JOHANN STRAUSS (Senior).

Caricature by Dantan in the Carnavalet Museum, Paris.

Some of these operettas—especially The Bat (Fledermaus), the Merry War, the Queen's Lace Handkerchief, and the Gypsy Baron—became enormously popular in Austria, Germany and the United States (where they have been sung successfully in both German and English), and if anything had been needed to make the "Waltz King" known to the whole world, and admired by everybody, these operettas would have brought about that result.

It is a strange but suggestive fact that although no name is better known in the musical world than that of the Strauss family, most of the histories of music ignore it almost entirely. And why should the erudite historians honor with their attention a mere Strauss, who was only a man of genius and never constructed any symphonies, oratorios, or operas? Scores of composers are treated of in these histories whose genius was not a tithe of that of Johann Strauss, father or son; but because they wrote a number of (tedious and now forgotten) sonatas and symphonies, they are considered worthy of attention by these writers! Even Chopin has often been treated by historians in a similar gingerly manner, because he wrote hardly anything but short pieces for the pianoforte; as if there were not more genius and beauty and suggestiveness in most of Chopin's five-minute pieces than in many one-hour symphonies and four-hour operas. The same may be said of not a few Strauss waltzes.

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