Johann Strauss
Johann Strauss was born in Vienna. His father wanted him to become a banker, but with help from his mother he studied the violin secretly.
When one day his father found out his musical plans there was a violent and unpleasant scene and it was only when his father left the family and took on a mistress when Johann was 17 that he was able to fully concentrate on his chosen career as a composer.
His father’s influence meant that many establishments were wary of offering Johann a contract, but he was able to persuade the Dommayer’s Casino in Vienna to give him a chance.
Strauss found his early years difficult, but he soon won over audiences after accepting commissions to perform away from home. He would eventually proceed to surpass his father’s fame, and become the most popular of all waltz composers, extensively touring Austria, Poland and Germany with his orchestra.
Vienna was racked by a bourgeois revolution on 24th February 1848 and the intense rivalry between father and son became more apparent. Eventually, Johann decided to side with the revolutionaries ― a decision that was both musically and professionally at his disadvantage: Austrian royalty twice denied him the music director position and he was also hauled up by the Viennese authorities for playing the La Marseillaise, which stoked up revolutionary sentiment.
Strauss had an astute business mind which he utilised to the fullest. After establishing his first orchestra prior to his father’s death, he founded many others to be supplied to various entertainment establishments such as the ‘Sperl’ ballroom as well as the ‘Apollo’ where he dedicated appropriately titled pieces to commemorate the first performances there. When the commissions became too much for him, he sought to promote his younger brothers Josef and Eduard to deputise in his absence from either poor health or an impossible commission.
In 1853, he was even confined to a sanatorium to recuperate as he was suffering from shivering fits and neuralgia. But Johann Strauss proceeded to consolidate his position as the “waltz king” with his exquisite The Blue Danube waltz which began life as a choral waltz with banal words written by a local poet.
The polka also underwent development from a Bohemian peasant dance in the 1840s to one which generated interest in serious musical societies in Vienna. Strauss brilliantly displayed its potential with the Unter Donner und Blitz ‘Thunder and Lightning’ and the cheerful Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka which can be literally translated as ‘chit-chat’ in English.
Strauss was much admired by prominent composers of the day, including Richard Wagner, who once admitted that he admired the waltz Wein, Weib und Gesang op. 333 and Johannes Brahms, who was also a personal friend, and to whom he dedicated his popular waltz Seid umschlungen Millionen ‘Be Embraced Millions’ op. 443 inspired by a poem by Friedrich Schiller.
Other admirers include the famous Richard Strauss who, when writing his Rosenkavalier waltzes said: ‘how could I forget the laughing genius of Vienna?’ which made a clear reference to the genius of Johann Strauss.
Strauss’ operettas, however, have not had as much enduring success as have his dance pieces: and much of the success was reserved for Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron. This has been attributed to the fact that Strauss was once considered to lack dramatic and theatrical sense, although his musical prowess was never questioned.
The result was a welter of fine music drawn from themes of his lukewarm operettas of which ‘Cagliostro-Walzer’ op. 370 and ‘Rosen aus dem Süden’ Walzer op. 388 were fine examples. His gift was evident especially in instrumentation but his apparent lack of dramatic sense has led many ’serious music’ enthusiasts to dismiss his works as mere ‘light music’.
One such example was the failure of his only opera Ritter Pásmán which could be faulted on the libretto, but nevertheless many attribute his strong links to the waltz and the polka as his failure as this may well indicate that he may not be able to write serious music.
In fact, for his third and most successful operetta of all time, Die Fledermaus 1874, music critics of Vienna prophesied that his work would only be a ‘motif of waltz and polka melodies’. Nonetheless, his fiercest critic and ironically a strong supporter, Eduard Hanslick wrote at the time of Strauss’s death in 1899 that his demise would signify the end of the last happy times in Vienna.
It should be noted that most of Strauss’ works that we are all familiar with today may have existed in a near negligible different form as conceived by him as his brothers destroyed a great amount of original orchestral archives in a furnace manufacturer in 1907.
However, the Johann Strauss societies around the world have painstakingly pieced together a large body of these destroyed works and allowed many generations after to appreciate and love the waltzes and polkas of the famed Strauss family.
Strauss’ music is now regularly performed at the annual Neujahrskonzert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, thanks to the efforts of the late Clemens Krauss who performed a special all-Strauss programme in 1929 with the established orchestra. Johann Strauss died from pneumonia in Vienna in 1899 at the age of 74 and was buried there in the Zentralfriedhof.
You can book tickets to Strauss concerts from our Music Concerts page.
Johann Strauss, Vienna waltz music, Vienna polkas
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