future. The monarchy was divided into two halves separated by a small tributary of the Danube, the Leitha river: to the east lay Transleithania, the kingdom of Hungary with considerable devolved powers; to the west and north lay the remainder of the Austrian lands, Cisleithania, the empire of Austria. Franz Joseph ruled as king of Hungary and emperor of Austria, but in recognition of the fact that the Habsburg

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court remained in control of the army and foreign policy, there was a new over-arching construct, Austro-Hungary, also with the titular head of an emperor, with Franz Joseph acting in two imperial capacities.17 This complexity resulted in a profusion of abbreviations for the patronage of the emperor: for instance, C. A. Spina’s title pages for Johann Strauss’s music continued to use the old formulation ‘k. k.’ for his post of director of the court balls, that is kaiserlich-königlich (imperial-royal), though it technically now signified an appointment only in the non-Hungarian part of the empire; for Hungary alone, ‘kgl.’ (königlich) was used, and for the new Austrian-Hungarian identity a new abbreviation, ‘k. u. k’, kaiserlich und königlich (imperial and royal) came into use, but not consistently. As for the music of the Strauss family, its appeal fitted easily into the new ‘k. u. k’ duality. It had always been popular in the Hungarian capital and any Hungarian qualities in the music were equally well received in Vienna. The three brothers may well have recalled that their own great-grandfather, Johann Michael Strauss, was Hungarian. By sheer coincidence, Johann Strauss’s An der schönen, blauen Donau was first performed in the same month as the Ausgleich negotiations were concluded, February 1867. The Danube had always belonged to both countries, so now did Strauss’s waltz. In the summer of 1867, while Johann was in Paris, Josef wrote two Ausgleich works to coincide with the coronation in Buda and Pest of Franz Joseph as king of Hungary and Elisabeth as queen of Hungary, both performed at the Volksgarten: Ungarisher Krönungsmarsch (Hungarian Coronation March, Op. 225; Figure 10) and a set of waltzes, Krönungslieder (Coronation Songs, Op. 226). In the immediately following years the three brothers made two highly successful visits to Pest to promote this new dual identity, in March 1868 and March 1869. The fact that all three brothers made the journey and the visits were brief – two or three days – may be an indication that they were initiated in government circles, Austrian, Hungarian, or both. For the 1869 concerts, Josef wrote a new march dedicated to the prime minister of Hungary appointed by the emperor, Count Gyula Andrássy, the Andrássy-Marsch (Op. 268); Johann’s contribution was even more popular: a quick polka with the Hungarian title of Éljen a Magyár! (Long Live the Magyar!, Op. 332). Dedicated to the Hungarian nation, the subsequent publication by Spina was 17

Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 119–26; Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 153–7; Judit Beke-Martos, ‘After 1848: The Heightened Constitutional Importance of the Habsburg Coronation in Hungary’, in Klaas Van Gelder (ed.), More than Mere Spectacle: Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, (New York, 2021), pp. 283–4, 288–95.

Mirroring the Times

illustrated with the Hungarian coat of arms and the historic crown of St Stephen. As always, the inclusion of the names of the foreign publishers from whom the work could be purchased imparted an international dimension to the work, from which everybody benefited – Emperor Franz Joseph, Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy and Kapellmeister Johann Strauss.

Commerce, Industry and Science Delayed by the economic and political travails of the Napoleonic Wars, the Industrial Revolution had arrived late in the Habsburg territories. Over the ensuing decades Austria quickly made up for lost time, through a mixture of government planning and private investment, including from Britain and France.18 In Vienna, the ever-expanding outer suburbs saw the establishment of modern factories for all manner of goods, from cotton mills and manufacturers of leather goods and candles to brickworks. Gas lighting was available throughout the city by the middle of the century and one of the least-mentioned new buildings in the Ringstrasse project, but very possibly the most frequently visited, was the exceptionally large Central Market Hall erected between the Ringstrasse and the Sophiensaal. Various aspects of this self-confident transformation are apparent in the careers of the Strauss brothers in the 1860s. The development of the Danube for recreational as well as commercial purposes was always going to benefit from Johann’s best-known work. Much more eye-catching was another mode of transport, the railway, rapidly developed from the focal point of Vienna outwards to distant parts of the monarchy. Four new stations were built in Vienna, serving all points of the compass, north, east, south and west: the Nordbahnhof, Ostbahnhof, Sudbahnhof, Westbahnhof, plus a fifth, the Franz Joseph Bahnhof, each a temple to the transport industry in much the same way as the new opera house and the Musikverein were to opera and concert music, respectively. In addition to Eduard’s Bahn frei! polka, Johann wrote a fast polka with the title Vergnügungszug (Excursion Train, Op. 281) and Josef wrote a polka in celebration of the new train service to Munich that had opened in 1860, Gruß an München (A Greeting to Munich, Op. 90).

18

For broad surveys, see Bertrand Michael Buchmann, ‘Wirtschaft und Finanzen’ in Peter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll (eds.), Wien: Geschichte einer Stadt, vol. 3: Von 1790 bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 2006), pp. 129–47; Peter Payer, ‘Um 1870 Wien wird groß und laut: Stadteindrücke und Beobachtungen’, in Wolfgang Kos and Ralph Gleis (eds.), Experiment Metropole: 1873, Wien und die Weltausstellung, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2014), pp. 44–51.

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The railway companies that developed these services belonged to the Verein der österreichischen Industriellen; its annual ball was one of the most prestigious in Vienna, especially when one or more of the Strauss brothers participated. The title of the organization itself appears in a set of waltzes by Josef Strauss, Die Industriellen (Op. 158), and two sets of waltzes by Johann Strauss refer respectively to the profits to be made from shares, Dividenden (Op. 252), and the competitive nature of many businesses, Concurrenzen (Rivalries, Op. 267). Two works by Johann evoke particular aspects of mechanical engineering: Accellerationen (Accelerations, Op. 234) is a set of waltzes in which the introduction and theme of the first waltz (the latter recalled in the coda) depict the gathering momentum of a turbine, and more particularly perhaps the wheels of a paddle steamer. The most specialized technical references, to the point of obscurity, occur in three works written by the brothers for the ball of students of applied sciences in the Dianasaal in February 1865. They all refer to the creation of static electricity. Electrofor (Op. 297), a quick polka by Johann, is the name of a machine that had been invented to produce static electricity, while the titles of a set of waltzes by Josef and a polka by Eduard refer to aspects of the process itself, Combinationen (Combinations, Op. 176) and Die Evolvirende (The Evolving, Op. 13).

Students, Artists and Journalists Founded in 1385, the University of Vienna was one of the oldest institutions in the city, still located in the inner city in the 1860s. It had four faculties: law, medicine, philosophy and theology; music (specifically musicology) was not to become a university subject until the 1890s, though introductory history of music courses open to all students were given by Eduard Hanslick and illustrated at the piano.19 Law and medicine students organized annual balls, and some of the new works composed by Johann and Josef for these occasions were given titles that alluded to their chosen profession. Budding lawyers danced to legal terms such as Sentenzen (Op. 233) and Actionen (Legal Actions, Op. 174), which were waltzes by Johann and by Josef, respectively. For medical students Johann wrote two waltzes, Thermen (Op. 245), a reference to thermal cures, and Die ersten Curen (Basic Cures, Op. 261), the healthy practice of dancing. One of Josef’s medical waltzes was given the title Heilmethoden (Healing Remedies, Op. 189) and the title page 19

Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, pp. 155–7.

Mirroring the Times

of another, Günstige Prognosen, has three mythical norns (‘Past’, ‘Present’ and ‘Future’) spinning the ‘favourable prognosis’ (Figure 11). More disturbing is his set of waltzes Delirien (Op. 212), in which the slow introduction portrays acute delirium, with echoes of the Wolf’s Glen scene in Weber’s Der Freischütz – a delirium that abates only when the melody of the first waltz, a sign of sanity, is prefigured by a solo flute. As well as celebrating the intellectual interests of students in various subjects, the dances composed by Johann, Josef and Eduard in the 1860s reveal how much the social standing of students themselves had changed since the revolutionary year of 1848. As Johann and Josef, in particular, would have recognized, they had long forgotten the reckless impulses and enthusiasms of that year and were now part of a coherent, comfortable wider society. In certain respects, student life had become rather elitist. The favoured venue for their annual ball was the Redoutensaal, routinely sponsored by a group of women aristocrats. They were specifically acknowledged in a set of waltzes composed by Johann for the Carnival of 1862, Patronessen (Patronesses, Op. 264), twelve female aristocrats whose nagmes were then listed on the piano arrangement.20 Male aristocrats hardly ever feature on title pages, pointing to a new, defined presence for women aristocrats in Viennese society in general, the environment that had nurtured the enthusiasms and ambition of Princess Pauline Metternich. As a result of this patronage, a portion of the takings of university balls were routinely given to a fund that supported sick students. As creative figures, Johann, Josef and Eduard were members of a broadly based society for artists, Hesperus (Venus), founded in 1856, which held its annual ball in the Dianasaal. For the 1869 ball Josef provided a set of waltzes, Aquarellen (Water Colours, Op. 258), Eduard a French polka, In Künstlerkreisen (In Artistic Circles, Op. 47), and Johann a polka-mazurka, Fata Morgana (Fairy of Good Fortune, Op. 330). Perhaps the society that best represented the emerging sense of liberal values in Vienna in the 1860s was Concordia, founded in 1859 with the explicit aim of raising money for journalists and publishers who had fallen on hard times, but which soon came to be identified with wider social and cultural discourse as a result of the reforms of the censorship laws in 1862. The government still had oversight of newspapers, pamphlets, journals and 20

Princess Francisca Liechtenstein, Princess Wilhelmine Kinsky, Baroness Antonie von Lasser, Princess Eleonore Schwarzenberg, Privy Counsellor Marie Oppolzer, Princess Antonie Khevenhüller, Countess Celine Bieberstein-Zamadzka, Countess Emilie Thurn, Baroness Julie Spannocchi, Countess Francisca Hardegg, Countess Therese Potocki and Countess Helene Mniszek.

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music publications, but its more enabling outlook saw a rapid rise in the number of newspapers and journals in the 1860s.21 Concordia held its annual Carnival ball in the Sophiensaal, at first led by Johann Strauss, joined later in the decade by his two brothers. The new energy of the emancipated press is reflected in the titles of the waltzes and polkas composed for the society by the three brothers: Leitartikel (Leading Article, Op. 273), Morgenblätter (Morning Papers, Op. 279), FeuilletonWalzer (Supplement Waltz, Op. 293), Flugschriften (Pamphlets, Op. 300), Die Publicisten (The Journalists, Op. 321), Illustrationen (Illustrations, Op. 331) and Von der Börse (From the Stock Exchange, a familiar heading in newspaper columns, Op. 337), all by Johann; Eingesendet (Gone to Press, Op. 240) by Josef; and Nachtrag (Amendment, Op. 35) and Vom Tage (News of the Day, Op. 46) by Eduard. Since Carl Haslinger and Carl Anton Spina were almost certainly members of the society, the title pages of the subsequent piano publications are similarly eye-catching: a list of newspapers and journals (Leitartikel), images of publications (FeuilletonWalzer) and, on the title page of Morgenblätter, a journalist who has just penned his contribution to a paper, relaxing with a cigar in his hand, reading its content to a group of women while being served breakfast by an attentive waitress.22 Johann Strauss himself is featured on the title page of Telegramme (Op. 318), sending the crisp opening motifs of his waltz as a telegram to a young lady, not, it seems, to the forty-nine-year-old Jetty.

Stadt und Land Johann’s first composition after his return from the hugely successful visit to Paris and London in 1867 was a polka, one that reminded his public of his abiding loyalties to Vienna and to the Austrian countryside, Stadt und Land (Op. 322), first performed in the appropriate venue of the Horticultural Society. Even though Johann and Josef often took their holidays in the 21

22

Heidi Hakkarainen, Comical Modernity: Popular Humour and the Transformation of Urban Space in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna (New York, 2019), pp. 28–31. Publications listed on the title page of Johann Strauss, Leitartikel (Op. 273): Donau-Zeitung, Das Vaterland, Die Presse, Wanderer, Vorstadt-Zeitung, Ost-Deutsche Post, Morgen-Post, Der Botschafter, Constitutionelle Oesterreichische Zeitung and Fremden-Blatt. Images on the title page of Feuilleton-Walzer (Op. 293): Kikeriki, Neue freie Presse, Donau-Zeitung, Die Glocke, Figaro, Das Vaterland, Vorstadt-Zeitung, Hans Jörgel in Gumpoldskirchen, Wanderer, FremdenBlatt, Die Presse, Constitutionelle Oesterreichische Zeitung, Morgen-Post, Ost und West and Der Botschafter. The title page of Morgenblätter is reproduced in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), p. 258.

Mirroring the Times

Austrian countryside, their outlook was a thoroughly urban one, two celebrated individuals immersed in a city of 900,000 people. Their father’s professional life had often taken him to towns and villages on the outskirts of Vienna, such as Baden and Mödling, but short visits of that kind are noticeably absent in the careers of the three brothers. Instead, beauty and ways of life in the countryside are fed into a shared overriding identity of town and countryside, rather than a contrasting one. While idealization of the countryside was not a new feature in the Romantic era, evident in Austria in the landscape paintings of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793–1865), offering a similarly idealized view of urban life was more distinctive. ‘Vienna’ and ‘Viennese’ feature regularly in the titles of dances by Johann and Josef in the 1860s: Johann’s Wiener Chronik (also the name of a newspaper supplement, Op. 268), Wiener Bonbons (Op. 307) and NeuWien (Op. 342); and Josef’s Wiener-Bonmots (Viennese Sayings, Op. 108), Wiener Couplets (that is, couplets from popular folk plays, Op. 150), Wiener Leben (Viennese Life, Op. 218), Wiener Stimmen (Voices of Vienna, Op. 239) and Wiener Fresken (Viennese Frescos, Op. 249). Beyond the titles, none of these works identifies programmatic content, but they promote an implied sentiment of fondness and loyalty, the famed Gemütlichkeit of Viennese society, good nature tinged with a certain cosy contentment. It had been in the making for decades in popular plays, comic operas and journal illustrations, as well as dance halls. When Johann Strauss returned from his visit to Russia in 1864, he re-introduced himself to the Viennese with a new polka, ʼS giebt nur a Kaiserstadt, ʼs giebt nur a Wien (There’s Only One Imperial Town, There’s Only One Vienna, Op. 291), a dialect version of ‘Es ist nur ein’ Kaiserstadt/Es ist nur ein Wien’ that had appeared on the title page of his father’s Heimath-Klänge nearly thirty years earlier. The bonbons, bon-mots, voices and frescos of the waltzes and polkas from the 1860s were part of this all-embracing sense of belonging to a city without equal. The title ‘New Vienna’ had particular connotations.23 From the 1820s, that combination of adjective and noun was used entirely positively, synonymous with the good and the beautiful. By the 1860s, it still had those associations, but mixed with irritation about some of the inconveniences caused by the seemingly endless reconstruction of the city. That sense of the new being imposed on society helped to nurture a fondness for the old, ‘Alt-Wien’, an outlook that was to become increasingly common in the 23

Kai Kauffmann, ʻEs ist nur ein Wien!ʼ: Stadtbeschreibungen von Wien 1700 bis 1873 (Vienna, 1994), pp. 320–21.

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remainder of the century. Johann Strauss’s Neu-Wien was a set of four choral waltzes, commissioned by the same organization as had commissioned An der schönen, blauen Donau and Wein, Weib und Gesang!, the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, with a text by one of its members, Josef Weyl, who worked in the offices of the city police. The text of the introduction refers directly to the organization responsible for the expansion of the city, ‘Es griff uns hübsch tief in die Tasche/Die StadterweiterungsCommission’ (The City Expansion Commission reached pretty deep into our pockets), while that of the first waltz directly addresses the city, ‘Mein liebes Wien, du alte Stadt . . . bist du jetzt wie ein Dockerel so nett’ (My dear Vienna, you old town . . . you’re now as pretty as a doll). Subsequent waltzes refer to the increasing influence of parliamentary democracy, the emancipation of women and the fashion for using public transport rather than walking. But whatever else awaits Vienna’s inhabitants, the choral waltz concludes, ‘ʼs gibt nur a Kaiserstadt, ʼs gibt nur a Wien’. There is a further element to the new Vienna that emerges in the music of the Strauss brothers in the 1860s: a polite celebration of the work of the city burghers, an increasingly influential group of citizens, largely separated from the imperial bureaucracy and the parliament. The three Strauss brothers performed regularly at the Bürgerball (Citizens Ball) held in the Redoutensaal. Josef’s set of waltzes, Wiener Stimmen, was performed at the 1868 ball and subsequently dedicated to the organizing committee, as was Johann’s respectfully named polka-mazurka Ein Herz, Ein Sinn (One Heart, One Mind, Op. 323), performed on the same evening. Individuals, families and friends drawn from the Wiener MännergesangVerein, the city burghers, the journalists, university students and other social and professional groups, travelled readily in the summer months to the Wienerwald, an extensive area of natural woodland in the hills to the west and south-west of Vienna; it is safe to assume that Johann, Josef and Eduard, together with their respective families, did so too. Johann’s masterly Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Woods, Op. 325) was first performed in June 1868 in the Volksgarten at a benefit concert for Josef and Eduard, in which Johann also participated. The title page of the subsequent piano version depicts some of the appeal of the area: a zither player (featured at the beginning and end of Strauss’s tales), a loving couple, a shooting competition and a game of skittles (Figure 12). Two years later, the Volksgarten was again the venue for a Wienerwald work by Johann, a French polka that carried the name of a popular inn in the area, Im Krapfenwald’l (At the Krapfenwald’l, Op. 336). Johann was not the first of the brothers to reference the Vienna Woods, however; in 1861, Josef had

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composed a polka-mazurka, Aus dem Wienerwald (Op. 104), the title page of which depicts ramblers resting in a clearing in the forest. There are other shared responses by the three Strauss brothers to the countryside, possibly the products of sibling rivalry gently fanned by C. A. Spina. Josef’s polka-mazurka Die Libelle (The Dragonfly), composed in 1866, had been preceded by Johann’s waltz Libellen (Dragonflies, Op. 180) in 1856 and was followed three years later by Eduard’s Die Biene (The Bee, Op. 54), a French polka. Josef had dealt with inclement summer weather long before Johann’s Unter Donner und Blitz from 1868, composing a Sturm-Polka (Storm Polka, Op. 75) in 1859 and a Blitz-Polka (Lightning Polka, Op. 106) in 1861. Johann’s Unter Donner und Blitz originally had a different, gentler title, Sternschnuppen, a reference to the natural phenomenon of falling stars; Josef had already composed a set of waltzes with that title eight years earlier, with an appropriate image on the title page.24 It remains an open question whether Johann was asked to rename his work or whether he had decided that the bold gestures of his music warranted a reference to a thunderstorm rather than to falling stars. Finally, a year after Johann’s Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, Josef composed a polka that references Nasswald, a village in Lower Austria, Die Nasswalderin (Op. 267). It is a chamber work for two zithers accompanied by three violins, viola, cello and piano.

Body and Soul The sense of physical and mental well-being created by performing, dancing and listening to the music of the Strauss brothers was fundamental to its appeal. It was also without its equal in music, precisely because it invited participation, actual or imagined, in a way that a Beethoven symphony, a Brahms song, a Liszt piano piece or a Wagner opera did not. That appeal is sometimes directly reflected in the titles of individual works, such as Eduard’s Froh durch die ganze Welt! (Joyful throughout the World, Op. 43), Josef’s Heiterer Muth (Cheerful Spirit, Op. 281) and Johann’s Freuet euch des Lebens (Enjoy Life, Op. 340). Other titles, particularly those of fast polkas, exhort urgent action, as in Johann’s Par force! (a huntsman’s call similar to ‘Tally-ho’, Op. 308), Josef’s Pêle-mêle (Op. 161) and the possible result of being too urgent, Eile mit Weile (More Haste, Less Speed, Op. 247). Fashionable outdoor activities are referenced, including hunting (Johann’s Jäger-Polka, Op. 229), horse racing (Josef’s Jokey-Polka, Op. 24

Reproduced in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), p. 210.

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278), rifle shooting (Josef’s Schützen-Marsch, Op. 250, and Johann’s Freikugeln, Op. 326), ice-skating (Josef’s Eislauf, Op. 261) and the novel appeal of cycling (Josef’s Vélocipède, Op. 259). Equally novel were gymnastics and strenuous outdoor exercise; Josef wrote two works for a dedicated society in Vienna, Turner-Quadrille (Gymnastic Quadrille, Op. 92) and Sturmlauf (Fast Running, Op. 136). Appropriately, a choral polka that Johann wrote for the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, Sängerslust (Op. 328), celebrates the joy of singing and dancing, ‘La, la, la . . . Fröhlich singt und lustig tanzt’. As Johann and Josef had often experienced, there was always the pleasure of a holiday away from Vienna: the former wrote Aus den Bergen (From the Mountains, Op. 292), the latter Auf Ferienreisen! (On Holiday, Op. 133). Finally, a few allusions to physical movement or an emotional state are mediated ones, a composer’s response to some of the familiar tropes of Romantic poets, painters and, indeed, other composers: Johann’s Taubenpost (Op. 237) and Postillon d’amour (Op. 317) deal with the image of an expectant letter from a lover, while Die Spinnerin (Op. 192) by Josef reflects his familiarity with ‘spinning music’ by Haydn (Die Jahreszeiten), Schubert (‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’), Mendelssohn (‘Spinnlied’) and Wagner (Der fliegende Holländer). More down to earth are the allusions to everyday discourse, polite or otherwise. Two of Johann Strauss’s best-known works deal with the real world of social chatter in balls and concerts, from the Dianasaal and Sophiensaal to the Volksgarten and Redoutensaal: gossip in the TritschTratsch polka and those bravado mainstays of male life, wine, women and song, in the celebrated waltz. Josef also referenced these qualities: gossip in the wonderfully named fast polka, Plappermäulchen (Babbling through Pursed Lips, Op. 245) from 1868 and Lieb’ und Wein (Love and Wine, Op. 122), a polka-mazurka composed seven years before Johann’s waltz. Both Johann and Josef wrote works that were respectful of women: a polkamazurka by the elder brother, Lob der Frauen (In Praise of Women, Op. 315), a composition prompted by a well-known poem by Friedrich Schiller, ‘Würde der Frauen’. Schiller’s poem and Johann’s polka lay behind the title of a subsequent set of waltzes by Josef, Frauenwürde (The Dignity of Women, Op. 277).

Celebrating Music The music of the Strauss family had always readily engaged with the wider musical life of Vienna, celebrating composers and works together with popular songs in much the same way as it celebrated the imperial family,

Mirroring the Times

punctilious lawyers, carefree students, gymnasts and the Wienerwald. In the 1860s, quadrilles by the Strauss family joyfully raided operas recently performed in Vienna, including Auber’s Le Premier Jour de bonheur, Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (all by Johann Strauss) and Gounod’s Faust (Josef Strauss). Since these operas were usually sung in German, rather than the original French or Italian, the original cultural ambience of Paris and Milan was displaced by a broadly Germanic one, a process of cultural appropriation that was taken a step further – literally so – in the ballrooms of the city, where it became distinctly Viennese. Quadrilles had often quoted familiar songs, from ‘Champagne Charlie’ through French songs to Russian folk melodies. One work by Josef catches the eye, Das musikalische Oesterreich (Musical Austria), a tribute not to the now well-established heritage of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven but to the Austrian folk tradition, a presentation of folk songs and dance tunes from the Austrian crown lands as they existed then, proudly listed on the title page: Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Krakau (Cracow), Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Saxon Siebenbürgen, Hungarian Siebenbürgen, Romanian Siebenbürgen, Dalmatia, Lombardy, Venice, Tyrol, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carnolia, Lower Austria and Upper Austria. Described as a potpourri rather than a quadrille, it was composed as a piano work and published by C. A. Spina in 1865, without an opus number; the title page indicates that Josef Strauss had collected the material besides arranging it (‘zusammengestellt und für das Pianoforte arrangirt von Josef Strauss’), one more indication of his musical curiosity. As well as being the busy publisher of music by the Strauss brothers in the 1860s, C. A. Spina had a particular interest in promoting the music of Franz Schubert.25 He had amassed a substantial collection of the composer’s music in manuscript, notably songs, and during the decade issued several first editions of the music, including the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony. He was the publisher who had renamed Schubert’s overture to Die Zauberharfe the Rosamunde Overture, a work that was taken up by the Strauss brothers in their concerts. In the winter of 1866–7 Spina seems to have persuaded Eduard Strauss to compose a quadrille that featured songs by Schubert – thirteen in number, plus one march (March No. 3 from D819). The songs included ‘Die Forelle’, ‘Ständchen’, ‘Die Nachtigall’ and ‘Heidenröslein’, plus five from Die schöne Müllerin. With the title of Lieder-Kranz (Garland of 25

Margret Jestremski, ‘Spina’, in Ernst Hilmar and Margret Jestremski (eds.), SchubertEnzyklopädie (Tutzing, 2004), vol. 2, pp. 718–19; Norbert Rubey, ‘Strauß’, in Ernst Hilmar and Margret Jestremski (eds.), Schubert-Enzyklopedie (Tutzing, 2004), vol. 2, p. 274.

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Songs, Op. 23), it was first performed at a masked ball in the Sophiensaal on 23 January 1867.26 Four months later, on 27 May, Josef and Eduard participated in a concert to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone for the Schubert memorial in the Stadtpark,27 not far from the Donauweibchen and the well-known memorial statue for Johann Strauss that was to be built over fifty years later. One composer dominates the quadrilles of the three Strauss brothers in the 1860s: Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880). As the inventor of French operetta in the 1850s, he was as much an international figure in that genre as Johann Strauss was in dance music. Theatres in Vienna, especially the Theater an der Wien and the Carltheater, were quick to follow those in Paris with performances of his operettas, translated into German (Offenbach’s native tongue) – an exploding popularity that was consolidated by the many visits the composer made to the city in the 1860s. In the world of operetta, Offenbach enjoyed as much public acclaim in Vienna as the Strauss brothers did in their domain.28 The two worlds came together in no fewer than twelve quadrilles based on themes from Offenbach operettas, listed in Box 4.1. The intensity of this shared enthusiasm, amounting to cultural infatuation, and the efficiency of the supporting commercial business are remarkable: typically, fewer than ten months spanned the premiere in Paris (and in Bad Ems in the case of Coscoletto), the first performance in Vienna and the first performance and publication of a quadrille by one of the Strauss brothers; in the case of La GrandeDuchesse de Gérolstein, it was just seven weeks. ••••• The combined musical output of the Strauss brothers in 1860s reflects a society that was increasingly content with itself, with the torment of the revolutionary year a distant memory. It provided a musical affirmation of Vienna at one with its social and political outlooks, a musical counterpoise to the burgeoning culture of newspaper reading and coffee house conversation, and a shared musical discourse that was accessible and participatory. The commercial energy of Haslinger and C. A. Spina played a fundamental part in the phenomenon, giving priority to distributing the oeuvre to society at large rather than as a specialized service to the music profession. It was as much an item of consumerist fashion as the latest trend in clothing. 26 28

Fremden-Blatt, 23 January 1867. 27 Rubey, ‘Strauß’, p. 274. On Offenbach’s popularity in Vienna, see Laurence Senelick, Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 84–8.

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155

Box 4.1 Offenbach operettas in Vienna referenced in quadrilles by the Strauss brothers, 1860–70 Orphée aux enfers/Orpheus in der Unterwelt Paris premiere: 21 October 1858 Vienna first performance: 17 March 1860 Quadrille: JSII, Op. 236 Piano publication: April 1860 La Chanson de Fortunio/Meister Fortunio und sein Liebeslied Paris premiere: 5 January 1861 Vienna first performance: 24 April 1861 Quadrille: Jos.S, Op. 103 Piano publication: May 1861 La Belle Hélène/Schönen Helene Paris premiere: 17 December 1864 Vienna first performance: 17 March 1865 Quadrille: ES, Op. 14 Piano publication: September/October 1865 Coscoletto Premiere: 11 July 1865 Vienna first performance: 5 January 1866 Quadrille: ES, Op. 15 Piano publication: May 1866 Les Berges/Die Schäfer Paris premiere: 11 December 1865 Vienna first performance: 17 February 1866 Quadrille: Jos.S, Op. 196 Piano publication: March 1866 Barbe-bleue/Blaubart Paris premiere: 5 February 1866 Vienna first performance: 21 September 1866 Quadrille: Jos.S, Op. 206 Piano publication: September 1866 La Vie parisienne/Pariser Leben Paris premiere: 31 October 1866 Vienna first performance: 31 January 1867 Quadrille: ES, Op. 24 Piano publication: August 1867 La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein/Die Großherzogin von Gerolstein

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Box 4.1 (cont.) Paris premiere: 12 April 1867 Vienna first performance: 11 May 1867 Quadrille: Jos.S, Op. 223 Piano publication: May 1867 Geneviève de Brabant/Genofeva von Brabant Paris premiere: 19 November 1859 Vienna first performance: 9 May 1868 Quadrille: Jos.S, Op. 246 Piano publication: May 1868 La Périchole Paris premiere: 6 October 1868 Vienna first performance: 8 January 1869 Quadrille: Jos.S, Op. 256 Piano publication: January 1869 Vert-Vert/Kakadu Paris premiere: 10 March 1869 Vienna first performance: 3 February 1870 Quadrille: Jos.S, Op. 276 Piano publication: March 1870 Les Brigands/Die Banditen Paris premiere: 10 December 1869 Vienna first performance: 12 May 1870 Quadrille: ES, Op. 57 Piano publication: September/October 1870 Sources: Manuela Jahrmarker et al., ‘Offenbach’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, Personenteil, vol. 12 (2004), cols. 1321–6; Strauß-Elementar-Verzeichnis (SEV): Thematisch-Bibliographischer Katalog der Werke von Johann Strauß (Sohn), Vols. 1–8 (Tutzing, 1990–2013), vols. 9– (Vienna, 2017–); Wolfgang Dörner, Josef Strauss: Chronologischthematisches Werkverzeichnis (Vienna, 2021); Alexander Weinmann, Verzeichnis sämtlicher Werke von Josef und Eduard Strauss, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alt-Wiener Musikverlages, vol. 1/3 (Vienna, 1967); Fremden-Blatt, 30 January 1867, 2 February 1870.

Musically, it was also a conjuring trick of the most beguiling kind, whether at home, in a Carnival ball or at a concert. Whereas the relationship between title and content in quadrilles is direct and unambiguous, it is often more complex, even elusive, in waltzes, polkas and marches. If the

Mirroring the Times

music has an external signifier, such as birdsong, thunder, zither playing or a quotation from the national anthem, a link between the given title and content is readily made. Where there are no musical signifiers, the titles could easily be interchanged between works, from one military march to another, from one quick polka to another, even from An der schönen, blauen Donau to Wein, Weib und Gesang! Although applying titles to dances that had no evident programmatic content had been a feature of the tradition from early in the century, it reached a high point of creative sophistry in the 1860s, gently guiding reflection, sentiment and memory. It was this musical independence that also made it appealing to individuals like Brahms and Hanslick. The latter drew attention to that aesthetic self-sufficiency, removed from actual dancing as well from any pictorial element, in Vom Musikalisch-Schönen: ‘Johann Strauss set down some charming, indeed intellectually stimulating music in his better waltzes, but it ceases to be so as soon as we only want to dance to it.’29 Printed dedications underneath the given title added to the sense of a shared experience, one that was socially binding. Rather than the old supplicatory gesture of thanks to a generous patron, they were now much more egalitarian: medical students shared the same interests as Princess Metternich; Franz Joseph the same interests as journalists; and women the same interests as men. Fashion and self-validation did, however, have an increasing degree of social exclusion in the 1860s: not everybody was embraced in this cultural fold. Since the Strausses no longer performed in suburban taverns, their social world was that of the bourgeoisie, the educated professionals and people who took a stroll in the Volksgarten, visited the halls of the Horticultural Society or chatted in smart coffee houses; the growing numbers of working class individuals who lived in crowded accommodation in new suburbs like Floridsdorf and Semmering were at best curious onlookers. Part of the escapist appeal of the music was that it never unfolded a narrative, even when the title itself might have suggested a sequence of events. At the same time, it was also more fluid than a painting, despite any image that appeared on the title page. Equally distinctive is that the subject matter hardly ever harks back to the past, with historical topics such as Prince Eugen’s monument being prompted by contemporary 29

Lee Rothfarb and Christoph Landerer, Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful: A New Translation (Oxford, 2018), p. 92.

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memorialization rather than a desire to re-live his military victories. Ironically, and perhaps unfortunately, later generations were to overlay the music with nostalgia, of a very Viennese kind, Alt-Wien. There are glimpses of this protective veil in the 1860s, yet for the most part the music was thoroughly contemporary – bewitching, celebratory and energizing, but never indulgent. It was, altogether, one of the most distinctive cultural products of the nineteenth century.

5

1871–1899. Two Brothers: Johann and Eduard

Two Futures Johann Strauss’s interest in composing operetta dates back to the mid1860s, having been nurtured by the companionship of his wife, Jetty, who had extensive knowledge and experience of that world. It was conditioned by two contradictory impulses: a desire to broaden his career and innate caution that would have told him that a change was unnecessary and would require new business as well as creative skills. His performances on the podium had always had a strong sense of the theatre in the broadest sense. Also, he had consistently engaged with operatic repertoire, as a composer of quadrilles that drew on newly performed stage works by Auber, Gounod, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Verdi and others, topped up by concert performances of single numbers from operas by Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner. Musically, the theatre was not an alien world. Jetty’s role was to make him more acquainted with its commercial practices, especially the potential to earn substantial sums of money. It was altogether a considered, contemplative process that was not to yield a stage work until 1871, when Indigo und die vierzig Räuber was first performed, and just three years later the sensationally successful Die Fledermaus. The music that Johann wrote on commission for the Wiener Männergesang-Verein – four works between 1867 and 1870 – would have introduced him to some of the mechanics of writing waltzes and polkas with words, including the counter-intuitive practice, common in the world of operetta, of applying words to pre-existing music. Quadrilles, on the other hand, had always ignored texts, and Strauss was now required to be aware of that dimension. As a naturally gifted musician and a confident performer, he was instinctively attuned to the relationship between music and physical movement, perhaps to a greater extent than Offenbach, who had trained as a cellist and always directed with a baton.1 He had shown, too, that he could shape a musical structure 1

Senelick, Jacques Offenbach, pp. 30–3.

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across a ten- to fifteen-minute period, but shaping it across several hours in accordance with a narrative, without it being perceived as a sequence of single attractive numbers, was a new challenge. Pasticcio works like Jupiter und Pluto (written in collaboration with Josef Strauss) would have provided little or no real preparation for the composition of a fully-fledged operetta. At the same time, the practice of compiling pasticcio operetta on the existing music of the Strauss family – father and all three brothers – had already begun: in January 1867 the Theater in der Josefstadt presented two performances of ‘an old, new, free farce’ (‘Eine alte, neue freie Posse’) that included music by members of the Strauss family alongside music by Franz Suppé (1819–95), Adolf Müller (1801–86), Joseph Lanner and others.2 At the very least, Johann may well have thought that in collaboration with a librettist he could compile a pasticcio operetta based on his own music. During the late 1860s there were rumours of varying credibility that Strauss was working on a particular stage project, including a pasticcio work based on the adventures of Don Quixote and an original operetta on the legendary founder of Rome, Romulus. The project that sustained his attention the most was Die lustigen Weiber von Wien, the text of which he had received from the librettist and journalist Josef Braun (1840–1902).3 The title was clearly a parody of Otto Nicolai’s opera Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor), a staple part of the repertoire at the Court Opera House, where Nicolai had been the well-regarded music director in the 1840s. That institutional relationship would have appealed to Strauss, as would, more fundamentally, the focus on Vienna; he had, after all, composed twelve works with ‘Vienna’ in the title and there may well have been vague plans to incorporate some of them in Die lustigen Weiber von Wien. A new appointment in the Theater an der Wien proved to be a decisive turning point in Johann’s cautious engagement with operetta. Born in Danzig in 1823, Richard Genée (1823–95) was one of the most experienced figures in the world of German operetta; composer, librettist and conductor, he was able to deal with the creative process from raw idea to premiere. This thoroughly pragmatic, resourceful professionalism was precisely what Strauss needed, and Genée was to figure in Strauss’s new existence for over twenty years. He was not, however, someone who 2 3

Fremden-Blatt, 27 and 30 January 1867. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 78, 96, 140–1.

