Johann Strauss Jr. (part II)

By the Beautiful Blue Danube, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Artist’s Life, The Bat… Almost everyone is familiar with these titles. Johann Strauss Jr. wrote over 500 musical compositions, among which we can find waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, marches, gallops, quadrilles, romances, overtures, operettas, one opera and symphonic poems. He elevated his waltzes to symphonic form with a very clear structure and an original coda. Towards the end of his life he wrote Traumbild, a symphonic poem in two parts; it was neither performed nor published during his lifetime (apparently, he had no intention of performing it in public), and shows us a very different Strauss.

He was strongly advised to start writing operettas by his wife Jetty, who knew that is was an emerging musical form extremely popular in Paris thanks to Jacques Offenbach. Having refused it at first (he never felt at ease with theatre people), he reluctantly accepted, and the new operetta style was born: the Viennese operetta. Johann’s most popular operettas are The Bat (1874) and The Gypsy Baron (1885), premiered at the Theatre an der Wien in Vienna with great success. It must be said, however, that many of his operettas were not that fortunate because of the weakness of its librettos. His only opera, Ritter Pázmán (now almost entirely lost, apart from its ballet and czardas) was not very well received either, which pained Strauss greatly, as he wanted to be considered a serious opera composer.

It would be possible to write tomes about Strauss’ relationship with his brothers. Josef Strauss (1827-1870) worked as an engineer despite his father’s desire that he become a military man. When he was asked by his family to replace Johann during his illness in 1853, he was reluctant at first. Later, however, he started to enjoy the role of the conductor of the Strauss Orchestra and began writing his own music. A very talented composer, Josef was highly admired by his older brother Johann. Their relationship, however, was not, apparently, devoid of professional jealousy from both sides. At the same time, Johann praised his brother’s talent – ‘Pepi [Josef] is the most talented of us two, I am merely the most popular one’, he is reported to have said.

Things were even more complicated between Johann and the youngest brother, Eduard (1835-1916). A gifted conductor, ‘the handsome Edi’ lacked his brothers’ originality and their knack of writing popular and widely loved music. In 1907 Eduard burnt Strauss family archives, which included works written by Johann Sr., Johann Jr., Josef, as well as other composers. That action greatly complicated the work of numerous musicologists, who were forced to reunite lost compositions and to orchestrate them again (in many cases only piano versions survived). 

Strauss spent his last years surrounded by his wife Adele, her daughter Alice, whom he had adopted, his closest friends, one of whom was Johannes Brahms, and his horses. In 1884 the fortieth anniversary of Strauss’ premiere at the Dommayer Casino was celebrated, and the maestro received greetings from prominent musical, drama and literature figures all over the world. Giuseppe Verdi, for instance, wished him the following: ‘I honor him as one of my most congenial colleagues and the best I can wish him on his jubilee is an iron constitution. Those Viennese are no joke. It is too bad that [Strauss] cannot substitute a double for those tough days which await him… A double jubilee in Vienna and for Strauss yet… well, may the Lord have the mercy on him’ (the quote is taken from the book ‘Johann Strauss. The End of an Era’ by Egon Gartenberg, 1979).

Material used:

Kemp, Peter (1989), ‘The Strauss Family’, Omnibus Press, London/New York/Sydney/Cologne.

Fantel, Hans (1971), ‘Johann Strauss. Father and Son and Their Era’, Redwood Press Limited, Trowbridge and London.

Gartenberg, Egon (1979), ‘Johann Strauss. The End of an Era’, Da Capo Press, Inc., New York.

Jacob, H.E. (translated my Wolff, Marguerite) (2005) ‘Johann Strauss – Father and Son – A Century of Light Music’, Kessinger Publishing Co.

Мейлих, Е. (1975), ‘Иоганн Штраус. Из истории венского вальса’, Музыка, Ленинград (Meylich, E., ‘Johann Strauss. From the History of the Viennese Waltz’, Music, Leningrad). 

http://www.johann-strauss.org.uk/ (The Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain), accessed on September 30^th, 2013.