Emil Waldteufel, waltz-king of France, was born in Strasbourg on December 9, 1837. His father, a professor of music at the Strasbourg Conservatory, gave him his first music instruction. After that Emil attended the Paris Conservatory, but he never completed his course of study there, leaving the schoolroom to take on a job with a piano manufacturer. He published his first waltzes at his own expense in 1860, Joies et peines and Manola. The latter so enchanted the Prince of Wales that he willingly accepted the dedication of Waldteufel’s next waltz, Bien aimé, a fact that played no small part in establishing Waldteufel’s reputation in England. Waldteufel now decided to sidestep all other activities to concentrate on the writing of waltz music. In short order he became the idol of Paris in the same way that Johann Strauss II was of Vienna. For a period, Waldteufel’s fame throughout Europe was second only to that of the Viennese waltz king. Waldteufel made many tours of the European capitals conducting his own compositions, scoring triumphs in Covent Garden in 1885, and in Berlin in 1889. In 1865 he became chamber musician to the Empress Eugénie and director of the court balls. He died in Paris on February 16, 1915.
Waldteufel published over 250 waltzes. A comparison with Johann Strauss is perhaps inevitable. The French waltz king never equalled Strauss’ remarkable melodic invention, original approaches in harmony and orchestration, and overall inspiration. Most of Waldteufel’s waltzes are functional pieces, and make far better dance music than concert music. But a handful of his waltzes are classics, and deservedly so. They are buoyant and inviting in their spirit, aristocratic in style, spontaneous in expression. Waldteufel’s most famous waltzes include the following: España, op. 236, which utilizes for its waltz melodies the basic themes from Chabrier’s rhapsody of the same name; and The Skaters (Les Patineurs), op. 183, in which the main elegant melody has the lightness of foot and the mobility of motion of facile figure skaters. Other popular Waldteufel waltzes include the Acclamations, op. 223; Dolores, op. 170; Estudiantina, op. 191; Mon rêve, op. 151; Les Sirènes, op. 154; Toujours ou jamais, op. 156; and Violettes, op. 148.
Karl Maria von Weber
Karl Maria von Weber was born in Eutin, Oldenburg, Germany, on November 18, 1786. His father, who played the violin in small theaters, was determined to make his son a musical prodigy, subjecting him from childhood on to severe discipline, and to intensive study with Karl’s stepbrother, J. P. Heuschkel and Michael Haydn. Weber made public appearances as pianist in early boyhood. His first opera was written when he was only thirteen, and at fourteen his second opera was performed in Chemnitz, Freiberg, and Vienna. An even more comprehensive period of study than heretofore followed in Munich with Abbé Vogler. After that, in 1804, Weber was appointed conductor of the Breslau City Theater. In 1806 he became Musik Intendant to the Duke of Wuerttemberg, and in 1807 private secretary and music master to Duke Ludwig in Stuttgart. From 1813 to 1816 he was the music director of German Opera in Prague and in 1817 musical director of German Opera in Dresden. It was in this last post that he created the first of his unqualified masterworks, the opera Der Freischuetz, introduced with phenomenal success in Berlin on June 18, 1821. It was with this work that German Romantic opera was born, grounded in Germanic nationalism, filled with the German love for the legendary and the supernatural, and characterized by its use of German landscapes and backgrounds. Weber wrote two more masterworks with which his high station in opera was solidified: Euryanthe, introduced in Vienna on October 25, 1823, and Oberon, first heard in London, on April 12, 1826. In London, attending the première of the latter opera, Weber succumbed to his last sickness on June 5, 1826. His body was transferred to Dresden where it was buried to special ceremonies at which Wagner delivered the eulogy.
Weber’s monumental contributions to opera in general, and German opera, in particular, do not fall within the scope of this volume; neither do the three masterworks with which he gained immortality. In music in a lighter vein he was most significant for being one of the first to create waltz music within an extended structure. The most popular of these compositions was the Invitation to the Dance (Aufforderung zum Tanz), written in 1819 as a “rondo brilliant” in D-flat major, for piano solo. It has since become celebrated in several orchestral transcriptions, notably those by Berlioz and Felix Weingartner. This work is one of the first in music history in which several different waltz tunes are combined into a single cohesive composition, preceded by an introduction and concluding with an epilogue. The introduction consists of a subdued, well-mannered melody, simulating the request to a lady by a young man for a dance, and the acceptance. Several waltz melodies follow, to which this couple dance. The epilogue consists of a return of the introduction, this time with the gentleman thanking the lady for having danced with him.