Two Futures

worked in precious isolation. As was typical of the commercial world of operetta, Genée worked with others as the need arose, from librettists to composers to senior administrative figures – in this case, the joint management of Maximilian Steiner (1830–80), a career administrator, and Marie Geistinger (1836–1903), the star performer at the Theater an Wien – although his precise contribution to a single stage work was often difficult to pinpoint. Operetta, compared with opera, was a genre that readily rode roughshod over creative narcissism. Over the winter of 1869–70 Genée instilled a sense of purpose in Strauss’s ambition, to the extent that he was offered a contract by the management of the Theater an der Wien in May 1870, a few days after Josef Strauss had begun his fateful series of concerts in Warsaw. The eleven clauses of the contract skilfully combine detail and flexibility.4 Collectively, Steiner, Geistinger and Genée clearly believed that this was a major event in the development of operetta in Vienna, and indeed German-speaking Europe in general, marking the arrival of a new Offenbach. For two seasons the Theater an der Wien was to have exclusive rights to all theatrical works composed by Johann Strauss, whether the product of a libretto sourced by him or provided by the theatre. Within four weeks of receiving a completed work the theatre would indicate whether it was going to stage it and, if so, commit to a first performance within a further eight weeks. Strauss had already begun work on his first operetta, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (referred to as Ali Baba in the contract), and was to deliver the vocal music by 15 June 1870, followed by the entire score by the end of November 1870; the premiere was promised for the beginning of February 1871 at the latest. As regards payment for this and any other any stage work that occupied an entire evening, Strauss was to receive 10 per cent of gross box office takings. Following twenty performances (and subsequent multiples of twenty), Strauss was to be granted a benefit performance, from which he was guaranteed half the takings minus costs; such payments were to continue beyond the period of the contract. Strauss’s susceptibility to illness was also taken into account, with the indicated timetable for the composition of an operetta sympathetically extended by the length of any debilitating illness. In the summer and autumn of 1870 Johann worked on the operetta in accordance with the timetable set out in the contract, seemingly unperturbed by the illness and subsequent death of his brother. Although Steiner was to be credited with preparing the text, it is likely that it was the work of several 4

Transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 151–3.

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people, including Genée; entitled Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (Indigo and the Forty Thieves), it was duly submitted in time for performance in February 1871. Buoyed by this new professional lifestyle, Johann had made a bold, even provocative, decision to give up the title of Hofballmusikdirektor – a title he had assiduously sought for seven years and then held for just eight years. In a formal petition to the court, delivered on 5 January 1871, he cited his general health as the only reason but carefully used the diversionary tactic of recounting how successful his general career had become, referring to his oeuvre of some 350 works, ensuring local and international fame; his success as a conductor, including ‘the highly significant and epoch-making artistic creations of Richard Wagner’; and his participation in the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867.5 While performing at the imperial court during the annual Carnival period had never been especially time-consuming, it seems that he had become tired of the duty and, in a society that valued titles and enjoyed privileged employment for life, he had decided to take the highly unorthodox step of giving them up. The response of the imperial court was as magnanimous as it had been curtly indifferent when he had first sought the post. It willingly acceded to the request and, in recognition of his work at the court balls and as composer, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph. Three months later, on 27 April, he was given an audience at court, when he was personally thanked by the emperor.6 The first performance of Indigo und die vierzig Räuber on 10 February was eagerly awaited: how would someone who had dominated the musical landscape of Vienna for over twenty years respond to the new challenge? It was this existing status as much as the work itself that ensured its success. With his customary energy, Strauss conducted the premiere; there was a cast list of close to thirty, including Marie Geistinger in the lead female role of Fantasca, supplemented by a troupe of dancers. Loosely derived from the fabled stories of 1001 Nights, the plot injects Vienna into the narrative as the hometown of Fantasca, the leader of the harem, to which she longs to return. Alongside some alla turca colouring long familiar to Viennese audiences, Strauss’s score consists of waltzes and polkas: it was this presentation of the familiar Strauss, rather than an overtly experimental Strauss, that appealed to the audience. An old school friend of the 5

6

Petition transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 177–9; and Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 229–31. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 179–83; Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 232–4.

Two Futures

composer, Anton Langer (1824–79), an author and journalist who also wrote for the stage, penned a supportive public letter that summarized its success and hinted at possible pitfalls that might arise in the future: You have enough talent that an operetta by you needs no theatrical element other than your music. You don’t find it necessary to present fifty half-naked women or women in trousers; you don’t find it necessary to share your triumph with the tailor, the scene painter, the laminater, the gold embroider and the lighting operators. Get yourself a good libretto and ‘Good luck’ with the next work.7

Eduard Hanslick was more forthright and regarded the move from dance composition to the theatre as ill-conceived. In a lengthy review in the Neue Freie Presse, he first proclaims his admiration for Johann Strauss, and the Strauss family as a whole, for their contribution to musical life. But composing dances was not the best preparation for composing stage works: it was akin to a painter of still life and animals wanting to be a historical painter, or a poet who writes epigrams or sonnets daring to write a drama. Hanslick recognizes the attractiveness of individual numbers, but bemoans the one-dimensional characters and the lack of true drama. ‘A man of the reputation and talent of Johann Strauss would have been better off having nothing to do with it.’8 Despite Hanslick’s view, by the end of the year Strauss’s operetta had been performed over sixty times, plus a run of performances in Graz; this succès d’estime laid the foundation for his career during the next twelve years, which were to see a series of eight further operettas. Meanwhile, Eduard Strauss had laid equally solid foundations for his career. After sharing responsibility for the activities of the Strauss Orchestra with Josef, he was now in sole charge, relieved of fraternal tensions. Josef was no longer a rival; while Johann was entirely preoccupied with his own career, though his music, new and old, continued to be performed by the ensemble. Eduard adroitly cultivated the middle ground between dance music performed for actual dancing (in particular, the extremely popular masked balls) and the high-minded concerts presented by the Court Opera Orchestra. The new venue of the Musikverein became a permanent venue, and this relationship was to be a mainstay of his career through to the end of the century. Smaller than the capacious halls of the Sophiensaal and the Dianasaal, the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein encouraged focussed listening to the ensemble placed on an elevated stage, while at the same time allowing the public to sit at tables and enjoy 7

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 187–8.

8

Neue Freie Presse, 12 February 1871.

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their refreshments. When the same hall was used as a dance venue, including by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde itself, it surreptitiously cemented this association between Strauss, the venue and wider cultural society. The promenade concerts were held on a weekly basis on Sunday afternoons, at first in the period between the end of Carnival and early spring, later at other times of the year too. From the accumulated resources of the Strauss Orchestra, arrangements of music by Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Wagner and others continued to be performed alongside waltzes, polkas and quadrilles. Naturally, new works by Eduard were performed, but audiences responded even more enthusiastically to new works by Johann Strauss, partly because they were now routinely drawn from his latest stage work (as summarized in Box 6.1), adding yet another dimension to the appeal of the Musikverein concerts. In 1871 Eduard’s concerts at the hall included four works drawn from Indigo und die vierzig Räuber: the overture (not published), performed on 26 February; a quadrille Indigo-Quadrille (Op. 344), performed on 5 March; a set of waltzes, Tausend und eine Nacht (Op. 346), performed a week later, on 12 March; and a march, Indigo-Marsch (Op. 349), performed on 9 April.9 For much of the 1870s a previous, long-standing professional relationship governed Eduard’s activities in the summer months: his engagement for concerts in the Volksgarten. Directed by Eduard, these concerts showed the same mix of programming, arrangements of music by ‘classical’ composers, new works by Eduard, an occasional work by Josef and, again, the latest music by Johann. Three polkas drawn from Indigo and a fast polka, Im Sturmschritt (Double Quick, Op. 348), were performed at the Maifest on 19 May; a polka-mazurka, Aus der Heimath (From the Homeland, Op. 347), at Großes Sommerfest on 2 June; and a French polka, Lust’ger Rath (Joyful Advice, Op. 350), at Eduard’s benefit concert on 16 June. The many traditional appearances at various society balls during Carnival constituted the final strand in Eduard’s career. In 1871 Johann managed to figure there, too, with two further derivative dances, both polkas, performed in advance of the premiere: Schawl-Polka (Shawl Polka, Op. 343) at the ‘Concordia’ ball on 7 February and Auf freiem Fuße (At Liberty, Op. 345) at the law students’ ball in the Sophiensaal on 14 February. Johann turned up to conduct at the first of these, the ball for the society of authors and journalists, probably motivated by the fact that within a few days some of the journalists were going to be commenting on the premiere of Indigo. 9

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 190.

Two Futures

Johann had become adept at maintaining his public standing in concerts and dance halls, even if meant eclipsing that of his brother, who was usually the presiding figure. Inevitably, that led to renewed tension. Eduard, too, was ambitious, but he lacked the carefree flair of his brother and managed to create the impression that he was more interested in accruing status than public acclaim. The autumn of 1870 had seen the state visit of the emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, to Vienna. While strolling in the Volksgarten, the emperor happened to hear a concert directed by Eduard, was much taken by the event and invited him to a private meeting. Eduard composed a new march with a French title, La Gloire du Brésil (The Glory of Brazil, Op. 63), that quoted the Brazilian national anthem in the trio section. Rather bizarrely, it might seem, he was rewarded with the honorary title of ‘Director of Music to the Imperial Brazilian Court’, which he was to use for the rest of his life (including on title pages, see Figures 13 and 14), even after the country became a republic in 1889.10 But the honour was not an entirely eccentric one. Emperor Dom Pedro II was highly regarded, both in his own country (where he was dubbed ‘Pedro the Magnanimous’) and internationally. Moreover, he had Habsburg blood: his mother was Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, a daughter of Emperor Franz II (I). Like his cousin Emperor Franz Joseph, he had a strong sense of duty but, unlike Franz Joseph, was also naturally progressive in his political views and had wide intellectual interests, including music; he was, for instance, a supporter of Wagner and contributed to the building of the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth, which opened a few years after his visit to Vienna. As for the imperial court in Vienna, it first invited Eduard to direct the music at a court ball on 10 January 1872; five weeks later he was awarded – without formal petition, it seems – the title formerly enjoyed by his father and his brother, k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor.11 It was soon routinely printed on title pages of his music alongside his other imperial title, kaiserl. brasil. Hofkapellmeister honoraire. Even though Johann had asked to be relieved of any duties associated with the title of Hofballmusikdirektor, his published music continued to feature it through to the middle of the 1880s. Both brothers were thoroughly Viennese in their fondness for titles, and a few months after Eduard had been granted his title a bureaucratic process was begun that could have led to Johann gaining a knighthood. It was even odder than the Brazilian 10 11

Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 59–60. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 202; document transcribed in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 236.

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award, comparable to an improbable operetta plot. Jetty Strauss’s father, Josef Franz Ritter von Scherer (1796–1886), was a retired imperial bureaucrat and a widower who had come up with the idea that if he were to adopt Johann as his son, Johann would inherit the title of ‘Ritter von’, a member of the so-called second aristocracy. With Johann’s full support, Scherer, who had himself inherited the title from his father, prepared a lengthy petition addressed to the emperor. The process dragged on for nearly a year before the request was finally rejected.12

World Peace Jubilee (Boston) and World Exhibition (Vienna) The promising success of Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, recently performed in Berlin as well as in Vienna and Graz, encouraged the Theater an der Wien to commission a new work, Carneval in Rom. As well as having to travel to Graz and Berlin to conduct performances of Indigo, Johann was experiencing other pressures on his time: he was contracted to return to Pawlowsk in the summer of 1872, his first visit there for three years, and he was anxious, too, to maintain contact with Baden-Baden, where he had enjoyed a musically successful and socially stimulating visit the previous year. These competing pressures were put to one side by an entirely unexpected invitation, from the United States of America. The city of Boston was preparing a ‘World Peace Jubilee and International Music Festival’, under the management of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore (1829–92), to mark the end of the Franco-Prussian War, two identities strongly represented in Boston’s immigrant population. Boston could legitimately claim to be America’s leading cultural city; Harvard University (founded in 1636) had recently been joined by other institutions, Boston University and Boston Conservatory (both established in 1867), and the Museum of Fine Arts (established in 1870). Gilmore was a central figure in its musical life, as a bandsman, composer, the proprietor of a music shop and the director of promenade concerts; he had, moreover, acquired a reputation as an ambitious and efficient organizer. For the 1872 festival a ‘coliseum’ was built, capable of holding up to 100,000 people. As well as American bands, military bands were engaged from Berlin, London and Paris. Johann Strauss, already popular in those cities, was engaged as the leading attraction. Johann and Jetty would have been attracted by the 12

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 204; documents transcribed in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 237–40, 242–51.

Boston World Peace Jubilee, Vienna World Exhibition

honorarium of 100,000 dollars. Both, too, would have been familiar with the frequent advertisements in Viennese newspapers for steamships sailing from Bremerhaven that carried migrants to the United States – an adventure they could now experience first-hand as honoured visitors rather than nervous immigrants. Without much hesitation, Johann reneged on the contract to travel to Pawlowsk.13 It was from Bremerhaven that Johann and Jetty, plus three servants, sailed on 1 June, crossing the Atlantic to New York before travelling onwards to Boston. Johann was accustomed to ‘monster concerts’ in Vienna, but the Boston Coliseum was on an unimaginably monstrous scale, verging on the impractical. The assembled performers numbered around 1,000; the beginning of each item in a concert was signalled by cannon fire; and Strauss directed in his customary way with violin in the hand, relaying the beat to twenty sub-directors. An der schönen, blauen Donau was especially popular, as was the Pizzicato Polka. For Gilmore’s benefit concert he presented a new work, Jubilee-Waltz, in reality a sequence of existing waltz melodies that culminated in the coda with a new tune, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. Johann was much taken with the commercial energy that he encountered in Boston, readily engaging with journalists but avoiding what he described as the ‘army of impresarios’ wanting to arrange further tours. The visit seems also to have been a catalyst for music publishers in America, notably Ditson in Boston, to issue their own, pirated editions of Strauss’s music, for which Strauss gained publicity but no extra income. On the back of the successful appearances in Boston, Strauss appeared in three hastily arranged concerts in New York, for which he earned a further 4,500 dollars. He flattered his enthusiastic audience with the ManhattanWaltz, once more drawing on existing works but including a familiar tune in the coda, this time the popular song ‘The Old Folks at Home’. After a stay of six extraordinary weeks, Johann, Jetty and servants sailed from New York to Bremerhaven on 13 July in a steamship that could not have been more appropriately named, the Donau.14 Their temporary destination was actually closer to the Rhine, BadenBaden, where they stayed until early October, partly to avoid a cholera outbreak in Vienna. It was a period that combined relaxation with the directing of some concerts, the renewal of previous acquaintances and planning for the future. Hans von Bülow (1830–94), whom Strauss had 13 14

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 203. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 205–9.

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first met in Haslinger’s shop in Vienna in the early 1850s, was also in BadenBaden. He was so taken with Johann Strauss’s conducting of the local orchestra that he asked to attend a rehearsal, where his admiration grew even more, to the extent that he penned a public letter, addressed to the orchestra and published in a local newspaper.15 He describes how, despite having attended its Baden-Baden concerts for many years, he had never heard the local spa orchestra play so well: ‘such wonderful precision, such rhythmic sensitivity, such fiery energy . . . Gentlemen, permit me to congratulate you on becoming so Austrian in such a short period of time.’ He also weaves a historical narrative that was beginning to take hold, namely, that German music was dependent on Vienna not Berlin. ‘The creator of the German dance, like the German song, is the Viennese Franz Schubert – his legitimate heir and successor as the cultivator and developer of German dance, to the level of a work of art, is your present conductor Johann Strauss.’ While Johann was directing the Baden-Baden orchestra, there was a second, visiting orchestra in the town, directed by Julius Langenbach (1823–86), who impressed Johann as much as Johann had impressed von Bülow. Numbering about forty players, the orchestra was based in Elberfeld, a small town to the east of Düsseldorf (now part of Wuppertal). From his earliest visits to Pawlowsk to the triumph of the World Exhibition in Paris and now the concerts in Baden-Baden, Johann had always developed a good working relationship with German players and, to a lesser extent, conductors. The scenario was about to be repeated in Vienna, with Johann Strauss once more as the opportunistic beneficiary and his brother Eduard filling Benjamin Bilse’s role as the partner who was destined to be slighted. Since the third World Exhibition in London in 1862, Austria had held the ambition of hosting the event, further intensified by the success of the Paris exhibition in 1867. Detailed planning began in 1871, when a dedicated office was set up in the Praterstrasse.16 Following the example of the Paris exhibition, the organizers had decided that concerts should be held in a dedicated pavilion on the exhibition site and, very reasonably, they contacted Johann Strauss in Baden-Baden for his views. Rather than making the obvious recommendation that the Strauss Orchestra should be engaged and that he and Eduard would share the direction, which was an arrangement the two brothers had already discussed informally, Johann suggested that 15 16

Partially described in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 213–14. Noëmi Leemann, ‘Die Weltausstellung kommt nach Wien: Ein Unternehmen der Superlative’, in Wolfgang Kos and Ralph Gleis (eds.), Experiment Metropole: 1873, Wien und die Weltausstellung, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2014), pp. 118–25.

Boston World Peace Jubilee, Vienna World Exhibition

Langenbach’s orchestra should be engaged.17 On hearing the news, Eduard wrote an extremely angry letter, addressed to Jetty but accusing them both of betrayal, not only of an apparent agreement but of the wider honour of the family, including the deceased Anna Strauss and Josef.18 Johann and Jetty ignored Eduard’s protestations. They returned to Vienna in mid-October and for much of the ensuing winter there was little or no communication between the brothers. Johann busied himself with composing Carneval in Rom and finalizing arrangements for the appearance of a German orchestra in the Austrian World Exhibition; Eduard carried on with his concerts, which, as always, included works by his brother. One of Eduard’s concerts in the Musikverein towards the end of the 1872– 3 season was announced as a celebration of fifty years of musical presence in Vienna for the Strauss family, a claim that was a little strained since in 1823 Johann Strauss (Father) had only just joined the Lanner ensemble and had not yet composed any dances. But for Eduard, at least, it was a welcome opportunity to celebrate the family tradition that he had accused Johann of ignoring. Johann was invited to participate and agreed. The concert was divided into two parts: history and the present. It began with the music of Johann Strauss (senior) and Josef Strauss: Eduard opened the concert with the Radetzky march; Johann directed his father’s first and last waltzes, the Täuberln-Walzer and the Soldaten-Lieder (Op. 242), plus his most popular waltz, the Loreley-Rhein-Klänge. The first half continued with Eduard conducting a generous number of works by his late brother: Die Ersten und Letzen and Rudolfs-Klänge (Op. 283), his first and last works, followed by three polkas, Frauenherz, Die Libelle and Blitz-Polka. The first half ended with the entertaining potpourri from the 1830s by Johann Strauss (senior), Ein Strauss von Strauss. The second half was shorter: Johann directed a polka derived from Carneval in Rom, Vom Donaustrande (From the Danube Shore, Op. 356), and Eduard the most popular of his recent works, the aptly titled Myrthen-Sträußchen waltz (Bouquets of Myrtle, Op. 87).19 One newspaper reported that the audience was one with long memories, an elite gathering in which the old property-owning middle class (the Wiener Bürgertum) was especially well represented.20 If Eduard hoped that this very public display of family unity would lead to a thaw in the relationship between him and his brother, he was to be disappointed. Within a few weeks it had taken several turns for the worse. 17 18 19 20

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 215. Letter of 3 October 1872; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 215–17. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 225–7. Neue Wiener Tagblatt, 6 April 1873; transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 226.

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Just over a fortnight after the Strauss concert, on 22 April, the Musikverein was the venue for an even grander event, a ball to raise money for the pension fund of the Court Opera House and, more generally, to celebrate the wedding of Archduchess Gisela (Franz Joseph’s second child) to Prince Leopold of Bavaria; he was twenty-seven, she was only sixteen. Very reasonably as Hofballmusikdirektor and a regular conductor of concerts in the Musikverein since its opening, Eduard might have assumed that he would be asked to conduct. Instead, the organizers went for the more celebrated Johann, then in the middle of a successful run of performances of Carneval in Rom. Ever the imaginative opportunist, Johann composed a new set of waltzes that took its title from a best-selling book that had appeared that very year, and one that explored the same sense of place and inheritance that the Strauss family had cultivated over the decades: Friedrich Schlögel’s Wiener Blut: Kleine Culturbilder aus dem Volksleben der alten Kaiserstadt an der Donau (The Blood of Vienna: Small Culture Vignettes from the Life of the People of the Old Imperial City on the Danube). Strauss’s Wiener Blut (Op. 354) was performed by an eightystrong orchestra taken from the ranks of the Court Opera Orchestra and directed by the composer (another indicator of esteem for Johann, another slight for Eduard).21 Johann seemed indifferent to his brother’s feelings as he enjoyed the success of his second operetta, Carneval in Rom, his commanding position as the director of high-society balls and, soon, his position as one of the directors of the Wiener Weltausstellungskapelle (Vienna World Exhibition Orchestra), as Langenbach’s orchestra was now described. From the ‘Hirschenhaus’ on the Taborstrasse, Eduard and his family would have been well aware of the preparations that were taking place in the Prater for the World Exhibition. Vienna was determined that this exhibition would be the largest ever, catering for visitors from all over the globe for six months, from May to November. In terms of its physical scale, it built on the self-confidence of the Ringstrasse project and used much of the same expertise and physical resources. The large, but very flat area of the Prater easily accommodated the many temporary buildings that housed the different exhibition halls, but the focal point, the Rotunde, was to be a permanent legacy, at the time the largest dome structure in the world, one that was to survive until 1937, when it was irreparably damaged by fire. While exhibitors and the curious public could easily spend several days exploring the site, it also benefitted the 21

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 227–8.

Boston World Peace Jubilee, Vienna World Exhibition

city as a whole, with improvements in the horse-drawn omnibus and tram systems. It also gave a boost to the incipient tourist industry, with many newly constructed hotels in the city spurring international publicity; Thomas Cook in London, for instance, offered a pre-booked package that included travel (trains and steamship) plus hotel. Nearly sixty years after the Congress of Vienna that had shaped post-Napoleonic Europe, the city was, once more, at the centre of the civilized world.22 Ambition, pride and self-confidence were not to be rewarded. The formal opening on 1 May, attended by royalty from Belgium, Britain, Denmark and Prussia, was ruined by the exceptionally cold and wet weather, which continued through to early June. Cholera returned to the city, claiming over 2,000 victims and deterring potential visitors. Even more damaging than the weather and the threat to public health was the complete collapse of the economic system that the exhibition was meant to celebrate and promote. On 9 May the value of shares on the Vienna stock exchange plummeted, marking the start of a sustained crash that ended the boom years of Franz Joseph’s reign, the Gründerzeit, and was to shape wider social and political developments for the remainder of the century. Instead of the anticipated twenty million visitors, just seven million had attended when the exhibition finally closed in early November. Alongside this national calamity, the now very public tension between Johann and Eduard Strauss continued to unfold. Early in May Johann caught a heavy cold, which meant that his appearances with the Wiener Weltausstellungskapelle were fewer than Langenbach had expected, and certainly far fewer than international visitors wanting the Strauss experience had hoped for. With a dwindling number of visitors and the reluctance of many to negotiate the increasingly muddy paths of the Prater, Johann Strauss and Langenbach organized concerts in some of the more traditional venues in the city, such as the Blumensäle, involving the always popular Wiener Männergesang-Verein in their programmes; a new choral waltz was composed for the society with the optimistically gemütlich title of Bei uns z’Haus (At Home with Us, Op. 361). Eduard devoted several pages of his memoirs to these few months.23 Clearly wounded by what he pointedly terms (and punctuates) ‘the swindle of the “Viennese” exhibition orchestra’ 22

23

For a richly illustrated account of the exhibition, see Wolfgang Kos and Ralph Gleis (eds.), Experiment Metropole: 1873, Wien und die Weltausstellung, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2014). On the wider economic and political background, see Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 143–7; Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 185–8. Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1906), pp. 58–63; see also Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 70–1.

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(‘der Schwindel “Wiener” Ausstellungscapelle’), he also, very reasonably, admitted that, in the end, his own career benefitted. By mid-summer the failing exhibition exposed a major division within the organizers that resulted in the sidelining of its leading figure, Baron Schwarz-Senborn. Part of this wider disaffection was the unexpected, and to some inexplicable, absence of a Strauss orchestra directed by a member of the Strauss family in the official programme of the exhibition – a disaffection that only grew when it became known that a reactionary attempt to involve the Strauss Orchestra was stymied by the clauses of the legal contract with Langenbach and the Weltausstellungskapelle. Influential figures sympathetic to Eduard, however, did open other doors for him. Two of the many musically informed royal visitors to Vienna were Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia and his wife, Crown Princess Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria. They attended a concert at the exhibition, expecting to see the Strauss Orchestra, but were surprised by the appearance of someone they already knew, Julius Langenbach. Diplomatic embarrassment was assuaged by a hastily arranged visit to the Volksgarten, where the Strauss Orchestra was playing, but not, as it happened on that evening, directed by Eduard Strauss, for he was providing the music at a dinner in honour of two of Victoria’s brothers, Edward Prince of Wales and Arthur Duke of Connaught. Finally, a special private performance by the Strauss Orchestra was organized for Friedrich and Victoria. Two interesting details emerge from this event. As well as directing with a violin, Eduard played the harp in several arrangements for that instrument plus string quartet of music by other composers, which suggests that this was still an occasional practice. Princess Victoria informed Eduard that her mother had suggested that she should ask him to perform the Doctrinen waltzes (Op. 79), a favourite work of the British monarch, even though that work had been published only the previous summer and Eduard had not yet visited Britain. If this particular detail is correct, it suggests that his music was already known in Britain. Johann Strauss continued to keep a low public profile in the summer months. After his illness he devoted much of his time to the composition of a new operetta, his third, Die Fledermaus, allegedly composed in forty-two days and nights. By October it was essentially complete and Johann was able to focus his attention more consistently on other activities. He seems to have been the instigator of a charity concert to raise money for victims of cholera in Hungary, seeking support at the highest level of the Habsburg government. One of the key figures in the Ausgleich of 1867 was Count Gyula Andrássy, someone who personified that settlement. Previously a revolutionary much resented by the Habsburg authorities, he had

Boston World Peace Jubilee, Vienna World Exhibition

promoted the ideal of a political settlement partly through gaining the sympathetic ear of Empress Elisabeth; he became prime minister of Hungary in 1867 and four years later foreign minister for the whole empire, a position he held until his retirement in 1879.24 Johann wrote to Andrássy’s wife, Countess Kathinka Andrássy (d.1896), seeking her support for the charity concert; she willingly agreed and offered to rally support from other aristocrats.25 The Musikverein was booked for Saturday, 25 October, provocatively a day before one of Eduard’s regular concerts in the same venue; the Fremden-Blatt compounded the issue by advertising both in the same issue, one above the other.26 Billed as a one-off vocal and instrumental concert (‘Außergewöhnliches Vokal- und Instrumental-Konzert’), it featured the Wiener Weltausstellungskapelle, the Wiener MännergesangVerein and three singers, Rosa Csillag, Marie Geistinger and Randolff. After the orchestra performed the ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ from Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, an orchestral arrangement of the variations on ‘Gott erhalte’ from Haydn’s Quartet Op. 76, No.3, and the Pizzicato Polka by Johann and Josef Strauss, it was joined by the Männergesang-Verein for a performance of the recent choral waltz, Wiener Blut. Rosa Csillag, a native Hungarian, sang the so-called ‘Bolero’ aria (‘Merci, jeunes amies’) from Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes, but the real highlight was a brand-new aria by Johann Strauss that highlighted the central charitable purpose of the evening, a Hungarian csárdás drawn from the recently completed, but not yet staged, Die Fledermaus and skilfully crafted for its destined singer, Marie Geistinger.27 In the operetta it is set up as a parody, sung by Roselinda dressed as a Hungarian countess at a masked ball (a would-be Countess Kathinka Andrássy), but Strauss had already learnt the trick of musical virtuosity triumphing over dramatic context. It was a notable success, as was the concert as a whole, raising 1,500 florins for the Hungarian victims of cholera.28 The premiere of Die Fledermaus at the Theater an der Wien had been pencilled in for January 1874, but it was postponed because of the particularly successful run of performances of Verdi’s La traviata and Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Adelina Patti in the respective leading roles of Violetta and Rosina.29 In the aftermath of the financial crash and the 24 25 27 28

29

Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 150–2, 154, 177, 211–12. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 238. 26 Fremden-Blatt, 25 October 1873. Programme summarized in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 241–2. Reported in a letter of thanks from Johann Strauss; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 244. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 246.

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comparative failure of the World Exhibition, these performances of popular works by Verdi and Rossini were an escape from reality, an experience long associated with the music of the Strauss family. Die Fledermaus, however, marked out new territory for Johann Strauss’s creative personality, as well as for the genre as a whole. Much of the credit for this was due to the customary collaborative working methods of the operetta industry in Vienna. Maximilian Steiner, the director of the Theater an der Wien, had heard of the success of a new comedy play performed in Paris, Le réveillon (The Midnight Supper) by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, and purchased the rights to have it staged in Vienna. On the advice of Gustav Lewy, Strauss’s old schoolboy friend and, from the triumphant visit to Paris onwards, his agent, it was decided that the play would make a good basis for an operetta. The original location was high society in Paris, with the action taking place on New Year’s Eve: unscrupulous behaviour before, during and after a masked ball, aided and abetted by complicit professionals, including a lawyer and a prison governor, and all resolved in the unlikely venue of the prison.30 Although the re-working of the play into a libretto was credited to two people, Karl Haffner and Richard Genée, with the former translating the original French into German and the latter turning it into a viable text for the composer, it is likely that Genée once more helped to shape the musical response too; certainly, his musical handwriting is evident in the autograph score.31 The names of the leading characters were taken from the original play, as was the general course of the plot. Changing the location from contemporary Paris to contemporary Vienna was an inevitable and easy decision, fitting in with the musical personality of the composer. But Genée’s masterstroke – if it was his rather than Haffner’s or, indeed, Steiner’s – was to not make this change explicit: the action is described as taking place ‘in a spa town near a large city’, which everyone recognized as Baden, sixteen miles to the south of Vienna. ‘Wien’ and ‘Baden’ are never mentioned in the libretto, allowing the audience in the Theater an der Wien the pretence of being implicit in its workings rather than complicit. With the exception of the imperial house itself – no censor would have allowed the Habsburg family to feature in a stage work – all sections of 30

31

For an account of the original play (plus a synopsis), see Dietrich Stoverock, Die Oper, Schriftenreihe über Bühnenwerke: Die Fledermaus, Operette von Johann Strauss, 2nd edn (Berlin, 1973), pp. 30–3. Neue Johann Strauss Gesamtausgabe, Serie I, Werkgruppe 2, vol. 3: Die Fledermaus, ed. Michael Rot (Vienna, 1999), p. xi.

Boston World Peace Jubilee, Vienna World Exhibition

society are represented: a Russian prince (Orlofsky), the well-to-do second aristocracy with their self-regarding ‘von’ (Gabriel and Rosalinde von Eisenstein), the professionals with their titles (Dr Falke and Dr Blind, that is Doctors Hawk and Blind), an Italian singing teacher (Alfredo), a musically-gifted parlour maid (Adele) and three unnamed servants of the prince. Not evident in most modern productions are the other guests of the prince who appear in the Act 2 ball: a troupe of unaccompanied women whose names – Ida, Melanie, Felicita, Sidi, Minni, Faustine, Silvia, Sabine, Bertha, Loni and Paula – suggest a particular kind of easy familiarity.32 In a city that had recently hosted an international exhibition the dramatis personae are notably international, too. Italy (until 1870 partly a Habsburg territory) is represented by Alfredo and Ausgleich Hungary is celebrated in the csárdás. As well as Russia, many other countries are referenced, sometimes mocked: America (Murray), England (Lord Middleton), Egypt (Ali Bey) and France (‘Chevalier Chagrin’, the name assumed by the prison governor, Frank, in the masked ball). The ballet sequence in Act 2 specifically identifies dances of different nationalities: Spanish, Scottish, Russian, Hungarian and, by implication, Polish (a polka). There is some routine anti-Semitism of a type that was to become ever more strident in the remaining decades of the century; the legal profession was already one favoured by Jews and Dr Falke’s name (Dr Hawk) evokes the physical racial stereotype of a hooked nose.33 First performed eleven months after the financial crash and six months after the end of the desultory World Exhibition, the image of people at play in the ‘spa town’ is hardly a positive one, more cynical than escapist; this is not the Vienna of Johann Strauss’s Gruß an Wien (Op. 225), Josef’s Wiener Stimmen or Eduard’s Wiener Welt-Ausstellungs-Marsch (Op. 107). But it was not unique. Its mixture of cynicism and humour was the product of a burgeoning tradition that had gained momentum during the Gründerzeit, nurtured by relaxed censorship, with the protracted Ringstrasse project, the failed exhibition and the financial crash providing easy targets.34 Cartoons, scurrilous verses and short waspish articles in the popular newspaper Kikeriki (Cock-a-doodle-do) regularly painted a picture of the real Vienna as opposed to the official Vienna of imperial and city planning. The indulgent behaviour of the aristocracy, the incompetence of 32

33 34

The full cast list of thirty was given on the programme leaflet; reproduced in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), p. 268. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews 1867–1938: A Cultural History. (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 37–8. See Hakkarainen, Comical Modernity, pp. 94–9, 116–19, 202–5.

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administrators, the fashion for cross-dressing and the excesses of Carnival were recurring targets. For instance, the issue of 2 April 1874, some nine months after the crash and three days before the premiere of Strauss’s operetta, contained a pair of before-and-after cartoons that drew attention to the change in the number of visitors to the Prater – ‘Previous year, one prince after another. Now, no one’ – and, more directly associated with the Strauss family, a four-verse ‘Ode to the Sperl’, a venue no longer sought for its ‘attractive manly frailties’, ‘no more champagne, no more cancan girls’, ‘at last, morality blooms’.35 In Die Fledermaus Johann Strauss shifted his position from a constituent member of that society to being an ironic commentator on its failings. Yet, the music as music had not changed; while the text may have pointed to new outlooks, the emotional range of Strauss’s music was broadly the same as before – he was not a Rossini, a Verdi, or a Wagner. The succession of dance types in the score – waltzes and polkas – obscures the difference between pretence and reality to such an extent that the listener is perfectly happy to accept the outlook of the illicit lovers, Alfredo and Rosalinde, at the end of Act 1: a crisp, thirteen-syllable line set in waltz rhythms, ‘Glücklich ist, wer vergisst, was doch nicht zu ändern ist’ (Happy’s he, who forgets, that which cannot chang-ed be). At the conclusion of the entire work the assembled cast breezily blames everything on too much champagne, the ‘king of all wines’ (‘der König aller Weine’). Strauss’s music, a fast polka, validates the action and constitutes the real heady champagne. Much of the music was easily converted into orchestral works (summarized in Box 6.1), performed as concert pieces, where they effortlessly reverted to being the familiar, uncontested Strauss. But the implication that Strauss’s music was more suited to the dance hall and the concert hall than to the theatre, as opined by Hanslick in his critique of Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, should be resisted: there is no sense that Die Fledermaus is merely a vehicle for a series of set-piece dances. One of the central achievements of the operetta – and here Genée may have been influential – is its fluency, halted at the beginning of Act 3 in a way that accorded with wider operatic tradition but regained in the remainder of the work. In addition, Strauss had learnt to master the techniques associated with orchestrally accompanied recitative as well as spoken dialogue over orchestral 35

Cartoon captions: ‘Ein Fürst nachdem anderen’ and ‘Nur ein einziger Fürst’. Lines from Ode an der Sperl: ‘Nimmermehr wird von dem Schönen/Männerschwachheit ausgenutzt! . . . Wird nicht mehr Champagner schäumen/Keine Diva cancanir’n . . . Endlich Sittlichkeit erblüh’n!’, Kikeriki, 2 April 1874.

