FROM A PORTRAIT OF THE ELDER JOHANN STRAUSS IN EARLY MANHOOD.
Drawn and lithographed by C. Lutherer.
Eduard, the youngest, born on Feb. 14, 1835, has proved the least talented of the three. His compositions, numbering over two hundred, though often piquant in harmony and cleverly orchestrated, are deficient in melodic spontaneity and originality and often a mere echo of his brother Johann's genius. (There are melodious exceptions, the Doctrinen Walzer, opus 79, e. g.) He is a good conductor of dance music, and since the death of his brother Josef, in 1870, and the retirement of Johann from executive music in the same year, he has been sole conductor of the Strauss orchestra at court balls and in the Volksgarten.
Josef, the second of the brothers, had more talent for composition than Eduard. He was of delicate constitution and lived only forty-three years (Aug. 22, 1827, to July 22, 1870), yet the number of his original pieces is two hundred and eighty-three, to which must be added about three hundred arrangements. Some of his waltzes and polkas—like the "Village Swallows" and "Woman's Heart"—have become great favorites, and deservedly so, but I cannot agree with the opinion, which has been held, that he was the superior—or even the equal—of his brother Johann. He was a good pianist, and for a number of years divided with his brothers the task of conducting the Strauss orchestra in Vienna.
We now come to Johann Strauss, the oldest of the brothers, born Oct. 25, 1825, and still living. It is not often that a man of genius has a son who attains even greater eminence than himself, but in this case the palm must be awarded to Johann Strauss, Jr., whose creative power was not only greater than that of his brothers, but soared into regions of which even his father never dreamed.
His talent for music was manifested at a very early age, but his father did not encourage it—forgetting how much he himself had suffered in his childhood from parental opposition to his natural inclinations. It was Horace who remarked, almost two thousand years ago, that no man is quite satisfied with his occupation, and everyone fancies he would have been happier had he chosen some other career. This may have been the reason why the elder Strauss, in the midst of his honors and remarkable popularity, decided that none of his sons should become musicians. Johann was to be a merchant, Josef an engineer, and for Eduard, too, some non-musical employment would have been selected had not his father died before he was fourteen.
Fortunately for Johann, his mother secretly encouraged his fondness for music, allowing him to take lessons on the violin and in composition. His first waltz was written when he was only six years old, and called his 'First Thought.' That was sixty years ago, and every one of these years has added several waltzes to his list. As a conductor he made his first venture at the age of nineteen, with a band of his own; and when his father died, five years later, he took his place and remained at the head of his orchestra for ten years. As an "orchestral traveller" he was even more enterprising than his father had been, for he extended his journeys as far as America and St. Petersburg, being heard at Gilmore's Jubilee at Boston in 1869, while in St. Petersburg he gave a series of concerts every summer, from 1856 to 1866, always returning to Vienna in winter to furnish the music for the court festivities and the numerous other balls given in that gay city during the carnival.