For his various ensembles and orchestras Lanner produced a wealth of popular Viennese music: quadrilles, polkas, galops, marches, and more than a hundred waltzes. It is in the last department that Lanner was most important, for he was one of the first composers to carry the waltz to its artistic fulfillment. With composers from Mozart to Schubert, the waltz was only a three-part song form with a trio. Johann Hummel and Karl Maria von Weber suggested a more spacious design by assembling several different waltz tunes into a single integrated composition. Lanner extended this form further. He prefaced each series of waltzes with an introduction in which the theme of the main melody was often suggested; after the waltz melodies had been presented, Lanner brought his composition to completion with a coda which served as a kind of summation of some of the ideas previously stated. Between the introduction and the coda came the succession of lilting, lovable, heart-warming waltz-melodies so remarkable for their grace, elegance, freshness and poignancy that Lanner has sometimes been described as “the Mozart of the dance.” Nevertheless, Lanner always emphasized soaring lyricism where the elder Strauss was more partial to rhythm. The Viennese used to say: “With Lanner, it’s ‘Pray dance, I beg you.’ With Strauss it’s ‘You must dance, I command you!’”
The form which Lanner finally crystallized, and the style with which his waltz music unfolded, were adopted by the two Johann Strausses, father and son, who were destined to bring this type of Viennese music to its ultimate development. Thus Lanner was the opening chapter of a musical epoch. He was the dawn of Vienna’s golden age of waltz music.
Lanner’s most famous waltz is Die Schoenbrunner, op. 200, his swan song. Other outstanding Lanner waltzes are: Die Pesther, op. 93, Die Werber, op. 103, Hofballtaenze, op. 161, Die Romantiker, op. 167, and Abendsterne, op. 180. “With Lanner,” wrote H. E. Jacob, “the romantic epoch began for the waltz, and the flower-gardens and green leaves of Spring penetrated into the ballroom. Lanner’s compositions are unsophisticated and unpretentious, but his waltzes could no more be commonplace than could a flower.”
Charles Lecocq
Charles Lecocq was born in Paris on June 3, 1832. For four years he attended the Paris Conservatory where, as a pupil of Bazin and Halévy, he received prizes in harmony and fugue. For a while he earned his living teaching the piano and writing church music. In 1857 he shared with Bizet the first prize in a competition for one-act operettas sponsored by Offenbach. This winning work, Le Docteur miracle, was successfully introduced in Paris that year. After that Lecocq wrote several light operas which were failures, before he enjoyed a major success with Fleur de thé in 1868, first in Paris and subsequently in England and Germany. His greatest successes came with two crowning works in the French light-opera repertory: La Fille de Mme. Angot in 1872, and Giroflé-Girofla, in 1874. Between 1874 and 1900 he wrote over thirty more operettas. He died in Paris on October 24, 1918 after enjoying for almost half a century a place of signal honor among France’s composers for the popular theater.
Lecocq is remembered today mainly for La Fille de Mme. Angot and Giroflé-Girofla. The first of these was introduced in Brussels on December 4, 1872. In Paris, where it was given on February 23, 1873, it enjoyed the formidable run of more than five hundred consecutive performances. The book—by Siraudin, Clairville and Koning—was set in Paris during the French Revolution. Clairette, daughter of Mme. Angot, must marry the barber Pomponnet even though she loves the poet, Pitou. To avoid an undesirable marriage, even at the risk of arrest, Clairette sings a daring song by Pitou about an illicit affair between Mlle. Lange (reputed a favorite of Barras, head of the Directory) and a young lover. When Pitou proves fickle, and is discovered in the boudoir of Mlle. Lange, Clairette stands ready to forget him completely and to take Pomponnet as her husband.
The sprightly overture, filled with vivacious tunes and dramatized by energetic rhythms, is a favorite of semi-classical orchestras. So are several dances from the operetta, including an electrifying Can-Can, and a sweeping Grand Valse with which the second act comes to an exciting close. The main vocal excerpts are Pomponnet’s passionate avowal of Clairette’s innocence, “Elle est tellement innocente” and the duet of Mlle. Lange and Clairette, “Jours fortunés de notre enfance” both from Act 2.
Giroflé-Girofla—book by Vanloo and Leterrier—was introduced in Brussels on March 21, 1874. Giroflé and Girofla are twin sisters. Giroflé is pressured by her parents to marry the banker, Marasquin; Girofla is in love with an impoverished fire-eating Moor, Mourzouk. When Girofla is secretly abducted by pirates, the Moor comes to her home demanding to see her, only to mistake Giroflé for Girofla. The complicated situation ensuing becomes resolved only after Girofla is rescued and brought back home.
The most frequently heard excerpts from this gay score are the Pirates’ Chorus, “Parmi les choses”; the rousing drinking song, “Le Punche scintille”; the ballad, “Lorsque la journée est finie”; and the love duet, “O Ciel!”