Famous composers and their works, Vol. 2

by Unknown

Wherein lies this originality that entitles the name of Strauss to so prominent a place in musical history? It lies partly in the individuality of their style and ideas; but still more in their having succeeded in making the waltz the most popular form of modern dance-music throughout the civilized world, and in the creation of a new style of operetta, or comic opera. In the first of these achievements all the members of the Strauss family have coöperated, while in the last the credit belongs to the second Johann alone.

To inoculate the world with a passion for a special form of dance music is not such an easy thing as it seems at first sight. National customs and inclinations stand in the way. As Rubinstein has remarked, "A melody which moves a Finn to tears will leave a Spaniard cold, a dance rhythm which makes a Hungarian skip will not disturb an Italian in his rest, etc." To have made all the young people in the world dance to the rhythm of the Austrian waltz is, therefore, a feat which required the magic power of genius for its performance. And not only has the waltz been universally adopted, but it has become the dance of dances, the modern dance par excellence, the rapturous dance in which the young people find an embodiment of the glowing passion of love, while in the old-fashioned dances,—the minuet at their head—it was the old people and the chaperons who did the stiff and formal dancing in a slow and stately movement.

Of course the honor of making the waltz cosmopolitan does not belong to the Strausses alone. The Austrian Lanner, the Bohemian Labitzky, the Hungarian Gungl and others had their share, but they can be regarded merely as satellites, who could only revolve around the world by revolving around Strauss. Nor did Strauss invent the waltz. It "just growed," like Topsy, among the people, and the time and even the country of its origin are under dispute. It was at Vienna however, about a century ago, that it first came into notice; and as it was developed chiefly by Viennese composers, and is danced most generally by the people of that part of Europe, the popular notion that Vienna is the home of the waltz does not call for correction. A few waltz-like pieces had been written by Mozart and Beethoven, but they are, as Dr. Hanslick remarks, "astonishingly dry and insignificant," and it remained for that genuine Viennese genius Franz Schubert, to first infuse true musical genius into this form of composition. Schubert is the real originator of the modern waltz, as of the Lied for the voice, and the song for the piano. In the Peters edition there is, besides a volume of Schubert's Marches and one of Polonaises, one of his "Dances" (seventy-four pages), mostly waltzes, "valses nobles," "valses sentimentales." No. 13 of the last name is that most exquisite piece which Liszt has made such fine use of in his "Soirées de Vienne," and which may be regarded as the predecessor, and the equal, of the noble waltzes of Chopin, Rubinstein, Brahms and other modern composers. Indeed, these Schubert waltzes contain the germs of most of the later developments of the waltz for the piano.

In thus giving Schubert his due we do not detract from the merit of the elder Strauss. He was of course far from having the genius of Schubert, but he did a great work in transferring the Schubert spirit to the orchestral and dance-waltz. For the first time people came to cafés and dance halls to listen to music for its own sake instead of regarding it merely as an aid to conversation and dancing. Strauss not only had the gift of inventing original themes, he also had the skill to clothe them in a charming orchestral garb. Great composers, like Cherubini, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, recognized his talent, and Wagner wrote in 1863 that "a single Strauss waltz surpasses in grace, refinement and real musical substance, the majority of the oft-laboriously-collected foreign products."

To quote Johann the younger once more on his father: "He has borne the fame of German dance-music over the whole world, and severe judges have not hesitated to acknowledge that his gay and piquant rhythms bubbled from the pure fount of musical art. As a conductor he had that indefinable quality which carried away the performers, was communicated by them to the hearers, and made their hearts and pulses beat faster." He was the first to introduce the custom of giving a name to his dance music, and each of his pieces—including one hundred and fifty waltzes, fourteen polkas, twenty-eight galops, nineteen marches, and thirty-five quadrilles, has its own title, either characteristically Viennese, or referring to his travels or the emotions which a dance piece is apt to evoke, or purely fanciful. The quadrille was imported by Strauss from Paris. His marches are the least interesting of his compositions, and his waltzes the most fascinating and meritorious, the polkas ranking next.