Challenges and Opportunities

accompaniment. The melodrama in Act 3, when the thoroughly drunk prison governor Frank (‘Chevalier Chagrin’) returns to his office, stumbles around and hazily recalls events from earlier in the evening before falling into a deep sleep, is a masterful combination of pictorial orchestral writing, with snatches of waltzes and polkas plus inebriated speech, whistling and singing. Johann Strauss directed the first performance of Die Fledermaus on Easter Sunday, 5 April 1874. From the overture onwards, it was received with great enthusiasm by the public and by an acquiescent press; by the beginning of June it had received forty-nine performances and would have received many more that summer if the singer in the role of Prince Orlofsky had not been taken ill.36 While it is not known whether Eduard attended any of these performances, he continued his customary role of facilitating Johann’s wider success. Two of the derived orchestral dances – the Fledermaus Polka and An der Moldau – had already been performed during the winter season by the Strauss Orchestra directed by him; the remaining four works were given (or very likely given) their performance over the summer.

Challenges and Opportunities, Personal and Professional Having directed the premiere of Die Fledermaus in April and some benefit performances in the following weeks, Johann Strauss spent the whole of May touring Italy with Langenbach and the Weltausstellungskapelle; the tour took them in turn to all the major cities – Venice, Milan, Genoa, Turin, Bologna, Florence, Livorno, Rome, Naples, Padua and Verona – plus the Austrian seaport of Trieste.37 Apart from Johann’s brief honeymoon stay in Venice, this was the first visit by any member of the Strauss dynasty to Italy and, in the north in particular, the memories of the oppressive rule of Austria, especially the long military and governmental presence of Field Marshal Count Josef Radetzky, were now well established in received history. Accordingly, the Radetzky-Marsch was diplomatically absent from Strauss’s repertoire, as were the several marches and waltzes by the Strauss brothers that quoted the Austrian anthem. Only one new work was written for the tour, Bella Italia, first performed in Turin; when Johann 36

37

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 253. The often very lengthy reviews are given in Michael Jahn, Johann Strauss: Die Fledermaus, Ritter Pásmán, Wiener Historischer Opernführer, vol. 8 (Vienna, 2009), pp. 15–33. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 255–8.

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returned to Vienna, it was given a title taken from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre – Wo die Citronen blüh’n! (Where the Lemons Bloom, Op. 364) – a much more culturally resonant title for German-speaking devotees of Johann Strauss and one that encapsulated the love of people from north of the Alps for the very different land to the south of the Alps. The remainder of the repertoire performed in Italy reveals a distinct trend towards canonization – the Annen-Polka; An der schönen, blauen Donau; Pizzicato-Polka; and Wein, Weib und Gesang! – but with a noticeable avoidance of works that referenced Vienna in their titles. On the return journey the orchestra gave two concerts in Graz, where, in stark contrast, the programmes were loaded with works that referenced the imperial capital – Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, Neu-Wien and ʼS giebt nur a Kaiserstadt, ʼs giebt nur a Wien – as well as the expected An der schönen, blauen Donau. Johann’s return to Vienna itself did not result in a renewed presence there. The now established pattern of devoting the summer and autumn to the composition of the next operetta (in this case another Viennese topic, Cagliostro in Wien) and his unwillingness to appear in Eduard’s concerts, plus the end of any commitments at the Habsburg court and his susceptibility to exhaustion, meant that Johann’s public appearances were restricted to conducting the occasional performance of an operetta. This most Viennese of creative figures was a largely absent one even when he was there; this self-determined detachment encouraged newspaper gossip that he might move elsewhere – to Graz, Florence or even Paris.38 In fact, he remained ensconced in his comfortable villa in Hietzing. Eduard, on the other hand, had a public presence in Vienna for much of the 1870s, promoting the Strauss cause but without accruing any of the status that Johann enjoyed. There was not even a hint that he, too, might turn to operetta and certainly no sense that he could rely on a corpus of popular works to sustain his career. From one year to the next he dutifully composed a dozen or so works, none of which became canonic in the manner of his brother’s An der schönen, blauen Donau or his father’s Radetzky-Marsch. There was a more equitable balance between the number of waltzes and polkas than had existed in the early years of his career and he was able to gain some reflected glory in those quadrilles that drew on stage works by Charles Lecocq (1832–1918) and Offenbach, also Bizet’s Carmen, which received its first Viennese performance at the Court Opera House in October 1875. More gratifying for Eduard’s self-esteem were his annual 38

Newspaper coverage in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 258–9.

Challenges and Opportunities

appearances at the court balls, while his fondness for wider recognition was sated by another award from a distant country that he was never to visit: the Order of Carlos III from the Spanish royal court.39 The winter season of 1874–5 was a rare period when Eduard temporarily eclipsed Johann in the eyes of the Viennese public thanks to the increasingly contentious figure of Richard Wagner. Between January and March of 1875 the Court Opera Orchestra presented three charity concerts in the Musikverein to raise money for the Bayreuth Festival Theatre, followed by a single concert in May devoted to the composer’s music; the composer himself was in Vienna from February onwards and assumed some of the conducting duties. The concerts included the Prelude and ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan und Isolde, Wotan’s Farewell and the Magic Fire Music from Die Walküre and extracts from the as yet unperformed Götterdämmerung. In anticipation of this series, the previous December Eduard had dedicated a concert at the Musikverein to the composer’s music, including extracts from Tristan und Isolde. Wagner’s music and the debate it stimulated between devotees and detractors dominated the musical scene for months, entirely overshadowing the premiere and subsequent performances of Johann Strauss’s Cagliostro in Wien.40 For once, Eduard was part of fashionable musical debate, while Johann was marginalized by it. A telling aspect in the careers of Johann and Eduard Strauss in the 1870s was the waning influence of a closely associated Viennese publisher. For half a century the firm of Haslinger (father and son) and, to a lesser extent, C. A. Spina had moulded the life-work of all four members of the family, at home and abroad. Quite unexpectedly, C. A. Spina announced in July 1872 that the business was to be sold, suggesting that it was no longer financially rewarding. It was taken over by the local firm of Friedrich Schreiber, who ran it for four years. Those years were the most economically challenging in Vienna since Napoleonic times, and in the summer of 1876 Schreiber in turn sold the company to the firm of August Cranz in Hamburg.41 That firm was attracted as much by the accumulated back catalogue of music by a range of composers in Vienna, notably Schubert, as by the particular prospect of becoming the publisher of new music by the two Strauss brothers. This Viennese connection was apparent on the title pages, which for a few years listed the two cities, ‘Wien, C. A. Spina – Hamburg, Aug. Cranz’, as if they were joint publishers, whereas Cranz was in fact the 39 40

41

Document in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 261–2. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 271; Bailey, Eduard Strauss, p. 76; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra concert programme database: www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/en/konzert-archiv. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 220, 294.

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sole owner. (See Figure 13, showing the title page of Eduard’s fast polka, Ausser Rand und Band (Out of Control, Op. 168), published in 1878. Incidentally, this title page shows Eduard and his orchestra whipping up the frenzy of the polka; more prosaically, the original owner of this particular copy had purchased it from Gustav Lewy’s music shop in Vienna, as revealed by the stamp in the lower right-hand corner.) With his career firmly focussed on the more lucrative activity of composing operetta, Johann was indifferent to this change and may indeed have welcomed it, since it reflected his international standing. Eduard, however, missed the productive relationship with a local publisher who was familiar with the musical life of Vienna, a relationship that was facilitated by personal contact rather than through correspondence; August Cranz in distant Hamburg was to be his publisher through to 1890, but with little or no sense that he was a pro-active partner. The financial benefits of Johann Strauss’s new career paid off handsomely in the 1870s, in defiance of the economic gloom in Vienna. Die Fledermaus became a permanent part of the repertory, accruing steady income, soon supplemented by performances in Berlin, Budapest, Graz and elsewhere, while, of the five other operettas he had composed at the time, only Blindekuh was a failure. The visit to Boston and the United States in 1872 had been a lucrative one, topped by subsequent visits to Italy in 1874, Paris and Budapest in 1875, and Berlin and Leipzig in 1876. For Johann, publication fees were almost incidental. He was financially shrewd, guided by the advice of Gustav Lewy. Rather than the precarious stock market, Johann Strauss invested heavily in real estate. By 1875 he was already the owner of two properties in the Viennese suburbs and partowner of a third, forty-nine apartments that yielded a rental income in excess of 9,000 florins per annum.42 For several years Johann and Jetty had lived in their comfortable villa in Hietzing. In 1876 they purchased a plot of land in the Igelgasse, near the Wiedner Hauptstrasse, close to the inner city, where they built an entirely new imposing two-storey house in the fashionable neo-Renaissance style, soon casually referred to as the Palais Strauss.43 In complete contrast, Eduard, his wife and their two young boys continued to live in the old family house, the ‘Hirschenhaus’ in Leopoldstadt.

42 43

Document in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 254–5. Document in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 259–60. For a detailed account of the layout of the house and its contents dating from the early 1890s, see Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 308–17.

Challenges and Opportunities

With these two clearly separate careers – Johann the composer of operetta in demand internationally and Eduard trying to maintain a steady presence in Vienna as a music director and composer – the future seemed to be following a fixed and predictable pattern, one that allowed residual bad feeling between the brothers to turn into resigned indifference. With Jetty’s encouragement, Paris had once more become the focal point for Johann’s plans. While the success of his operettas in Vienna had not entirely displaced the popularity of Offenbach’s operettas in that city, musical fashion in Paris was slowly turning its back on Offenbach in the 1870s. Jetty, in particular, saw that Johann Strauss’s operettas could fill that space in the French capital, benefitting, as in Vienna, from the fact that his waltzes and polkas were already well known. Some of his operettas were already being performed in French translation and there were even vague plans for a brand-new work in that language. To discuss these plans further, Johann and Jetty travelled to Paris in January 1877, where Johann also directed the music at a series of New Year balls at the Paris Opera. A new element emerged in the discussions, or rather an element that had already figured in Johann’s career on two previous occasions: musical performances at the next World Exhibition. Five years after the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 and eleven years after the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867, the 1878 exhibition was to be held in Paris once more. During preliminary discussions on whether Johann should repeat his success of 1867, a consensus had emerged that it would be better if the orchestra were a Viennese one (rather than a German one as in 1867) and that the concerts should be called Strauss Concerts. This was a clear signal that Eduard and his orchestra should be involved, and that he and Johann should share the direction, rather than Johann and a guest conductor. In a letter to Gustav Lewy in Vienna Jetty floated the idea, together with the tricky issue of how best to approach Eduard: ‘I have a fantastic idea, which only you can bring to fruition, and one that Jean, clever chap, approves.’ The approach was not entirely altruistic. Johann and Jetty did not want to repeat the experience of the Weltausstellungskapelle in the 1873 exhibition or the arrangement with Benjamin Bilse in the 1867 exhibition; having Eduard and his Viennese orchestra avoided that recurrence while also allowing Johann to pick and choose which concerts to direct. Lewy seems to have made that informal approach to Eduard, who responded positively. It would, after all, be his first foreign visit for thirteen years and the appearance at the World Exhibition would go some way to razing the bitter memory of events of 1873. In a subsequent letter to Lewy Jetty reported that Johann had sent

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a telegram to Eduard and that a positive reply had been received. In the event, the plans were never finalized.44 Even if the shared journey to Paris to perform at the 1878 World Exhibition had been agreed, Johann would almost certainly have withdrawn because of a wholly unanticipated tragedy. Jetty and Johann spent the early months of that year anticipating a move to their new home in the Igelgasse. Johann was making intermittent progress on a sixth operetta, Blindekuh, originally scheduled for performance that season and impatiently awaited by the management of the Theater an der Wien. Jetty, whose own health problems had always taken second place to the chronic concerns of her husband, was unwell. She suffered a stroke at lunchtime on 8 April 1878 and died at 11.30 that night, aged sixty. A constant presence in Johann’s life for sixteen years, she had nurtured his ambition and confidence, and had reshaped his career in such a way that he was now internationally regarded as a composer of operetta as well as a composer of unequalled dance music. Johann was shocked by her sudden death, but his immediate behaviour once more revealed that curious characteristic of not being able to deal with the death of a family member, in this case his closest companion. He left the villa in Hietzing to live in the Hotel Victoria on the Favoritenstrasse, a few minutes away from the nearly completed house in the Igelgasse. Meanwhile, Eduard took care of the funeral arrangements, with both the service and the burial taking place in Hietzing; once again, Johann did not attend. Jetty was subsequently honoured with a new family tomb in the Hietzing cemetery, in which four further members of the family were to be entombed (including Eduard’s son, Josef, and Johann’s future stepdaughter, Alice), but not Johann himself. Jetty and Johann were never to be re-united in death.45 The events of the next few weeks set in train the reason for this absence from the family tomb. While he was staying at the Hotel Victoria, Johann became acquainted with a young actress, Angelika Dittrich (1850–1919), twenty-five years his junior. Beautiful, charming and talkative, she became a much-valued confidante and within weeks his mistress. A series of letters from Johann to Angelika that are safely dated to April–May 1878 show that he had become infatuated with ‘Lili’. He addresses her as ‘My beautiful, loving, good Lilibet’; ‘My All’; ‘My precious little Lili’; and even gave himself a new familiar name, ‘Hans’, to replace the ‘Jean’ he and Jetty had 44 45

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 311, 312–24. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 11–12, 13; tomb inscriptions given in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 265–6.

Challenges and Opportunities

habitually used.46 By 23 May, when Johann sought documentary proof of his baptism,47 they had decided to marry. The wedding took place on 28 May in the grandest of surroundings, the spacious Karlskirche, but with no members from their respective families; there were just two witnesses, a local hotelier and a court paymaster.48 Johann had been a widower for a mere fifty-five days, but if he thought that Lili would become a younger version of Jetty he was mistaken. The already slow progress on the composition of Blindekuh was delayed even further by a brief stay in Baden, followed by seven weeks in near isolation on the island of Föhr, off the north-west coast of SchleswigHolstein, where the blustery summer weather, the seascapes and the mixture of Friesian and German languages provided a very different environment for the newly married couple. Eduard, meanwhile, had been revaluating his own career. While the new settled relationship between him and Johann was a positive development, there were other longer-term processes at work that affected the viability of his professional existence. Two elements of the annual cycle of commitments remained rewarding: the concerts in the Musikverein from October through to April, and the Carnival season with its mixture of private and public balls plus the occasional concert in venues other than the Musikverein. The summer months, however, were increasingly difficult ones. For many years the Strauss family had given joint concerts with regimental bands, a complementary relationship that went back to Johann Strauss senior’s day. By the 1870s military bands had assumed a dominant presence in many parkland concerts in the summer. Eduard was not alone in trying to negotiate the changing taste of the Viennese. His rival Carl Michael Ziehrer (1843–1922) had begun his career as a composer of dance music, but soon combined that with conducting military bands at home and abroad. Eduard’s memoirs also refer obliquely to another new element in Viennese popular culture – ‘the emerging cult of a new “species” of trivial music’ (‘der beginnende Cultus einer neuen “Species” trivialer Musik’)49 – a reference to the increasing popularity of folk music groups, typically three or four instrumentalists who played in cafes and restaurants at the popular Heurige evenings in Grinzing, as well as in certain establishments in the inner city. He may also have in mind the popularity of the zither, an instrument that was now as likely to be found in bourgeois homes as in 46 48 49

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 19–23. 47 Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 284. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 27; Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 285. Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 63.

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the open air in the Waldviertel.50 The satirical journal Die Bombe printed a pair of cartoons that mischievously drew attention to a ‘Wagner cult’, ‘Franz that is, not Richard’. In the first, Franz, dressed in peasant clothing and playing his zither, is depicted in a rural Bauernstube; in the second, Franz and his zither are in an urban salon, where he is dressed in a smart suit, coiffured with a full black beard and neatly combed hair (rather like Johann Strauss) and surrounded by bosomy ladies and politely attentive gentlemen.51 Eduard was increasingly caught between several competing traditions: his reluctance to provide dance music for the most minimal forces in the smallest of venues; his apparent lack of interest in military music; the new volkstümliche Musik; and, on the non-trivial side, the increasing status of the concerts of the Court Opera Orchestra. Had he lived, Josef might have faced the same predicament, though he might have followed Johann’s example and turned to the composition of operetta. Eduard’s solution was a different one: he re-invigorated his career with regular international tours, typically in the summer months. For the next twenty years, through to the end of the century, Eduard was to visit Canada, England, Holland, Russia, Sweden and the United States, as well as cities in the Austrian and German territories such as Berlin, Breslau, Budapest, Cologne, Dresden, Frankfurt, Graz, Hamburg, Munich, Prague and Strasbourg. Soon, Eduard’s performances of ‘Viennese music’ outside Vienna made it more popular than it was in Vienna itself. The first in this long sequence of absences occurred in 1878, when Eduard left Vienna in July and did not to return until early October. He accepted engagements to conduct a military band in Frankfurt and orchestras in Hamburg and Stockholm. In Vienna, that summer was the first in fifty years or so not to feature public performances by the Strauss Orchestra; the contract at the Volksgarten had been awarded to Ziehrer. Eduard followed the equally long-lived tradition of flattering a visiting city with a musical greeting – in this case a polka française, Gruss an Stockholm (Hello to Stockholm, Op. 171) – and marking his return to his home city with a similarly flattering tribute – a fast polka Wien über Alles! (Vienna above Everything, Op. 172). Flattering Vienna had worked well for his father in the 1830s but at the end of the 1870s it had lost its allure, even when the subsequent publication included an image of the popular hillside area of the 50

51

Thomas Aigner, ‘“Rotunde-Quadrille”: Wiener Unterhaltungsmusik in den Jahrzehnten um die Weltausstellung’, in Wolfgang Kos and Ralph Gleis (eds.), Experiment Metropole: 1873, Wien und die Weltausstellung, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2014), pp. 248–55. Die Bombe, 22 December 1879.

Challenges and Opportunities

Kahlenberg to the north of the city, easily reached by two trains: a main line from the Franz Joseph Bahnhof followed by a rack-and-pinion train towards the summit (Figure 14). That it was published by Cranz in distant Hamburg was a further indication of a new, displaced Viennese tradition. After a long period of gestation, Blindekuh was finally completed in November in readiness for performance in the Theater an der Wien a week before Christmas. Since Strauss’s previous five operettas had been well received in Vienna and Die Fledermaus, in particular, had just notched up 100 performances in Cologne and 300 hundred in Berlin,52 anticipation of another success was high. It proved to be a resounding failure. Most criticism was directed at the plot, a planned arranged marriage between a poor young girl from Austria and her rich cousin from the United States (hence the title, literally blind cow but also the name of the German equivalent of ‘blind man’s buff’), which was described as trivial and unsuited to Strauss’s Viennese style.53 The critics had stumbled on a fundamental truth: Strauss’s dramatic instincts worked best when a libretto was as Viennese as his music; he lacked the musical ability to compose music that was not Viennese. With a mischievous pun, one critic also suggested that Strauss was missing the guiding hand of Jetty Treffz – her ‘Treffsicherheit’ (unerring certainty).54 Only fifteen further performances were given. Johann had not directed the Strauss Orchestra for nearly five years but, perhaps motivated by a desire to appear in a public event that compensated for the failure of the operetta, he participated in two of Eduard’s concerts in the Musikverein, directing the overture to Blindekuh (not published) on 26 December and a derivative set of waltzes, Kennst du mich? (Do You Know Me? Op. 381) on 12 January.55 Later in the season Eduard gave the first performance of three further derivative works: Nur fort! (Go Away!, a fast polka, Op. 383), Pariser Polka (Op. 382) and a quadrille (Op. 384). Eduard had helped to mitigate a rare disappointment in his brother’s career. Over the next few years Johann revitalized his engagement with amateur music-making in Vienna. At the request of the MännergesangVerein, he composed a waltz, In’s Centrum (Bull’s Eye, Op. 387), for a concert given in the Prater to coincide with a shooting tournament. It could well have been a scene from an operetta, with the choir counting down the action: ‘One’ – ‘Two’ – ‘Three’ – ‘Bull’s eye, Hurray’. When 52 53 54 55

Statistics from Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 30. Press reviews in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 34, 36. Morgenpost, 19 December, 1878; quoted in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 36. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 36.

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Strauss’s old friend Rudolf Weinwurm (1855–1911), the conductor of the Männergesang-Verein, became the conductor of a student male choir, the Wiener Akademischer Gesangverein, Strauss provided the society with a celebratory choral polka, Burschenwanderung (Students’ Excursion, Op. 389). In his late fifties, despite the occasional setback such as the failure of Blindekuh, and gossip about his personal life, there was a sense that Johann Strauss was increasingly becoming an untouchable, revered establishment figure in Vienna. For the fortieth anniversary, in October 1884, of his debut as a composer-director a variety of city institutions showered him with honours: the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the Wiener Akademischer Gesangverein each presented him with a printed address, and the Theater an der Wien gave him a gold medal;56 finally, on 17 October, in a short ceremony in the recently completed Rathaus the civic authorities made Strauss a ‘Bürger von Wien’ (Citizen of Vienna), having already absolved him of the need to pay any civic taxes.57 As he was allowed to do, Johann Strauss continued to use the title k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor, and he and the active Hofballmusikdirektor, Eduard, both featured in commemorative and celebratory events. The most notable was the marriage of Crown Prince Rudolf to Princess Stephanie, daughter of the King of the Belgians, in the Augustinerkirche on 10 May 1881. The music for the religious ceremony was provided by the court musicians, supplemented by those of the Augustinerkirche, directed by Joseph Hellmesberger and with Anton Bruckner playing the organ; the music included Haydn’s second Te Deum.58 As Hofballmusikdirektor, Eduard was involved in two private events at court that presented two specially composed waltzes by the brothers: Johann’s Myrthenblüthen (Blossoms of Myrtle, Op. 395) and Eduard’s Schleier und Krone (Veil and Crown, Op. 200).59 The Habsburg imperial name of Rudolf had been especially common in the medieval period and it was in honour of the very first Rudolf, the thirteenth-century ruler who had established the core Austrian territories, that a concert was held at the Musikverein on 19 December 1882, shared by the Strauss Orchestra and a regimental band, as part of which Eduard directed a performance of a new march, Österreichs Völker-Treue (The Loyalty of the Austrian People, Op. 211). A week later at a similar event in the Carltheater Johann directed his loyalist march, Habsburg Hoch! 56 57 58 59

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 258–60. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 246, 256–8. Steurer, Das Repertoire der Wiener Hofmusikkapelle, p. 532. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 72.

Challenges and Opportunities

(Habsburg Aloft, Op. 408).60 In a way that audiences had come to expect, he quoted ‘Gott erhalte’ and his father’s Radetzky-Marsch, though less expected was the initial piano dynamic for both quotations; they were joined by a third quotation of a popular folksong in praise of Prince Eugen of Savoy, ‘Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter’. In contrast to this orderly public career, Johann’s private life was, once more, in crisis. In a way that he seems never to have anticipated, Lili had become disillusioned with married life and had left him. For a few years the relationship had been a mutually rewarding one; they had made a second visit to the island of Fröh in 1879; and in the following summer both were enjoying a summer existence in a newly acquired house in Schönau, deep in the countryside to the south of Baden. By the summer of 1881 Lili was seeking greater independence. She wanted to spend some of that summer in an unspecified spa town and, indicative of her determination to do so, made all the arrangements for Johann to visit Fröh alone.61 In the event, none of this happened and the couple remained in Schönau. The following summer Lili’s idea of an independent spa visit with a friend was realized. From the middle of July to early September she and Therese (her surname is unknown) were in the highly fashionable town of Franzensbad in north-west Bohemia. During this period Johann wrote thirty letters to his wife from Schönau, giving accounts of progress on his next operetta, Eine Nacht in Venedig, of his various minor ailments, walks in the countryside, his waning enthusiasm for billiards, his enjoyment of an afternoon cigar in the garden and the cost of dental treatment, and telling her that their favourite dog, Donderl, visits her bedroom every evening to see if she is there. All these tales of domestic bliss are surrounded by repeated declarations of love.62 Lili’s replies have not survived but the tone of Johann’s letters for much of August is unfailingly positive. Early in September, however, Lili announced she was leaving him. Strauss was distraught, a mood that changed to anger when he learned that she was having an affair with someone he knew very well, Maximilian Steiner’s son Franz (1885–1920), soon to be the manager of the Theater an der Wien. By the end of September Lili had collected her belongings from the Igelgasse as well as the house in Schönau. Johann’s response to this wholly unexpected situation was disconcertingly similar to that following the death of his first wife, Jetty. Within a few 60 61 62

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 153–4. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 70–1. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 88–136.

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weeks he was confiding in another woman, even younger than Lili. Adele Strauss (née Deutsch, 1856–1930) was the daughter-in-law of an old family friend (not a relative), Albert Strauss, a banker who lived in the ‘Hirschenhaus’. Aged twenty-four, she had been a widow for five years and had a seven-year-old daughter, Alice; mother and child also lived in Leopoldstadt. By the end of October Johann had asked ‘my heavenly Adele’ to meet him in the Prater; he avoided signing his name as ‘Hans’, reverting to the ‘Jean’ he and Jetty had used.63 By December she and the daughter had moved into the house in Igelgasse and the relationship was common knowledge, much to the disapproval of Albert Strauss, who promptly distanced himself from the couple. As for Lili, she and Franz Steiner were married by the end of the year; she was to live until 1919, aware of the careers of Johann and Eduard, the wider narrative of the Strauss family, but burdened with notoriety as Johann’s unfaithful second wife.

Austrian and German: Competing and Complementary Identities Within a year of meeting Adele, Johann had indicated his commitment to their relationship in a legally binding document that granted her an annuity of 4,000 florins per annum for the remainder of his lifetime.64 This unusual legal commitment reflected the obstacles that had to be overcome before they could marry, a process that was to take four years and some ingenuity. Although the civic authorities in Vienna had granted the divorce of Johann and Lili, the Catholic Church had refused to annul the marriage. A further complication – that Adele was Jewish – was more easily overcome. Like many Viennese Jews who readily identified with their environment, she converted to Protestantism, doing so in 1883.65 While this was a clear and widely understood gesture of assimilation and identity, Johann embarked on the apparently contradictory and, given his status, controversial process: the renunciation of his Austrian citizenship. That was granted in December 1885, two months after the premiere of Der Zigeunerbaron, and was followed seven months later by Johann’s own conversion to Protestantism.66 This new religious identity and Johann’s non-Austrian status enabled the couple to fulfil a plan to become citizens of 63 64 65 66

Letter of 21 October 1882; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 140–1. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 188–7; Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 297–9. On this common practice, see Beller, Vienna and the Jews, pp. 152–3. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 315–18, 372–3.

Austrian and German Identities

a German Protestant duchy, that of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, where they were finally married in one of the two capitals, Coburg, on 15 August 1887.67 There was no associated commitment to live in the duchy and, in fact, the couple left Coburg for Franzensbad in Bohemia the following day. If this narrative of religious and legal manoeuvring suggests a certain doggedness in seeking a solution to a pressing problem, that is only one aspect of the story. The reasons why it was able to succeed were broader than the determination of two individuals and reveal some of the changing cultural and political values of the time, notably the extent to which Germanic identity in Austria was increasingly aligned with that recently established in the German empire. In 1879 Germany and Austria had signed the so-called Dual Alliance with the immediate purpose of promoting a common approach to the political and territorial ambition of Russia.68 More generally, it was to shape Austrian and German politics through to the end of the First World War and, indeed, beyond. It was not a sudden realignment but built on shared characteristics and values that arose from a common language. Like Austria, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had several religious communities that were tolerated – Catholic, Protestant and Jewish – but while Catholicism was dominant in Austria, Lutheranism was dominant in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Co-existence was accompanied by a degree of indifferent secularism, too: changing religion was not seen as unusual or inappropriate. Johann and Adele were representative of this new outlook. A key figure who had facilitated Johann’s application to become a citizen of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was a Habsburg Catholic, Archduke Johann Salvator (1852–91), who knew a member of the Protestant ruling family in the duchy. Amateur musical and dramatic interests also played a part. Archduke Johann Salvator was a capable musician who had written a waltz for piano, Stimmen aus dem Süden (Voices from the South), which Strauss had obligingly agreed to revise and orchestrate. For his part, the current Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Ernst II (1818–93), was a keen amateur actor, to whom Johann was to dedicate his operetta Simplicius. There was also physical testimony to the links between the duchy and Austria-Hungary; the family owned a castle in Grein, a small town on the Danube between Linz and Vienna, and the Palais Coburg in Vienna that overlooked the Blumensäle had been built by a Catholic branch of the family. Johann and Adele were just one more strand in this web of Austro-German, Catholic-Protestant interrelationships. 67 68

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, pp. 126–7. Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, p. 155; Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, p. 212.

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From the 1830s onwards the music of the Strauss family had been popular throughout the German territories and, for Johann in the 1880s, successive operettas were regularly performed there, too. In the same way that Berlin emerged as the political capital of Germany, it also emerged as a major venue in the empire for Strauss’s operettas in the 1880s, part of a musical dual alliance with Vienna involving the FriedrichWilhelmstädtisches Theater and the Theater an der Wien. Vienna was usually the city that gave the premiere, followed by performances in Berlin soon after, with Strauss himself directing in both venues. However, in 1883 that primacy was reversed: Eine Nacht in Venedig was premiered at the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater on 3 October 1883 and at the Theater and der Wien on 9 October, both directed by Johann Strauss. Four years later the Berlin theatre presented a cycle of Strauss’s operettas to date (with the exception of Blindekuh and Prinz Methusalem), beginning on 9 April with Indigo und die vierzig Räuber and ending on 29 May with Der Zigeunerbaron.69 As mentioned earlier, Eduard, too, figured in this musical dual alliance. During the 1880s he made no fewer than eight visits to the German capital, occasionally as part of a longer tour but more often as the only destination; Figure 15, dating from 1881, shows a typically dapper public figure, ‘schöner Edi’. Unlike Johann, he did not appear as a guest conductor but took his Strauss Orchestra of some four dozen players with him. In Berlin, Eduard and his orchestra constituted the resident ensemble in a large hotel, the Central Hotel, where the concerts were played in a palm house capable of holding more than 3,000 people.70 The formula was the same as the concerts in Vienna: a mixture of music by members of the Strauss family (including Johann senior and Josef) alongside music by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schubert and others. While a new operetta by Johann directed by the composer had the appeal of the new and the unexpected, Eduard’s concerts were reassuringly routine. Only once were the two brothers in Berlin at the same time. In April 1886 Johann was there to conduct a series of performances of Der Zigeunerbaron before travelling on to St Petersburg; he attended one of Eduard’s concerts in the Central Hotel, but both were too busy to organize a joint appearance.71 Since 1877 the firm of Cranz in Hamburg had been publishing the music of Johann and Eduard Strauss – Opp. 375–436 for Johann and Opp. 150– 259 for Eduard – contributing to the sense that these two Viennese 69 71

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 49. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 342.

70

Bailey, Eduard Strauss, p. 93.

Austrian and German Identities

composers were being promoted on behalf of a wider German-speaking world. In 1888 both relationships came to an abrupt end. In Eduard’s case the cause of that breakdown is unknown; perhaps Cranz no longer regarded his music as commercially viable – a hypothesis supported by the fact that Eduard was never again to have a continuing arrangement with a publisher, contrary to the practice that had underscored the careers of the Strauss family for over sixty years. Instead, Eduard’s remaining fortyone opuses were published in a piecemeal fashion by six different companies (including three by Cranz) in five different cities: Boston, Hamburg, Leipzig, Paris and Vienna. Johann, on the other hand, was in a much stronger position. He terminated the relationship with Cranz following a dispute about arrangements of music from Simplicius. For him the outcome resulted in a strengthening rather than a weakening of status, also of a Germanic identity: from 1889 he was taken on by the firm of Simrock, one of the leading music publishers in Germany. For much of its history it had been based in Bonn but it had re-located to Berlin in 1870; its back catalogue contained works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Spohr, while its roster of living composers included Brahms and Dvořák. Published in Berlin but living in Vienna, Brahms recommended his close friend to Simrock and by the autumn Johann Strauss had acquired the same dual presence.72 The first Strauss work to be published by Simrock in the autumn of 1889 became one of his best-known works, the Kaiser-Walzer (Emperor Waltz, Op. 437); but which emperor is referred to in the title – the new German emperor, Wilhelm II, or the now elderly Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz Joseph – is not clear. Perhaps it was both. During a fleeting visit to Berlin in early September Johann was asked whether he would participate, alongside other invited conductors, in a series of concerts to mark the opening of a new venue, the Königsbau.73 Back in Vienna, he began working on a new waltz for the occasion, with the provisional title of Hand in Hand, which could easily be interpreted as a reference to the relationship between the two emperors. When he returned to Berlin, Strauss learned that his new publisher, perhaps prompted by the slow march of the introduction, had already decided to give the waltz a different name, Kaiser-Walzer, which some Berliners took to mean their kaiser, not the Habsburg one. In accordance with Simrock’s frequent practice, the title page does not have a dedication, but its wording and 72 73

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 211. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 301–2.

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associated image were decisively Habsburg: alongside Strauss’s title of ‘K. K. Hofballmusik-Director’, there is an image of the Austrian imperial crown complete with radiating lines. This overt promotion of a Viennese identity by a Berlin publisher may well reflect sympathy for the wholly devastating episode in the Habsburg family earlier that year, the suicide of the Crown Prince, Rudolf.74 Rather oddly, however, Simrock himself admitted to being confused about the identity of the crown, presumably thinking that, like the unspecific title of Kaiser-Walzer, it made no difference to sales.75 As it happens, two further publications by Simrock over the next year also had images of Vienna on their title pages, demonstrating sustained sympathy for the alliance partner: the Rathaus (Rathaus-BallTänze, Op. 438) and a stylized view of two churches, St Stephen’s and the Karlskirche (Groß-Wien, Op. 440). The first performance of the KaiserWalzer in Vienna took place a month after the premiere in Berlin, at a benefit concert on 24 November for Eduard Strauss in the Musikverein, where it was conducted by the composer and unconditionally received as an Austrian work. For Johann, this happy confusion in Berlin about the actual significance of the title masked a more private impulse for its composition. The third waltz alludes to a gently insistent theme from the second movement of Brahms’s Quartet in C minor (Op. 51, No. 1, bar 27 and following), itself published by Simrock, and can be understood as a token of thanks to the composer for introducing him to the firm. Indeed, perhaps Strauss’s original title, Hand in Hand, arose from that musical friendship, rather than from the notion of two German dynasties working together. The Strauss brothers – Johann, Josef and Eduard – had always honoured the memory of their father, usually in the form of celebratory concerts in major anniversary years and always for a local audience in Vienna. That sense of an enduring legacy was now complemented by a permanent indication of wider artistic standing for the music of the elder Strauss. The Leipzig firm of Breitkopf & Härtel had established an international reputation for producing complete editions of the works of single composers from the German tradition. The Beethoven complete edition – 263 works in 24 categories – was the first, issued between 1862 and 1865, followed by the complete output of Mozart between 1877 and 1883. Similar editions were in progress during the 1880s for J. S. Bach, Schubert and Schumann. They were joined in the late 1880s by 74 75

Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 260–2. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 316.

Austrian and German Identities

a projected complete edition in seven volumes of the music of Johann Strauss (senior), a decisive indicator of perceived stature within the AustroGerman tradition. In 1887–8 five volumes were issued, embracing his output up to the Gibellinen-Galopp (Op. 117) of 1840, before the project was abandoned. To emphasize its importance, Johann Strauss the younger was asked to provide a biographical introduction in the form of an open letter that was to be printed at the beginning of the first volume.76 With the likely assistance of one or more individuals, including Eduard Hanslick, this extended letter of some 1,200 words is generously worded, providing an outline of the father’s musical career from the early days with Joseph Lanner, through summaries of the various tours, his variable health, the 1848 revolution and his early death.77 As if conscious of the wider implications of the project, Strauss’s penultimate paragraph neatly and touchingly summarizes his father’s achievement. Like every true artist, my father sought the highest standard, and never for a moment had the presumption of wanting to place himself on the same pedestal as the heroes of great art. Yet his art had banished many a care, mitigated many a blow, restored energy, re-established a joy for life; it had consoled, delighted and blessed – and, for that, mankind will forever remember him.

