Eduard wrote over three hundred popular instrumental compositions in the style of his celebrated brother but without ever equalling his remarkable creative freshness and originality. But there is a good deal of pleasurable listening in Eduard’s waltzes and polkas. In the former category belongs the Doctrinen (Faith) Waltzes, op. 79; in the latter, the gay Bahn Frei (Fast Track) Polka, op. 45. In collaboration with his two brothers, Johann and Josef, Eduard wrote the Trifolienwalzer and the Schuetzenquadrille.
Johann Strauss I
Johann Strauss I was one of the two waltz kings of Vienna bearing that name. The more famous one, the composer of “The Blue Danube” was the son. But the father was also one of Vienna’s most popular composers and café-house conductors. He was born in Vienna on March 14, 1804, and as a boy he studied both the violin and harmony. His love for music, combined with the decision of his parents to make him a bookbinder, led him to run away from home. When he was fifteen he joined Michael Pamer’s orchestra which played at the Sperl café; another of its members was Josef Lanner, soon also to become a major figure in Vienna’s musical life. As Lanner’s star rose, so did Johann Strauss’. First Strauss played in the Lanner Quartet at the Goldenen Rebbuhn and other cafés; after that he was a member of the Lanner Orchestra which appeared in Vienna’s leading cafés. When Lanner’s mounting success made it necessary for him to create two orchestras, he selected Johann Strauss to conduct one of them. Then, in 1826, Johann Strauss formed an orchestra of his own which made its debut at the Bock Café. For the next two decades he was the idol of Vienna, Lanner’s only rival. By 1830 he had two hundred musicians under him. His major successes as a café-house conductor came at the Sperl and the Redoutensaal. But his fame spread far beyond Vienna. In 1833 he toured all Austria, and in 1834 he appeared in Berlin. After that he performed in all the major European capitals, achieving formidable successes in London and Paris. Meanwhile, in 1833, he had become bandmaster of the first Vienna militia regiment, one of the highest honors a performer of light music could achieve in Austria. In 1845 he was appointed conductor of the Viennese court balls. He died in Vienna on September 25, 1849.
Like Lanner, Strauss wrote a considerable amount of dance and café-house music, over 250 compositions. His first composition was the Taeuberlwalzer, named after the café Zwei Tauben where he was then appearing. After that he wrote waltzes, galops, polkas, quadrilles, cotillons, contredanses, and marches—which Vienna came to love for their rhythmic vitality and appealing lyricism. People in Vienna used to say that the waltzes of the first Johann Strauss were made for dancing because their rhythmic pulse excited the heart and made feet restless.
Not much of the father Strauss’ library of music has survived. The exceptions are the following waltzes: Caecilien, Donaulieder, the Kettenbruecken, and the Lorelei Rheinsklaenge. To the waltz, the older Johann Strauss brought a symphonic dimension it had heretofore not known, particularly in his spacious introductions of which the thirty-bar prelude of the Lorelei Rheinsklaenge is an outstanding example. He also carried over to the waltz a variety of mood and feeling and a lightness of touch new for this peasant dance. “This demon of the ancient Viennese folk spirit,” wrote Richard Wagner after hearing Strauss perform one of his own waltzes in Vienna, “trembled at the beginning of a new waltz like a python preparing to spring, and it was more the ecstasy produced by the music than the drinks among the enchanted audience that stimulated that magical first violin to almost dangerous flights.”
Of his other music the most famous is the Radetzky March. Count Radetzky was an Austrian military hero, victor over the Italians in 1848-1849. In honor of his Italian triumphs and suppression of the Italian nationalist movement, Strauss wrote the spirited, sharply accented march in 1848 which almost at once became the musical symbol of Hapsburg Vienna and Austrian military power. The following programmatic interpretation of this music by H. E. Jacob is of interest: “Drunk with triumph, the Generalissimo’s battalions hurl themselves down into Lombardy. They are close on the heels of the fleeing troops of King Albert, the King of Sardinia. And then comes a new phase of the march to accompany the victorious troops. A different sun shines down on this, a memory of Vienna, a lingering trace of the feel of girls’ arms; scraps of a dance song with a backward glance at three-quarter time. But on they go, still forward. There are no more shots, there is laughter. The trio follows. The ... superdominant ... hoisted as if it were a flag.... Finally comes the return of the principal theme with the laurels and gaiety of victory.”
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II, son of the first Johann Strauss, was born in Vienna on October 25, 1825. Though he showed an unmistakable bent for music from his childhood on, he was forbidden by his father to study music or to indulge in any musical activity whatsoever. The young Johann Strauss, encouraged by his mother, was forced to study the violin surreptitiously with a member of his father’s orchestra. Only after the father had deserted his family, to set up another home with his mistress, did young Johann begin to devote himself completely and openly to music. After studying the violin with Kohlmann and counterpoint with Joseph Drechsler, he made his debut as a café-house conductor and composer at Dommayer’s Casino in Hietzing, near Vienna, on October 15, 1844. The event was widely publicized and dramatized in Vienna, since the son was appearing as a rival to his father. For this momentous debut, the son wrote the first of his waltzes—the Gunstwerber and the Sinngedichte—which aroused immense enthusiasm. He had to repeat the last-named waltz so many times that the people in the café lost count. “Ah, these Viennese,” reported the editor of The Wanderer. “A new waltz player, a piece of world history. Good night, Lanner. Good evening, Father Strauss. Good morning, Son Strauss.” The father had not attended this performance, but learned of his son’s triumph from one of his cronies.
Thus a new waltz king had arisen in Vienna. His reign continued until the end of the century. For fifty years Johann Strauss II stood alone and unequalled as the musical idol of Vienna. His performances were the talk of the town. His own music was on everyone’s lips. After the death of father Strauss in 1849, he combined members of the older man’s orchestra with his own, and toured all of Europe with the augmented ensemble. From 1863 to 1870 he was conductor of the Viennese balls, a post once held by his father. In 1872 he made sensational appearances in Boston and New York. All the while he was writing some of the most famous waltzes ever written, as well as quadrilles and polkas and other dance pieces. And in 1871, with the première in Vienna of Indigo he entered upon a new field, that of the operetta, in which once again he was to become a dominating figure. He was admired not merely by the masses but also by some of the greatest musicians of his generation—Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Hans von Buelow, Offenbach, Goldmark, Gounod, all of whom expressed their admiration for his music in no uncertain terms. In 1894, Vienna celebrated the 50th anniversary of his debut with a week of festive performances; congratulations poured into Vienna from all parts of the civilized world. He died five years after that—in Vienna on June 3, 1899—and was buried near Schubert, Beethoven, and Brahms.
It is perhaps singularly fitting that Johann Strauss should have died in 1899. A century was coming to an end, and with it an entire epoch. This is what one court official meant when he said that “Emperor Francis Joseph reigned until the death of Johann Strauss.” History, with its cold precision, may accurately record that the reign of Francis Joseph actually terminated in 1916. But its heyday had passed with the 19th century. The spirit of old Vienna, imperial Vienna of the Hapsburgs, the Vienna that had been inspiration for song and story, died with Johann Strauss. After 1900, Vienna was only a shadow of its former self, and was made prostrate by World War I.