Pizzicato Polka

Johann & Josef Strauss

Pizzicato Polka

A polka for plucked strings only was a brilliant idea: it would provide a memorably alliterative title, it would be a novel sound and, since the polka doesn’t require sustained melodic lines, it wouldn’t seem unnatural to deny the string players the use of their bows. But it was easier said than done, as Josef Strauss found when his elder brother tried to persuade him to write a Pizzicato Polka for their season in the Vauxhall Pavilion at Pavlosk near St Petersburg in 1869. In the end they collaborated on it - amusing themselves, no doubt, not only by scoring the sudden shifts in dynamics, from fortissimo to pianissimo and back again, but also by writing in the pauses which give the conductor an opportunity to tease his instrumentalists while keeping them anxiously waiting for the next beat.