La Clemenza di Tito: Overture

Vienna, capital of music

There was music in Vienna before Johann Strauss – quite a lot of it, in fact. Composers like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert contrived, while contributing to the prehistory of the waltz with hundreds of German Dances and Ländler, to write those operas, symphonies and other large-scale works that made Vienna the musical capital of the world. Although Schubert was the only one of the four actually born in the city, Mozart was no less Viennese in his love of the ballroom and the dances that were performed there. He was delighted rather than offended to find on a visit to Prague in 1787 that “people were flying about in sheer delight to the music of my Figaro arranged for quadrilles and waltzes.” In that same year he was appointed Chamber Musician to the court in Vienna, which meant that he was to spend most of every December and January writing dances for the coming Lenten Carnivals. During the course of his duties he wrote more than 60 examples of the German Dance, which was the forerunner of the waltz not only in its musical characteristics but also its universal appeal – as is neatly symbolised in the ball scene in his opera Don Giovanni, where the aristocratic Giovanni and the peasant Zerlina find that it is the one interest, apart from lust, they have in common.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

La Clemenza di Tito: Overture

The most popular of Mozart’s overtures were written for his comedies – The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, The Magic Flute. His last opera, La Clemenza di Tito, which was designed to celebrate Emperor Leopold II’s coronation as King of Bohemia in Prague in 1791, required something different. German Dances, much though the Emperor might have enjoyed them, would have been distinctly out of place here. Based on a 50-year old libretto by Metastasio, the revered master of opera seria, it is a monument to classical virtue, both musical and moral. The overture, which is correspondingly elevated in style, is a model of economy, complete in itself but modestly proportioned and not so abundant in melodic material as to compete with the opera itself. Beginning with a full-orchestral fanfare in C major and an eager little tune on violins, it incorporates a more lyrical melody for woodwind, a development that takes the main theme through a variety of harmonic adventures, and a recapitulation that recalls the woodwind melody first so as to reserve the fanfare for the ceremonial ending.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Accelerationen (Accelerations): Waltz Op.234

Tempo changes are not, by necessity, a prominent feature of the Viennese waltz. It is no doubt for that very reason, and certainly to amuse the engineering students of Vienna University at their St Valentine’s Day Ball in 1860, that Johann II defied the first law of ballroom choreography in his Accelerations Waltz. Following an introduction that is in itself a tease, the first waltz begins slowly and reaches its true tempo only gradually, as if wound up by a well-oiled rotary handle. A neat piece of engineering, it can be admired four times in all, twice near the beginning and, after an abundantly varied sequence of other waltz tunes, twice near the end.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Exsultate, jubilate: Motet K.165

Aria: Exsultate, jubilate (Allegro)

Recitativo: Fulget amica dies –

Aria: Tu virginum corona (Andante) –

Aria: Alleluja (Vivace)

Few composers of sixteen have written anything that has achieved the lasting and widespread popularity of Mozart’s motet Exsultate, jubilate. Even Mozart might not have been as successful as he was without the inspiration of Venanzio Rauzzini, whose voice he had in mind as he wrote the piece. As he would have discovered when rehearsing his opera Lucio Silla in Milan in December 1772, the male (castrato) soprano who took the leading role of Cecilio was not only a highly accomplished singer but also a gifted all-round musician and a composer in his own right. So here was an opportunity to write a church work with a soprano solo part of nothing less than operatic virtuosity and here too was a challenge to create something that would impress Rauzzini with the quality of its scoring, its melodic invention and its harmonic ingenuity.

Written for performance in the Theatine Church in Milan on 17 January 1773, the motet is addressed, as the Church calendar required on that day, to the Virgin Mary. It is clear from the start, however, that it is at least as much a celebration of Rauzzini’s virtuosity as the Virgin’s virtue. In the opening aria the soloist’s technique is most impressively displayed in the rapid runs and wide leaps applied to each of the three appearances of the closing line “psallant aethera cum me” (Let the heavens resound). As the intervening recitative suggests, Tu virginum corona is an episode of contrasting serenity. Oboes and horns are omitted while strings provide a gently expressive accompaniment to a poised, decoratively melodious vocal line. It leads without a break into the closing Alleluja, an aria of such irresistible vitality that it is frequently performed as a separate item – even though it is heard to best effect only in its original context, offset by the preceding cavatina and corresponding in tempo and harmony with the opening Exsultate, jubilate.

