ON 2006

See me Dance the Polka

The glory of Viennese popular music is, without question, the waltz. Emerging from humble beginnings in the Austrian countryside towards the end of the 18th century, it made its way into the outskirts and then the centre of Vienna and from there conquered the world, both as a dance and a musical form. For most of the 19th century and much of the 20th it was the universal favourite in ballrooms and dance halls from one end of the social scale to the other. It proved to be just as effective in song, at every artistic level from the music hall to the opera house, and - the Strauss family having demonstrated its symphonic potential - it was absorbed at an early stage into just about every kind of music written for the concert hall, the symphony included.

It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate the role of the polka. It was not an Austrian invention - it originated across the border in Bohemia in the 1830s - and it didn’t find its way into the Viennese ballroom until the early 1840s, when it replaced the galop as the must-have item alongside the waltz. Unlike the waltz, which remained a vital source of interest to generations of Viennese and other composers after the end of the Strauss regime, it did not long survive the retirement of Eduard, the youngest of the three brothers, in 1901. Nor, except in the music of Czech composers like Smetana and Janácek, did it penetrate very far into the concert hall or opera house. Even so, the polka was all the rage as it spread through Europe in the 1840s - “Can you dance the Polka? Do you like the Polka? Polka – Polka – Polka – Polka – it is enough to drive me mad,” remarked Punch at the time - and it retained its popularity for decades after that. George Grossmith’s famous music-hall song See me Dance the Polka dates from 1886:

You should see me dance the Polka,

You should see me cover the ground,

You should see my coat-tails flying,

As I jump my partner round;

When the band commences playing,

My feet begin to go,

For a rollicking romping Polka

Is the jolliest fun I know.

Jolly fun it clearly was and, for a while, it was the perfect foil to the seriously sexy waltz. The wit and ingenuity, the rythmic energy and tuneful verve invested in the polka are the qualities that keep it alive as a concert item today. It is such an integral part of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day tradition that it is regularly represented not only in the programme itself, where it so effectively offsets the waltzes, but also in the strictly controlled series of three encores at the end - which must always end with the Blue Danube Waltz and the Radetzky March and must always begin with a polka.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Der Waldmeister (Woodruff) Overture

The value of the polka or the gallop in offsetting the elegance of the waltz is most effectively illustrated by the Overture to Johann II’s last-but-one operetta, Waldmeister, which was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1895. The story - about a Saxon village that falls victim to the intoxicating properties of a drink made from wine and woodruff - need not concern us. What is important is the hit number of the show, the waltz song Trau, schau, wem? (“Look before you leap”) which is also the main theme of the Overture, where it occurs over and over again. Although it is dressed in resourcefully varied orchestral colours on each occasion, to sustain its seductive attractions it also needs the contrasting duple-time tunes that replace it in the middle, just as it needs the concluding gallop to divert it from one too many star appearances.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

German Dance K.605 No.3 (“Sleighride”)

The transitional status of the German dance, the predecessor of the waltz, as it entered high society towards the end of the eighteenth century is neatly symbolised in the ball scene in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, where the aristocratic Giovanni and the peasant Zerlina find that it is one thing they have in common. Towards the end of his life, as official chamber musician to the court in Vienna, Mozart supplied numerous dances for masked balls in the Redoutensaal, many of them German dances. Though slower and obviously more formal than the Viennese waltz, the German dance could benefit too from a little novelty in its scoring and its title - as the middle section of the third of the three dances K.605 so delightfully demonstrates: headed “Sleighride” it glides along on an legato melody accompanied by the jingle of bells tuned to five different pitches.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Idomeneo: “Padre, germani, addio!”

Cosi fan tutte: “In uomine”

Let’s be serious for a few minutes: Ilia, a Trojan Princess, is in love with her captor, Idamante, son of the King of Crete - which, since she is now torn between her duty to her royal Trojan family and her love for its Greek enemy, has put her in a painful dilemma. In a beautifully written aria from near the beginning of Idomeneo she gives passionate expression to her fractured feelings.

It is difficult to imagine Despina, the maidservant in Così fan tutte, getting into such a situation. She is too much the realist for that. Unlike her two young lady employers, the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, she is most unlikely to be carried away by romantic dreams. In her brightly mischievous little aria “In uomine,” after excusing herself for disagreeing with them, she cheerfully advises the sisters not to take men seriously but, on the contrary, to treat them as playthings. First performed in 1790, nine years after the very serious Idomeneo, Così fan tutte is the third of the three great Mozart comedies written in collaboration with his brilliant librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Johann Strauss II

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Woods): Waltz, Op.325

The best thing that ever came out of the Vienna woods, the composer seems to be telling us, is the Viennese waltz. Certainly, the Ländler, the peasant ancestor of the most sophisticated of 19th-century dance forms, originated in the countryside round Vienna - the rustic charms of which are poetically evoked, alongside the usual waltz-time fanfares, in the extended introduction to these Tales from the Vienna Woods. And it is from this pastoral background that, after a picturesque flute cadenza, one of the main themes first emerges, not as a waltz at this stage but as a simple Ländler played on a zither (or, failing that, on muted strings). It is introduced in its waltz form - on string and woodwind this time - in the second of the four central sections of the work, each one of which has its own main and subsidiary themes and sometimes a countertheme in the accompaniment as well. Although it is not recalled along with the other main themes in a coda long enough to match the scale of the introduction, it is heard for the last time, as a Ländler again on zither (or violins), in a brief but show-stopping episode of nostalgia just before the end.