Adele and Johann had often spent the summer months in Franzensbad, itself a meeting point for visitors from all over Europe. In 1888 they interrupted their stay there to make the short journey south-west to Bayreuth, where they attended performances of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Parsifal, both conducted by their old friend Hans Richter. During a private party attended by the couple, Richter toasted the good health of Johann, a ‘Viennese master much admired by Richard Wagner’ (‘von Richard Wagner hochverehrten Wiener Meister’).78 The Strauss brothers, especially Josef, had played a notable part in the early reception of Wagner’s music in Vienna. By the 1880s it was an all-consuming taste. The repertoire of the Court Opera House was dominated by Wagner and devotees of the composer regularly travelled to Bayreuth in the summer months to attend performances at the Festival Theatre. Richter conducted most performances at the Court Opera House in Vienna and most of the subscription concerts of its orchestra; those concerts also featured the music of another musical friend, Brahms. It is not clear whether Johann 76

77 78

Johann Strauss (Vater): Sämtliche Werke in Wiedergabe der Originaldrucke, ed. Ernst Hilmar (Tutzing, 1987), vol. 1, preface. Transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, pp. 153–7. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 246.

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Strauss’s musical tastes were as extensive as those of Richter. Being seen and celebrated at the Bayreuth Festival was important, but Adele’s letters to their friend in Pressburg, Johann Batka, suggest a certain detachment. They refer to Bayreuth as ‘the holy city’ and ‘Mecca’ and, prompted by Parsifal, their visit as ‘a pilgrimage in search of the Holy Grail’.79 Adele comments on the enthusiasm of women in particular, including many English women, who packed the numerous book stores in search of Wagner memorabilia, including books, busts, notepaper, postcards, miniature grails and Parsifal slippers (Parcifalpantoffeln).80 The subject matter of the two operas, a medieval sacred drama and sixteenth-century Nuremberg, could not be more distant from that of Strauss’s music; only the failed comic opera, Ritter Pásmán, comes close. From its early performances in the 1860s, Die Meistersinger had been seen as a work that celebrated German identity. One wonders what Johann Strauss made of it given that his recent operetta, Der Zigeunerbaron, had championed a competing identity, Austro-Hungarian, even though the language of the text is the same. While historically informed members of the audience might have pointed out that Die Meistersinger takes place in the old Holy Roman Empire ruled by the Habsburgs, the final pages make it very clear that it is ‘holy German art’ (‘heil’ge deutsche Kunst’) that is being promoted, an identity now readily assumed by many Austrians. In the field of music, ‘German art’ already included Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and others in its embrace, but what about the two living Strausses, Johann and Eduard? Personal circumstances and commercial opportunities ensured that Germany was increasingly central to their careers in the 1880s, yet, like the Habsburg family itself, they retained an Austrian identity and, even more strongly, within that a Viennese identity. Only one of Strauss’s operettas – Waldmeister – is located in Germany, specifically Saxony (part of the German empire since 1871), and while none of his operettas after Der Zigeunerbaron was set wholly or in part in Vienna, Habsburg territories are favoured, especially Hungary. The composer continued to produce dances (together with illustrative title pages) that referenced the city, the empire and the Habsburgs, and those works were widely distributed and performed in the German empire. In his personal life as well as his professional life he owed a great deal to the German empire, but at heart he was always to remain a Habsburg loyalist. 79 80

Letter of 15 August 1888; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 246. Undated letter from Bayreuth; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, pp. 247–9.

Austrian and German Identities

Eduard’s livelihood in the 1880s was similarly dependent on success in Germany, with Berlin even more of a focal point than it was in Johann’s case. Other cities that saw more than one extended visit by Eduard included Breslau and Hamburg. His increasing disenchantment with the attitude of the Viennese towards him, especially in comparison with Johann, resulted in far fewer works that directly reference Vienna, Austria or the Habsburgs. After Schleier und Krone, written for the wedding of Prince Rudolf and Princess Stephanie, only two such works were written in 1880s: a march, Österreichs Völker-Treue (Op. 211), and a waltz, Wiener Dialect (Viennese Dialect, Op. 237). Eduard’s memoirs give extensive coverage of his foreign visits in the 1880s, including to Berlin. But by far the most detailed is that devoted to his visit to London in 1885; it runs to fifteen pages and reflects his curiosity and the enthusiastic response of the public.81 Between May and October the city was the venue for a trade fair, the International Inventions Exhibition, located in parkland between the rear of the Royal Albert Hall and the Victoria and Albert Museum. As in the various World Exhibitions, the displays were organized according to countries, with Austro-Hungary making a special feature of its sewing machine manufacturing. Also like the World Exhibitions, there was musical entertainment, with regular concerts by the bands of the Coldstream Guards (misremembered by Eduard as Goldstream Guards) and the Grenadier regiment. To the consternation of some commentators, who would have preferred a local orchestra, Eduard and the Strauss Orchestra were engaged from Vienna, the first visit by a member of the Strauss family since Johann’s triumphant appearances at Covent Garden in 1867. But, as Eduard pointed out in his memoirs, that had been as a guest conductor, not a conductor of the Strauss Orchestra; the last appearance in Britain of the Strauss Orchestra had been in 1849, directed by Johann Strauss (Father). While the invitation reflected the particular popularity of music by the Strauss family, it also reflected a distinctive Germanic presence in the musical life of Britain that had grown over the course of the nineteenth century, nurtured in part by the royal family, members of the same SaxeCoburg-Gotha dynasty that had recently enabled Johann and Adele to marry. Queen Victoria’s much-mourned husband, Prince Albert, 81

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, pp. 65–80. As Leigh Bailey points out (Bailey, Eduard Strauss, p. 153), these pages include a description of a visit to Windsor Castle that actually took place ten years later, in 1895. Other observations and impressions, too, may have arisen during the later visit.

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was the brother of the ruling duke, Ernst II, and Coburg had become Victoria’s favoured holiday destination; Eduard’s memoirs mention that she spoke German with a slight southern accent.82 There were other connections. Edward, Prince of Wales, was a frequent visitor to Vienna, including on the occasion of the 1873 World Exhibition, when Eduard and the Strauss Orchestra had participated in a private concert in his honour. As president of the organizing committee of the International Inventions Exhibition, the prince may well have played a key role in the decision to invite Eduard and the Strauss Orchestra to London. Eduard’s account of his London visit also mentions Prince Albert’s second son, Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, as an amenable and interested host. He had inherited his father’s interest in music, if not his technical capabilities, and was to play a key role in setting up the Royal College of Music, subsequently built on part of the site of the exhibition. In 1893 he became the reigning Duke of Saxe-CoburgGotha, following the death of Ernst II, and lived in Coburg for the remainder of his life. Eduard and the Strauss Orchestra gave two concerts per day – in the Albert Hall between 5.00 and 6.30 and in a bandstand in the nearby exhibition site between 7.30 and 9.00 – both to exceptionally large and enthusiastic crowds. Eduard’s account of the Albert Hall is a highly impressionable one: the largest concert hall in the world, with the largest organ in Europe and with a resounding echo, especially if trumpets and timpani were playing. Alongside these public concerts, Eduard and the orchestra provided the music for a state ball in Buckingham Palace and a second ball hosted by the Prince of Wales in Marlborough House. The success of the London visit in general prompted some reflection by Eduard on musical taste in England, which was overwhelmingly German. Beethoven, Meyerbeer and Schubert are popular, as are the early operas of Wagner, he observed. Eduard’s orchestration of some Schumann piano pieces were well received, but above all he noted widespread enthusiasm for the music of Mendelssohn: his symphonies, overtures, the violin concerto, the Rondo capriccioso and the funeral march from Athalia, as well as the many Songs without Words. If Eduard was perceived as part of this German tradition, one senses he would not have minded.

82

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 70.

Repossessed by Vienna

Repossessed by Vienna Johann Strauss’s last extended musical tour took place in 1886, taking him to Berlin, Hamburg and St Petersburg. In the Russian capital he directed a series of concerts in the German theatre; they consisted mainly of familiar works, enthusiastically received: An der schönen, blauen Donau, Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, Neu-Wien, Pizzicato-Polka, TritschTratsch Polka, Wiener Blut and others. Popular with the public at home and abroad, Johann himself was more interested in promoting the new: his latest operetta, dances drawn from them, plus the occasional original dance work. The tension between wanting to be continually creating the new and responding honourably to the public desire to celebrate the old was to be a defining characteristic of the 1890s, when, in the absence of foreign tours, he became ever more bound up in the image that was being manufactured on his behalf in his home city. He completed five stage works in five years: the comic opera Ritter Pásmán (1892) for the Court Opera House and the four operettas Fürstin Ninetta (1893), Jabuka (1894), Waldmeister (1895) and Die Göttin der Vernunft (1897) for the Theater an der Wien. His domestic life was the happiest since his first marriage, to Jetty, and perhaps even happier than then, since Adele gently supported rather than actively fostered Johann’s ambition. Johann also enjoyed his role as a father, habitually referring to Alice as his daughter rather than stepdaughter. When she got married to the painter Franz von Bayros (1866–1924) in 1896, to accompany the procession of father and daughter up the aisle he wrote an instrumental prelude, the Hochzeits-Praeludium for organ, violin and harp (Op. 469).83 Played by members of Eduard Strauss’s orchestra, it was an unusual work, but one that reflected the father’s fondness for playing the harmonium as well as his prowess as a showy violinist. The family home in the Igelgasse was a lively household, with frequent visitors and dinner parties. Having sold the summer house in Schönau in 1893, Johann began renting a villa in Bad Ischl for the summer months, eventually purchasing it jointly with Adele’s brother, Josef Simon (1854–1926), a well-to-do banker and part-time theatre director. Villa Erdödy (presumably named after the Hungarian aristocratic family of that name) was located a little outside Bad Ischl, next to a stream (Kaltenbach) and with a generous garden. The three-storey house had ten rooms (two with broad verandas) plus kitchen, toilets 83

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 8, p. 196.

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and a cellar.84 The town had a theatre, where residents and visitors could hear performances of operetta, including Die Fledermaus. For Johann, the summer months in Bad Ischl became associated with hard work on the next operetta as well as relaxation. Since Eduard Strauss spent every summer in the 1890s touring with his orchestra in America, Germany, England or Russia, he was never a guest at the Villa Erdödy. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, his relationship with his brother became an increasingly cordial one in the 1890s, both professionally and personally: he and Adele got on well and he seems to have accepted his role as the independent brother who was also a cog in the wheel of Johann’s career, from which he in turn benefitted. In terms of personal friendship, that between Johann Strauss and Brahms was especially strong during the 1890s, forming one of the closest bonds in the history of music, based as much on compatibility as professional regard. Brahms lived in the Karlsgasse, a five-minute walk away from the building of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, where he visited the archive and library as often as he attended concerts in the two concert halls – the small one for chamber music, the large one for the subscription concerts of the Court Opera Orchestra and Eduard Strauss’s Sunday afternoon concerts. A twentyminute walk in the opposite direction took him to Johann and Adele’s house in the Igelgasse. Here, he was an equally frequent visitor, either alone or with others such as Eduard Hanslick, the composer Carl Goldmark (1830–1915) or the critic – and, in due course, Brahms’s biographer – Max Kalbeck (1850– 1921). Bad Ischl was a favoured summer destination for Brahms, too – in the 1890s partly because the Strauss family was there. For her wedding Alice Strauss had wanted Brahms to act as one of the traditional group of best men, but he balked at the formality of the position, especially the dress code, though gladly attended as an ordinary guest.85 Whether in the Igelgasse or the Villa Erdödy, social evenings included piano-playing, solo and duet, and, tarock, a complex card game especially popular in the Habsburg territories and a consuming pastime of both Brahms and Johann Strauss. They shared a mutual sense of whimsy, too: at the supper following Alice’s wedding Brahms signed a place card ‘Johann Strauss’ and Strauss signed his ‘Johannes Brahms’.86 Brahms once summed up their relationship simply: Strauss was ‘of all colleagues, the dearest’ (‘von allen Kollegen der liebste’).87 84

85 86 87

Details from the probate valuation drawn up in June 1899; see Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 381–9. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 8, pp. 196–8, 202–3. See illustration in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 8, p. 205. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 201.

Repossessed by Vienna

Brahms had long attended performances and rehearsals of Strauss’s operettas, regularly gave impromptu performances in Viennese salons of his waltzes and polkas on the piano and had blessed An der schönen, blauen Donau with the well-known comment ‘Sadly, not by me’ (‘Leider nicht von mir’).88 If this suggests that Brahms admired the melodic generosity of Strauss’s music, he also admired Strauss’s orchestration,89 different from his own in being filtered through half a century of violin-playing and directing, whereas Brahms’s orchestration was informed by the hands and fingers of a consummate pianist. While Brahms’s waltzes for piano and, more directly, his two sets of Liebeslieder waltzes (Opp. 52 and 65) for voices and piano belong to the same broad environment as Strauss dances, occasionally the spirit of the waltz is captured in the composer’s large-scale works too, though most modern performances tend to underplay that indebtedness. The fifth movement of the Ein deutsches Requiem, ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’ and, more subtly, the opening of the Second Symphony both owe something to Johann Strauss. It is difficult to point to the reverse process – the influence of Brahms on Strauss – perhaps because operetta and dance composition had little need of pervasive thematic transformation or the shaping of large-scale organic structures. Biographical evidence suggests, too, that Johann was not as acquainted with Brahms’s music as Brahms was with Johann’s music, with accounts of Strauss regularly attending performances of Brahms’s music in the Musikverein or elsewhere being conspicuous by their absence. As ever in Johann’s career, he took rather more than he gave to the relationship. Brahms’s admiration and friendship had been key to securing Simrock as Strauss’s publisher in 1889. During the three years of that business relationship Brahms remained a supporter, even when he was in danger of being caught in the cross-fire between composer and publisher that eventually led to its breakdown. In November 1891 Johann informed Simrock that his next waltz was to be dedicated to Brahms, a grateful public gesture of thanks on a title page that was to be prepared by their shared publisher.90 Three months later Strauss reported that he had alighted on 88

89

90

Variants of this story exist. A newspaper account from October 1893 has Brahms writing ‘Leider nicht von mir – Johannes Brahms’ on a fan owned by Adele Strauss; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 450. A later newspaper account from December 1899 has Brahms writing ‘Leider nicht von Johannes Brahms’ on a fan owned by Alice Strauss; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, p. 375. Richard Heuberger recalled Brahms exclaiming ‘How wonderfully Strauss orchestrates’ (‘Wie herrlich Strauss orchestriert’); see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 8, p. 165. Letter of 25 November 1891; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 5, pp. 369–70.

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a suitable title for the set of waltzes, suggested by an old acquaintance from Berlin, the satirical author Julius Stettenheim (1831–1916):91 Seid umschlungen Millionen (Be Embraced, Ye Millions, Op. 443), familiar to Austrians and Germans alike as a line from Schiller’s ‘An die Freude’ that features prominently in the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It was particularly appropriate for its would-be dedicatee, who was routinely lauded as a major figure in the line of musical development from Beethoven onwards. Early in the New Year an old acquaintance of Johann Strauss, Princess Pauline Metternich, the aristocrat who had facilitated his hugely successful debut in Paris in 1867, got in touch.92 She was a member of a committee charged with some of the arrangements for a forthcoming exhibition in the Prater, the International Exhibition for Music and Theatre. It is not known whether she and the committee considered once more the idea of having a Strauss presence in the Prater throughout the duration of the exhibition, from May to October; if so, they would have soon discovered that Eduard and the Strauss Orchestra were already committed to their traditional summer tour – that year to Hamburg, Leipzig and Berlin. Instead, Johann Strauss was asked to write a new waltz for the opening concert, to be given by an ensemble yet to be decided. He had still not composed Seid umschlungen Millionen, but opportunistically decided that it could now serve two purposes: a tribute to Brahms and the main item in the opening concert of the exhibition. Simrock was asked to prepare the printed material in advance, including a suitable title page that would reflect the two, very different circumstances of composition and performance. As the weeks went by, both Simrock and Princess Metternich became increasingly concerned that Strauss would not complete the work in time. By mid-March he had done so, but then aggravated Princess Metternich’s impatience when he decided to offer the first performance to Eduard at one of his Sunday concerts in the Musikverein. On 27 March Johann directed the performance, which had to be twice encored.93 With the highly successful performance of a waltz with a resonant title in the presence of its dedicatee and in a building very much associated with him, Johann may well have felt that he had fulfilled his duty to Brahms. But there was still the issue of the Simrock publication, especially its title page, which had to acknowledge the forthcoming exhibition. Johann had drafted the dedication to Brahms, which was to appear on 91 92 93

Letter of 6 February 1892; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, pp. 76–7. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, pp. 62–3. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 160.

Repossessed by Vienna

the right-hand side of the top half of the title page, in a very formal manner: ‘Herrn Doctor Brahms freundschaftlich zugeeignet’ (Cordially dedicated to Doctor Brahms).94 But the planned pictorial image on the title page that reflected the exhibition was in conflict with this formality and took up too much space. The final result was something of an embarrassing compromise: Brahms was moved to the top margin with the dedication reduced to two words, ‘Brahms gewidmet’ (Dedicated to Brahms). The rest of the title page was devoted to the International Exhibition, with an energetic Terpischore propelling the whole world and, underneath, an image of the central Rotunda in the Prater.95 For Strauss, the tale of the composition, performance, publication and dedication of this waltz had been a clumsy one, beginning as a warmhearted tribute to a friend and ending with that friend being an irrelevant tag to an ostentatious exhibition in the Prater. At the same time, the idea that Brahms and Johann Strauss should appear together in a musical publication would not have been considered eccentric. One of the recurring characteristics of musical life in Vienna in the last decade of the nineteenth century is how often it was described in terms of these two commanding personalities, with an entirely subordinate indication of the kind of musicians they were and, certainly, an avoidance of terms such as Ernstmusik (serious music) and Unterhaltungsmusik (light music). Eduard Hanslick, a personal friend of both composers and a frequent dinner table guest, remarked that ‘each is the first in his field. Brahms represents the House of Lords, Strauss the House of Commons’ (‘ist doch jeder von ihnen der Erste in seinem Fach. Brahms repräsentiert die Pairskammer, Strauß das Abgeordnetenhaus der Musik’).96 One notable foreign visitor to Vienna in 1892 was France’s leading composer of opera, Jules Massenet (1842–1912), whose opera Werther was given its first Viennese performance at the Court Opera House on 16 February, a month before the first performance of Seid umschlungen Millionen. For him, Brahms and Johann Strauss symbolized ‘Vienna the great city, Vienna the beautiful city’ (‘Wien die große Stadt, Wien die schöne Stadt’); the former embodied ‘the soul of Vienna’ (‘die Verkörperung der Wiener Seele’), the latter ‘the fragrance of Vienna’ (‘der Duft von Wien’).97 In the following year, to coincide with 94 95

96 97

Letter of 20 February 1892; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 104. Colour reproduction in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), p. 162. Neue Freie Presse, 6 April 1892; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 162. Reported in Max Kalbeck’s biography of Brahms; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, pp. 77–8.

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Brahms’s sixtieth birthday and to honour his long association with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the society created a new award, the Brahms Medallion: its first recipient was Johann Strauss.98 Appropriately, the high point of Johann Strauss’s personal and public relationship with the Viennese public occurred in 1894, the fiftieth anniversary of his debut at Dommayer’s Casino in Hietzing. Vienna delighted in validating its musical history with all manner of anniversaries. The Strauss brothers had often acknowledged their father’s memory in anniversary events; and Johann had previously been acknowledged on the thirtieth and fortieth anniversaries of his debut. The Wiener Männergesang-Verein had recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary; 1894, the Strauss year, also marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the new Court Opera House, the 500th performance of Don Giovanni in successive court theatres and the 200th performance of Tannhäuser. But the ‘Strauss Jubilee’, as it became known, was not only the most important musical celebration in that year but the most extensive of the decade, easily eclipsing the Mozart anniversary year of 1891.99 Since Strauss’s debut at Dommayer’s Casino had taken place on 14 October 1844, October 1894 became the focal point for the celebrations. Planning began early in the year. In February it was reported that Strauss’s latest operetta, Jabuka, would be given its premiere at the Theater an der Wien in October. By April a committee was set up to co-ordinate activities. In reality, it comprised two complementary committees: a Festcomité, consisting of administrators, financers and politicians, and an artistic committee (künstlerische Comité) that included Brahms, Goldmark, Hans Richter, Wilhelm Jahn (conductor at the Court Opera House), Johann Nepomuk Fuchs (also from the Court Opera House), Franz Suppé, Carl Zeller (composer and lawyer, 1842–98), Alfred Grünfeld (concert pianist, 1852–1920), Eduard Kremser (chorus master of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, 1838–1914), Eduard Hanslick and Max Kalbeck.100 As they deliberated and finalized their plans, May saw the announcement of a new book by Ludwig Eisenberg (1858–1910), a biography of the composer published in Leipzig by Breitkopf & Härtel: Johann Strauss: Ein Lebensbild. At 365 pages, this was a substantial volume prepared with scholarly impulses. Described as a portrait of Johann 98 99

100

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 399. On the presence of Mozart’s music in Vienna in the 1890s, see David Wyn Jones, Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 184–5; on musical anniversaries in general in the city, see Jones, Music in Vienna, pp. 188–9. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, p. 30.

Repossessed by Vienna

Strauss’s life, it is much more than that, demonstrating the same broad perspective evident in his other publications, notably a dictionary of Viennese intellectuals, architects, sculptors, actors, artists, illustrators, journalists, painters, musicians and authors.101 The biography had considerable coverage of the careers of Johann Strauss senior, Josef and, to a lesser extent, Eduard, and to get round the fact that it was perforce a biography of someone who was very much alive, the final chapter is an extended tribute to Johann Strauss, as a person and as an artist. For Eisenberg, the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of the younger Johann Strauss was an opportunity to celebrate an entire tradition as much as the particular achievement of its dominant figure. In advance of publication Adele and Eduard were concerned that it might open old wounds and reflect some of the inaccuracies that had appeared in the press over the years.102 Their concerns proved unnecessary and Johann himself was delighted with the volume. A warm-hearted letter of thanks to Eisenberg ends with the exclamatory remark ‘May Heaven crown your work with success’ (‘Der Himmel kröne Ihre Arbeit mit Erfolg’), though he does rather undermine his sincerity in the body of the letter, where he admits that he has not yet had time to read the biography.103 An even more welcome indication of esteem was provided by an old friend, the sculptor Victor Tilgner (1844–96), in the form of a new bust of the composer. In a literal sense, Tilgner was more visible as a creative figure in Vienna than Johann. From the 1870s onwards his sculptures adorned the new public buildings and spaces in the city, including the Burgtheater, the Court Opera House and the Stadtpark; his best-known sculpture, Mozart, was also his last work, originally located in the square in front of the Albertina but later transferred to the Burggarten. Very early in his career he had made a bust of Josef Strauss and, later, perhaps as many as three or four busts of Johann.104 Johann and Victor, plus their respective wives, were regular companions and the warmth of that broader friendship is evident in a letter that Victor wrote to Johann and Adele: ‘The bust . . . is the expression of true friendship, of sincere reverence and admiration for 101

102 103 104

Ludwig Eisenberg, Das geistige Wien: Mitteilungen über die in Wien lebenden Architekten, Bildhauer, Bühnenkünstler, Graphiker, Journalisten, Maler, Musiker und Schriftsteller (Vienna, 1889). Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 34–5, 37. Letter of 10 October 1894; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), pp. 221–2. Toman, Vienna, pp. 266–7; Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), pp. 293–5. Ludwig Eisenberg reported that Johann owned an exemplar of the Josef Strauss bust; see Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, p. 316.

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Joh. Strauss, Vienna’s greatest artist.’ (‘Die Büste . . . ist der Ausdruck treuer Freundschaft, aufrichtiger Verehrung und Bewunderung für unseren größten Wiener Künstler Joh. Strauss.’)105 Two theatres, one concert hall and a hotel combined to honour Johann Strauss in October. During the year the Theater an der Wien had presented frequent performances of two of Strauss’s most popular operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron, and the premiere of Jabuka was planned for the autumn. Quite unexpectedly, Johann was approached by the management of the Court Opera House, enquiring whether he would direct a matinee performance of Die Fledermaus on 28 October to raise money for its pension fund. Strauss readily agreed but, in the event, had to withdraw because of a heavy cold; the performance was entrusted to the staff conductor Johann Nepomuk Fuchs. Strauss did, however, manage to appear at the curtain call at the end of Act 2 (after Prince Orlofsky’s party), when he was rapturously received.106 A fortnight earlier, the weekend of 12–14 October, had been the absolute highlight. On the Friday the Theater an der Wien gave the premiere of Jabuka. On the Sunday two consecutive concerts were given in the Musikverein. At 12.30 the Court Opera Orchestra, with two of their conductors, Fuchs and Wilhelm Jahn, were joined by the Wiener Männergesang-Verein and their conductor Eduard Kremser plus the pianist Alfred Grünfeld. Following the declamation by a court actress of a celebratory poem (a Festgedicht) consisting of twelve lengthy stanzas by Baron Alfred von Berger (1855–1912),107 the concert itself included many of Strauss’s most popular works, including the overture to Die Fledermaus, Wein, Weib und Gesang! (male chorus version) and An der schönen, blauen Donau (male chorus version with the now standard text, ‘Donau, so blau, durch Thal und Au, wogst ruhig du hin, dich grüsst unser Wien’).108 Following the concert, many members of the audience, including Brahms and Hanslick, returned for a second concert in the same hall at 5.30, given by Eduard Strauss and the Strauss Orchestra. Their programme avoided the most well-known works in favour of the overtures to Indigo und die vierzig Räuber and to Blindekuh, the waltz Seid umschlungen Millionen, the Wildfeuer polka, the Bauern-Polka and a potpourri drawn from Der Zigeunerbaron. In addition, there were three first performances: two dances drawn from Jabuka and a potpourri assembled by Eduard Strauss, 105 106 107 108

Letter of late autumn 1894; Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 301–2. Press reports quoted in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 293–4. Given in full in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 380–2. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, p. 250; facsimile of printed programme, vol. 7, p. 266.

Repossessed by Vienna

Blumenkranz (Garland of Flowers), a chronological survey of Johann’s works across the fifty years of his professional career.109 The two concerts were reported at length by Viennese newspapers, as was a subsequent banquet in honour of Johann Strauss in the Grand Hotel on the Ringstrasse, at which, with the exception of Adele, all the guests were male.110 As well as congratulations and praise, there was a clear sense of ownership in the tributes and the press reports, with Johann being considered to belong to Vienna. As Berger’s Festgedicht put it, ‘Vienna without Strauss! Really?/That would be Vienna without St Stephen’s’ (‘Wien ohne Strauß! – Das kann’s nicht geben?/Ein Wien wär’s ohne Stefansdom’). Johann Strauss also represented the culmination of a tradition that could be traced back to his father and to Joseph Lanner, a historical narrative that omitted any mention of Josef and Eduard Strauss. The sobriquet ‘Waltz King’ (‘Walzerkönig’) is constantly used, which had the effect of marginalizing marches and polkas, as well as the wider management of aesthetic that is displayed in many of the operettas. There is a clear sense of Johann Strauss being corralled by the term. Brahms, who was present at all these events, commented interestingly on the social make-up of the people attending them: ‘The week belonged to Strauss,’ he wrote in a letter to Simrock. ‘It was really splendid, also cheerful, pleasant and agreeable. It’s interesting that the court and the aristocracy did not take notice . . .’ (‘Die Woche gehörte Strauß! Es war recht toll, aber heiter und schön und behaglich. Interessant ist, daß Hof und Adel nichts von sich merken ließen . . .’)111 In a conversation reported by Richard Heuberger (1850–1914), Brahms went further: Strauss had not been given any award or honour by the court; no minister, no senior imperial administrator, no court actor and no court singer attended the banquet.112 This was not a deliberate slight by the imperial court, and certainly not a return to the suspicious years of the 1850s, but rather a reflection of changes in Strauss’s career and his place in wider society. He had not performed at court since being relieved of his duties as Hofballmusikdirektor in 1871 and had not written a Habsburg march since 1882 (Habsburg Hoch!). In recent years publications of his music by Cranz and Simrock had ceased to include k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor on title 109

110 111 112

Press report in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 268; facsimile of printed programme, vol. 7, p. 267. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 274–6. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, p. 280. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 280–1.

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pages. Politics in Vienna had become more stratified over the decades, with the national parliament having increasing influence over policy and, more recently, civic authorities in Vienna itself having a greater say in local governance. When Johann began his career in 1844, there was only one level of government; now there were three. The increasing influence of the Christian Social Party, especially under their leader, the opportunistically anti-Semitic Dr Karl Lueger, unsettled the long-standing liberal consensus that had emerged in the 1850s and 1860s. It was to reach a crisis point in the year following the Strauss Jubilee, when the emperor refused to ratify the election of Lueger as mayor of Vienna.113 While Strauss and his music never reflected these political developments, both the composer and his music did reflect a certain separation of the city from the court. As a citizen of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Strauss did not have a vote and there is no evidence of his political views: he was not anti-Semitic – his lifelong friend, Gustav Lewy, was Jewish – and one suspects that his sympathies lay with the Liberal party, the one that had constituted the background to his career earlier in the century. Eduard’s presence in Habsburg Vienna in the 1890s was a different, more complex one. As Hofballmusikdirektor, he continued to perform at court during the Carnival season throughout the decade and wrote two waltzes that were associated with the weddings of three Habsburg archduchesses: Myrthenzauber (Op. 272) for the weddings of Franz Joseph’s daughter Marie Valerie and that of a distant cousin, Luise, and Hochzeitslieder (Op. 288/290) for the wedding of a niece, Margarethe Sophie. Eduard had a strong sense of historical loyalty to the dynasty. In the early 1880s he had spent some time collecting material for a potpourri of dances that covered the reigns of six monarchs: Maria Theresia, Joseph II, Leopold II, Franz II (I), Ferdinand I and Franz Joseph. This historical potpourri was performed at the Musikverein on two occasions, 18 November 1883 and 29 November 1891; unfortunately, unlike Josef Strauss’s Das musikalische Oesterreich, it has not survived.114 But loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty went hand in hand with increasing contempt for the Habsburg capital; he spent most of the summer months away from Vienna and felt little or no attachment towards it. In a congratulatory letter to Johann following the successful jubilee concert in the Musikverein he gives free rein to these now ingrained outlooks: ‘I have, thank God, long been independent from Vienna, a long time emancipated. My tours are my 113 114

Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 273–4. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 5, p. 402

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livelihood – and my success. I don’t care a damn what any critic in Vienna says. I’m already working on my next tour [to London, Holland and Germany] and will be happy not to hear anything from the Viennese press claque for six to seven months.’115 There was a fundamental irony here: the success of the tours was dependent on projecting that quality which Eduard professed to despise: an image of Vienna and the Strauss legacy. As Eduard indicates, he was heavily dependent on foreign tours for his income and, though he was never to be as well off as his brother, he had built up a healthy portfolio of investments and savings. In 1886 he had purchased an apartment for the family in the Reichsratsstrasse in the heart of the new Vienna, directly behind the parliament building (completed in 1884) and along the road from the Rathaus (completed in 1883). But this self-assuring purchase was to be undermined in the 1890s by the behaviour of his immediate family. The eldest son, Johann Maria Eduard (1866–1939), was married with a young son, Johann Eduard Maria (1895–1972), and enjoyed a respectable career as an accountant in the ministry of education. Eduard’s second son, Josef Eduard Anna (1868–1940), could not have been more different: troublesome, feckless and deceitful. When the family moved to the Reichsratsstrasse, he was a student at a commercial college; he gave up his studies, accumulated debts and joined the army, only to be discharged by 1892. Unknown to Eduard, but with the connivance of their elder son, Eduard’s wife, Maria, had begun to spend the accumulated wealth on supporting Josef, partly in order to avoid a public scandal – a dishonesty that was expedited by Eduard’s lengthy annual absences from Vienna. The marriage itself had always been a happy one and for nearly three years Eduard knew nothing. When he discovered the continuing embezzlement in 1897, he was close to bankruptcy. He acted swiftly and decisively. Josef had already been disowned; he was now joined by Johann. As for Maria, she was summarily evicted from the apartment and legally prevented from accessing what was left of the family fortune.116 Eduard was to live the rest of his life bitter and implacably unforgiving of the behaviour of his wife and two sons. Although Johann and Adele were fully aware of the family scandal as it unfolded in 1897, it was not reported in newspapers, and the public commitments of Johann and Eduard were able to proceed as normal, hindered only by concern about the flu virus that was circulating in the 115 116

Letter of 18 October 1894; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, pp. 281–2. Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 163–5.

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city. Johann’s latest operetta, Die Göttin der Vernunft, was given its first performance in the Theater an der Wien on 13 March, with the subsequent distribution pattern unfolding in the familiar way: performances in other cities, the composition of derivative dances and their performance in Eduard’s concerts. One personal element was missing: the curiosity of Brahms about the latest operetta of his friend. With the onset of cancer the previous summer, Brahms was becoming increasingly weak and had last visited Strauss in the Igelgasse on 23 January, though he seems to have attended part of the premiere of Die Göttin der Vernunft.117 He died on 3 April in his home in the Karlsgasse. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde took care of the funeral arrangements, a procession witnessed by thousands as it made its way from the Karlsgasse via the Musikverein to the Protestant church in the Dorotheergasse. After the service the cortege proceeded to the exceptionally large municipal cemetery, the Central Cemetery, to the south-east of the city, where there was a dedicated area for composers that included the re-interred remains of Beethoven, Lanner, Schubert and two members of the Strauss family, Johann Strauss (Father) and Josef Strauss. There, Brahms was laid to rest. Among the mourners were Dvořák, Fuchs, Goldmark, Kalbeck, Kremser, Lueger, Marie Schumann (Robert and Clara’s daughter) and Felix Weingartner (1863–1942). Eduard Strauss attended, as did Adele, but not Johann.118 This was yet another funeral that he missed, though on this occasion he did have a semblance of an excuse in his continuing concern about catching influenza. Johann was eight years older than Brahms, Eduard two years younger. Unusually, Johann did not have a major project that demanded his attention during the now standard relocation to Bad Ischl in the summer. Eduard, on the hand, stunned by recent family events, immersed himself in organizing a summer tour, first to London from May to August and, on the return journey, a further month in Germany.119 With the death of Brahms, the Brahms-Strauss axis – a construct that promoted the vitality of musical life in Vienna - had disappeared and what remained was becoming increasingly backward-looking, with the public being more interested in old Strauss than new Strauss. In comparison with the 1860s, when all three brothers were in action, their music no longer consistently engaged with the topical and the familiar. Late nineteenth-century Vienna exhibited the same commercial, economic and industrial energy that had produced the extensive railway system in the first half of the century and the Ringstrasse 117 119

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 8, p. 312. Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 165–7.

118

Neue Freie Presse, 7 April 1897.

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project in the second, but little of that found its way into the music of the Strauss brothers in the 1890s. While newspapers excitedly commented on events such as the first electric tram, the first cinema, the new sport of football, the erection of the famous Riesenrad in the Prater and a new highway linking the outer suburbs to the south and west of the city called the Gürtel (girdle), none of these found its way into a Strauss waltz, polka or march. Other characteristics of life in the 1890s were even less conducive to the Strauss aesthetic. The new railway stations designed by Otto Wagner (1841–1918) that were built alongside the Gürtel and elsewhere in the 1890s were strikingly modern in their appearance and, in a related field, 1897–8 saw the founding by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and colleagues of the Secessionist movement, including the building of a dedicated exhibition hall, the House of Secession, above the entrance of which was proclaimed its motto ‘To the age its art, to art its freedom’. It could have been applied to the Strausses in the middle of the century, but not at its end. The shifts in the nature of political power were also not favourable. While absolute and representational monarchy was well-suited to the music of the Strauss brothers, parliamentary politics and the new, contentious politics of Dr Karl Lueger were not. After the fallow summer of 1897 Johann Strauss returned the following year to the practice of devoting the summer months in Bad Ischl to a stage project, this time a rather different one, a ballet based on the Cinderella story (Aschenbrödel). To a degree, presenting a series of dance movements to fit a well-known story was a simpler task than composing an operetta. One long-standing friend, Hanslick, visited Strauss in Bad Ischl and was given a copy of the scenario, later writing to the composer that he found it uninteresting and not suitable for musical treatment.120 Undeterred, Strauss continued to work on the project. He was still in Bad Ischl in September when the distressing news came through that Empress Elisabeth had been murdered while taking a stroll to a passenger steamer on Lake Geneva, where she had been recuperating from illness. She had been a distinctive, if often absent, figure in the life of the empire for forty-four years, perhaps most sympathetically remembered by Johann Strauss for her strong identification with the Hungarian component of the dual monarchy. As well as the requisite period of state mourning, provisional plans to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Franz Joseph’s accession to the throne were put to one side. 120

Letter of 13 September 1898; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, p. 88.