Josef Strauss (1827-1870)

Die Libelle (The Dragonfly): Polka-mazurka Op.204

If Josef Strauss had not been plagued by illness, which resulted in his death at the age of 43, and if he had been as ambitious as his brothers, he might well have turned out the greatest composer of the three – not necessarily of dances but of more ambitious forms of music. Even so, he was a brilliant exponent of the polka, including the hybrid form the polka-mazurka, which ingeniously combines the polka step with the uneven triple-time of the mazurka. Die Libelle, with its prettily scored main theme, is one of the most attractive of its kind.

Johann Strauss II

Furioso: Quick Polka Op.260

One of the least likely of Johann II’s many enterprises was the seasons of summer concerts – ten of them between 1856 and 1865, two more in 1869 and 1886 – which he directed in the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk Park near St Petersburg. As the result of a deal with the Tsarskoye-Selo Railway Company, which was eager to publicise its line between St Petersburg and Pavlovsk, the Russian audience had the privilege of being the first to hear such favourite pieces as the Tritsch-Tratsch and Pizzicato Polkas and an unknown composer called Tchaikovsky had his first opportunity to hear his music performed in public. Written for the Pavlovsk season of 1861, the Furioso Polka has an appropriately Russian-dance flavour to its bustling opening theme. Not that, in the increasingly frenetic galop that follows, any dancer would have the time to notice such stylistic niceties.

Franz von Suppé (1819-1895)

Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant): Overture

Although Johann Strauss is the hero of Viennese operetta – and in his lifetime he had no serious rival – its father figure was Franz von Suppé (or, to give him his full name and title, Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé Demelli). It was Suppé who had the talent and the initiative to write pieces just as entertaining as the Offenbach opéras bouffes which threatened to monopolise the Viennese audience in the late 1850s, before Strauss came on the scene. If most of the dozens of operettas he wrote for the Theater an der Wien and the Carltheater are now remembered only by their overtures, it is not so much because the operettas are inferior as because the overtures are so very good. Though written in 1846, years before he entered into competition with Offenbach, and though intended not for one of his operettas but for a play by Carl Elmer, the Poet and Peasant Overture – with its slow introduction, its lyrical cello solo, its rousing main theme and, of course, its elegant Viennese waltz tune – is a thoroughly characteristic example.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Idomeneo: ballet music

Chaconne

Passepied

Pas seul

An earllier opera seria by Mozart, this one set in Crete not long after the Trojan war, Idomeneo is no more appropriate a score for German Dances than La Clemenza di Tito. It does, however, illustrate the composer’s love of the dance in general. He wasn’t too happy about having to write ballet music for his opera – in the opera houses of the day that task was usually handed over to someone else – and he complained about it. But, as a young composer given his first big chance in opera, he could scarcely refuse. Consoling himself with the thought that “now all the music will be by the same composer,” he completed five dances shortly before the first performance, which took place in Munich two days after his 25th birthday in January 1781. The evidence of the music itself is that he enjoyed writing “those cursed dances.” Shortage of time no doubt explains his borrowing of material from Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide for the Chaconne, but the splendour of that dance silences criticism. The grace of the Passpied and the developing drama of the Pas seul prove are just as irresistible in their different ways.

Josef Strauss

Dorfschwalben aus Österreich (Village Swallows from Austria): Waltz, Op.164

Like his brother’s Cuckoo Polka, Josef’s Dorfschwalben aus Österreich (Village Swallows from Austria) offered Viennese good-time society a pleasure trip to the countryside – where, since it originated as the Ländler folk dance, the waltz is not entirely out of place. Having set the scene in the opening bars with bagpipe drones on the strings and a yodelling clarinet, Josef introduces not only his first main theme but also, with the help of a bird whistle in the orchestra, his twittering swallows. Some of the tunes are more sophisticated than others but there are regular yodelling or droning reminders of the rustic setting. The swallows and the graceful tune that goes with them are recalled just before the end.

