SCO Viennese 2009b

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 pre-history of the waltz, to write those operas, symphonies and other large and small-scale- works that made Vienna the musical capital of the world in their day.

Although Schubert was the only 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.

Unlike Mozart, neither Beethoven nor Schubert held an official position requiring the provision of dance music – which, however, did not prevent them from indulging in that comparatively trivial but no doubt enjoyable pastime. Many of Beethoven’s efforts in this respect were directed at the Gesellschaft der bildenden Künstler, which had been holding winter balls in Vienna since 1792, when Haydn had provided the Society with 12 minuets and 12 German Dances. Beethoven’s first contribution was in 1795, when he too provided 12 minuets and twelve German dances. In all he wrote he wrote not far short of 100 ballroom dances – all of them before 1807 when he applied himself to higher things.

Being an essentially convivial composer, Schubert frequently improvised dances for his friends. In some, though far from all, cases he wrote them down, sometimes, though far from always, for publication. So, while it is difficult in these ciscumstances to estimate how many he created, there is documentary evidence of something like 400 of them. They include minuets and écossaises but above all German Dances and Ländler – some of them close to the waltz as it was to develop by way of Joseph Lanner and the Strauss family. Brahms loved them so much that he went out of his way to bring them to the attention of his friend Johann Strauss II who, he must have felt, would appreciate them or perhaps even learn from them.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Overture: Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Set as it is in Turkey, the libretto of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (also known as Il Seraglio) offered the composer no opportunity to introduce German dances. As the hectic Presto outer sections of the Overture indicate, Mozart’s priority here – in rhythm, harmony and orchestral colouring – was to create an atmosphere appropriate to the exotic setting. In the middle of the piece, however, the tempo slows down to Andante to accommodate an anticipation of the aria in decorously Europe style that Belmonte, the Spanish hero of the opera, is to sing as soon as the curtain rises on the first act. First performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1782, Die Entführung inspired the Emperor’s famous remark, “Too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and vastly too many notes,” to which Mozart truthfully replied, “Just as many as are necessary, your Majesty.”

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Romance in F major for violin and orchestra Op.50

When Beethoven left his native Bonn for Vienna in 1792 it was, as one of his noble patrons elegantly put it, to “receive the spirit of Mozart from the hand of Haydn.” Although he had direct contact with Haydn, whose pupil he was for a while, Beethoven probably learned even more from Mozart – not, of course, from the composer himself, who was dead by then, but from his example. That much is clear from the Romance in F for violin and orchestra, which could have been written as early as 1795 – several years before its companion piece, the Romance in G. It is an exquisitely Mozartian aria rondo form based on the expressive melody introduced by the violin in the opening bars. Plunged into a dramatic episode in the middle, the soloist emerges with added serenity and a still more decorative line on the reprise of the main theme towards the end.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Rondo (Allegro) from Serenade in D major K.250 (“Haffner’)

Mozart’s Serenade in D was composed not for Vienna but for Salzburg, where it was first performed in the garden of the Haffner family home during the celebrations of the wedding of Marie Elisabeth Haffner to Franz Xaver Späth in July 1776. Like three earlier orchestral serenades written for Salzburg occasions, it contains a miniature violin concerto which the composer probably intended to play himself. Certainly, the concerto movements in the “Haffner” Serenade indulge the soloist to such an extent that no violinist could easily resist them. The last of those movements, a rondo, offers no fewer than four opportunities to insert a cadenza – the first three to welcome the return of the delightfully skittish main theme, the last to make way for one last display of virtuosity just before the end. In the absence of cadenzas by Mozart himself, incidentally, it is up to the soloist to provide his own.

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)

Ballet Music No.2 from Rosamunde D797

In December 1823 the Theater an der Wien, the Viennese theatre where where Johann Strauss II was to enjoy many of his operetta successes, was the scene of a disaster. Helmina von Chézy’s play Rosamunde von Cypern was so badly received that it was taken off after only two performances – much to the disappointment of Franz Schubert who had written nine pieces of incidental music for it and who had received far more praise for his work than the “terrible Frau von Chézy” for hers. However, while the play has disappeared from view, the incidental music, which contains some of Schubert’s best tunes, lives on. The last item in the score, the second of two ballet episodes, includes three or four of those tunes, all of them worked into an attractively symmetrical pattern and delightfully scored for a small orchestra of strings, woodwind in pairs and a solitary horn.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Finale (Spiritoso) from Symphony No.104 in D major (“London”)

Known in English-speaking countries as the “London,” Haydn’s Symphony No.104 is only the last of twelve such works written for performance in London between 1791 and 1795. So why it should have been singled out in that way, by a nickname that could have been applied to any of them, no one really knows. It could be, however, that it is the only one of the twelve which seems to have anything of London in it, the opening theme of the last movement having been claimed as an allusion to the street cry “Hot Cross Buns.” On the other hand, since that same tune has been identified as the Croatian folksong “Oj Jelena” (by Bartók among others) the symphony could equally have been nicknamed the “Croatian.” Introduced as it is by violins over a folk-song drone on horns and lower strings, the Croatian origin seems the more likely of the two.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Overture: Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus is by far the most successful of all Johann Strauss’s operettas. The only one set in the Vienna of his day, it has a very special status in that its waltz and polka numbers numbers are, for once, presented in their true social context. Not the least entertaining part of it is the Overture which, since it takes no account of the order of events in the plot, requires no previous knowledge of how one of its principal characters acquired the embarrassing nickname of “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) and how he gets his own back at a lavish and frankly dissolute party thrown by the Russian Prince Orlofsky. It begins with the most dramatic music in the score, which accompanies a show-down scene in a remarkably comfortable Viennese prison in the last of the three acts, cuts back to the bell striking six to mark the end of the central ball scene, and cuts back again to the vigorous waltz which represents the climax of the Orlofsky festivities. A sentimental episode from the first act is followed by an increasingly impatient effort to get back to where the action is and the earlier tunes are duly recalled in an irresistibly reckless recapitulation.

Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)

Liebesleid

Although he was better known in his day as a violinist – who rarely practised and yet was one of the most accomplished instrumentalists of his day – Fritz Kreisler was also an expert composer. He wrote both under his own name and, notoriously, under the names of long-dead minor composers whose works he claimed to have discovered and edited. He

was such an accomplished pasticheur, in fact, that it was difficult for his contemporaries to distinguish between the real thing and the imitation. Most of the music he acknowledged as his own has a strong Viennese flavour, like his elaborate waltz piece Caprice viennois. Two other, shorter works in a similar style, Liebesfreud (“The Joy of Love”) and its counterpart Liebesleid (“The Pain of Love”) he presented not as his own but as “old Viennese dance tunes.” At one recital in Berlin he played the Caprice viennois in the same programme as the “old Viennese dance tunes,” which at that time he attributed to the early pioneer of the waltz Joseph Lanner. Afterward the critic of the Berliner Tagesblatt reprimanded him for daring to put his own insignificant composition alongside such “Lanner gems” as Liebesfreud and Liebesleid which, he said, “are full of the Schubertian melos.”

Johann Strauss II

Wiener Blut (Vienna Blood): Waltz, Op.354

The Viennese waltz as Johann II and his brothers developed it – with its four or five main sections offering two tunes each – was a formidable challenge to a composer’s melodic invention. It was a challenge the Strausses were always ready to accept, however. The dance was their way of life and, what is more, they had perfected the musically rewarding art of setting a waltz melody free from its triple-time accompaniment. The inspired main theme of Wiener Blut, the one that glides in on violins and woodwind once the waltz tempo is established, floats serenely above the persistent pizzicato rhythm in the bass and even contradicts it from time to time. Melodies of this distinction – there is rarely more than one in each waltz – are usually anticipated in the introduction, as this one is in an episode featuring an unusually expressive string ensemble. Like its counterparts in most other Viennese waltzes, it is then presented in its definitive form as the first main theme and is finally recalled in glory at the end.

Champagner (Champagne) Polka, Op.211

Although the polka was almost as popular as the waltz in the 1850s and 60s, it didn’t stay in fashion for anything like as long. It was an exhilarating ballroom exercise but it was neither as sexy for the dancer nor as interesting for the composer. Its high-energy requirement meant that it rarely lasted longer than two or three minutes while its high-speed rhythmic activity gave the composer little opportunity to do more than put a cheerful tune to it and dress it up in colourful orchestration. If he could also put a catchy title to it or introduce a special sound effect, so much the better. The Champagne Polka, which was written at the height of the polka craze in 1858, is a characteristic example. Described by the composer as “a musical joke,” it pops it punch line in the middle and, while the rhythms fizz and the orchestration bubbles, repeats it several times over.

Furioso 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 publicize 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, an unknown composer called Tchaikovsky had his first opportunity to hear his music performed in public, and Johann Strauss made a small fortune in roubles. 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.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Hungarian Dance No.1 in G minor

Brahms, who was to become one of Johann II’s greatest admirers, was an enthusiast for Hungarian-gypsy music even before he settled in Vienna. Having partnered a Hungarian violinist on concert tours in his early twenties, he was intimately familiar with the idiom and retained his affection for it to the end of his life. His Hungarian Dances for piano duet, drawing on his memories of the music he had in his youth but on other sources too, were written between 1858 and 1880, the later ones in Vienna. The Hungarian Dance No.1 in G minor is based on the Isteni Csárdás by Ferenc Sárközi and, above all in its passionate opening theme on the strings, is a highly attractive example of what Brahms and his contemporaries found so attractive in the Hungarian-gypsy idiom. It is one of the three (the others being No.3 in F and No.10 in E) orchestrated by Brahms himself.

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Slavonic Dance in A flat major Op.46 No.3

Having made a lot of money out of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances for piano duet, the German publisher Simrock turned to a little known Czech composer for what he hoped would be a similarly successful set of Slavonic Dances. The eight pieces that Dvorak sent to him in 1878 proved to be so popular that when he asked the by now famous composer for another set of Slavonic Dances eight years later he had to pay ten times as much for them. Although Dvorak was clearly influence by Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, his Slavonic dances differ from their model in that they are all based on tunes of the composer’s own invention. Stylistically, however, they derive from one kind or another of Czech folk dance. The outer sections of No.3 in A flat major, for example, offer two manifestations of the polka – one gentle, one energetic – even though the middle section, in which two trumpets introduce a syncopated melody in thirds, is quite different.

Johann Strauss II

An der schönen blauen Donau (By the Beautiful Blue Danube): Waltz Op.314

The Blue Danube is the most famous of all waltzes. Written in 1867, it has achieved the status of a Viennese folk song, or anthem even. Although the original version, written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association, has fairly frivolous words attached to it, the choral version usually performed today has a new text which, added in 1890, confirms the depth of the local sentiment inspired by the waltz in the meantime. But that doesn’t have the splendid coda which in the orchestral version recapitulates and develops the main themes of four of the five main sections, referring back to the leisurely introduction and effortlessly completing a perfectly integrated construction. Johann II’s melodic genius was such that even if the river itself were to dry up Vienna and the Danube would be inseparable.

Gerald Larner © 2009