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Back in Vienna Johann was becoming increasingly reclusive in nature, welcoming visitors to his home in the Igelgasse but hardly venturing outside. As ever, he was concerned about his physical health, but comparative isolation and dwelling on changing times nursed a certain melancholy, too. Alice, his much-loved stepdaughter, had recently been granted a divorce from her first husband and, in March 1899, married Richard Epstein (1869–1919), the celebrated pianist, in a low-key ceremony in the Protestant church in the Dorotheergasse, a rare moment of happiness for Johann.121 About this time he seems to have developed a chest infection, which, in the absence of antibiotics, became increasingly debilitating. He continued to work on the Cinderella project, welcomed visitors, professional and family, and played the occasional game of tarock. The Court Opera House was planning to give a matinee performance of Die Fledermaus to raise money, once more, for its pension fund and Johann was asked whether he would conduct the overture, after which one of the staff conductors, Joseph Hellmesberger (1855–1907), would take over for the rest of the work. Enthused by this gesture, Johann agreed. On 22 May at 1.00 pm, Johann Strauss entered the pit to the sound of a fanfare, before unleashing the excitable beginning of the overture for what was to be the last time.122 The weather that May was unseasonably cold and wet, aggravating Johann’s physical condition as well as his melancholy. Five days after his appearance at the Court Opera House Johann took to his bed, shivering and coughing. Over the next few days moments of delirium alternated with brief lucidity. He died at 4.15 in the afternoon of 3 June 1899 at the age of seventy-three.123 As had been the case with his friend Brahms, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde took care of the funeral arrangements, which included many of the features of the earlier occasion.124 Shortly after 3.00 pm on 6 June – ironically in the heat of high summer – the cortege left the Igelgasse, the bier followed by six wagons laden with wreaths and flowers. The mourners were led by Adele and Alice; Eduard, who had left Vienna for his tour of Germany, was unable to attend but was represented by his two errant sons, Johann and Josef. The cortege first made its way to the Theater an der Wien, Johann’s professional base for nearly thirty years, and 121 122 123 124

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, pp. 155, 172. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, pp. 188–9. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, pp. 196–9. The following description draws on the detailed account in the Fremden-Blatt, 7 June 1899; for a shortened transcription, see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, pp. 256–62.

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then towards the inner city, across the Ringstrasse and past the Court Opera House to the Protestant church in the Dorotheergasse, the venue for Alice’s second wedding a few months earlier. Watching crowds were often five or six deep, while others occupied vantage points in the upper storeys of large buildings, many built during Strauss’s lifetime. A short forty-five-minute service in the church included a performance of Mendelssohn’s Chorale Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath (Op. 47, No. 4) by the church choir and Carl Reissiger’s Wanderers Nachtlied by members of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein. From the church, the procession made its way across the city to the Musikverein, paused outside, where, after a spoken tribute by the vice president of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, members of its Singverein conducted by Richard Perger (1854–1911) sang Brahms’s part-song, Fahr wohl, o Vögelein (Op. 93a, No. 4). The procession then began the journey to the Central Cemetery, along streets thronged with silent onlookers. At 5.30 it reached the dedicated open grave, not far from the resting place of Brahms and Schubert. After the wreaths of the widow and of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde had been placed in the open grave, the mayor of Vienna, Dr Karl Lueger, gave a tribute on behalf of the city: ‘We have here selected his resting place, in the midst of the great heroes of classical music. In this way we wish to declare that when Vienna is spoken of, Strauss too is mentioned, indeed must be mentioned.’ Lueger’s tribute was followed by two shorter ones, by Richard Perger and by a journalist on behalf of ‘Concordia’, the organization for which Johann Strauss had written so many dances. After the assembled mourners departed in the early evening sunshine, the remaining flowers and wreaths were placed on the grave, forming a large mound.

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Staging Comedy: Operetta and Opera

The musical career of the most celebrated member of the Strauss family, Johann Strauss the younger, had unfolded in two clear stages: twenty-six years from 1844 to 1870 devoted to the composition and direction of dances for concerts as well as for the ballroom, and twenty-eight years from 1871 to 1899 devoted to the composition and frequent direction of stage works (fifteen operettas and one comic opera), with original dance works for the ballroom and the concert hall occupying a secondary role. As the list of stage works given in Box 6.1 reveals, the works were distributed evenly across the decades: six works in the 1870s, five in the 1880s and five in the 1890s. Following preliminary work, there was a broad working pattern of intense composition in the summer months, leading to premieres in the subsequent season between October and April. Also evident from Box 6.1 is a consistent association with one theatre, the Theater an der Wien, with only three works being given premieres in other theatres (Eine Nacht in Venedig at the FriedrichWilhelmstädisches Theater in Berlin, Prinz Methusalem at the Carltheater in Vienna and Ritter Pásmán at the Court Opera House in Vienna). It would be a mistake, however, to deduce that Strauss had found a successful blueprint for his professional life, one that remained essentially unaltered across the decades. What is striking about the succession of works is the different nature of each one: for instance, there was never a sequel to Die Fledermaus that further explored the characters and plot lines of that work. Strauss constantly strove to make his next stage work a different challenge for himself as a composer, and even if he was sometimes badly served by librettists, managers and singers, he maintained that outlook throughout his career. The following broad survey of the stage works focuses on three different aspects: the creative attitude to time and place in the works; performance and dissemination; and the failure of the experimental comic opera, Ritter Pásmán. 212

6 Staging Comedy: Operetta and Opera

213

Box 6.1 Johann Strauss (Son): operetta and opera. Premieres, theatres, librettists and derivative published works Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (10 February 1871, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Richard Genée Waltz: Tausend und eine Nacht (Op. 346, 1871) Polka: Schawl-Polka (Op. 343, 1871); Auf freiem Fuße (Op. 345, 1871); Aus der Heimath (Op. 347, 1871); Im Sturmschritt! (Op. 348, 1871); Die Bajadere (Op. 351, 1871) Quadrille: Indigo-Quadrille (Op. 344, 1871) Other: Indigo-Marsch (Op. 349, 1871) Carneval in Rom (1 March 1873, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Josef Braun Waltz: Carnevalsbilder (Op. 357, 1873) Polka: Vom Donaustrande (Op. 356, 1873); Nimm sie hin! (Op. 358, 1873); Gruss aus Oesterreich (Op. 359, 1873) Quadrille: Rotunde-Quadrille (Op. 360, 1873) Die Fledermaus (5 April 1874, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Carl Haffner and Richard Genée Waltz: Du und Du (Op. 367, 1874) Polka: Fledermaus-Polka (Op. 362, 1874); Tik-Tak (Op. 365, 1874); An der Moldau (Op. 366, 1874); Glücklich ist, wer vergißt! (Op. 368, 1874) Quadrille: Fledermaus-Quadrille (Op. 363, 1874) Cagliostro in Wien (27 February 1875, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Richard Genée and Friedrich Zell (= Camillo Walzel) Waltz: Cagliostro-Walzer (Op. 370, 1875) Polka: Bitte schön! (Op. 372, 1875); Auf der Jagd (Op. 373, 1875); Licht und Schatten (Op. 374, 1875) Quadrille: Cagliostro-Quadrille (Op. 369, 1875) Other: Hoch Oesterreich!/Cagliostro-Marsch (Op. 371, 1875) Prinz Methusalem (3 January 1877, Carltheater, Vienna) Libretto: Victor Wilder and Alfred Delacour Waltz: O schöner Mai (Op. 375, 1877) Polka: I Tipferl-Polka (Op. 377, 1877); Banditen-Galopp (Op. 378, 1877); Kriegers Liebchen (Op. 379, 1877) Quadrille: Methusalem-Quadrille (Op. 376, 1877) Blindekuh (18 December 1878, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Rudolf Kneisel Waltz: Kennst du mich? (Op. 381, 1879) Polka: Pariser Polka (Op. 382, 1879); Nur fort! (Op. 383, 1879); Waldine (Op. 385, 1879) Quadrille: Opern-Maskenball-Quadrille (Op. 384, 1879)

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6 Staging Comedy: Operetta and Opera

Box 6.1 (cont.) Das Spitzentuch der Königin (1 October 1880, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Heinrich Bohrmann-Riegen and Richard Genée Waltz: Rosen aus dem Süden (Op. 388, 1880) Polka: Stürmisch in Lieb’ und Tanz (Op. 393, 1881); Liebchen, schwing’ Dich! (Op. 394, 1881) Quadrille: Spitzentuch-Quadrille (Op. 392, 1881) Other: Gavotte der Königin (Op. 391, 1880); Matador-Marsch (Op. 406, 1883) Der lustige Krieg (25 November 1881, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Friedrich Zell (= Camillo Walzel) and Richard Genée Waltz: Kuß-Walzer (Op. 400, 1882); Italienischer Walzer (Op. 407, 1882) Polka: Was sich liebt, neckt sich (Op. 399, 1882); Der Klügere giebt nach (Op. 401, 1882); Entweder – oder! (Op. 403, 1882); Violetta (Op. 404, 1882); Nord und Süd (Op. 405, 1882) Quadrille: Der lustige Krieg (Op. 402, 1882) Other: Der lustige Krieg (march) (Op. 397, 1882); Frisch in’s Feld! (march) (Op. 398, 1882) Eine Nacht in Venedig (3 October 1883, Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater, Berlin) Libretto: Friedrich Zell (= Camillo Walzel) and Richard Genée Waltz: Lagunen-Walzer (Op. 411, 1883) Polka: Pappacoda-Polka (Op. 412, 1883); So ängstlich sind wir nicht! (Op. 413, 1883); Die Tauben von San Marco (Op. 414, 1883); Annina (Op. 415, 1884) Quadrille: Quadrille, Eine Nacht in Venedig (Op. 416, 1884) Der Zigeunerbaron (24 October 1885, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Ignaz Schnitzer Waltz: Schatz-Walzer (Op. 418, 1885) Polka: Brautschau (Op. 417, 1885); Kriegsabenteuer (Op. 419, 1885); Die Wahrsagerin (Op. 420, 1885); Husaren-Polka (Op. 421, 1886) Quadrille: Zigeunerbaron-Quadrille (Op. 422, 1886) Simplicius (17 December 1887, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Victor Léon Waltz: Donauweibchen (Op. 427, 1888) Polka: Soldatenspiel (Op. 430, 1888); Lagerlust (Op. 431, 1888); Muthig voran! (Op. 432, 1888) Quadrille: Simplicius-Quadrille (Op. 429, 1888) Other: Reitermarsch (Op. 428, 1888) Ritter Pásmán (1 January 1892, Court Opera House, Vienna) Libretto: Ludwig Dóczi Waltz: Pásmán-Walzer (Op. 441A, 1892); Eva-Walzer (Op. 441D, 1892) Polka: Pásmán-Polka (Op. 441B, 1892)

Time and Place: Then and Now

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Quadrille: Pásmán-Quadrille (Op. 441E, 1892) Other: Csárdás (Op. 441C, 1892); Ritter Pásmán (ballet music) Fürstin Ninetta (10 January1893, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Julius Bauer and Hugo Wittmann Waltz: Ninetta-Walzer (Op. 445, 1893) Polka: Diplomaten-Polka (Op. 448, 1893); Neue-Pizzicato-Polka (Op. 449, 1893) Quadrille: Ninetta-Quadrille (Op. 446, 1893) Other: Ninetta-Marsch (Op. 447, 1893); Ninetta-Galopp (Op. 450, 1893) Jabuka (12 October 1894, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Gustav Davis and Max Kalbeck Waltz: Jabuka-Walzer (Op. 455, 1894) Polka: Das Comitat geht in die Höh’! (Op. 457, 1894); Tanze mit dem Besenstiel! (Op. 458, 1894); Sonnenblume (Op. 459, 1894) Quadrille: Jabuka-Quadrille (Op. 460, 1894) Other: Živio! (march) (Op. 456, 1894) Waldmeister (4 December 1895, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: Gustav Davis Waltz: Waldmeister-Walzer (Op. 463, 1895) Polka: Herrjemineh (Op. 464, 1895); Liebe und Ehe (Op. 465, 1896), Quadrille: Waldmeister-Quadrille (Op. 468, 1896) Other: Klipp-Klapp (galop) (Op. 466, 1896); Es war so wunderschön (march) (Op. 467, 1896) Die Göttin der Vernunft (13 March 1897, Theater an der Wien, Vienna) Libretto: A. M. Willner and G. Buchbinder Waltz: Heut’ ist heut’ (Op. 471, 1897) Polka: Nur nicht mucken! (Op. 472, 1897) Other: Wo uns’re Fahne weht! (march) (Op. 473, 1897) Sources: Alexandra and Andrea Hönigmann, ‘Zeittafel’, in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), pp. 11–79; Strauß-Elementar-Verzeichnis: Thematisch-Bibliographischer Katalog der Werke von Johann Strauß (Sohn), vols. 1–8 (Tutzing, 1990–2013), vols. 9– (Vienna, 2017–).

Time and Place: Then and Now The creative sleight of hand that informed the decision to locate Die Fledermaus ‘in a spa town near a large city’ rather than ‘in Baden near Vienna’ is indicative of a wider aesthetic in Strauss’s operettas: the music

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was always going to be interpreted as Viennese, even when, as in Die Göttin der Vernunft, the action was located in a completely different time and place (in that case, revolutionary France). Since there was no such thing as a serious operetta, this disjunction allowed comic characters and comic plots that were the product of ‘Viennese’ music to figure in a variety of times and places, from Portugal (Das Spitzenbuch der Königin) to Serbia (Jabuka), and from the early fourteenth century (Ritter Pásmán) to the present day (Blindekuh). At its best, this disjunction was creative, entertaining and informing in a way that it would not have been had Strauss written sixteen operettas set in contemporary Vienna. It was also different from the aesthetic of the dance music of all four members of the Strauss dynasty, which often had a strong sense of place but did not play tricks with time. Only one work is set entirely in Vienna: Cagliostro in Wien, first performed at the Theater an der Wien ten months after the premiere of Die Fledermaus; but the action is placed in the middle of the eighteenth century.1 Count Alessandro Cagliostro was the pseudonym assumed by a well-known charlatan of the period, Giuseppe Balsano (1743–95) from Palermo, and the operetta describes his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to dupe the Viennese, who proceed to reveal his true, non-aristocratic identity, though, rather than being damned, his entertaining presence is celebrated at the end of Act 3 in the aria ‘Nur Cagliostro ist der Mann, der solch’ Wunder wirken kann’ (Cagliostro is the only man who can do such wonderful things). At the beginning of the operetta, before the arrival of Cagliostro, the assembled Viennese are seen celebrating the centenary of the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, when the city walls only just held out against the invaders. Over two hundred years later, when Strauss’s operetta was first performed, Viennese work-men were busy demolishing those very same walls. The past and the present come together in the opening number, a ‘Tempo di Valse’ chorus sung by the citizens of Vienna, followed by a male chorus in march time that celebrates the bravery of citizens and soldiers alike on behalf of an entity, the Fatherland, that belongs more to the nineteenth century than to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries: ‘Bürger und Soldaten übten Heldenthaten, machten frei das Vaterland’ (Citizens and soldiers performed heroic deeds, made the Fatherland free).2 The celebrations continue with wine, dancing, the sound of a hurdy-gurdy, plus competing calls from stall-holders selling

1 2

Plot summary and cast list in Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 192–3, 356. For an extensive account of military patriotism prompted by Austria’s most famous soldier, Radetzky, see Laurence Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford, 2014), pp. 63–107.

Time and Place: Then and Now

sausages, beer, salami and pork (Kaiserfleisch), compressing two hundred years of muddled history into one glorious moment, the here and now. One operetta, Blindekuh, is set in the Austrian countryside, in a house set in broad parkland and large enough to have its own ballroom, though otherwise unidentified. While the lady of the house, Arabella, often refers to Vienna, the storyline is not strongly characterized by Viennese attributes. The libretto, the composite work of individuals in the Theater an der Wien, was based on a play by the Prussian author and actor Rudolf Kneisel (1831– 99).3 It is set in contemporary times and features the visit of a rich American relation, Adolf Bothwell, to the country estate, where he is expected to fulfil an arranged marriage with Waldine, daughter of the landowner. She, however, is in love with a local man, Hellmuth, but even more of a problem is the fact that Adolf Bothwell is already married. After a multitude of twists and turns, deliberate and accidental, the confusion is resolved to the benefit of the Austrian lovers, Waldine and Hellmuth. In the central act, set in parkland, confusion is further complemented by a game of Blindekuh, blindman’s buff. Beyond the cliché of true love being rewarded, there was very little here with which audiences in the Theater an der Wien could identify. Three operettas were located wholly or in part in a totally different country, Italy, and in a period, ‘middle of the eighteenth century’, that was usefully vague: Carneval in Rom, Der lustige Krieg and Eine Nacht in Venedig . While the timeframe allowed a degree of escapism from the constraints of the present, the geographical setting of Italy encouraged extravagance in the stage presentation, and occasionally in the music too. Italy had never figured significantly in Strauss’s career, and he did not make his first visit to the country until 1874, a year after the premiere of Carneval in Rom and eight years after Austria had been forced to relinquish its territories in the peninsula. The climate was different, as was the maritime topography and the individuality of major cities such as Rome and Venice, but Strauss and his librettists, Josef Braun, Richard Genée and Camillo Walzel, engaged only opportunistically with its allure. In that sense, Johann Strauss was rather different from Berlioz (Harold in Italy), Liszt (Années de pèlerinage, second and third volumes), Mendelssohn (‘Italian’ Symphony) and Tchaikovsky (Capriccio italien, Francesca da Rimini and Souvenir de Florence). One of the operettas set in Italy, Eine Nacht in Venedig, reflected a displaced Viennese fondness for the city that had been cultivated by Johann Strauss (Father) and which his son also treasured. In July 1834 his father had organized an open-air concert in the Augarten, Eine Nacht in 3

Plot and cast list in Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 212, 359.

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Venedig, with a particularly large and skilfully illuminated stage-set providing an imposing background to the festivities. Aged eight, the young Johann Strauss may well have attended the event; he certainly owned a copy of the lithograph that was produced at the time, on display in his study in the Igelgasse.4 The successive stage-sets of the operetta are similarly evocative: the Grand Canal, the ducal palace of Urbino and St Mark’s Square. Strauss the Son would not have been the only one to link the operetta with the memory of his father. This public fondness for Venice was further enhanced in the 1890s by the opening of a popular attraction in the Prater, ‘Venedig in Wien’ (Venice in Vienna), a theme park complete with canals, gondolas, a café, champagne bar and a theatre.5 The music of Strauss’s operetta points up images of Vienna in Venice, as it were: a beguiling song by the barber Caramello, dressed as a gondolier, that cleverly uses waltz rhythms (notated in 6/8) to evoke the lapping water, and a choral tribute to the pigeons of St Mark’s Square, ‘Tauben von San Marco, wem sind sie nicht bekannt?’ (Who doesn’t know of the pigeons of St Mark’s?), in which the singers imitate the cooing of the birds. Pigeons, St Mark’s Square and other Venetian images feature on the title page of the piano arrangement of the derivative set of waltzes, Die Tauben von San Marco (Op. 414) (Figure 16). Although the province of Massa-Carrara in Tuscany is indicated as the location for Der lustige Krieg, the operetta has little sense of place. Rather, it is a sustained narrative of intrigue, as absurd as it is entertaining.6 Two provinces are nominally at war, Genoa and Massa-Carrara, but actual fighting is replaced by a comedy of manners acted out by the aristocrats, the households and the military of both sides. The leader of the invading Genoese is Colonel Umberto Spinola; Massa-Carrara, in turn, is led by a widowed countess, Violetta Lumelli, who leads an army of women. The two fall in love, as a result of which actual warfare is happily averted. While audiences in Vienna of 1881–2 may have drawn the moral that Austrian soft diplomacy was more likely to yield success than victory on the battlefield, especially given the loss of former German and Italian territories in the previous decades, they may also have been amused by the names given to the leading characters. Spinola brings to mind the actual personage of Ambrosio Spinola (1569–1630), who commanded Spanish and Dutch 4

5

6

Reported in Eisenberg’s detailed description of Strauss’s house in the Igelgasse; see Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, p. 311. A coloured version is reproduced in Brusatti, Düriegl and Karner, Johann Strauß, p. 88. Klaus Hödl, Entangled Entertainers: Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (New York, 2019), pp. 66–7. Plot summary and cast list in Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 221–3, 360.

Time and Place: Then and Now

forces in the Thirty Years War, while, more topically, Violetta may have brought to mind the central figure in Verdi’s La traviata, an opera that was enjoying a run of performances on the stage of the Court Opera House in Vienna, where it was performed in German and given the title Violetta.7 With Viennese waltzes, polkas and marches ringing out from the stage of the Theater an der Wien, Strauss’s Violetta was more fortunate in love than Verdi’s Violetta on the stage of the Court Opera House. Strauss’s first operetta, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, is the most escapist of all his stage works. Drawn very loosely from the collection of oriental tales One Thousand and One Nights, time and place (the fictitious island of Makassar, ruled by King Indigo) are wholly indeterminate except for one element: the central character, a dancing girl in the harem named Fantasca, who longs to return to her birthplace, Vienna.8 Her Heimweh is projected against a comic picture of the Orient that allows easy digs at contemporary society in the West, including musical life. Two eunuchs are given the names Soprano and Falsetto, a poet is appropriately named Chimerico and a government minister Corruptio. Alibaba is a donkey herdsman, which allows his first number to pun on the words ‘Esel’ and ‘Edel’ (donkey and aristocrat), to the detriment of the latter. It is left to Fantasca to bring a sympathetic focus onto Vienna: in a trio with the high priest Romadur and the carefree counsellor Janio, she longs to return to the city ‘on the blue Danube in my beautiful Fatherland’ (‘dort an der blauen Donau möcht’ ich geh’n, meines schönes Vaterland, dich widerseh’n’). The visual image turns to a musical one, a waltz in praise of the ‘Donaustrand’ (banks of the Danube), Strauss’s second homage to the river. When Fantasca and her companions are eventually freed from captivity and board a ship to begin their journey back to Vienna, the principal melody of the waltz is reprised in triumph. In contrast to usefully vague indications of time such as ‘the present’ and ‘middle of the eighteenth century’, the poster for one operetta, Simplicius, indicates that it takes place in a specified year in the seventeenth century, 1644.9 That year was towards the end of the Thirty Years War that shaped a new relationship between the Habsburg monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as between France and Sweden. Military life in the Habsburg army forms the broad background to the action, set in two areas of conflict: Olmütz in Moravia and, two years later (1646), Hanau 7 8

9

Wilhelm Beetz, Das Wiener Opernhaus: 1869 bis 1955 (Zurich, 1955), pp. 180–1. Plot summary in Camille Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna: Operetta and the Politics of Popular Culture (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 262–3; cast list in Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, p. 351. Poster (with cast list) reproduced in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 167; plot summary in Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna, p. 266.

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to the east of Frankfurt. The cast is populated by army personnel of all kinds, plus the children of soldiers, local lads, a priest and various tradesmen such as a tailor, a baker, a cobbler and an innkeeper. Against this background there is the poignant story of the eponymous Simplicius, a young orphan who has been brought up by a hermit; separated from this caring father, he joins the army, falls in love with Tilly, eventually marries her and is reunited with his hermit father. A sentimental rather than gloriously silly tale, the intertwining of personal circumstances and the military environment is skilfully managed by the librettist Victor Léon (1858–1940) and reflected in Strauss’s music. The opening scene focusses on the figure of the hermit praying at the foot of a rustic wooden cross – a gentle reminder to the audience of one of the abiding consequences of the Thirty Years War, namely, that the religion of citizens should be determined by the religion of the ruler, cuius regio, eius religio. Over two hundred years later Viennese censors very rarely allowed the depiction of religious practice on stage; however, the censors may have thought this example was suitably neutral – a hermit in a woodland rather than a priest in a church – an acknowledgement that tension between Catholic and Protestant was no longer a feature of Habsburg society. The finale of Act 1 is unashamedly loyalist: as the soldiers are about to march off to war, excitable children indulge in a bout of Katzenmusik (more 1848 than 1644) and all join in the declamation ‘Für’s deutsche Reich! Für Ferdinand! Hurrah. Mit Gott für Kaiser und Vaterland!’ The Reich was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, dissolved in 1806, and the emperor was Ferdinand III, the Habsburg monarch who successfully negotiated the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War. There is one further incident in the operetta that references the old relationship between the Habsburg monarchy and the Reich in a manner that would have appealed to the Viennese. It shows Strauss at his most musically inventive, atmospheric, amusing and touching. Simplicius and Tilly are joined by a second pair of lovers, Arnim and Hildegarde, in a number in Act 2 that compares two rivers, the German Rhine and the Austrian Danube, their musings supported by a humming chorus (Brummchor) in the background. Tilly, Arnim and Hildegarde remark that the fabled Lorelei of the Rhine lures people to their death, whereas the fabled Donauweibchen of the Danube usually brings good fortune; Simplicius is unable to follow this discussion and resorts to verbalizing ‘la, la, la’ to the 4/8 rhythms of the Rhine and ‘didl, dum-dei, didl, dum-dei’ to the waltz rhythms of the Danube. On account of her good nature, the superiority of the Donauweibchen is said to be valued in the entire Reich (‘ist gepriesen

Time and Place: Then and Now

darum in dem ganzen Reich’), a gentle assertion of the historical dominance of the Habsburgs and Vienna in the history of the Holy Roman Empire. Given that Simplicius is an operetta that is unusually explicit about its historical setting in a way that many Viennese, especially the educated bourgeoisie, would have understood, it invites the question of whether this light-hearted musical history lesson would have provoked comparisons with the nature of German and Austrian kinship in the 1880s. In the same year as the premiere of Simplicius, Strauss and Adele had become citizens of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, formerly part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the operetta itself was dedicated to its ruler, Duke Ernst II.10 Like the productive muddle as to which kaiser is celebrated in the KaiserWalzer, Simplicius celebrates both identities, ones that were familiar to the Viennese, the pan-German and the Austrian. There was one cardinal difference between the operetta and evolving history in the 1880s: in the operetta, Habsburg Austria emerges as the dominant force; in real political life, Germany was increasingly the more influential. Whereas political and cultural duality may be inferred in Simplicius, it is the central concern of Der Zigeunerbaron, first performed at the same theatre, the Theater an der Wien, fourteen months earlier.11 The text was based on a novel by the Hungarian author, Mór Jókai (1825–1904). Born in the same year as Johann Strauss, Jókai’s career had similarities with that of the composer, as well as with the Hungarian political leader Count Gyula Andrássy, until 1879 the foreign minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As an avid follower of Andrássy, Jókai had participated enthusiastically in the revolution of 1848, as Strauss had done; also like Strauss, he married someone from the theatre, the actress Judit Benke Laborfalva. As a journalist and author, he developed a literary career that mirrored the political career of Andrássy, writing in both languages, German and Hungarian. Andrássy and Jókai personified the Ausgleich of 1867, two complementary personalities in the new entity of Austro-Hungary. Written in German, Jókai’s novel Saffi appeared in November 1883 and relates the tale of a gypsy girl who falls in love with a fellow gypsy, Sándor Barinkay, a love match that is threatened by the discovery that Saffi is the daughter of the last pasha of Hungary and 10

11

Undated letter of dedication by Strauss transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, pp. 131–2. The Austro-Hungarian character of the work is discussed in Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna, pp. 170–209; Péter Hanák, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton, 1998), pp. 137–40. For changing perceptions of that characteristic in the early years of the twentieth century, see Markian Prokopovych, ‘Celebrating Hungary? Johann Strauss’s Der Zigeunerbaron and the Press in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna and Budapest’, Austrian Studies, 25 (2017), pp. 118–35.

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not, therefore, someone suitable to be married to Barinkay; he joins the Habsburg army, is ennobled for his service and, as a gypsy baron, now feels himself to be worthy of the hand of Saffi.12 It is thought that Strauss and Jókai first met in Budapest when the composer was in the city in November 1883. Both became committed to the idea of converting the novel into a libretto for an operetta. For this very practical process, the author and journalist Ignaz Schnitzer (1839–1921) was approached. To an even greater extent than Strauss and Jókai, Schnitzer had a career that embraced the two elements of the new empire. Born in Pressburg, he lived in Vienna from 1857 onwards, moved to Budapest in the Ausgleich year of 1867 and then back to Vienna in 1881; throughout his career he wrote in two languages, German and Hungarian. While Schnitzer worked on the libretto, Jókai became involved with an ambitious project promoted by the Habsburg court in Vienna and designed to celebrate the collective achievement of the diverse peoples of the empire, Die österreichische-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, a popular, lavishly illustrated encyclopedia that was to appear in twenty-four volumes between 1885 and 1902.13 The huge public success of Der Zigeunerbaron in those years added Klang to the Wort und Bild of the encyclopedia. Placing the action of Der Zigeunerbaron, once more, in ‘the middle of the eighteenth century’ rather than in the present discouraged the particular association of character and plot with living individuals and current incidents. The denoted period also allows a narrative of the gradual embracing of the other to emerge. Zigeuner clearly indicated Hungary rather than Austria, and the first two acts are located in the Banat of Temesvár, a Habsburg province that existed in the eighteenth century and, populated by Romanians, Serbs, Greeks, Hungarians, Germans and Jews, was one of the most ethnically diverse in the monarchy. Act 2 narrows the action to an unnamed gypsy village. When the action moves to Vienna in the third act, this conveniently allows the Habsburg capital to emerge as a unifying force in a way that would not have occurred if the action had pitched Budapest against Vienna. The shifting sense of place is supported by a mix of characters: five natives of the Banat – Ottokar and his daughter Arsena, the gypsy Czipra and her daughter Saffi, plus the pig farmer Zsupan – are counterbalanced by four outsiders – Barinkay, the soldier Count Homonay, Carnero (the 12

13

Plot summary in Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna, pp. 265–6; cast list in Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, p. 365. Fichtner, The Habsburgs, p. 210.

Time and Place: Then and Now

chief of the commission for public morality, the Sittenkommission) and the Bürgermeister of Vienna. The two gypsy lovers, Barinkay and Saffi, stand apart from their respective groups, Barinkay as an exile who has returned to claim his inheritance and Saffi who discovers that she is the daughter of the last pasha of Hungary. Neither group is free from caricature. The pig farmer is completely illiterate but wealthy: ‘Yes, reading and writing was never my thing, for since childhood I’ve spent my time with pigs’ (‘Ja, das Schreiben und das Lesen ist nie mein gewesen, denn schon von Kindesbeinen befaßt’ ich mit Schweinen.’) The self-importance of the recruiting soldier and the chair of the Sittenkommission is punctured by their names, Count Homonay, a distortion of the Italian omone (fat man), and Carnero, literally the carnal one. The overture skilfully anticipates the move from the Banat to Vienna. The Banat is characterized by strident scalic patterns with a flattened supertonic and flattened seventh followed by warbling, quasi-extemporized lines for solo clarinet and flute; Vienna by a diatonic melody led by oboe followed by a fast polka and, finally, a celebratory waltz. In Act 1, Barinkay’s first number is a waltz, Saffi’s first number a gypsy song (Zigeunerlied), with both celebrating personal integrity. But as Act 2 unfolds, the waltz gradually emerges as a musical symbol of the destiny of the narrative, first in the trio sung by Czipra and the two lovers, Barinkay and Saffi, as they uncover buried treasure, and then when the cast anticipates the departure of Barinkay for Vienna: ‘So voll’ Fröhlichkeit gibt es weit und breit keine Stadt wie die Wienerstadt’ (With so much merriment there’s no town far and wide like Vienna). Later, the vocal waltz turns to particular images of the city and its environs musically familiar to theatre audiences from Strauss’s dance music: ‘Gesang, Weib und Wein’ (Song, Women and Wine) and the Wienerwald, ‘so voll’ Duft wie der Mai, und so herzig und treu’ (so fragrant, as in the month of May, so sweet and true). The shorter Act 3 is set in Vienna, very specifically on the Glacis in front of the Kärntnertor, an increasingly distant, yet fond memory for Viennese audiences, an open space now occupied by the Ringstrasse and the new Court Opera House. The assembled cast, including soldiers and a range of AltWien characters such as a sausage seller, a girl selling turnips and gherkins, a lantern lighter, a sedan chair porter, a woman selling pretzels, colourfully dressed merchants from Greece, police and civic guards, all join together to celebrate a recent military victory. Within that celebration, the stage action focusses on Barinkay’s war service, the award of a Habsburg title of baron, the imminent marriage of Ottokar and Arsena and the love of Barinkay and Saffi. With the reprise of ‘So voll Fröhlichkeit’, sung by the entire cast, the

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allure of Vienna is broadened to include the success of the AustroHungarian Ausgleich, now nearly twenty years old.

Performance and Dissemination: Theatres and Publishers The performance venue most associated with the younger Johann Strauss was not a dance or concert hall but a theatre, the Theater an der Wien; it was here that he directed the initial performances of thirteen operettas between 1871 and 1897, topped up by guest appearances in later performances. When it was opened in 1801, it was the largest theatre in Vienna, capable of holding an audience of some 2,200 people. Licensed by the imperial court, as shown in the formal title of ‘k. k. priv. [privilegierte] Theater an der Wien’ that appears on posters for Strauss’s works, it had always been a commercial theatre, dependent on management and repertoire for its success. It was the theatre where the various versions of Beethoven’s Fidelio were first given and the venue for the exacting concert of December 1808 that included the first public performances of the composer’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy. But for consistency of association across several decades, that of Strauss far outstrips Beethoven’s. Built near the Wien river on the southern edges of the Glacis, the theatre had escaped the destruction and rebuilding of the 1860s and 1870s. For the audiences who attended the theatre, it was conveniently situated between the inner city and the expanding suburbs, benefitting also from the new bourgeois residences that were being built along the Ringstrasse. By the middle of the century there were, typically, three layers of management in the Theater an der Wien: ownership, leaseholders and artistic direction, with some overlap in their functions. Following several decades of artistic and commercial success under the leadership of two members of the Pokorny family, Franz and Alois (father and son), the theatre rather lost its way in the early 1860s, becoming financially unstable and uncertain in its repertoire. In 1869, two individuals – the singer Marie Geistinger (1836–1903) and the businessman turned actor Maximilian Steiner (1830–80) – took over the lease and the running of the theatre. As one of the most popular singers of operetta in Vienna and now an influential manager too, Geistinger played a key part in establishing the early popularity of Strauss operettas; she undertook the roles of Fantasca in Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, the Swiss peasant girl in Carneval in Rom, Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus and Loretta in Cagliostro in Wien. She

Performance and Dissemination

withdrew from her management position a few months after the premiere of Cagliostro, leaving Maximilian at the helm until his death, when his son Franz took over. Shortly afterwards there was a new proprietor, Franz Jauner (1830–1900). While he was an experienced man of the theatre who had briefly lured Strauss away from the Theater an der Wien to the Carltheater in 1876 to compose Prinz Methusalem, the day-to-day manager, Franz Steiner, was not; aged twenty-five, he had previously worked for the Nordbahn railway company.14 Within four years he had run up large debts. However, the centrality of Strauss operettas to the repertoire was maintained with two new works, Das Spitzenbuch der Königin and Der lustige Krieg, as well as continuing performances of earlier works. A third new work, Eine Nacht in Venedig, should have been given its premiere at the theatre too, but Franz Steiner’s affair with Strauss’s wife, Lili, made the composer determined to present the work elsewhere – at the FriedrichWilhelmstädtisches Theater in Berlin, which made it the only operetta by Strauss that was not premiered in Vienna. Having secured the contract for the Berlin premiere, Strauss overcame his resistance to a performance in the Theater an der Wien, where it was given for the first time on 9 October, just six days after the Berlin premiere.15 In effect, there were now two premiere performances running in parallel, one in the German capital and one in the Austro-Hungarian capital. Strauss would have been aware that despite the public success of Eine Nacht in Venedig in the Theater an der Wien – sixty performances by the following February16 – the financial stability of the theatre was precarious. By the following summer the debts incurred by Franz Steiner had forced him to give up his position, and Jauner sold the theatre to a wealthy member of the second aristocracy who had enjoyed a fledging career as an actress, Alexandrine von Schönerer (1850–1919); she was to run the theatre until 1900, initially working in co-operation with the experienced librettist Camillo Walzel (1829–95), the co-author of the text of Cagliostro in Wien, Der lustige Krieg and Eine Nacht in Venedig.17 She had inherited her acute business sense, as well as her wealth, from her father, Matthias von Schönerer, a key figure in the development of the Austrian railway network. At about the same time that she began to play a leading role in the musical life of the city, her elder brother, Georg von Schönerer (1842–1921), was making his mark in politics as a fierce supporter of pan-Germanism and, 14 15 16 17

Hadamowsky, Wien, Theater Geschichte, pp. 615–19. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 195–206. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 280. Hadamowsky, Wien, Theater Geschichte, pp. 619–21.