The Jubilee Overture (Jubel), op. 59, for orchestra is another of Weber’s more popular creations, this time in a stirring style. He wrote it in 1818 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the ascension to the throne by the King of Saxony. A slow introduction leads to the main body of the overture in which the main theme is forcefully stated by the full orchestra. By contrast there later appears a light-hearted tune, soon given considerable prominence in the development section. When both ideas have been repeated, a climax is reached with a statement of the English anthem, “God Save the King” in the wind instruments accompanied by the strings.
Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill was born in Dessau, Germany, on March 2, 1900. A comprehensive musical training took place first with private teachers in Dessau, then at the Berlin High School of Music, and finally for three years with Ferruccio Busoni. Weill started out as a composer of avant-garde music performed at several important German festivals. His first opera, The Protagonist, with a text by Georg Kaiser, was produced in 1926. From this point on Weill continued writing operas in which the texts were realistic or satiric, and the music filled with popular idioms, sometimes even those of jazz. The most important were The Royal Palace in 1927; The Three-Penny Opera, a sensation when first produced in 1928; The Czar Has Himself Photographed, also in 1928; and The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny, in 1930, one of whose numbers, “The Alabamy Song,” was a leading song hit in Germany that year. With these works Weill became one of the leading exponents of the cultural movements then sweeping across Germany under the banners of Zeitkunst (Contemporary Art) and Gebrauchsmusik (Functional Music). In the fall of 1935, Weill established permanent residence in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1943. He soon assumed a position of first importance in the Broadway theater by virtue of a succession of outstanding musicals: Johnny Johnson (1936); Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) in which Walter Huston starred as Peter Stuyvesant and out of which came one of Weill’s most popular musical numbers, “September Song”; Moss Hart’s musical about psychoanalysis and the dream life, Lady in the Dark (1941) in which Gertrude Lawrence was starred; One Touch of Venus (1943), with Mary Martin; Street Scene (1947), a trenchant musical play based on Elmer Rice’s realistic drama of New York; Love Life (1948), book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, its main musical number being another all-time Weill song favorite, “Green-Up Time”; and Lost in the Stars (1949), a powerful musical drama adapted from Alon Paton’s novel, Cry, the Beloved Country. Weill died in New York City on April 3, 1950.
The Three-Penny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is one of the most important musical productions of the post-World War I era in Europe; and since its premiere it has lost little of its initial popularity. This musical play (or opera, if you will) was based on the historic 18th-century ballad opera of John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera. The text was rewritten and modernized by Berthold Brecht, in whose hands the comic opera became a brilliant, though often bitter, satire of Germany in the late 1920’s, with penetrating satirical comments on crime and corruption in this post-war era. Weill’s opera was introduced in Berlin on August 31, 1928 and scored a sensation with few parallels in contemporary German theater. Over one hundred theaters gave it four thousand performances throughout Germany in its initial year. It was made into a motion-picture by G. W. Pabst (the first of several screen adaptations). It was introduced in the leading theatrical centers of the world; the American première—in New York on April 13, 1933—was, however, a dismal failure. It has since been revived frequently in all parts of the civilized world. An off-Broadway presentation in 1954—with a new modernized text by Marc Blitzstein, but with the Weill music untouched—made history by accumulating a run of more than five years; a national company was then formed to tour the country in 1960. During this long Broadway run, the principal musical number, “Moritat” (or “Mack the Knife”) became an American hit song on two different occasions. In 1955 it was given over twenty different recordings and was often represented on the Hit Parade; revived in 1959 by Bobby Darin, it sold over a million discs.
Weill’s score is a mixture of opera and musical comedy, of European stage traditions and American idioms. It opens with a blues and concludes with a mock chorale, while in between these opposite poles there can be heard a shimmy, a canon in fox-trot, popular tunes, formal ballads, light airs, choruses, and ensemble numbers. The style ranges freely from Tin Pan Alley clichés to atonality, from mock romanticism to dissonance. Each number was basic to the plot; principal numbers often became penetrating psychological commentaries on the characters who presented them. “Moritat” (or “Mack the Knife”) is the main musical number. But several others are also of outstanding interest including “Love Song” (“Liebeslied”), “The Ballad of Pleasant Living” (“Ballade vom angenehmen Leben”), the Canon-Song, Barbarasong, and the Bully’s Ballad (“Zuhaelterballade”).