Johann Strauss II

Im Krapfenwald’l (Cuckoo): French Polka Op.336

Since it is named after Josef Krapf’s well known tavern in the Vienna woods, it would be reasonable to assume that Im Krapfenwand’l is another tribute to the countryside the Viennese knew best. When it was first performed, however, at the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk Park it was called In the Pavlovsk Woods. Astute businessman though he was, the composer might have been better advised to go for neutrality in this case and give it the “Cuckoo” title it has since acquired in English-speaking countries. It would at least have acknowledged the vital role played by the virtuoso musician who makes no fewer than eight entries in each of the four main sections and five more in the coda.

Josef Strauss

Plappermäulchen (Blabbermouth) – A Musical Joke: Polka Op.245

The Plappermäulchen Polka – the title of which translates literally as “Blabbermouth” and which is not to be confused with another polka by Josef Strauss called Die Schwätzerin or “Chatterbox” – is what the composer described a “musical joke.” Written for the Viennese Carnival season of 1868, with its amusing instrumental repartee and its percussion rattling on, it is a characteristically ingenious example of the novelty polka. It has two possible endings: one which finishes abruptly and the original, though rarely performed version with a miniature coda.

Johann Strauss II

Die Fledermaus: “Spiel’ ich die Unschuld vom Lande”

The most successful of Johann II’s operettas – the only one set in contemporary Vienna – has always been Die Fledermaus, which was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1874. One of its principal characters is Adele, a parlour maid who has surreptitiously taken the evening off to attend a lavish ball thrown by the Russian Prince Orlovsky and to further her ambitions as an actress. How she comes to be showing off her acting abilities in a prison in the early hours of the morning after would take too long to explain but, clearly, as she goes through the repertoire of parts she can play, she is not in the least put off by the incongruous circumstances.

Johann Strauss II

Die Tänzerin Fanny Elssler: “Draussen in Sievering”

(arr Oskar Stalla and Bernard Grün)

Such was the demand for Strauss operettas that other composers continued to manufacture them out of Johann II’s dance music for literally decades after his death. The libretto of Die Tänzerin Fanny Elssler is based on the scandalous life of a celebrated Viennese dancer – whose father, Johann Elssler, worked with Haydn at Eisenstadt – and the score is a judicious example of recycling by Oskar Stalla and his colleague Bernard Grün. First performed in the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1934, it scored a particular success with “Draussen in Sievering” (Yonder in Sievering) – a number which, having appropriated one of Johann II’s most seductive waltz melodies and one of his most attractive polka tunes to make its romantic tribute to Vienna, could scarcely have failed.

Josef Strauss

Feuerfest (Fireproof): French Polka Op.269

Sometimes known in this country as “Anvil Polka” – for reasons which will shortly become obvious – Feuerfest was written for a great Viennese occasion: F.Wertheim & Co. had just completed the manufacture of their 20,000th fireproof safe. Metal strikes metal, sparks fly, and a particularly engaging polka rolls down the production line.

Johann Strauss II

An der schönen blauen Donau (By the Beautiful Blue Danube) waltz, Op.314

The Blue Danube waltz is not only the last word in flattery - the Danube in Vienna is a muddy brown in most lights - but also the ultimate example of the concert waltz. In company with some of the most distinguished examples of its kind, it consists of as many as five distinct waltz-time sections, each one of them based on two different themes. Clearly, as the composer of well over a hundred waltzes (not including those in his operettas), Johann II was a uniquely resourceful melodist. Written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association in 1867, this most familiar of Viennese waltzes was originally scored for chorus and orchestra and in that form it has achieved something like the status of a national anthem. The choral version, however, doesn’t have the splendid coda which in the orchestral version recalls and briefly develops the main themes of four of the five sections, referring back to the leisurely introduction and effortlessly completing a perfectly integrated construction. It flows just as easily as the Danube itself, and far more colourfully.

Notes by Gerald Larner © 2009