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later, a prominent figure in the fostering of an even more fierce antiSemitism. Alexandrine always made it absolutely clear that she did not support her brother’s views. The first new operetta by Strauss that appeared during her stewardship was Der Zigeunerbaron, a pan-Habsburg rather than pan-German work composed to a libretto by Ignaz Schnitzer, an AustroHungarian Jew. Performances of Der Zigeunerbaron, Die Fledermaus and Eine Nacht in Venedig, in particular, were to underpin the commercial success of the Theater an der Wien during the management of Alexandrine von Schönerer. Strauss wrote five further operettas for the theatre in the 1880s and 1890s – Simplicius, Fürstin Ninetta, Jabuka, Waldmeister and Die Göttin der Vernunft – and while none of these achieved the status of those earlier works, their planning, composition, anticipated premiere and critical reception provided a certain rhythm and character to the working lives of both composer and manager. Appropriately, Schönerer relinquished her management of the theatre a year after Strauss’s death; even more appropriately, the last work to be performed before her retirement was Der Zigeunerbaron. There was another element in Strauss’s recurring work pattern. As soon as he had submitted the nominally completed operetta to the Theater an der Wien, he turned his attention to preparing derivative works from the score – over ninety items across nearly thirty years, principally waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and marches (listed in Box 6.1). Rather than waiting to see whether a particular stage work would prove popular, publication of derivative works, particularly by C. A. Spina and Cranz, normally coincided with the premiere, creating a mutually supportive relationship between the two sides of Strauss’s professional existence, the theatre and the concert hall. Eduard Strauss’s concerts played a decisive role in this wider awareness of his brother’s operettas, more often than not without Johann’s presence. In a display of commercial astuteness, the preparation of derivative works was not facile hackwork; many of the derivative waltzes in particular, such as Tausend und eine Nacht and Rosen aus dem Süden, enjoyed an independent existence that surpassed that of the related operetta. There was never any attempt to reproduce the narrative of the operetta in shortened form. On the contrary, part of the appeal of the derived works was the new juxtaposition of thematic material that arose from the structural needs of a concert waltz, polka or quadrille; musical topics appropriate to the stage action at various points in the operetta had to be reconfigured to build these structural entities. A concert polka typically required four themes (two for the main section, two for the trio section)

Performance and Dissemination

and these were taken from anywhere in the operetta score. Since waltz rhythms (or those of a medium-paced polka in 3/4) occur less frequently in the stage works and certainly not as a set of five dances (plus introduction and a coda), the task of finding enough material to establish a version for the concert hall was more challenging. Strauss’s very first derivative waltz, Tausend und eine Nacht from Indigo, is typical of many in having fewer individual constituent dances – namely, three rather than the standard five. Introductions also ate up suitable material. With this process of thematic redeployment, adjustments often had to be made to the original key, shifting the tonic by a step, a third or even a fifth to fit the shaping of the new version. The titles of the derivative works usually signalled a connection with the operetta, taking either the title of the operetta itself or a particular number (even when other numbers had been raided, too). Very occasionally, the music was recycled with no reference to the stage work. In Cagliostro in Wien, the opening celebration of the centenary of the Turkish siege included a strophic song in march tempo, ‘Frisch, Ihr tapfern Kriegssoldaten, rüstet euch zur Türkenschlacht’ (Away, brave warriors, prepare for the Turkish battle). As an orchestral march, it was renamed Hoch Oesterreich! (Rejoice Austria!) and first performed at Eduard Strauss’s outdoor concert in the Volksgarten on 25 June 1875;18 the following day the piano version was advertised by Schreiber, with the title indicating the source of the march (‘motifs from the operetta Cagliostro in Wien’). Meanwhile, Richard Genée (one of the librettists of the original stage work) had written a new text for a choral version, ‘Recht in Freud und Lust . . . klingt der Ruf: “Hoch Oesterreich”’ (‘Faithful in joy and desire . . . the call goes out: “Rejoice Austria”’). That choral version was performed later in the year to commemorate a different Turkish event: the hundredth anniversary of the peaceful annexation of the former Ottoman territory Bukovina, an anniversary affirmed by the establishment of a new German-language university – the Franz-Joseph Universität – in the capital of Czernowitz. Ludwig Eisenberg’s biography of Johann Strauss that appeared in 1894 contains a valuable appendix consisting of cast lists for the premieres of the thirteen stage works composed up to that time. Equally valuable are the summary lists of cities and towns where the works were performed after their premiere in Vienna or Berlin.19 These lists derive from information provided by Strauss’s agent, Gustav Lewy, and, though neither 18

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 280.

19

Eisenberg, Johann Strauss, pp. 351–68.

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comprehensive nor consistent, they provide arresting evidence of the distribution of Strauss’s stage works during his lifetime, locally, nationally and internationally. Some twenty miles to the south of Vienna, beyond Baden, was the city of Wiener Neustadt, which, despite its name, was as old as Vienna itself, though increasingly associated with modern industry by the second half of the nineteenth century. It had a thriving theatre, originally built in the nave of the church of the Cistercian abbey following Emperor Joseph II’s dissolution of many monasteries in the 1780s. It held some 600 people and Gustav Lewy’s records summarized by Eisenberg reveal that all of Strauss’s operettas up to and including Der Zigeunerbaron were given there, mirroring his career in the nearby capital. Other towns and cities in the Austrian half of the empire that presented one or more Strauss operettas included Graz, Innsbruck and Salzburg. Similarly, in the Hungarian part of the empire Budapest had seen performances of Indigo und die vierzig Räube, Carneval in Rom, Die Fledermaus, Cagliostro in Wien, Prinz Methusalem, Das Spitzentuch der Königen, Der lustige Krieg, Eine Nacht in Venedig and Der Zigeunerbaron. When Jókai and Strauss were discussing the transformation of Jókai’s novel into an operetta, the author was keen that the first performance should take place in Budapest, appropriate for the subject matter but also a natural continuation of a Strauss operetta tradition that was almost as pervasive as that in Vienna. In the event, only one month separated the Vienna premiere and the first performance in Budapest on 26 November 1885.20 Also detectable in the information given by Gustav Lewy to Eisenberg is the strong link between Vienna and Berlin, already mentioned. The choice of the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater for the premiere of Eine Nacht in Venedig was not a risky one; three operettas by Strauss had already been performed there: Carneval in Rom, Die Fledermaus and Cagliostro in Wien. A similar picture is evident for theatres in Aachen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover and Würzburg. Even stronger was the Strauss tradition in the Saxon capital of Dresden, where the Residenz-Theater had staged Indigo, Carneval in Rom, Die Fledermaus, Cagliostro in Wien, Prinz Methusalem, Das Spitzentuch der Königin, Der lustige Krieg, Eine Nacht in Venedig and Der Zigeunerbaron. Finally, Eisenberg’s lists give a glimpse of the presence of Strauss’s music across the globe: Carneval in Rom in Chicago and New York; Die Fledermaus in Adelaide, Basel, Bombay, Chicago, Copenhagen, London, 20

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 286.

From the Theater an der Wien to the Court Opera House

Melbourne, San Francisco, Stockholm and St Petersburg; and Der Zigeunerbaron in Chicago, Detroit, Michigan, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York.

From the Theater an der Wien to the Court Opera House As the data summarized by Eisenberg from Lewy’s professional records indicate, Johann Strauss’s career as a composer of comic works for the stage was at least as successful as his career as a composer and director of dances. But it was not without its disappointments. Blindekuh and his very last operetta, Die Göttin von Vernunft, were comparative failures, but those failures were easily absorbed by the overwhelming and continuing success of several other works from the 1870s and 1880s. That impregnable and unparalleled reputation also outweighed the greatest failure of his career as a whole: a comic opera composed for the Court Opera House. Ritter Pásmán was given its much anticipated premiere on 1 January 1892, was poorly received and withdrawn from the stage after only nine performances, that is, seven fewer than Blindekuh had achieved in the winter of 1878–9 before it had been withdrawn. From at least the early 1870s Strauss had enjoyed a cordial relationship with the Court Opera House. Its music director from 1870 to 1875, Johann Herbeck (1831–77), was an admirer and invited him to write a new set of waltzes for the annual ball of the Court Opera, with the proceeds going to the pension fund. Strauss was also invited to direct the performance by the Court Opera Orchestra, violin in hand, and Wiener Blut (Op. 354) was duly given at the ball held in the Musikverein on 22 April 1873.21 A few months later he shared the podium with Herbeck at a concert given by the orchestra during the World Exhibition, directing one of the two Märsche der königlichen spanischen Nobel-Garde (Op. 240) by Johann Strauss senior and An der schönen, blauen Donau.22 For Johann Strauss Son, these and later guest appearances at the helm of the future Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra were convivial ones, since some of its members had previously played in the Strauss Orchestra. Strauss’s most recent operetta was Carneval in Rom; Herbeck indicated that he wished to present the work at the Court Opera House, but the plan was never realized.23

21 22

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 227–8. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 242–3 23 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, p. 224.

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The general intendant of the Court Opera House from April 1880 to October 1885 was Leopold von Hofmann (1822–85), previously a career diplomat who had also served as finance minister for the AustroHungarian Empire. As general intendant, he was particularly interested in the development of ballet at the Court Theatre and with his encouragement Strauss began sketching some musical ideas, though nothing came of the project.24 Similarly, vague suggestions that Eine Nacht in Venedig could be performed at the Court Opera House came to nothing. Strauss’s next operetta project, Der Zigeunerbaron, would have appealed even more to the former Habsburg minister, and the composer himself supported the idea of giving the premiere in the Court Opera House rather than the Theater an der Wien. By early 1885, the Viennese press was confidently announcing that it was, indeed, going to be premiered at the Court Opera House. The management of the Theater an der Wien responded angrily that they had ownership of the project and Strauss quietly abandoned what seems to have been his genuine preference.25 Nearly three years elapsed before the idea resurfaced in the Viennese press that Strauss was composing a work for the Court Opera House. On 1 January 1888 the Fremden-Blatt reported that Strauss was preparing ‘a comic opera’ (‘eine komische Oper’), a precise description that indicated that there was to be no spoken dialogue.26 Like Der Zigeunerbaron, this comic opera had a Hungarian topic. The subject of a medieval knight named Pásmán came originally from a ballad by the Hungarian poet János Arany (1817–82) and was being fashioned into a libretto by another Hungarian literary figure, Ludwig von Dóczi (1845–1919), who lived in Budapest. For the next three years the Viennese press was full of speculation about the progress of the work, the signing of the contract, that it had been completed and that it was to premiered in November 1890 on the name-day of Empress Elisabeth, who would have been particularly interested in the Hungarian subject matter.27 The old rumour that Strauss was working on an ambitious ballet for the Court Opera House also resurfaced; journalists variously labelled the work a ‘Tanzpoem’ or a ‘Tanzdichtung’, which suggests a dance equivalent to the symphonic poem of the concert hall.28 Again, nothing eventuated.

24 25 26 27 28

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, p. 171. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 3, pp. 222–3, 273–5. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 182. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 4, p. 213; vol. 5, pp. 58, 72. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 5, p. 7–10.

From the Theater an der Wien to the Court Opera House

The opera, however, was delivered in September 1890 and was initially scheduled for performance in March 1891 but then postponed until the autumn of 1891, raising further speculation about its content.29 Finally, the premiere took place on 1 January 1892. Initial press reports of the premiere focussed on the occasion rather than the merits of the work itself, with one reviewer deeming it ‘a splendid success’.30 But these were soon overtaken by a series of negative reviews, polite in tone but eventually dismissive. The Fremden-Blatt was less polite: ‘without doubt one will one go to Fledermaus, in order to recuperate from Ritter Pásmán’.31 Eduard Hanslick, now one of Strauss’s closest friends, took refuge in laying the blame on Dóczi’s libretto, which he considered unfitting for the composer: ‘In order to remain true to himself, Strauss needs subject matter that is hearty and cheerful, comic situations and humorous characters. Dóczi’s libretto has undoubtedly restricted rather than inspired the creative fire of the composer.’32 Some familiar features from operetta are apparent in the work: a pompous central character who clumsily acts as he wishes (Ritter Pásmán), a hunting chorus for male voices (Act 1), a chorus that compares the relative quality of wines from Italy, France and the Rhineland (Act 1), the use of a lyrical Tempo-di-Waltz aria for a sympathetic portrayal of a female character (Eva, Pásmán’s wife, in Act 2) and a prolonged, pointless argument about who kissed whom and with what intent (Act 3). One new feature captured the imagination of the critics and public alike: the Act 3 ballet consisting of seven numbers that included new dance types, such as a gracious slow minuet (with a push on the second beat), alongside the expected polka and waltz. Here, Strauss was unequivocally himself, and for many audience members a partial fulfilment of the rumours that he had been working on a full-scale ballet. The clever manipulation of time and place that had always characterized Strauss operettas is conspicuous by its absence in Ritter Pásmán. It is firmly set in the early fourteenth century, the earliest setting of any stage work by the composer, but with no sense that it was a convenient and fertile ruse for the present. Medievalism was certainly topical in the Habsburg capital with the completion of the capacious Votivkirche in 1879 and the even more capacious Rathaus in 1883, but Strauss’s operettas had always more easily glanced back to the middle of the eighteenth century than to a period four hundred years before that. Once Strauss and Dóczy had committed 29 30 31

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 5, pp. 130, 136, 139. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, pp. 15–16. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 18. 32 Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 20.

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themselves to a stage presentation of János Arany’s ballad, the die was cast: creating a comic opera set in the medieval period was a much more difficult task than creating a serious opera set in the period. This was compounded by a second self-imposed challenge: the shared decision that both the text and the music should engage willingly and knowingly with the stage works of Wagner. This bold decision reflected the nature of the repertoire at the Court Opera House. Comic opera, broadly understood, formed a very small part. Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro were familiar works (performed in German), as was Otto Nicolai’s ‘comicfantastic opera’ Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor; otherwise, comic stage works were the preserve of other theatres, such as the Theater an der Wien and the Carltheater. Within the general dominance of serious works at the Court Opera House by composers such as Beethoven, Meyerbeer and Verdi, there was a further, particular dominance by the stage works of Wagner, very nearly his complete output: Rienzi, Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the four works that constituted the Ring cycle, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. In 1891, the year before the first performance of Ritter Pásmán, of the 306 performances given in the Court Opera House, 34 were of eight different works by Wagner.33 Inevitably, Ritter Pásmán, the mythical tale of a medieval knight, was going to be understood against this background, but for many devoted Wagnerians the very idea of a comic Wagnerian opera was a contradiction in terms, tantamount to sacrilege. Dóczy’s text has several allusions to Wagner’s oeuvre.34 The opening chorus is a spinning chorus reminiscent of that at the beginning of Act 2 of Der fliegende Holländer; the main female character is Eva, easily confused with Elsa in Lohengrin; much of the turmoil is created by a ring, as briefly in Lohengrin and pervasively in the Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen; and Pásmán the knight loses his helmet, wears a beret instead and in the familiar rhyming couplet of an operetta text complains he’s cold (‘Warum ist mir so kalt, ich bin doch weder schwach noch alt?’), a puncturing of the magic powers of the Tarnhelm in Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung. 33

34

Statistics from Beetz, Das Wiener Opernhaus, pp. 168–80. On the broader Wagner tradition in Vienna, see Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna, pp. 215–21; Jones, Music in Vienna, pp. 181–3. Plot summary in Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna, pp. 266–8. On 25 December 1891, The Times published a preview of the opera that contained a detailed account of the plot; transcribed in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 5, pp. 428–30.

From the Theater an der Wien to the Court Opera House

Irony is not, however, a quality that emerges in Johann’s Strauss’s response to the text; for the most part it is serious rather than quick-witted and, in comparison with operetta, the plot is delivered at a slow pace. Instead of the customary potpourri overture, Strauss provides a short Vorspiel that leads into the spinning chorus, and while individual musical numbers are clearly signalled most of their conclusions bleed directly into the ensuing music. This, coupled with the absence of spoken dialogue to set up the music, adds to the sense of one-paced delivery. At the same time, Strauss’s ability to absorb some very distinctly Wagnerian elements into his musical language is impressive. The orchestral forces are the largest he ever used, and he makes greater use than normal of heavily weighted music in the middle and low registers, as in Pásmán’s first entry. The harmonic palette, too, is considerably broadened, with liberal use of diminished sevenths from the very opening phrase, even a few instances of the Tristan chord, though never, alas, in a tongue-in-cheek way. Strauss had long been a master of the theatrical recall of characterful melodies, fast and slow, but he scrupulously avoided distilling this into anything that might be close to leitmotif practice and, with that, a pervasive symphonic texture. The most obvious instance of large-scale transfer of music is the chorus that frames Act 3, ‘Heil!, Heil, uns’rer Königin!’ (Hail, Hail Our Queen), impressive enough in itself, but with its key of C major and flourishing trumpets, for Viennese devotees of Wagner rather reminiscent of Die Meistersinger.35 Ultimately, the task of writing a comic opera that was replete with the traits of serious Wagnerian opera was an impossible one, as impossible as the reverse one of asking Wagner to compose a serious work using the tools of operetta. Unfortunately for Johann Strauss and Ludwig von Dóczy, this failure played out in the Court Opera House alongside the stunning success of a second new work in the repertoire, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, which received 100 performances in two years.36 As a serious work, it suited the taste of audiences at the Court Opera House, delivered by a musical style that was as approachable as that of Strauss, but with a plot that was contemporary rather than mythical. The arrival of verismo opera at the Court Opera House was as much a factor in the failure of Ritter Pásmán as the adoration of Wagner. Johann Strauss attended only one performance of Ritter Pásmán, the premiere. By April 1892 he was back on familiar ground, working on a new 35

36

For further discussion of the Wagnerian elements, see Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna, pp. 239–47. Statistics from Beetz, Das Wiener Opernhaus, p. 165.

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operetta for the Theater an der Wien, Fürstin Ninetta, the first of four operettas he was to write for that theatre in the last decade of his life. He told Eduard that he had to prioritize operetta because he needed the money.37 Perhaps a more honest reason was that it was a routine that he had come to accept as a way of life, necessary for his general well-being. The Theater an der Wien, its associated managers, librettists, singers, orchestral players and stage personnel gave him that security in the last years of his life. The Court Opera House, however, did not turn its back on the composer following the disappointment of Ritter Pásmán. During the widespread celebration of Strauss the man and Strauss the composer that took place in the jubilee year of 1894, the Court Opera House asked the composer to conduct a charity performance of Die Fledermaus to raise money for its pension fund.38 This was such a success that it was repeated in later years, with a further indication of esteem accruing in 1897 when it was conducted by its newly appointed music director, Gustav Mahler.39 Charity performances for the institution led to the work becoming part of the continuing repertory. In the year of Strauss’s death there were sixteen performances, twenty-one in the following year and nine in the year after that – a mark of affection, distinction and ownership that helped to eradicate any memories of 1892.40 37 38 39

40

Letter written in December 1892; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 6, p. 319. Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 7, p. 30. Henry-Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler, vol. 2: Vienna: The Years of Challenge (1897–1904) (Oxford, 1995), p. 83. Statistics from Beetz, Das Wiener Opernhaus, pp. 169–70.

7

1900–1916. One Brother: Eduard

A Disenchanted Brother and a Disinherited Son In the weeks immediately following Johann Strauss’s funeral Eduard continued to honour his commitment to the German tour, travelling from Munich to Nuremberg, Würzburg and, finally, Berlin; a tour whose routine success was complemented by frequent tributes to the recently deceased Johann. Meanwhile, in Vienna various administrative and legal processes had begun to unfold with a view to establishing the nature and value of Johann’s estate, his home in the Igelgasse, four further properties in Vienna, and part-ownership of the Villa Erdödy in Bad Ischl. When the process was completed the following January, the total value of the estate was given as 834,494 krone, 67 heller – around £35,000 at the exchange rate of the time. To that was to be added royalties from performances of his operettas.1 The first version of the will had been made in 1872, shortly before Johann visited America; it was updated in 1895 and given a further codicil in 1897.2 As with his father’s will in 1849, the content was to cause strife in the family. The principal beneficiary was Adele, with legacies for his stepdaughter, Alice, and his two sisters, Anna and Therese. The updated version of the will had also made it clear who was not to benefit, namely, the heirs of his first wife, Jetty, and ‘my dear brother Eduard, on the grounds that he has a favourable lifestyle’. That was true in 1895, but within a couple of years Eduard was in the middle of a financial crisis not of his making; the codicil acknowledges these new circumstances, but does not alter the previous stipulation that he should not be a beneficiary: ‘I hope my brother’s circumstances will improve again.’ For Eduard, the injury of the 1895 will was made worse by the casual insult of the 1897 codicil – a display of indifference that had often characterized Johann’s attitude towards his younger brother 1 2

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 366–70, 374–407. Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 240–1 (1872), 346–50 (1895), 358–60 (1897); also in Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 2, pp. 204–5 (1872), vol. 8, pp. 38–42 (1895), vol. 8, pp. 338–9 (1897).

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across the decades. Eduard wrote a strongly worded letter to Adele, pointing out that he had contributed to the costs of their mother’s funeral and the expenses associated with bringing the seriously ill Josef back home from Warsaw, as well as the subsequent funeral. He also makes it clear that he regards himself as the rightful owner of musical material: a violin that belonged to his father and the library of manuscript and printed performance material accumulated over the years by Johann.3 Although Adele was a conciliatory figure by disposition, she and her brother-in-law were to remain estranged for the next three years. Through his own untiring efforts, Eduard’s financial circumstances had indeed improved following the German tour of 1899 and a second one in 1900. They were considerably enhanced by the offer of an extended, fivemonth tour of America and Canada from October 1900 to February 1901, sponsored by a group of businessmen and arranged by the leading New York impresario, Rudolph Aronson (1856–1919), who was also a composer. The financial appeal of this offer meant that, for the first time in his career, Eduard abandoned the principal features of his musical presence in Vienna in the winter season: regular concerts in the Musikverein, appearances at the imperial court balls and occasional performances at the Sophiensaal. Very willingly and with a degree of worldweariness, he was breaking free of his moorings. Eduard was invited to America and Canada in two overlapping capacities: as the only remaining member of a Strauss dynasty that had figured in European music making for some seventy years, and as a notably animated director, with violin in hand, of the music of four family members. He was not there as a composer of new dances, though some American editions of older music by Eduard were given English titles, which may have given the impression of new works.4 Evening concerts were held on most days, plus late afternoon concerts twice a week, typically featuring two dozen or so items. Travelling by rail, Strauss and his orchestra criss-crossed the continent, including visits to Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Montreal, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington. Eduard’s account of the trip in his memoirs takes up a disproportionate twenty pages – more a travelogue of a fascinated tourist than a professional account of a fully engaged 3 4

Letter of 28 September 1899; see Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, pp. 320–1. See list of derivative publications in Weinmann, Verzeichnis sämtlicher Werke, pp. 62–4.

A Disenchanted Brother and a Disinherited Son

musician.5 He admires the flora and fauna of sunny California, describes New Orleans as the ‘most unhealthy and dangerous city in the world’, visits the Chinese quarter in San Francisco, comments on the plight of the native American population and witnesses a tornado. He is impressed by large luxury hotels, including the quality of the cuisine, and gives an account of how to obtain wine and beer in temperance towns. Some of the public appearances in New York were at society balls rather than in concerts, but Eduard noted some reluctance to dance, because New Yorkers were accustomed to different tempi, especially in waltzes, which they preferred at a slower tempo. In musical terms, Eduard’s appearances were well received, though not quite with the acclamation of ten years earlier, some critics indicating that the experience was, indeed, a little dated. Perhaps Eduard secretly agreed. Of more concern to him were two bouts of poor health and a painful physical injury, both of which were to have long-term consequences. In the muggy, watery environments of Chicago and New Orleans he was twice treated for malaria, which afflicted him for a few days at the time but, as he would have been warned, was likely to recur in future years. Towards the end of the visit his overnight train was rammed from behind by another train, catapulting him out of his seat and leaving him with severe pain in his right shoulder, probably caused by a metal wall fitting; a subsequent diagnosis revealed that he had fractured his collarbone and torn some ligaments. Unable to play the violin or use a baton in his right hand, Eduard conducted awkwardly with his left hand for the remainder of the tour. The injury was to leave him with enfeebled stiffness in the arm and shoulder for the rest of his life. The extended five-month tour to America had certainly achieved its central aim, providing Eduard with a suitable fortune to replace the one that had been taken away from him. In New York in February 1901, while the Carnival season was coming to an end in Vienna, Eduard decided that he would retire. His last appearance was at a ball in the Metropolitan Opera House on 12 February. Early the following day this practising Austrian Catholic, with his injured arm still held firmly to his chest, went to St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan ‘to give thanks to the Almighty’. At 11.00 the players were paid and the Strauss Orchestra was dissolved after more than fifty years of continuous service, first directed by Johann Strauss (Son); then by Josef and Eduard (occasionally, Johann, too); then by 5

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1906), pp. 111–35; Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 177–83.

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Eduard and, occasionally, Johann; and, finally, by Eduard alone. Except for emergency deputies, there had never been a guest conductor. Eduard arrived back in Vienna late in the evening of 26 February 1901. Financially secure and comfortably housed in his apartment, he was to remain in the city for the rest of his life, apart from regular summer visits to various spa towns in Germany and Italy to ameliorate his many health conditions, such trips now being easily affordable. There was one musical irritation in this retirement: the musical ambition of his disowned son, Johann Maria Eduard Strauss. At the age of thirty-two and in the immediate aftermath of the exposure of the family fraud, Johann Maria had decided to embark on a career as composer and director of his own orchestra.6 His intentions were partly honourable – to continue the family tradition and to earn sufficient money to repay some of the debt he owed his estranged father – but it was also tainted by his forced resignation from the imperial civil service because of the financial scandal. His uncle, Johann, had been supportive of his musical ambition and may have encouraged him to seek the kind of professional existence that he had enjoyed for three decades (the lucrative composition of operetta and derivative dances) rather than that pursued by Eduard (dance composition and directing). He may well, too, have introduced him to the management of the Theater an der Wien. On 23 December 1898, twenty-one months after Johann’s Die Göttin der Vernunft had received its premiere in the theatre, his nephew’s three-act operetta Katze und Maus (Cat and Mouse) was given its premiere in the same theatre, with derivative dances (one waltz, three polkas, a quadrille, a march and a ‘Rococo-Gavotte’) made available from the publisher Ludwig Doblinger in a matter of weeks. The new Strauss was described as ‘Johann Strauss junior’, the heir to his uncle rather than to his father. One report commented that ‘it was as if a Waltz Prince had been born to the Waltz King’. Ironically, neither the artistic father nor the real father attended any of the performances of his operetta. Although the press coverage was favourable, the opinion of the paying public was less so. After a disappointing seventeen performances, Katze und Maus was withdrawn. It was never revived, and Johann Maria never composed a further stage work. Instead, his career began to mirror that of his father rather than his uncle. He formed his own orchestra, made his debut at a masked ball in Budapest – always a favoured second city for the Strauss family – and made regular summer tours that took him to Germany, Holland, 6

Mailer, Johann Strauss (Sohn), vol. 9, pp. 33–4, 43–4, 79, 110–11, 121, 135–48, 153–4; Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 170–1.

Memories, Monuments

Turkey and England. He also inherited his father’s duties at the imperial court, directing the Carnival balls for five successive seasons, from 1901 to 1906, though he was never to receive the title of k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor. As his father had found in the latter stages of his career, the professional pattern of composing a steady supply of new dances subsequently published in various formats was more difficult than it had been in earlier times. Seventeen dances were published by Cranz of Leipzig (Opp. 24–40), but many more remained in manuscript (and are now lost). By 1906 Johann Maria had, to all intents and purposes, ceased to compose and relied, as his father had done, on directing. The legal obligations of his past misdemeanours meant that creditors were entitled to claim much of his income and he was declared bankrupt in the same year. To avoid further demands from creditors, Johann Maria, his wife and three children, moved to Berlin in 1908, where he pursued a modestly successful career until the middle of the First World War as the local ambassador for the music of the Strauss dynasty.7

Memories, Monuments Back in Vienna, the legacy was being shaped in other ways, materially and musically. Within a year of Johann Strauss’s death, the Igelgasse had been re-named Johann Strauß-Gasse, joining the ever increasing number of streets in Vienna named after musicians – part of the image of the city that elicited Karl Kraus’s caustic remark, ‘The streets of most cities are paved with asphalt. The streets of Vienna are paved with culture.’8 Soon afterwards, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde successfully gained approval from the city authorities to have a commemorative plaque placed on the house: ‘In this house the master of cheerful music [‘heitere Musik’] Johann Strauss the Younger lived and worked from the year 1878 onwards. He died here on 3 June 1899 in his 74th year. Dedicated by the citizens of Vienna.’9 The house and the dedication were to stand until the final weeks of the Second World War, when the house was destroyed by Allied bombing. Now, only the street name remains. Soon after the valedictory tour of America, Eduard successfully petitioned the imperial court to be relieved of his duties as k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor,10 7

8 9 10

Marion Linhardt, ‘Johann Maria Eduard [Strauss]’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, Personenteil, vol. 16 (2006), cols. 51–2. Karl Kraus, ‘Von den Sehenswürdigkeiten’, Die Fackel, 10 (30 November 1908), p. 8. Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 407–8. Petition dated 3 March 1901; see Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, p. 412.

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though, as had happened in Johann’s case, he was allowed to continue to use the title. In the autumn there were two, very different celebratory events. In the Central Cemetery a permanent monument was erected on Johann Strauss’s grave, funded by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde with additional support from his widow, Adele.11 Together with a carved image of Strauss, two figures refer to his most popular works: a fluttering bat for Die Fledermaus and a Danube nymph for An der schönen, blauen Donau.12 Adele’s name was added to that of her husband when she died in 1930. Eduard was unable to attend the formal unveiling of the monument because of illness. A few weeks later he learnt that, for his services to music, the city authorities were to award him with a rare honour, the Salvator Medal, a gold coin with an image of Christ (‘The Saviour of the World’) on one side and an image of Vienna on the reverse. Among those who were formally informed of the award were Adele Strauss, Johann Strauss (Eduard’s son), Dr Kasper Schwarz (chairman of the Catholic School Association) and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Eduard’s son would certainly not have attended the subsequent ceremony in the town hall, but perhaps Adele did, marking the beginning of a thaw in the relationship between Eduard and his sister-in-law. Much more wounding to both was a clumsy bureaucratic blunder in the invitation itself, which named the recipient as ‘Johann Strauss’.13 One of the striking features of the city’s desire to honour its famous citizens was the practice of the Central Cemetery not only to honour the recently deceased but to add to their number with re-burials of the remains of long-dead figures interred in other cemeteries.14 The remains of Beethoven, Gluck, Schubert and Salieri were unearthed and re-interred alongside later composers in the Central Cemetery; in the absence of any remains, Mozart was commemorated with a memorial only. In the early years of the twentieth century Johann Strauss (the elder) and Josef Strauss were treated in the same way when their remains were disinterred from the Döbling Cemetery and the St Marx Cemetery respectively and re-buried in the Central Cemetery, close to those of Johann. A few months before the death of Johann in 1899, a public petition had been announced to raise money for a memorial for Johann Strauss (Father) 11 12

13 14

Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss., pp. 417–19. Renata Kassal-Mikula, ‘“Ein gutes Bild für die Welt, für die Wiener von ihrem lieber Strauss”’, in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), pp. 299–301. Notification of award and formal invitation in Jäger-Sunstenau, Johann Strauss, pp. 413–15. Kretschmer, ‘Musiktopographie’, pp. 589–60.

Memories, Monuments

and Joseph Lanner. It was to be placed in the park in front of the Rathaus, where, coincidentally, Eduard would be able to view it from his apartment on the Reichsratsstrasse. The ‘double monument’ (Doppeldenkmal) was formally unveiled in a ceremony at 10.30 on the morning of 21 June 1905 in the presence of Archduke Friedrich, a distant cousin of the emperor who was pursuing an increasingly prominent military career. Eduard made the short walk to the park, where, to a certain extent, he was able to avoid alienated family members who were also present, such as Therese (Johann Strauss’s sister); Josef’s daughter, Karoline (now Karoline Aigner); and, above all, his despised son, Johann Eduard. It was more difficult to ignore the sound of the son’s orchestra, who played a short programme of waltzes followed by the ever-popular Radetzky-Marsch. The archduke gave a brief tribute, describing the monument as ‘a symbol of Old-Vienna gaiety’ (‘ein Wahrzeichen der Alt-wiener Frölichkeit’).15 But this was predominantly a civic occasion rather than an imperial one, held in the park in front of the Rathaus, not one near the Hofburg. The monument itself had been created by Franz Seifert (1866–1951), already associated with memorials for other notable citizens of Vienna, including the playwright Eduard von Bauernfeld and the Benedictine monk Urban Loritz, and someone who had devoted much of his life to charity work on behalf of destitute children. It was not his first Strauss monument; five years earlier he had prepared a bronze bust of Johann Strauss (Son) for an Austrian government building in Paris.16 Appropriately, the principal speech was given by Dr Karl Lueger, the popular mayor of the city, who shifted the emphasis from Old Vienna to the present day, describing the monument ‘as a new, permanent sign of the artistic fame of our city’ (‘ein neues, unvergängliches Zeichen des künstlerichen Ruhmes unserer Stadt’).17 Following Lueger’s own death in 1910, part of the Ringstrasse directly in front of the Rathaus, a short stroll away, was to be designated Dr Karl Lueger-Ring. While erecting monuments and naming streets and squares in memory of its leading citizens was a constant preoccupation of the Viennese at the turn of the century – with artists, literary figures and politicians honoured in this way, as well as musicians – the recently deceased Johann Strauss received the much rarer distinction of having a brand-new theatre named after him. Located on the Favoritenstrasse near the Mozart Platz and the Brahms Platz, the Johann-Strauß-Theater was a small building capable of holding some 1,100 people and was dedicated to German-language 15 17

Neue Freie Presse: Abendblatt, 21 June 1905. Wiener Bilder, 28 June 1905.

16

Kassal-Mikula, ‘“Ein gutes Bild”’, p. 301.

