Carmen Quadrille, Op.134

Eduard Strauss (1835-1916)

Carmen Quadrille, Op.134

All the Strausses, including Johann I, wrote quadrilles. They had to since, like the polka, the quadrille was a popular dance form in Vienna from the 1840s onwards. Although its popularity waned in the ballroom, it retained a certain novelty value in that composers would frequently draw on themes from current successes in the musical theatre and attempt to fit them into the six sections, always in eight-bar phrases and mostly in duple time, of the conventional Viennese quadrille – often with hilarious results. Johann II wrote as many as sixty quadrilles, the later ones based on music from his own operettas, while Josef and Eduard wrote about thirty each, Josef’s including one on Lehár’s Graf von Luxemburg and Eduard’s one on Offenbach’s La vie parisienne and another on Millöcker’s Gasparone.

    One of the most entertaining to our ears, since Bizet’s last opera is so much more familiar to us than most of the scores they plundered, is Eduard’s Carmen Quadrille. It refers to at least twelve themes, some of them in passing and some – like Carmen’s Là-bas dans la montagne, which occupies the whole of the third section – at comparative length. Other prominent tunes include the opening of the Prelude, Don José’s Halte là! Qui va là ?and the children’s march in the first section, Carmen’s Habanera and the beginning of the Toreador’s song in the second section, Carmen’s dance with castanets, Remendado’s and Dancairo’s La chose, certes, nous étonne and the male chorus La cloche a sonné in the fifth section, the Card Trio and the Toreador’s march in the finale.