In his early waltzes the elder Strauss often begins, like Schubert, without an introduction and ends with a very short coda. Gradually, however (though with exceptions), the introduction and coda assume greater dimensions; but it remained for Johann the son to show how greatly the musical and emotional value of the waltz can be increased by elaborating the slow amorous introduction as well as the coda, in which all the themes of the preceding numbers can once more be brought forward and ingeniously developed or combined. Schubert's last set of waltzes consists of a chain of twenty links or parts. The elder Strauss has usually only five or six links in his chain; and his son shows a tendency to decrease that number to three or four separate parts, while giving the introduction the aspect of a short overture, with several changes of tempo, often delightfully fore-shadowing the waltz themes in a dreamy, passionate and tender manner, as if interpreting the thoughts of the young lovers who perchance are looking forward to their first embrace in the disguise of a waltz. In the "Stories from the Vienna Forest" Waltzes, opus 325, the introduction covers more than two pages of the piano score—one hundred and twenty bars, with four changes of tempo. The first number consists of forty-four bars, whereas originally each number consisted of eight or sixteen bars only; and the coda of one hundred and fifty-seven bars. And that this waltz, like all his best ones, is intended quite as much for the concert hall as for the ball room is indicated by the signs for retarding or accelerating and by the insertion of eighteen bars which are marked "to be omitted in playing for a dance." I have noticed, however, that at Viennese dances, when conductors, players, and dancers are simultaneously entranced by the intoxicating Strauss music, there is a slight tendency on the part of the couples to yield to the rubato or capricious coquetry of movement which is natural to this music. Such rubato dancing raises that art itself to a poetic height; but it is perhaps vain to hope for it outside of a Viennese dance hall.

As the younger Johann's waltzes ceased to be a mere accompaniment to dancing and assumed the function of interpreting the thoughts and feelings of lovers as they are whirled along, "imparadised in one another's arms," his harmonies became more and more piquant and novel, his instrumentation more tender, refined, dreamy and voluptuous. Berlioz, himself, in orchestrating Weber's superb "Invitation to the Dance," has not shown greater genius for instrumentation than Strauss the son has in his later waltzes. It might be said that whereas Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven built up the symphony from dance forms, Strauss, conversely, applied the symphonic resources of the orchestra to his dance pieces. One can get no idea of their real charm at the piano; but Americans have been fortunate in having had in Mr. Theodore Thomas for many years such a sympathetic and animated interpreter, who knew how to give them the true Strauss swing. Not all of these waltzes are of equal value, and popularity is no test of merit. Thus, the "Blue Danube" Waltz, of which over a million copies have been sold, is really one of the poorest, just as Schubert's Serenade is far from being his best song and the Wedding March from being the gem of "Lohengrin." Their number is enormous—440 is the opus number of the "Gross-Wien" Walzer, the last one printed up to the end of 1891.

When Strauss turned to composing operettas, there was great consternation, because it was feared that the Carnival in Vienna and elsewhere would have to dispense thereafter with its annual gifts from his pen. These fears were unfounded; his operettas were so full of waltz and polka buds and full-blown roses, that it was easy to pick them for a concert-hall and ball-room bouquet; so that some of his best recent dance pieces are taken from his operettas. Equally unfounded were the fears that after devoting more than a quarter of a century to the composition of dance music, Strauss would be unable to win distinction as a dramatic writer. In his first operettas, it is true, the libretto was little more than a peg to hang on waltzes, polkas and marches; but gradually he emancipated himself more and more from the simple saltatorial style, until, in "The Bat," the "Merry War" and subsequent works, he created a new type of operetta, with beautiful flowing, lyric melodies, and stirring dramatic ensembles. True, the "Waltz King" is never quite able to disguise his character, but in this very fact lie the originality and unique charm of the Strauss operetta. It is a new style of stage play—the Austrian operetta, a new "school" of comic opera; and in creating this, Strauss placed himself far above his father and his brothers. Millœcker would not have been possible but for Strauss, and Suppé did not write his best works till after Strauss had shown the way.

That J. Strauss, the younger, wrote four hundred and forty pieces of dance music has already been stated. The complete list of his operettas is as follows: Indigo, 1871; The Carnival in Rome, 1873; The Bat, 1874; Cagliostro, 1875; Prince Methusalem, 1877; Blind Man's Buff, 1878; The Queen's Lace Handkerchief, 1880; The Merry War, 1881; A Night in Venice, 1883; The Gypsy Baron, 1885; Simplicius, 1887. In my opinion there is in these operettas more good music than in the operettas of any other composer, but Strauss has been less fortunate in his librettists than Offenbach and Sullivan, and this has not only diminished the present popularity of his works in some countries, but will prevent them from enjoying as long a life as their truly prodigal wealth of new and charming melodies would otherwise entitle them to. Moreover, few things are so short-lived as operettas, and it is therefore probable that, to the next generation, Strauss will be chiefly known as the "Waltz King," after all, partly by the pieces which he wrote directly for the dance hall, and partly by those which are culled from his dramatic works. He is still at work, with greater ambition than ever, for his latest opus is a grand opera, Ritter Pásmán, which had its first performance at the Imperial Opera at Vienna on January 1, 1892. It is modelled partly on Wagner's Meistersinger, and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik finds in it the true type of the comic opera of the future, "combining the esprit and grace of French opéra comique with German depth of sentiment, and that spontaneous melodiousness which is an Austrian specialty—that flow of fresh and natural melody which we find in Schubert and Haydn." Dr. Hanslick recommends the score as a model to students of instrumentation.