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performances of operettas, plays and farces. It opened on 30 October 1908 with a performance of Strauss’s 1001 Nacht (a re-working of Indigo und die vierzig Räuber). For the next decade or so it was to become especially associated with a new generation of operetta composers, Imre Kálmán (1882–1953), Franz Lehár (1870–1948) and Oscar Straus (1870–1954).18 Tombstones, monuments, a street and a theatre gave a fixed view of the posthumous status of ‘Johann Strauss’, Father and Son, helped by the fact that the two living Strausses, Eduard and Johann, were not adding to the tally of compositions; for the first time in over eighty years, there was not a steady supply of new Strauss works. Yet it was not a wholly ossified picture. In the field of operetta, the years up to the First World War were notable for cultivating a presence for the Strauss dynasty in new stage works created from their dances; occasionally, these works even featured members of the family as named characters. Overlaying that presence was the creative mirage mentioned by Archduke Friedrich in his short tribute of Old Vienna, Alt-Wien, now very much an indulged outlook rather than a defined historical period.19 The year 1913 saw the first performance of a new one-act operetta by Richard Haller (music) and Robert Blum (text) entitled Im Paradeisgartl (In the Paradise Garden), a reference to the small garden near the Burgtor within the city walls that did not survive their demolition in the 1860s. Described as an ‘Alt-Wiener Liebesidylle’ (Old-Vienna Love Idyll), the operetta is set, very precisely, in Vienna in 1825 and tells the story of the young Johann Strauss and Anna Streim, soon to be married.20 Also in 1913 a new ‘Biedermeier Operette’ was presented for the first time, Die tolle Therese (The Splendid Therese), that is the actress and singer Therese Krones who had died in 1830 aged only twenty-nine. Johann Strauss (Father) makes an appearance and the score draws on his works.21 Johann Strauss (Son) appears, or rather his spirit does, in an operetta named An der schönen, blauen Donau, described as a ‘Viennese fairy tale from modern times’ (‘Wiener Märchen aus moderner Zeit’) and first performed in November 1903. ‘Modern times’ refers to the fountain erected in the Stadtpark in 1865 that features a sculpture of the fabled 18 19

20 21

Hadamowsky, Wien, Theater Geschichte, pp. 770–2. For a richly documented survey of this distinctive cultural phenomenon, see Wolfgang Kos and Christian Rapp (eds.), Alt-Wien: Die Stadt, die niemals war, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2004); on Alt-Wien operetta, see Marion Linhardt, Residenzstadt und Metropole: Zu einer kulturellen Topographie des Wiener Unterhaltungstheaters (1859–1918) (Tübingen, 2006), pp. 260–70. Linhardt, Residenzstadt und Metropole, p. 281. Linhardt, Residenzstadt und Metropole, p. 282.

Memories, Monuments

water nymph, the Donauweibchen (see Figure 1). She is joined on stage by three further spirits: the dramatist Ferdinand Raimund (1790–1836), the fictitious folk figure of Lieber Augustin and, finally, Johann Strauss.22 As we have seen, Johann Strauss (Son) had systematically exploited the practice of issuing dances derived from his operettas, waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and marches. The reverse practice of creating operettas from existing dances features prominently in his posthumous reputation, giving rise to four works in total up to the First World War: Wiener Blut (1899), Gräfin Pepi (1902), Reiche Mädchen (1909) and Der blaue Held (1912).23 It is not known whether Eduard Strauss was ever asked to consider creating an operetta from his output of dance music. Given that his own dance music was little played and that he was more and more remembered as a conductor, perhaps such an approach never came; if it did, his general disillusionment with the practices of the music business might well have resulted in a negative response. The least expected element of Strauss reception in Vienna between the death of Johann in 1899 and the onset of the First World War was the rehabilitation of Josef Strauss, not as a composer of dances but as a posthumous composer of operetta, a wholly new identity that suddenly placed him alongside Johann as a composer of both. One person who did not witness this development was Josef’s wife, Caroline, who died in November 1900, aged sixty-nine; she would have welcomed it as the fulfilment of her husband’s reported intention to turn to the composition of operetta. Five pasticcio operettas using music by Josef Strauss appeared between 1903 and 1911: Frühlingsluft, Frauenherz, Das Schwalberl aus dem Wienerwald, Das Teufelsmädel and Die weisse Fahne.24 None of them featured Josef as a character but, as his dances from the 1850s and 1860s had done, tapped into standard, comforting images of life in Vienna, now securely Alt-Wien even when the operettas were set in the present: respectively, the air in springtime, the female heart, birdsong in the Vienna Woods, a roguish maid and a surrender to love. This new presence for Josef Strauss featured in the protracted discussions for another monument, the best known of them all: the golden statue in the Stadtpark of a poised Johann Strauss, on his feet and leading a performance with his violin. As early as 1902 discussions had begun 22 23

24

Linhardt, Residenzstadt und Metropole, p. 277. Linhardt, Residenzstadt und Metropole, pp. 276, 279; Marion Linhardt, ‘Johann Baptist [Strauss]’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, Personenteil, vol. 16 (2006), col. 27. Bibliographical details are given in Weinmann, Verzeichnis sämtlicher Werke, pp. 33–5.

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and a committee set up to develop the plan and to raise money, from individuals as well as institutions such as the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. It was a slow process that came to a complete halt during the First World War and was finally brought to fruition only in 1921. Around 1910 it was suggested that the monument should feature all three brothers rather than one.25 That Josef should be considered, alongside the still living Eduard, was entirely due to his new presence as a composer of operettas. In the event, neither he nor Eduard was ever to be honoured with a statue in a public park in the city, just tombstones in the Central Cemetery.

Eduard’s Reminiscences Shortly after his seventieth birthday Eduard began to write his memoirs, the Erinnerungen. Unlike his brother Johann, he had never been given the accolade of a biography. At the same time, he knew that he was the custodian of a family history that went back to his father’s day and that he was uniquely placed to trace that history. Adele Strauss, who was only in her late forties, had direct knowledge of only part of that history, having met Johann some twelve years after Josef’s death; and of the two sisters, Anna and Therese, only Therese was still alive and she had little or no musical understanding. Eduard had more self-centred reasons, too: the wish to draw attention to his own, not inconsiderable career, especially abroad, and to ensure, in particular, that his account of the misdeeds of his wife and two sons would become the authoritative one. Unlike the biography of Johann Strauss by Ludwig Eisenberg, Eduard’s memoirs were a rewarding act of re-assurance rather than a determined and detailed history. At the same time, while the authorial presence is a real one, it is nowhere near as self-serving as other musical autobiographies, notably those of Berlioz and Wagner, nor that of Eduard Hanslick. The inaccuracies and omissions in the volume were not the product of an over-weening ego, just a certain casualness that reflected the prime need for individual catharsis. It was printed in 1906 at the author’s expense and was never actively promoted by a commercial publisher. As the coverage of the final American tour exemplifies, the relative weight given to events and the nature of the description vary considerably. 25

Zoë Alexis Lang, The Legacy of Johann Strauss: Political Influence and Twentieth-Century Identity (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 62–3; Bailey, Eduard Strauss, p. 204.

Eduard’s Reminiscences

The terminus of the biographical account is the end of Eduard’s career in 1901; there is nothing on the period 1901–6 and the volume was never subsequently updated. But Eduard’s professional retirement does not constitute the end of the book. The final 40 pages or so (from a total of 172) are given over to accounts of random, unconnected events and viewpoints, such as the corrupt musical text of ‘Gott erhalte’ that was commonly used, his extensive interest in religious church music (Anglican, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox, as well as Catholic) and the popularity in Germany of so-called Tingl-Tangl night clubs. There are also twenty illustrations, taken from Eduard’s own collection. Some are expected, such as those of the principal protagonists, Johann (Father), Johann (Son), Josef and Eduard, also the old family home of the ‘Hirschenhaus’; others are less so, such as the photograph of the Strauss Orchestra at the foot of the Niagara Falls and a drawing of a group of native Americans on horseback. All this suggests that this often disillusioned, occasionally bitter man must also have been a good conversationalist. If the act of writing his memoirs was ultimately a comforting exercise, one very dramatic and highly personal event was to occur a year after its publication: the systematic destruction of the Strauss performing library of scores and parts, mostly manuscript, accumulated across the decades. In the autumn of 1907 Eduard asked the owner of a factory in the Mariahilf district to the south-west of the city that manufactured tiled stoves whether one of his kilns could be used to burn large quantities of paper. Recognizing that this was an act of artistic vandalism, the owner agreed only reluctantly. A wagonload of material was delivered to the factory and for five hours was systematically fed into the furnace, with the whole destructive process witnessed by Eduard, seated in an armchair. Subsequently, two further wagonloads were delivered to another factory and similarly destroyed.26 Considered in isolation, this wanton act could be regarded as a natural, indulgently melodramatic conclusion to Eduard’s chronic sense of resentment, amounting to an inferiority complex, with respect to his perceived status in the history of the Strauss family business. But the truth was more complex than that. The idea that the music library would have to be destroyed at some point goes back to 1869, when the relationship between the three brothers was particularly strained: Johann was becoming more and more interested in the composition of operetta, wished to withdraw 26

See two complementary accounts by Leigh Bailey: Eduard Strauss, pp. 195–9; ‘A Tale of Two Brothers: Josef and Eduard Strauss’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1927–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 106–8.

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from regular commitments with the Strauss Orchestra but maintained a proprietorial interest in the library; at the same time, the new presiding relationship between Josef and Eduard had to accommodate Josef’s ambition to appear independently outside Vienna and Eduard’s increasing desire to act decisively in Josef’s absence. The memoirs make it clear that discussion of the future of the music library was part of the process of resolving these tensions.27 The library belonged to the business, not to any one individual. The memoirs focus on one aspect of its contents: the 800 or so arrangements of music by other composers, described as ‘operas, songs and concert works by masters Joh. Seb. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Rubinstein, Grieg, Meyerbeer, Richard Wagner, also French, English and Russian songs and folk tunes’.28 Unlike dances by the four Strausses, none of this material was published. In their wider deliberations on the future of the Strauss Orchestra, Josef and Eduard had to decide on the fate of this portion of the music library in particular; they came up with the simple solution that it should be destroyed by the last working Strauss. Between 1869 and the end of Eduard’s career in 1901 more arrangements, always in manuscript, had been added to the library. But there was a worrying new complication. Developments in copyright laws meant that performing arrangements of music by living composers without their prior approval might be considered illegal. While Eduard felt duty-bound to honour the 1869 agreement, it does raise the question of whether he considered donating the material to a library instead, where it could be studied but not used for performance. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde would have been the obvious choice. Eduard had performed in the Goldener Saal for thirty years and Johann Strauss had always had a close relationship with the society, which had made him an honorary member and took care of his funeral arrangements. It had already acquired some manuscripts of Johann’s music, many as part of Brahms’s library. Although Eduard’s personal relationship with the Gesellschaft was more distant than that of his brother, given the highly acquisitive nature of the society’s archive and library policy at the time, covering all sorts of ephemera from batons and death masks to tuning forks alongside autograph scores, it is difficult to imagine that the society would have declined the offer. If details of this tale are elusive, the result is clear. The part that performances of music by composers other than the four members of the Strauss family played in their careers will never be fully documented, understood or appreciated. 27

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 51.

28

Eduard Strauss, Erinnerungen, p. 51

The End of Two Dynasties

The End of Two Dynasties In his mid-seventies Eduard was already, by some distance, the longestliving member of the Strauss dynasty. When his sister Therese died in 1915 at the age of eighty-three, Eduard became the last remaining member of that generation, the children of Johann Strauss (senior). Comfortably housed in his apartment and financially secure, Eduard tolerated periods of debilitating illness of various kinds: gall stones, stomach and colon problems, plus recurring symptoms of the malaria he had caught in America. He was loyally served by a housekeeper and cook, Sophie Knorr, who, in the best tradition of such roles, willingly undertook additional duties. His immediate family – wife and two sons – were kept at a distance and he scrupulously ensured that he was in no way responsible for their welfare. It was not a lonely existence. Visitors were welcome and he took particular pleasure, as the former k. k. Hofballmusikdirektor, in being invited to attend the formal court balls during Carnival, now directed by Carl Michael Ziehrer. In a comic turn of events, his eightieth birthday was celebrated in two successive years: wrongly in 1914, when he received and felt obliged to reply to a considerable number of written tributes, and correctly in 1915, when tributes were received for a second time.29 The summer between the two eightieth birthdays saw the inexorable unfolding of events that led to the First World War, beginning with the assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on 28 June, followed by Austria’s declaration of war against Serbia a month later and the rapid involvement of other nations: Germany and Turkey alongside Austria, and Britain, France, Russia and Japan as the common enemy. Stretched military forces were soon fighting on several fronts as long-standing tensions in the AustroHungarian Empire were unleashed. Military weaknesses were exacerbated by diplomatic ones as Germany began to assume a determining role, with Austria witnessing the crumbling of its authority and influence.30 Unlike the revolutionary year of 1848, which the teenage Eduard had witnessed at first hand, Vienna itself was never a battleground. But its suffering in the First World War was both more acute and more prolonged than in 1848. Loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty and to the vague notion of the Fatherland was maintained, including by Eduard Strauss, but daily life soon became a struggle. Severe food shortages were the principal reason. At the beginning of the war the Allies had announced a blockade on trade of 29

Bailey, Eduard Strauss, pp. 205–9.

30

Beller, Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 241–61.

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any kind with Austria-Hungary, but the real problem was an internal one, a devastating and unforeseen consequence of the Ausgleich of 1867. While the Austrian part of the empire, Cisleithania, provided a source of basic foodstuffs such as flour, meat, milk and potatoes, it had always been dependent on rural Hungary to fulfil demand. The kingdom of Hungary soon gave priority to its own people, making use of a clause in the Ausgleich settlement that allowed it to sell foodstuffs to the Austrian half of the empire but with no obligation to do so. Between 1914 and 1916 imports of flour, vegetables and fruit from Hungary fell by some 70 per cent. As early as 1915 rationing was introduced in Vienna and became increasingly severe as the war unfolded, leading to a black market, rumour-mongering, rioting, malnutrition and rabid racism. Meanwhile, the population of the city was growing, with an influx of refugees from war-torn territories, supplemented by many permanently disabled soldiers.31 Although some entertainment venues, including dance halls, were closed, some of the principal theatres for operetta such as the Theater an der Wien and the Johann-Strauß-Theater maintained a reduced schedule. At the Court Opera House, Der Zigeunerbaron had joined Die Fledermaus in the repertory a few years earlier. It continued to feature until 1917 when, presumably, it was deemed too contentious due to its Hungarian subject matter; it was not to re-appear in the repertoire until 1925. A similar fate befell Die Fledermaus: two performances in 1914, three in 1915, none in 1916 and 1917, and only one in 1918; it, too, had to wait until the early 1920s before re-establishing its former escapist popularity, but in what had become a very different setting: no imperial court, no empire, an invisible first and second aristocracy, continuing inflation, a housing crisis and political uncertainty.32 In the summer of 1916 Eduard would have noticed with a certain wry detachment the opening of a new exhibition in the Prater, not a trade exhibition or a music exhibition but a war exhibition designed to boost the morale of the public, specifically its support of the military. Over forty halls and stands were devoted entirely to the war effort, artillery, munitions, the navy, communication, military hospitals, a cinema for propaganda films, the Red Cross and a souvenir stand. Music was restricted to military bands, which now often included wounded soldiers in their ranks.33

31

32 33

Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 31–86. Statistics from Beetz, Das Wiener Opernhaus, pp. 169–71, 182–3. Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire, pp. 87–8, 107–21.

The End of Two Dynasties

Emperor Franz Joseph was just five years older than Eduard, and in the autumn of 1916 the lives of the eighty-six-year-old and the eighty-one-yearold ran in rough counterpoint, signalling the end of two dynastic eras, one political, the other musical, with a fading memory of how the latter had served the former. The increasingly frail emperor stoically dealt with the latest developments in the war, in Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Romania. But after the briefest of illnesses he died on 21 November 1916. Long noted for his unwavering support and enthusiasm for the army, Franz Joseph was ironically denied the traditional overwhelming presence of the military in his state funeral on 30 November; it was fully engaged in defending his empire.34 A few days after Franz Joseph’s funeral, in early December, Eduard suffered a stroke and took to his bed. After a second stroke his condition deteriorated rapidly and he died in the arms of the faithful Sophie Knorr at 9.30 in the evening on 28 December, exactly four weeks after the emperor’s funeral. His own funeral took place three days later on New Year’s Eve, in the Votivkirche, the church built on an open space near the Schottentor to mark the emperor’s survival of the assassination attempt in 1853, a historical moment that Johann Strauss had celebrated with the composition of the Kaiser Franz Josef I. Rettungs-Jubel-Marsch. One newspaper report indicated that the congregation in the Votivkirche was not as large as Eduard Strauss deserved, with the general adversity of the times made worse by the wintry weather.35 Eduard had stipulated that neither his wife nor his sons should attend, and the only family member who is mentioned by name in the report is Josef’s daughter, Karoline, though it is difficult to think that Adele Strauss was not present. The church choir sang Johann Herbeck’s setting of the ‘Libera me’, the Wiener Männergesang-Verein sang Carl Gottlieb Reissiger’s Wanderers Nachtlied and members of the chorus of the Court Opera House sang the ‘Litanie auf das Fest aller Seelen’ from Schubert’s Vier Geistliche Lieder (D343). There is no mention of any watching crowds – something that had featured so memorably in Johann’s funeral – and the long journey to the Central Cemetery was a lonely one. There, Eduard was buried alongside other members of the dynasty: Johann Strauss his father, Johann Strauss his brother and Josef. There was no new Strauss to follow. On the previous day – 30 December 1916 – the new Habsburg emperor, Karl, had been crowned king of Hungary in Budapest. He, too, was not to have a successor. 34

Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs, pp. 340–3.

35

Fremden-Blatt, 2 January 1917.

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Appendix: Strauss Family Tree (Individuals Mentioned in the Present Biography)

Anna 1802–1802

Henriette Chalupetzky 1818–1878 Angelika Dittrich 1850–1919 Adele Strauss-Deutsch 1856–1930

1875–1945

(daughter from Adele’s first marriage)

Alice Strauss-Deutsch

Johann (Son) 1825–1899

Ernestine 1798–1862

Emilie Trampusch 1814–1864

Antonia 1808–1809

Therese 1831–1915

Ferdinand 1834–1834

Johann Maria Eduard 1866–1939

Eduard 1835–1916

Johann Wilhelm Clementina Emilia Maria Wilhelmine 1836–1864 1837–after 1878 1843–1849

Anna 1829–1903

Emilie Theresia 1835–after 1865

Anna Streim 1801–1870

Caroline Pruckmeyer 1831–1900

Karoline 1858–1919

Josef 1827–1870

Johann (Father) 1804–1849

Josefa 1807–1808

Katharina Feldberger c.1766–?

Barbara Dollmann 1770–1811

Rosalia Buschin 1729–1785

Franz 1805–1806

Franz Borgias 1764–1816

Johann Michael Strauss 1720–1800

Josef Eduard Anna 1868–1940

Maria Klenkhart 1840–1921

Theresia Karolina 1844–1851

Bibliography

Thematic Catalogues Dörner, Wolfgang. Josef Strauss: Chronologish-thematisches Werkverzeichnis (Vienna, 2021). Joseph Lanner: Chronologisch-thematisches Werkverzeichnis (Vienna, 2012). Strauß-Elementar-Verzeichnis (SEV): Thematisch-Bibliographischer Katalog der Werke von Johann Strauß (Sohn), prepared by the Wiener Institut für Strauss-Forschung, vols. 1–8 (Tutzing, 1990–2013), vols. 9– (Vienna, 2017–).

Complete Editions of Music Johann Strauss (Vater): Sämtliche Werke in Wiedergabe der Originaldrucke, ed. Ernst Hilmar, 5 vols. (Tutzing, 1987). Neue Johann Strauss Gesamtausgabe, [Johann Strauss, Son] (Vienna, 1995–).

Online Resources ANNO (= Austrian Newspaper Online). Historical newspapers and journals. www .anno.onb.ac.at. Oesterreichische National-Encyklopädie, 7 vols. (Vienna, 1835–8). Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Concert Archive. www.wienerphilharmoniker.at /de/konzert-archiv.

Articles, Books, Dissertations, Essays, Exhibition Catalogues

252

Aigner, Thomas. ‘Die Bälle der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien’, in Ingrid Fuchs (ed.), Musikfreunde: Träger der Musikkultur in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 2017), pp. 75–83. ‘Johann Strauß in Russland’, in Otto Brusatti, Günter Düriegl and Regina Karner (eds.), Johann Strauß: Unter Donner und Blitz, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 1999), pp. 211–19. ‘“Rotunde-Quadrille”: Wiener Unterhaltungsmusik in den Jahrzehnten um die Weltausstellung’, in Wolfgang Kos and Ralph Gleis (eds.), Experiment

Bibliography

Metropole: 1873, Wien und die Weltausstellung, exhibition catalogue (Vienna, 2014), pp. 248–55. ‘“Den russischen Weibern sagt das Resolute, entschieden Markige weniger zu.”: Josef Strauss findet in Pawlowsk ein aufnahmebereites Publikum für seine Orchesterfantasien’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 79–92. ‘Tanz auf dem Vulkan: Wiener Ball- und Marschmusik’, in Barbara Boisits (ed.), Musik und Revolution: Die Produktion von Identität und Raum durch Musik in Zentraleuropa 1848/49 (Vienna, 2013), pp. 399–415. Aldrich, Elizabeth. From the Ballroom to Hell: Grace and Folly in NineteenthCentury Dance (Evanston, IL, 1992). ‘Social Dancing in Schubert’s World’ in Raymond Erickson (ed.), Schubert’s Vienna (New Haven, CT, 1997), pp. 119–40. Anderson, Emily (ed.). The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols. (London, 1961). Ashby, Charlotte. ‘The Cafés of Vienna: Space and Sociability’, in Charlotte Asbhy, Tag Gronberg and Simon Shaw-Miller (eds.), The Viennese Café and Fin-deSiècle Culture (New York, 2013), pp. 9–31. Baedeker, Karl. Austria-Hungary, with Excursions to Cetinje, Belgrade, and Bucharest (Leipzig, 1911). Bailey, Leigh. Eduard Strauss: The Third Man of the Strauss Family (Vienna, 2017). ‘A Tale of Two Brothers: Josef and Eduard Strauss’, in Associationen Josef Strauss (1827–1870) (Vienna, 2020), pp. 99–109. Banks, Paul. ‘“The Foremost and Unrivalled Music Engraving Business in AustroHungary”: Josef Eberle (1845–1921), Printer, Publisher, and Manufacturer of Manuscript Paper’, Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies (9 December 2020). https://www.musau.org/parts/neue-article-page /view/94. Beer, Axel. ‘Spina’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, Personenteil, vol. 15 (Kassel, 2006), col. 1183. Beetz, Wilhelm. Das Wiener Opernhaus: 1869 bis 1955 (Zurich, 1955). Beke-Martos, Judit. ‘After 1848: The Heightened Constitutional Importance of the Habsburg Coronation in Hungary’, in Klaas Van Gelder (ed.), More than Mere Spectacle: Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (New York, 2021), pp. 283–302. Belina, Anastasia and Derek B. Scott (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Operetta (Cambridge, 2020). Beller, Steven. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1815–1918 (Cambridge, 2018). Vienna and the Jews: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 1989). Biba, Otto. Gott Erhalte!, with facsimile of first edition (1797) (Vienna, 1982). Boisits, Barbara. ‘Haslinger’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, Personenteil, vol. 8 (Kassel, 2002), cols. 775–8.

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Index of Works by Johann Strauss (Father), Johann Strauss (Son), Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss

Johann Strauss (Father) WALTZES Aether Träume (Op. 225), 68 Aurora-Festklänge (Op. 164), 55 Cäcilien-Walzer (Op. 120), 57 Champagner Walzer (Op.14), 23 Das Leben ein Tanz, oder Der Tanz ein Leben! (Op. 49), 27, 33 Der Frohsinn, mein Ziel (Op. 63), 35 Des Verfassers beste Laune (Op. 31), 25 Des Wanderers Lebewohl (Op. 237), 79, 81 Die Friedens-Boten (Op. 241), 76 Emlék Pestre (Erinnerung an Pesth) (Op. 66), 39, 44 Erinnerung an Berlin (Op. 78), 44, 71 Erinnerung an Deutschland (Op. 87), 44, 71 Es ist nur ein Wien! (Op. 22), 44 Fort nach einander! (Op. 16), 23 Frohsinns-Salven (Op. 163), 55 Heimath-Klänge (Op. 84), 44 Heiter auch in ernster Zeit (Op. 48), 27, 33, 125 Hietzinger-Reunion-Walzer (Op. 24), 23 Huldigung der Königin Victoria von Großbritannien (Op. 103), 78 Huldigungs-Walzer (Op. 80), 43 Josephstädter-Tänze (Op. 23), 23 Kettenbrücke-Walzer (Op. 4), 20, 23 Landes-Farben (Schwarz-Rot-Gold), (Op. 232), 71 Loreley-Rhein-Klänge (Op. 154), 53, 81, 125, 126, 169 Lust-Lager-Walzer (Op. 18), 23 Mittel gegen den Schlaf (Op. 65), 112 Philomelen-Walzer (Op. 82), 43 Robert-Tänze (Op. 64), 35 Rosen ohne Dornen (Op. 166), 55 Seven waltzes for piano, 18 Soldaten-Lieder (Op. 242), 169 Sorgenbrecher (Op. 230), 68 Souvenir de Baden (Op. 38), 23, 26

Tanz-Signale (Op. 218), 68, 122 Täuberln-Walzer (Op. 1), 19, 32, 169 Tausendsapperment-Walzer (Op. 61), 35 Tivoli-Freudenfest-Tänze (Op. 45), 29 Tivoli-Rutsch-Walzer (Op. 39), 26, 29 Trompeten-Walzer (Op. 13), 23 Walzer à la Paganini (Op. 11), 24 Wiener Damen-Toilette-Walzer (Op. 40), 23 Willkommen-Rufe (Op. 168), 54 GALOPS Champagner-Galoppe (Op. 8), 32 Gibellinen-Galopp (Op. 117), 193 Wilhelm Tell-Galopp (Op. 29b), 32 QUADRILLES Die vier Haimonskinder (Op. 169), 58, 61 Saison-Quadrille (Op. 148), 58 MARCHES Manövrir (Op. 240 No. 2), 76 Marsch der Studenten-Legion (Op. 223), 70 Marsch des Einigen Deutschlands (Op. 227), 71, 74 Märsche der königlichen spanischen NobelGarde (Op. 240), 229 Oesterreichischer Fest-Marsch (Op. 188), 59 Oesterreichischer National-Garde-Marsch (Op. 221), 69 Radetzky-Marsch (Op. 228), 73, 74, 81, 103, 125, 126, 169, 177, 187, 241 Triumf (Op. 240 No. 1), 76 POLKA Alice-Polka (Op. 238), 78 POTPOURRIS Der unzusammenhängende Zusammenhang (Op. 25), 33 Ein Strauss von Strauss: Aus Ton-Blumen (Op. 55), 33, 38, 43, 112, 125, 169 Musikalisches Ragout (Op. 46), 33 Wiener-Tagsbelustigung (Op. 37), 33

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Index of Works

Johann Strauss (Father) (cont.) MISCELLANEOUS Fantasy on Liszt’s Hungarian Dances (lost), 61 INCOMPLETE WORKS Radetzky-Bankett-Marsch, 79 Johann Strauss (Son) WALTZES Accellerationen (Op. 234), 146 An der schönen, blauen Donau (Op. 314), 1–2, 55, 115, 119, 120, 130, 136, 144, 157, 167, 178, 197, 199, 204, 229, 240 Aus den Bergen (Op. 292), 152 Bei uns z’Haus (Op. 361), 171 Bürgersinn (Op. 295), 119 Burschen-Lieder (Op. 55), 72 Concurrenzen (Op. 267), 146 Die ersten Curen (Op. 261), 146 Die Publicisten (Op. 321), 134, 148 Die Tauben von San Marco (Op. 414), 218 Dividenden (Op. 252), 146 Einheits-Klänge (Op. 62), 76 Erinnerung an Covent-Garden (Op. 329), 122 Feen-Märchen (Op. 312), 138 Feuilleton-Walzer (Op. 293), 148 Flugschriften (Op. 300), 148 Freiheits-Lieder (Op. 52), 71 Freuet euch des Lebens (Op. 340), 127, 151 Gedanken auf den Alpen (Op. 172), 98 Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Op. 325), 130, 133, 134, 150, 151, 178, 197 Glossen (Op. 163), 96 Groß-Wien (Op. 440), 192 Großfürstin Alexandra-Walzer (Op. 181), 102 Gunst-Werber-Walzer (Op. 4), 53 Hofballtänze (Op. 298), 141 Illustrationen (Op. 331), 136 In’s Centrum (Op. 387), 185 Jubilee-Waltz, 167 Kaiser-Walzer (Op. 437), 191–2 Kennst du mich? (Op. 381), 185 Krönungslieder (Op. 184), 102 Künstler-Leben (Op. 316), 122, 136 Leitartikel (Op. 273), 148 Libellen (Op. 180), 151 Manhattan-Waltz, 167 Morgenblätter (Op. 279), 111, 120, 122, 130, 148 Myrthen-Kränze (Op. 154), 94 Myrthenblüthen (Op. 395), 186

Neu-Wien (Op. 342), 116, 149, 150, 178, 197 Patronessen (Op. 264), 147 Rathaus-Ball-Tänze (Op. 438), 192 Reiseabenteuer (Op. 227), 133 Rosen aus dem Süden (Op. 388), 226 Sängerfahrten (Op. 41), 115 Seid umschlungen Millionen (Op. 443), 199–201, 204 Sentenzen (Op. 233), 146 Sinngedichte (Op. 1), 53, 55 Studentenlust (Op. 285), 136, 139 Tausend und eine Nacht (Op. 346), 164, 226, 227 Telegrafische Depeschen (Op. 195), 102 Telegramme (Op. 318), 148 Thermen (Op. 245), 146 Trifolien (with Josef and Eduard Strauss), 124 Wein, Weib und Gesang! (Op. 333), 116, 130, 136, 139, 152, 157, 178, 204 Wiener Blut (Op. 354), 170, 173, 197, 229 Wiener Bonbons (Op. 307), 117, 120, 149 Wiener Chronik (Op. 268), 149 Windsor-Klänge (Op. 104), 84 Wo die Citronen blüh’n! (Op. 364), 178 POLKAS Albion-Polka (Op. 102), 84 An der Moldau (Op. 366), 177 Annen-Polka (Op. 117), 120, 122, 178 Auf freiem Fuße (Op. 345), 164 Aus der Heimath (Op. 347), 164 Bauern-Polka (Op. 276), 122, 204 Burschenwanderung (Op. 389), 186 Demolirer-Polka (Op. 269), 108 Der Kobold (Op. 226), 104 Ein Herz, ein Sinn (Op. 323), 150 Electrofor (Op. 297), 146 Elisen-Polka (Op. 151), 94 Éljen a Magyár! (Op. 332), 144 Express-Polka (Op. 311), 138 Fata Morgana (Op. 330), 147 Figaro-Polka (Op. 320), 120 Fledermaus-Polka (Op. 362), 177 Freikugeln (Op. 326), 152 Geißelhiebe (Op. 60), 75 Gruß an Wien (Op. 225), 175 Herzenlust-Polka (Op. 3), 53 Im Krapfenwald’l (Op. 336), 133, 150 Im Sturmschritt! (Op. 348), 164 Jäger-Polka (Op. 229), 151 Leichtes Blut (Op. 319), 119 L’Enfantillage (Op. 202), 122

Index of Works

Liguorianer Seufzer (Op. 57), 72 Lob der Frauen (Op. 315), 152 Lust’ger Rath (Op. 350), 164 Nur fort! (Op. 383), 185 Par force! (Op. 308), 151 Pariser Polka (Op. 382), 185 Patrioten-Polka (Op. 274), 110, 141 Pizzicato-Polka (with Josef Strauss), 124, 167, 173, 178, 197 Postillon d’amour (Op. 317), 152 ‘S giebt nur a Kaiserstadt, ‘s giebt nur a Wien (Op. 291), 119, 149, 178 Sängerslust (Op. 328), 116, 152 Schawl-Polka (Op. 343), 164 Stadt und Land (Op. 322), 148 Tändelei (Op. 310), 143 Taubenpost (Op. 237), 152 Tritsch-Tratsch (Op. 214), 120, 122, 152, 197 Unter Donner und Blitz (Op. 324), 130, 132, 151 Vergnügungszug (Op. 281), 145 Vom Donaustrande (Op. 356), 169 Von der Börse (Op. 337), 148 Wildfeuer (Op. 313), 138, 204 QUADRILLES Alexander-Quadrille (Op. 33), 63 Debut-Quadrille (Op. 2), 53 Der Liebesbrunnen (Op. 10), 61 Die Belagerung von Rochelle (Op. 31), 62 Festival-Quadrille (Op. 341), 122 Hinter den Coulissen (with Josef Straus), 123 Indigo-Quadrille (Op. 344), 164 L’Africaine (Op. 299), 153 Le Premier Jour de bonheur (Op. 327), 153 Marien-Quadrille (Op. 51), 64 Monstre-Quadrille (with Josef Strauss), 124 Nikolai-Quadrille (Op. 65), 77 Opern-Maskenball-Quadrille (Op. 384), 185 Orpheus-Quadrille (Op. 236), 155 Serben-Quadrille (Op. 14), 63 Un ballo in maschera (Op. 272), 153 Vivat! (Op. 103), 86 Zigeunerin-Quadrille (Op. 24), 63 MARCHES Deutscher Krieger-Marsch (Op. 284), 142 Erzherzog Wilhelm Genesungs-Marsch (Op. 149), 94 Habsburg Hoch! (Op. 408), 186 Hoch Oesterreich! (Op. 371), 227

Indigo-Marsch (Op. 349), 164 Kaiser Franz Josef I. Rettungs-JubelMarsch (Op. 126), 93, 95, 103 Kaiser Franz Joseph-Marsch (Op. 67), 77, 93 Krönungs-Marsch (Op. 183), 102, 141 March of the Royal Horse Guards, 78 Revolutions-Marsch (Op. 54), 72, 93 Studenten-Marsch (Op. 56), 93 Vaterländischer Marsch (with Josef Strauss), 103, 124 Verbrüderungs-Marsch (Op. 287), 142 Viribus unitis (Op. 96), 86, 93 Wiener Jubel-Gruß-Marsch (Op. 115), 93 STAGE WORKS Aschenbrödel, 209 Blindekuh, 180, 182, 183, 185, 190, 204, 216, 217, 229 Cagliostro in Wien, 178, 179, 216, 224, 227, 228 Carneval in Rom, 166, 169, 170, 217, 224, 228, 229 Das Spitzenbuch der Königin, 216–7, 225, 228 Der lustige Krieg, 217, 218, 228 Der Zigeunerbaron, 62, 188, 190, 194, 204, 221–4, 226, 228, 229, 230, 248 Die Fledermaus, 159, 172, 173–7, 180, 185, 198, 204, 210, 212, 224, 226, 228, 231, 234, 240, 248 Die Göttin der Vernunft, 197, 208, 216, 229, 238 Eine Nacht in Venedig, 187, 190, 217–8, 225, 226, 228, 230 Fürstin Ninetta, 197, 234 Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, 159, 161, 162–3, 164, 166, 190, 204, 219, 224, 228 Jabuka, 197, 202, 204, 216 Prinz Methusalem, 190, 228 Ritter Pásmán, 194, 197, 216, 229, 230–4 Simplicius, 189, 191, 219–21 Waldmeister, 194, 197 PROJECTED STAGE WORK Die lustigen Weiber von Wien, 160 POSTHUMOUS STAGE WORKS 1001 Nacht, 242 Der blaue Held, 243 Gräfin Pepi, 243 Reiche Mädchen, 243 Wiener Blut, 243 MISCELLANEOUS Fantasy: Erinnerung an Neusatz (lost), 64 Hochzeits-Praeludium (Op. 469), 197