Johann Strauss II

Unter Donner und Blitz (Thunder and Lightning) Polka-schnell, Op.324

Unter Donner und Blitz is possibly an even more inspired quick polka than the earlier and equally famous Tritsch-Tratsch. Certainly, it offers a whole series of brilliantly witty observations on the meteorological situation - a roll of thunder in the opening bars followed by a flurry of evasive activity, a hectic middle section where the storm rages in lightning cymbal clashes and bass-drum thunder claps, and a final section which betrays not the least sign of a dampening of the irrepressible Viennese genius for having a good time.

Johann Strauss II

Egyptian March Op.335

Like Verdi’s Aida, the Egyptian March was written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. It was first heard at one of the Strauss summer seasons at Pavlovsk near St Petersburg and was then performed in Vienna as part of a theatrical entertainment called Towards Egypt. A wonderfully weird confection, it is coloured not only by exotic harmonies and percussion sounds but also some curious vocalisation. Whether it was in acknowledgement of this dubious tribute that Ismail Pasha sent Strauss two giraffes, on the occasion of the composer’s Golden Jubilee in 1890, history does not record.

Johann Strauss II

Frühlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring) Waltz, Op.410

Written originally as a vocal piece for the coloratura soprano Bianca Bianchi, Frühlingsstimmen was dismissed on its first performance in 1883 as “not very melodious” - which would suggest that Mme Bianchi didn’t sing it very well. Certainly, as an orchestral waltz, it is outstanding for the quality of its tunes, not least the sensitively syncopated and delicately scored first theme of the second section. Although, unlike some others among Johann II’s more ambitious waltzes, Frühlingsstimmen has no introduction, it does have a coda to recall the vigorous opening theme and to put a brilliant ending to it.

Johann Strauss II

Leichtes Blut (Light of Heart) Polka-schnell Op.319

Johann II’s Leichtes Blut (Light of Heart) polka was written in 1867 in the same fruitful season as the Blue Danube waltz. If it is not as familiar an example of its kind as its waltz-time companion, Leichtes Blut is certainly one of the best of all polkas. In fact, it is a perfect little inspiration, irresistibly propelled through the outer sections by a spring-heeled skipping rhythm, lifted by an exuberant new melody in the middle, and finished off by an ingenious little coda.

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)

Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow): Viljalied (Vilja Song)

The most successful of all Lehár’s operettas - the most successful of all Viennese operettas after Die Fledermaus - was, and still is, Die lustige Witwe (“The Merry Widow”), which was first performed in Vienna in 1905. Set for the most part in the Paris embassy of an imaginary Balkan state, it skilfully exploits both the sophisticated amusements of the great city and the sentiment associated with the backward way of life in Pontevedro. “I’m off to chez Maxim” belongs to the former category. The Vilja Song - introduced by Hanna Glawari, a young and rich and beautiful widow, the loss of whose personal fortune through marriage to a fortune-seeking Frenchman could sink the whole Pontevedran economy - falls in the latter category. It’s a kind of folk song: Vilja, a beautiful wood nymph, allows a huntsman to fall in love with her and then, to his inconsolable despair, disappears . . .

Johann Strauss II

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

The most successful of Johann II’s operettas, Die Fledermaus, which was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1874, is the only one set in contemporary Vienna. One of its principal characters is Adele, a parlour maid who has serruptitiously 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 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

Freikugeln (Magic Bullets) Polka schnell, Op.326

The Strauss brothers were frequently called upon to provide music for entertainment associated with special Viennese events - like national and corporate celebrations, student festivities, public holidays, sports meetings - for which they would always think of something appropriate. The many international competitors who attended the German Federal Shooting Contest in the Prater in July 1868 must surely have enjoyed not only the explosive sound of Johann II’s Freikugeln (Magic Bullets) Polka, its percussive shots heightened by a sparky piccolo, but also its breathtaking succession of briskly diverting tunes.

Johann Strauss II

Stürmisch in Lieb’ und Tanz (Tempestuous in Love and Dance) Polka schnell, Op.393

Like the famous waltz Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses from the South) the rather less familiar quick polka Stürmisch in Lieb’ und Tanz comes from Johann II’s otherwise almost forgotten operetta Das Spitzentuch der Königin (The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief) which was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1880. Equipped with a promising new title, Stürmish in Lieb’ und Tanz made its debut as a polka in its own right in the Sofienbad-Saal a year later, when its hectic, even uproarious tunefulness no doubt proved as irresistible as anything written for the ballroom in the first place.

Johann Strauss II

An der schönen blauen Donau (On 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. This one consists of as many as five distinct waltz-time sections, each one of them based on two different themes. Written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association in 1867, the 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 brieflly 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.

Gerald Larner ©2006

.