263

264

Index of Works

Johann Strauss (Son) (cont.) Jupiter und Pluto (with Josef Strauss), 111, 123, 132, 160 Musikalisches Feuilleton, 128 Offertory: ‘Tu, qui regis totum orbem’, 49 Perpetuum Mobile (Op. 257), 106 Pesther Csárdás (Op. 23), 63, 72 Rumänischer Nationalhymne (lost), 64 Rumänischer Nationalmarsch (lost), 64, 72 Slaven-Potpourri (Op. 39), 63 Josef Strauss WALTZES Actionen (Op. 174), 146 Aquarellen (Op. 258), 147 Combinationen (Op. 176), 146 Deutsche Grüsse (Op. 191), 117, 135 Deutsche Sympathien (Op. 149), 142 Die Ersten nach den Letzen (Op. 12), 92 Die Ersten und Letzten (Op. 1), 91, 169 Die Industriellen (Op. 158), 139 Die Vorgeiger (Op. 16), 98 Dorfschwalben aus Oesterreich (Op. 164), 130, 133 Fantasiebilder (Op. 151), 137 Frauenwürde (Op. 277), 152 Freuden-Grüsse (Op. 128), 108 Friedenspalmen (Op. 207), 138, 143 Günstige Prognosen (Op. 132), 147 Heilmethoden (Op. 189), 135 Helden-Gedichte (Op. 87), 141 Krönungslieder (Op. 226), 135, 144 Lustschwärmer (Op. 91), 114 Neue-Welt-Bürger (Op. 126), 135 Perlen der Liebe (Op. 39), 133 Rudolfs-Klänge (Op. 283), 169 Sphären-Klänge (Op. 235), 130, 135 Sternschnuppen (Op. 96), 151 Trifolien (with Johann and Eduard Strauss), 124 Wiener-Bonmots (Op. 108), 149 Wiener Couplets (Op. 150), 149 Wiener Fresken (Op. 249), 149 Wiener Stimmen (Op. 239), 149, 150, 175 POLKAS Auf Ferienreisen! (Op. 133), 152 Aus dem Wienerwald (Op. 104), 151 Blitz-Polka (Op. 106), 151, 169 Brennende Liebe (Op. 129), 108 Die Galante (Op. 251), 116 Die Libelle (Op. 204), 130, 132, 151, 169

Die Nasswalderin (Op. 267), 151 Die Spinnerin (Op. 192), 152 Eile mit Weile (Op. 247), 151 Eingesendet (Op. 240), 148 Eislauf (Op. 261), 152 Etiquette-Polka (Op. 208), 138 Frauenherz (Op.166), 169 Gnomen-Polka (Op. 217), 133 Gruß an München (Op. 90), 145 Heiterer Muth (Op. 281), 151 Jokey-Polka (Op. 278), 151 Künstler-Gruss (Op. 274), 127 La Simplicité (Op. 40), 140 Lieb’ und Wein (Op. 122), 152 Mignon (Op. 89), 114 Pauline (Op. 190), 117 Pêle-mêle (Op. 161), 151 Pizzicato-Polka (with Johann Strauss), 124, 167, 173, 178, 197 Plappermäulchen (Op. 245), 152 Sehnsucht (Op. 22), 140 Sturm-Polka (Op. 75), 151 Sturmlauf (Op. 136), 152 Sympathie (Op. 73), 140 Vélocipède (Op. 259), 152 Vorwärts! (Op. 127), 108 Wiener Leben (Op. 218), 149 QUADRILLES Blaubart-Quadrille (Op. 206), 155 Die Grossherzogin von Gerolstein (Op. 223), 156 Faust-Quadrille (Op. 112), 153 Genovefa-Quadrille (Op. 246), 156 Hinter den Coulissen (with Johann Straus), 123 Kakadu-Quadrille (Op. 276), 156 Meister Fortunio und sein Liebeslied (Op. 103), 155 Monstre-Quadrille (with Johann Strauss), 124 Périchole-Quadrille (Op. 256), 156 Schäfer-Quadrille (Op. 196), 155 Schützen-Quadrille (with Johann and Eduard Strauss), 124 Turner-Quadrille (Op. 92), 152 MARCHES Andrássy-Marsch (Op. 268), 144 Benedek-Marsch (Op. 199), 143 Deutscher Union-Marsch (Op. 146), 142 Erzherzog Carl-Marsch (Op. 86), 141 Prinz Eugen-Marsch (Op. 186), 141 Schützen-Marsch (Op. 250), 152

Index of Works

Schwarzenberg-Monument-Marsch (Op. 210), 141 Ungarischer Krönungsmarsch (Op. 225), 144 Vaterländischer Marsch (with Johann Strauss), 103, 124 MISCELLANEOUS Jupiter und Pluto (with Johann Strauss), 111 Potpourri: Das musikalische Oesterreich, 153 POSTHUMOUS STAGE WORKS Das Schwalberl aus dem Wienerwald, 243 Das Teufelsmädel, 243 Die weisse Fahne, 243 Frauenherz, 243 Frühlingsluft, 243 Eduard Strauss WALTZES Die Candidaten (Op. 2), 108 Doctrinen (Op. 79), 172 Hochzeitslieder (Op. 288/290), 206 Myrthenzauber (Op. 272), 206 Myrthen-Sträußchen (Op. 87), 169 Schleier und Krone (Op. 200), 186, 195 Trifolien (with Johann and Josef Strauss ), 124 Wiener Dialect (Op. 237), 195 POLKAS Ausser Rand und Band (Op. 168), 180 Bahn frei! (Op. 45), 131, 132, 145 Carnevalsblume (Op. 32), 140

Colibri (Op. 21), 138 Die Biene (Op. 54), 151 Die Evolvirende (Op. 13), 146 Dornröschen (Op. 19), 140 Eisblume (Op. 55), 127 Fleurette (Op. 29), 140 Froh durch die ganze Welt! (Op. 43), 151 Gruss an Stockholm (Op. 171), 184 Ideal! (Op. 1), 108 In Künstlerkreisen (Op. 47), 147 Nachtrag (Op. 35), 148 Sängers Liebchen (Op. 50), 116 Sonette-Polka (Op. 3), 108 Vom Tage (Op. 46), 148 Wien über Alles! (Op. 172), 184 Wunderblümchen (Op. 37), 140 QUADRILLES Coscoletto-Quadrille (Op. 15), 155 Die Banditen (Op. 57), 156 Helenen-Quadrille (Op. 14), 155 Lieder-Kranz (Op. 23), 113, 153 Pariser-Leben (Op. 24), 155 Schützen-Quadrille (with Johann and Josef Strauss), 124 MARCHES La Gloire du Brésil (Op. 63), 165 Österreichs Völker-Treue (Op. 211), 186, 195 Wiener Welt-Ausstellungs-Marsch (Op. 107), 175 MISCELLANEOUS Potpourri: Blumenkranz, 205

265

General Index

Aachen, 228 Abert, Johann Joseph Columbus, 119 Academic Legion, 99 Adam, Adolphe, 117 Adelaide, 228 Albert von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince, 84, 120, 195 Albrecht, Archduke, 54 Alexander II, Tsar, 102, 141 Alexandra Josifowna, Grand Duchess, 102 Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, 196 Alice, Princess, 78 Amon, Franz, 48, 89, 92, 96 Andrássy, Count Gyula, 144, 172, 221 Andrássy, Countess Kathinka, 173 Antoine, Duke of Mouchy, 120 Arany, János, 230, 232 Aronson, Rudolph, 236 Arthur, Duke of Connaught, 172 Auber, Daniel-François-Esprit, 53, 117 Le Premier Jour de bonheur, 153 Masaniello, 33 Ausgleich, 2, 124, 143–5, 172, 221, 224, 248

266

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 246 Bad Gastein, 91, 97, 98 Bad Ischl, 94, 197, 198, 208, 209 Villa Erdödy, 197, 235 Bad Neuhaus (Dobrna), 91 Baden, 23, 26, 36, 45, 149, 174 Baden-Baden, 127, 166, 167 Balfe, Michael Der Liebesbrunnen, 61 Die vier Haimondskinder, 58, 61 Die Zigeunerin, 61–2 Balsano, Giuseppe, 216 Baltimore, 236 Banat of Temesvár, 222, 223 Basel, 228 Batka, Johann, 194 Bäuerle, Adolf, 43, 44, 92, 105

Bayreuth, 193 Festival Theatre, 165, 179 Bayros, Franz von, 197 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 7, 20, 27, 34, 37, 57, 60, 66, 110, 122, 135, 190, 196, 208, 224, 232, 240, 246 Overtures Egmont, 101 Fidelio, 24, 33 Leonore (No. 2), 74 Quartet in C minor (Op. 18, No. 4), 32 Sonata in A for piano and violin, ‘Kreutzer’ (Op. 47), 57 Symphony No. 9 (Op. 125), 1, 24, 200 Belgrade, 63 Bellini, Vincenzo La straniera, 33 Benedek, Ludwig August von, 143 Berger, Baron Alfred von, 204 Bériot, Charles-August de, 57 Berlin, 36, 39, 46, 83, 100, 119, 166, 180, 185, 190, 195, 197, 200, 235, 239 Central Hotel, 190 Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater, 190, 212, 225 Königsbau, 191 Berlioz, Hector, 5, 59–60, 217 Damnation of Faust, 173 Overtures King Lear, 119 Roman Carnival, 59, 101 Bibescu, Gheorghe, 64 Bilse, Benjamin, 118, 120, 121, 125 Bismark, Otto, 118, 142 Bizet, Georges Carmen, 178 Blum, Robert, 242 Bologna, 177 Bombay, 228 Bonn, 42 Boston, 125, 166–7, 180, 191, 236 Coliseum, 167 Bottesini, Giovanni, 121

General Index

Boulogne, 42 Brahms, Johannes, 5, 135, 136, 157, 191, 193, 198–202, 204, 208, 210, 211, 246 Ein deutsches Requiem, 199 ‘Fahr wohl, o Vögelein’ (Op. 93a No. 4), 211 Liebeslieder (Op. 52), 199 Neue Liebeslieder (Op. 65), 2, 199 Quartet in C minor (Op. 51, No. 1), 192 Symphony No. 2, 199 Brandus, 111 Braun, Josef, 160, 217 Breitkopf & Härtel, 139, 192, 202 Bremerhaven, 167 Breslau (Wrocław), 83, 195 Brighton, 78 Bruckner, Anton, 186 Bucharest, 63, 64, 68 Buda, 7, 83, 144 Budapest, 2, 180, 222, 228, 238 Buffalo, 236 Bukovina, 227 Bülow, Hans von, 167 Buschin, Rosalia (JSI’s grandmother), 7 Büttner, A, 102, 110, 111 California, 237 Carlberg, Gotthold, 128 Chalupetzky, Henriette. See Strauss, Jetty (JSII’s first wife) Cheltenham, 78 Chicago, 228, 236 Chopin, Fryderyk, 28 Cleveland, 236 Coburg, 189, 196, 221 Cologne, 185 Congress of Vienna, 11 Constantinople (Istanbul), 63 Cook, Thomas, 171 Copenhagen, 228 Cranz, August, 179, 185, 190, 205, 226, 239 Crimean War, 99, 102 Csillag, Rosa, 173 Czernowitz (Chernivsti), 227 Danube river, 2–3, 9, 11, 19, 25–6, 37, 115, 144, 145, 219, 220 Danzig, 160 Debussy, Claude, 31 Denver, 236 Detroit, 229, 236 Deutsch, Adele. See Strauss, Adele (JSII’s third wife) Diabelli, Anton, 18–9, 22

Die Bombe, 184 Die Geißel, 75 Die österreichische-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, 222 Ditson, Oliver, 167 Dittrich, Angelika. See Strauss, Angelika (‘Lili’, JSII’s second wife) Doblinger, Ludwig, 238 Dóczi, Ludwig von, 230, 231, 232, 233 Dom Pedro II, Emperor, 165 Dommayer, Ferdinand, 105 Drechsler, Joseph, 49, 51 Dresden, 100, 228 Dual Alliance, 189 Dumba, Nikolaus, 138 Dvořák, Antonín, 208 Edelbauer, Joseph, 36 Edward, Prince of Wales, 121, 172, 196 Eisenberg, Ludwig, 244 Johann Strauss: Ein Lebensbild, 202, 227 Elberfeld, 168 Elisabeth, Empress, 94, 98, 143, 173, 209, 230 Epstein, Richard, 210 Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 189, 196, 221 Esterházy, Prince Paul Anton, 41 Eugen, Prince of Savoy, 187 Eugenie, Empress, 119 Evers, Carl, 58 Ewer & Co., 111 Eybler, Joseph, 59 Fahrbach, Joseph, 82 Fahrbach, Philipp, 30–1, 34, 81, 82, 86, 90, 93 Hungarian March, 33 Fane, John (Earl of Westmorland), 84 Feldberger, Katharina Theresia. (JSI’s stepmother), 8 Ferdinand I, Emperor, 5, 50, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 206 Ferdinand III, Emperor, 220 First Citizen Regiment, 30, 50 First Viennese Citizen Regiment, 54 Florence, 177, 178 Föhr, 183 Franco-Prussian War, 166 Frankfurt, 70, 142, 184, 228 Franz II (I), Emperor, 5, 21, 27, 29, 46, 206 Franz Joseph, Emperor, 5, 29, 71, 75, 76, 82, 83, 84, 92–3, 94, 105, 140, 141, 142, 143, 162, 165, 191, 206, 209, 249 Franz Karl, Archduke, 29, 84, 106

267

268

General Index

Franzensbad (Františkovy Láznĕ), 187, 193 Friedrich, Archduke, 241 Friedrich, Crown Prince of Prussia, 120, 172 Fröh, 187 Fuchs, Johann Nepomuk, 202, 204, 208 ‘Fuchslied’, 70, 72, 75 Fux, Karl, 41 galop (Galopp, galoppe), 32, 56 Gasser, Hanns, 2 Geistinger, Marie, 161, 162, 173, 224 Genée, Richard, 160, 162, 174, 176, 217, 227 Genoa, 177, 218 German Confederation, 142 Gerstner, Franz Anton, 100 Gilmore, Patrick Sarsfield, 166 Gisela, Archduchess, 170 Glinka, Mikhail, 101 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 240 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 178 Goldmark, Carl, 198, 202, 208 ‘Gott, der Eisen wachsen ließ’, 72 Gounod, Charles, 117 Faust, 153 Graz, 163, 178, 180, 228 Grein, 189 Grieg, Edvard, 246 Grillparzer, Franz, 115 Grimm, Vince, 37 Grün, Anastasius, 115 Gründerzeit, 140, 171, 175 Grünfeld, Alfred, 202, 204 Haffner, Karl, 174 Halévy, Ludovic, 117, 174 Haller, Richard, 242 Hamburg, 179, 184, 191, 195, 197, 200, 228 Hanau, 219 Hanover, 228 Hanslick, Eduard, 34, 133, 138, 146, 163, 176, 193, 198, 201, 202, 204, 209, 231 Aus meinem Leben, 70 Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, 157 Haslinger (firm), 30, 32, 55, 58, 69, 78, 85–8, 97, 98, 101, 102, 104, 108, 110, 133, 139, 154, 179 Carl Haslinger, 85, 100, 108, 110, 131, 141, 148 Tobias Haslinger, 20–3, 24, 25, 28, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44 Haydn, Joseph, 37 Die Jahreszeiten, 152

‘Gott erhalte’, 24, 34, 47, 69, 93, 94, 187, 245 Quartet in C (Op. 76, No. 3, ‘Emperor’), 119, 173 Quartet in D (Op. 20, No.4), 38 Seven Last Words, 33 Symphony No. 45 (‘Farewell’), 125 Te Deum in C (Hob.XXIIIc: 2), 92, 186 Heidelberg, 77 Heilbronn, 44 Hellmesberger, Joseph, 186, 210 Herbeck, Johann, 126, 138, 229 ‘Libera me’, 249 Hérold, Ferdinand, 117 Zampa, 33 Heuberger, Richard, 205 Heugel, Jaques Leopold, 119 Hildegard of Bavaria, Princess, 54 Hinterbrühl, 36 Hofmann, Leopold von, 230 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 23 Innsbruck, 70, 73, 228 International Exhibition for Music and Theatre (Vienna, 1892), 200 International Inventions Exhibition (London, 1885), 195 Jahn, Wilhelm, 202, 204 Jauner, Franz, 225 Jellačić, General Josip, 74 Johann Salvator, Archduke, 189 Stimmen aus dem Süden, 189 Johann, Archduke, 8, 70 Jókai, Mór, 221–2, 228 Saffi, 221 Joseph II, Emperor, 28, 206 Joseph, Archduke, 83 Kalbeck, Max, 198, 202, 208 Kálmán, Imre, 242 Karl, Emperor, 249 Karl, Prince, 39 Kattowitz (Katowice), 83 Katzenmusik, 72, 76, 220 Katzenmusik (newspaper), 72 Kikeriki, 175 Klenkhart, Maria Magdalena. See Strauss, Maria Magdalena Klimt, Gustav, 209 Kneisel, Rudolf, 217 Knorr, Sophie, 247, 249 Kohlmann, Anton, 49, 51, 52 Königgrätz (Sadowa), 118

General Index

Battle of, 115, 143 Kossuth, Lajos, 70, 77 Kraus, Karl, 239 Kremser, Eduard, 202, 204, 208 Krones, Therese, 242 Kullack, Theodor, 58 Laborfalva, Judit Benke, 221 Lachner, Franz Die vier Menschalter, 95 Langenbach, Julius, 168, 170, 171, 172, 177 Langer, Anton, 163 Lanner, August, 90–1 Lanner, Joseph, 17, 18, 24–5, 28, 30, 31, 34, 50, 54, 61, 90, 138, 160, 193, 205, 208, 241 Lecocq, Charles, 178 Lehár, Franz, 242 Leipzig, 42, 100, 180, 191, 200 Battle of, 11, 141, 142 Léon, Victor, 220 Leopold II, Emperor, 206 Leopold, Prince of Bavaria, 170 Leschetizky, Theodor, 101 Lewy, Gustav, 119, 174, 180, 181, 206, 227 Libényi, János, 92 Lichtl, Károly, 37 Lichtscheidl, Johann, 16 Liechtenstein, Prince Karl of, 99, 109 Liguornians. See Redemptorists (Liguornians) Liszt, Franz, 60, 66, 115, 217 Der ungarische Sturmmarsch, 61 Mazeppa, 101 Livorno, 177 London, 41, 42, 77, 83, 166, 195–6, 228 Almack’s, 78 Austrian embassy, 41 Buckingham Palace, 41, 78, 196 Covent Garden, 121–3, 133 Exeter Hall, 78 Hanover Square Rooms, 78 Marlborough House, 196 Richmond Palace, 78 Royal Albert Hall, 196 Royal Horse Guards (barracks), 78 Los Angeles, 236 Luca, Ignaz de Topographie von Wien, 12 Ludwigsburg, 44 Lueger, Karl, 206, 209, 211, 241 Luise, Archduchess, 206 Luther, Martin, 116

Mahler, Gustav, 5, 136, 234 Mainz, 97 Margarethe Sophie, Archduchess, 206 Maria Alexandrowna, Tsarina, 102 Maria Leopoldina, Archduchess, 165 Maria Theresia, Empress, 206 Marie Henriette, Queen, 120 Marie Louise, Empress, 69 Marie Valerie, Archduchess, 206 Marseillaise, 70, 75 Mascagni, Pietro Cavalleria rusticana, 233 Massa-Carrara, 218 Massenet, Jules, 201 Mathilde Bonaparte, Princess, 120 Maximilian of Bavaria, Duke, 94, 98 Mechetti, Pietro, 25, 54, 86 Meidling, 36 Tivoli pleasure garden, 26, 29, 35 Meilhac, Henri, 174 Melbourne, 229 Mendelssohn, Felix, 34, 110, 122, 190, 196, 217, 246 Elijah, 66 Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath (Op. 47, No. 4), 211 ‘Spinnlied’, 152 Metternich, Prince Clemens, 21, 23, 27, 47, 68, 69, 77, 105 Metternich, Prince Richard, 117, 120 Metternich, Princess Pauline, 117, 119, 120, 135, 147, 200 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 190, 196, 232, 246 L’Africaine, 153 Les Huguenots, 128 Robert le diable, 35, 53, 112 Michigan, 229 Milan, 50, 73, 177 Peace of, 79 Mödling, 36, 45, 149 Montreal, 236 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 34, 122, 240, 246 Contredanse in C (K587), 19 Die Schlittenfahrt (K605/3), 20 Don Giovanni, 112, 202 Le nozze di Figaro, 23, 232 Requiem, 81 Zauberflöte, 112 Müller, Adolf, 160 Müller, Anton, 16, 17 Müller, Wenzel Aline, oder Wien in einem anderen Welttheile, 44

269

270

General Index

Munich, 77, 235 Murat, Princess, 120 Naples, 177 Napoleon III, Emperor, 119 Napoleonic Wars, 8–9, 67 Nasswald, 151 National Guard, 69, 72, 75, 99 Neusatz (Novi Sad), 63, 64 Neutitschein (Nový Jičin), 55 New Orleans, 236 New York, 167, 228, 236 Metropolitan Opera House, 237 St Patrick’s Cathedral, 237 Nicholas I, Tsar, 77 Nicolai, Otto, 59, 65 Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, 160, 232 Nuremberg, 235 O’Donnell, Count Maximilian, 92 Obrenović, Prince Miloš, 63 Oesterreichische National-Encyklopädie, 21 Offenbach, Jacques, 117, 154, 159, 178 Orphée aux enfers, 112 Olmütz (Olomouc), 73, 75, 76, 219 Osmond, Count Charles d’, 118 Oxford, 78 Padua, 177 Paganini, Nicolò, 23–4 Violin Concerto No. 1, 24 Palermo, 216 Pamer, Michael, 16 Paris, 41, 42, 117–20, 166, 178, 180, 181, 191 Austrian embassy, 118, 119 Palais Rothschild, 120 Paris Opera, 181 World Exhibition, 117–21, 162 Patti, Adelina, 173 Pawlowna, Alexandra, 83 Pawlowsk, 96, 99, 100, 101, 104, 125, 166, 167 Perger, Richard, 211 Pest, 37–9, 62, 83, 124, 144 Philadelphia, 229, 236 Pichler, Karoline, 37 Pittsburgh, 229, 236 Plachy, Wenzel, 48 Pokorny, Alois, 224 Pokorny, Franz, 224 polka, 56, 131–2 Polka française, 131 Polka mazurka, 131 Polka schnell, 131

Pollischansky, Johann, 16 Postl, Karl Anton. See Sealsfield, Charles Prague, 76, 100 Peace of, 143 Pressburg (Bratislava), 39, 62, 63, 222 Preyer, Gottfried, 95 Promberger, Johann, 100, 101 Pruckmayer, Caroline. See Strauss, Caroline quadrille, 55, 132, 159 Raab (Györ), 62 Radetzky, Josef, 11, 26, 55, 73–4, 78–9, 103, 177 Rainer, Archduke, 90 Rákóczki March, 38 Rákóczki, Prince Ferenc, 38 Rather, Daniel, 110 Ratibor (Racibórz), 83 Reading, 78 Redemptorists (Liguornians), 72 Reiberger, Franz, 57 Reissiger, Carl Gottlieb Wanderers Nachtlied, 211, 249 Reznicek, Emil Nikolaus, 83 Rhine river, 220 Richter, Hans, 193, 202 Ricordi, 111 Rodaun, 61 Rome, 177 Rosenbaum, Joseph Carl, 15 Rossini, Gioachino Il barbiere di Siviglia, 173, 232 Wilhelm Tell, 32 Rothschild, Jakob Mayer, 41 Rothschild,Nathan Mayer, 41 Rothschild, Salomon Mayer, 41 Rubinstein, Anton, 101, 115, 246 Rudolf, Crown Prince, 186, 192 Russell, John, 27–8 ʼS gibt nur a Kaiserstadt, 102, 150 Salieri, Antonio, 240 Salmannsdorf, 45 Salzburg, 228 San Francisco, 229, 236 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 189, 195, 206 Scherer, Josef Franz Ritter von, 166 Scherzer, Johann Georg, 105 Schiller, Friedrich ‘An die Freude’, 200 ‘Würde der Frauen’, 152 Schindler, Alma, 6 Schleswig-Holstein, 142

General Index

Schlögel, Friedrich Wiener Blut, 170 Schnitzer, Ignaz, 222, 226 Schönau, 187, 197 Schönerer, Alexandrine von, 225 Schönerer, Georg von, 225 Schönerer, Matthias von, 225 Schönfeld, Johann Ferdinand von Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag,14 Schott, 97, 139 Schreiber, Friedrich, 179, 227 Schubert, Franz, 6, 113, 153, 168, 179, 190, 196, 208, 211, 240, 246 ‘Am Meere’, 110 ‘Die Forelle’, 153 ‘Die Nachtigall’, 153 Die schöne Müllerin, 153 Divertissement à la hongroise (D818), 38 Galop and Ecossaises (D375), 18 ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’, 152 ‘Heidenröslein’, 153 ‘Litanie auf das Fest aller Seelen’, 249 March No. 3 (D819), 153 Rosamunde Overture, 113, 153 ‘Ständchen’, 153 Valses sentimentales (D779), 18 Schubert, Magdalena, 17 Schumann, Clara, 66, 127 Schumann, Marie, 208 Schumann, Robert, 110, 113, 196, 246 Julius Caesar Overture, 114 ‘Träumerei’, 113 ‘Widmung’, 113 Schwarz, Kasper, 240 Schwarzenberg, Prince Felix, 41 Schwarzenberg, Prince Karl Philipp, 11 Schwarz-Senborn, Baron Wilhelm, 172 Sealsfield, Charles, 27 Second Citizen Regiment of Vienna, 54 Seifert, Franz, 241 Serov, Alexander, 101 Siege of Vienna (1683), 67, 216 Simon, Josef, 197 Simrock, Friedrich August, 191–2, 199–201, 205 Smetana, Bedřich Vltava, 1 Smirnitskaja, Olga, 103, 113 Sophie, Archduchess, 29, 82 Spina, Carl Anton, 96–8, 110, 115, 118, 122, 124, 131, 139, 142, 144, 148, 151, 153, 154, 179, 226 Spinola, Ambrosio, 218 Spohr, Louis, 34

St Petersburg, 96, 106, 107, 110, 125, 197, 229 Stein, Karl, 93 Steiner, Franz, 225 Steiner, Maximilian, 161, 174, 224 Steiner, S. A., 20 Stephanie, Princess, 186 Stettenheim, Julius, 200 Stockholm, 184, 229 Straus, Oscar, 242 Strauss, Adele (JSII’s third wife), 104, 188, 193, 197, 203, 205, 208, 210, 221, 235, 236, 240, 244, 249 Strauss, Albert, 188 Strauss, Alice (JSII’s stepdaughter), 182, 188, 197, 198, 210, 235 Strauss, Angelika (‘Lili’, JSII’s second wife), 182, 187–8 Strauss, Anna (JSI’s daughter), 26, 45, 235 Strauss, Anna (JSI’s sister), 7, 244 Strauss, Anna (JSI’s wife), 17, 42, 45, 52, 65, 66, 79, 80, 88, 96, 107, 126, 127, 169, 242 Strauss, Antonia (JSI’s sister), 8 Strauss, Barbara (JSI’s mother), 7, 8 Strauss, Caroline (Josef’s wife), 89, 91, 103, 107, 128, 129, 243 Strauss, Ernestine (JSI’s sister), 7, 26, 42 Strauss, Ferdinand (JSI’s son), 45 Strauss, Franz (JSI’s brother), 8 Strauss, Franz Borgias (JSI’s father), 7, 8 Strauss, Jetty (JSII’s first wife), 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 128, 148, 159, 169, 181, 185, 235 Strauss, Johann Maria Eduard (Eduard’s son), 111, 207, 210, 238–9, 240, 241 Strauss, Johann Michael (JSI’s grandfather), 7, 144 Strauss, Josef Eduard Anna (Eduard’s son), 111, 182, 207, 210 Strauss, Josefa (JSI’s sister), 8 Strauss, Karoline Anna (Josef’s daughter), 103, 241, 249 Strauss, Maria Magdalena (Eduard’s wife), 111, 128, 207 Strauss, Richard, 5 Der Rosenkavalier, 23 Strauss, Therese (JSI’s daughter), 45, 235, 241, 244 Streim, Maria Anna. See Strauss, Anna (JSI’s wife) Stuttgart, 43 Suppé, Franz, 160, 202 Sommernachtstraum Overture, 53 Swoboda, Johann, 114

271

272

General Index

Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilýich, 217 Teschen (Český Tĕšin), 55 Thirty Years War, 219, 219 Tilgner, Victor, 203 ‘Tinnerl-Lied’, 74 Todesco, Baron Moritz von, 107, 108 Traeg, Johann, 12–14, 19 Traeg, Johann (son), 36 Trampusch, Clementina Emilia, 66 Trampusch, Emilie, 46, 65, 66, 79 Trampusch, Emilie Theresia, 46, 66 Trampusch, Johann Wilhelm, 46, 66 Trampusch, Maria Wilhelmine, 46, 66 Trampusch, Theresia Karolina, 66 Trautwein, 36, 39 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 220 Trieste, 177 Troppau (Opava), 55 Trumau, 89 Turin, 177 Uhl, Friedrich, 120 Venice, 108, 177, 218 Verdi, Giuseppe, 122, 232 Ernani, 65 I due Foscari, 65 La traviata, 173, 219 Les vêpres siciliennes, 173 Nabucco, 65 Un ballo in maschera, 153 Verein der österreichischen Industriellen, 117, 139, 146 Verona, 177 Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia, 172 Victoria, Queen, 41, 78, 84 Vienna, 2 Akademisches Gymnasium, 66 British embassy, 84 cemeteries Central, 208, 211, 240, 249 Döbling, 240 Hietzing, 182 St Marx, 129, 240 Central Market Hall, 145 churches Augustinerkirche, 94, 186 Barmherzige Brüder, 75, 129 Hofburgkapelle, 47, 92 Karlskirche, 183, 192 Kirche am Hof, 49, 51, 81 Lichtental, 17 Protestant church, 208, 210, 211

Schottenkirche, 48 St Johann of Nepomuk, 48, 103 St Stephen’s, 79, 108, 115, 192 Votivkirche, 231, 249 commercial and industrial development, 68 concert and dance halls Apollo-Saal, 15, 19 Blumensäle, 124, 137 Dianasaal, 106, 111, 115, 136, 147, 152, 163 Dommayer’s Casino, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54, 56, 64, 81, 93, 105, 202 ‘Goldene Birne’, 47 Kettenbrücke-Saal, 19, 26, 29 Mehlgrube, 14 Musikverein, 163, 169, 173, 179, 185, 186, 192, 200, 204, 206, 211, 236 Redoutensaal, 14, 24, 57, 60, 79, 82, 117, 135, 137, 147, 150, 152 Sophiensaal, 81, 90, 95, 106, 126, 135, 136, 138, 141, 148, 152, 154, 163, 236 Unger Casino, 82, 91 ‘Zum goldenen Strauss’, 56 ‘Zum Sperl’, 14, 16, 23, 25, 26, 29, 35, 38, 45, 46, 47, 54, 56, 64, 81, 89, 91, 93, 105, 136 Concordia, 137, 147, 164, 211 Court Opera Orchestra, 65, 66, 114, 127, 138, 163, 170, 179, 184, 204, 229 fountains, memorials and monuments Archduke Karl, 140 Danube fountain, 2 Donauweibchen, 2, 243 Franz Schubert, 154 Johann Strauss (father) and Joseph Lanner, 241 Johann Strauss (son), 243 Prince Eugen of Savoy, 140 Prince Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg, 141 gates Kärntnertor, 223 Rotenturm, 105 Schottentor, 249 Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, 57–8, 65, 126–58, 137, 164, 186, 198, 202, 208, 210, 211, 239, 240, 244, 246 Hesperus, 137, 147 ‘Hirschenhaus’, 45, 46, 65, 88, 170, 180, 188, 245 Hofburg, 29, 69, 92, 140 hotels Grand Hotel, 205 Hotel Victoria, 182 Kahlenberg, 185 Kapuziner Gruft, 69

General Index

Palais Coburg, 84, 189 Palais Todesco, 107 parkland Augarten, 10, 11, 217 Glacis, 92, 108, 223, 224 Paradeisgartl, 56 Prater, 10, 11, 170, 171, 176, 185, 188, 200, 201, 209, 218, 248 Stadtpark, 3, 137, 154, 243 Volksgarten, 56, 64, 69, 78, 81, 86, 89, 91, 104, 109, 114, 115, 127, 137, 138, 142, 143, 150, 152, 164, 165, 172, 184, 227 Wasserglacis, 56, 64, 71, 137 Polytechnic Institute, 48 population and immigration, 64 railway, 68, 145 railway stations Franz Joseph Bahnhof, 145 Nordbahnhof, 45, 129, 145 Ostbahnhof, 145 Sudbahnhof, 145 Westbahnhof, 145 Rathaus, 186, 192, 231, 241 Riding School, 94 Schönbrunn Palace, 106, 123 Schottenstift, 48 streets and squares Am Hof, 49 Burghof, 59 Dorotheergasse, 208 Dr Karl Lueger-Ring, 241 Favoritenstrasse, 241 Freyung, 48 Graben, 35 Gürtel, 209 Heldenplatz, 140 Herrengasse, 69 Igelgasse, 180, 182, 187, 188, 197, 198, 208, 210, 218, 235, 239 Johann Strauß-Gasse, 239 Karlsgasse, 198, 208 Kumfgasse, 79 Marxergasse, 81, 136 Obere Donaustrasse, 136 Praterstrasse, 168 Reichratsstrasse, 207 Ringstrasse, 107, 137, 140, 145, 175, 223, 224, 241 Salvatorgasse, 72 Taborstrasse, 45 Weihburggasse, 108 suburbs Florisdorf, 157

Grinzing, 183 Hernals, 91 Hietzing, 23, 46, 123, 127, 129, 178, 180 Josefstadt, 75, 114 Leopoldstadt, 3, 9–11, 26, 37, 45, 75, 79, 105, 108, 188 Mariahilf, 245 Semmering, 157 theatres and companies Carltheater, 154, 186, 212, 225 Court Opera House, 113, 126, 160, 170, 178, 193, 197, 202, 204, 210, 211, 212, 219, 223, 248, 249 Johann-Strauß-Theater, 241, 248 Kärntnertortheater, 64, 66 Theater an der Wien, 44, 49, 64, 154, 160, 161, 166, 173, 174, 182, 185, 186, 187, 190, 197, 202, 204, 208, 210, 212, 216, 217, 219, 221, 224–6, 230, 234, 238, 248 Theater in der Josefstadt, 23, 65, 160 Theater in der Leopoldstadt, 10, 43, 49, 64 University, 137, 139, 146 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. See Court Opera Orchestra Vienna Woods. See Wienerwald Wiener Akademischer Gesangverein, 186 Wiener Männergesang-Verein, 1, 114–16, 126, 139, 150, 159, 171, 173, 185, 202, 204, 211, 249 Wiener Weltausstellungskapelle, 170, 171, 173, 177 Vieuxtemps, Henri, 58 Villemessant, Hippolyte de, 120 Waber, Josefine, 128 Wagner, Franz, 184 Wagner, Otto, 209 Wagner, Richard, 5, 28, 113–4, 115, 162, 165, 179, 184, 193, 196, 232–3, 246 Der fliegende Holländer, 113, 152 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 113, 193, 194, 233 Die Walküre, 179 Götterdämmerung, 179 Lohengrin, 95, 101, 112, 113 Parsifal, 193 Rienzi, 113 Siegfried Idyll, 114 Tannhäuser, 95, 101, 113–4, 119, 202 Tristan und Isolde, 113–4, 179 Waldmüller, Ferdinand Georg, 149 Waldviertel, 184 waltz, 132–6

273

274

General Index

Walzel, Camillo, 217, 225 Warsaw, 83, 125, 128–9 ‘Was ist des deutschen Vaterlands’, 75 Washington, 236 Weber, Carl Maria von, 31, 34, 246 Der Freischütz, 76, 147 Invitation to the Dance, 1 Webern, Anton, 5 Weingartner, Felix, 208 Weinwurm, Rudolf, 115, 186 Weniger, Leopold, 74 Weyl, Josef, 2, 115, 116, 150 Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeiitung, 30 Wiener Neustadt, 228 Wiener Theaterzeitung, 43

Wienerwald, 5, 150, 223 Wiest, Franz, 53, 61 Wilhelm I, King, 142 Wilhelm II, Emperor, 191 Wilhelm, Archduke, 94 Wilhelm, Prince, 39 World War I, 244, 247–9 Würzburg, 228, 235 Zamara, Anton, 96 Zarskoje-Selo-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, 99, 125 Zeller, Carl, 202 Ziehrer, Carl Michael, 110, 183, 184, 247

Figure 9 Johann Strauss (Son), Verbrüderungs-Marsch (Op. 287, 1864), title page. © The British Library Board, Hirsch M.1228.(22)

Figure 1 Hanns Gasser, Das Donauweibchen , public monument. © Wien Museum, 16.643

Figure 10 Josef Strauss, Ungarischer Krönungsmarsch (Op. 225, 1867), title page. © The British Library Board, h.991.c.(13)