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Johann Strauss II

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Johann Baptist Strauss
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(born Oct. 25, 1825, Vienna, Austria — died June 3, 1899, Vienna) Austrian composer. His father, Johann Strauss the Elder, was a self-taught musician who established a musical dynasty in Vienna. A violinist, he played in a dance orchestra from 1819; when it split in two (1824), he took over the second group, for which he began to write waltzes, galops, polkas, and quadrilles, eventually publishing more than 250 works. As bandmaster of a local regiment, he also wrote marches, including the Radetzsky March. Johann the Younger left his family in 1842 and soon surpassed his father's popularity and productivity, becoming known as the "Waltz King." By inducing his brothers, Josef and Eduard, to take over his conducting duties, he gained more time to compose the symphonic waltzes for which he is best known, including The Blue Danube (1867) and Tales from the Vienna Woods (1868). His operettas include the popular Die Fledermaus (1874) and The Gypsy Baron (1885). Eduard's son Johann, a conductor and composer in Berlin, was the last of the dynasty.

For more information on Johann Baptist Strauss, visit Britannica.com.

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American Theater Guide: Johann Strauss
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Strauss, Johann (the younger) (1825–99), composer. Son of the famous “Waltz King,” he became the leading composer of late 19th‐century Viennese operetta. Although he is best known today for Die Fledermaus and The Gypsy Baron, in his day he was more popular for such now‐forgotten works as The Merry War (1882), The Queen's Lace Handkerchief (1882), and Prince Methusalem (1883). Even A Night in Venice (1884) had only a short run. However, under a number of titles such as Champagne Sec and Rosalinda, Die Fledermaus enjoyed Broadway revivals throughout the first half of the 20th century.

Biography: Johann Strauss, Jr.
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Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899), Vienna's greatest composer of light music, was known for his waltzes and operettas. His music seems to capture the height of elegance and refinement of the Hapsburg regime.

Johann Strauss, Jr., was the eldest son of Johann Strauss, Sr., a famous composer and conductor, known as "the father of the waltz." Although the elder Strauss wanted his sons to pursue business careers, the musical talents of Johann, Jr., quickly became evident, and he composed his first waltz at the age of 6. Behind his father's back, his mother secretly procured a musical education for her son. At the age of 19 he organized his own small orchestra, which performed some of his compositions in a restaurant in Hietzing. When his father died in 1849, Strauss, combined both bands and became their leader and ultimately earned his own nickname, "the king of the waltz."

Strauss toured throughout Europe and England with great success and also went to America, conducting mammoth concerts in Boston and New York. He was the official conductor of the court balls in Vienna (1863-1870) and during this time composed his most famous waltzes. They include On the Beautiful Blue Danube (1867), probably the best-known waltz ever written, Artist's Life (1867), Tales from the Vienna Woods (1868), and Wine, Women, and Song (1869). He elevated the waltz from the atmosphere of the beer hall and the restaurant to that of the aristocratic ballroom.

In 1863 Jacques Offenbach, Paris's most popular composer of light operas, visited Vienna, and the two composers met. The success of Offenbach's stage works encouraged Strauss to try writing operettas. He resigned as court conductor in 1870 to devote himself to the composition of operettas. Of these, three remain consistently in the repertoire today. The finest of them, Die Fledermaus (1874; The Bat), is probably the greatest operetta ever written and a masterpiece of its genre. The lovely Du und Du waltz is made up of excerpts from this work. His two other most successful operettas were A Night in Venice (1883), from which he derived the music for the Lagoon Waltz, and The Gypsy Baron (1885), from which stems the Treasure Waltz.

Strauss continued to compose dance music, including the famous waltzes Roses from the South (1880) and Voices of Spring (1883). This last work, most often heard today as a purely instrumental composition, was originally conceived with a soprano solo as the composer's only independent vocal waltz. He wrote more than 150 waltzes, 100 polkas, 70 quadrilles, mazurkas, marches, and galops. His music combines considerable melodic invention, tremendous verve, and brilliance with suavity and polish, even at times an incredibly refined sensuality.

Further Reading

The best-known biographies of Strauss in English are Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Johann Strauss, Father and Son: A Century of Light Music (1940), and David Ewen, Tales from the Vienna Woods: The Story of Johann Strauss (1944).

Dictionary of Dance: Johann II Strauss
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Strauss, Johann II (b Vienna, 25 Oct. 1825, d Vienna, 3 June 1899). Austrian composer. He wrote only one ballet score, Cinderella, which was discovered after his death and has been used by E. Graeb (Berlin, 1901) and R. de Warren (Manchester, 1979). Many ballets have been set to arrangements of his other music, including Massine's Le Beau Danube (1924), Lichine's Graduation Ball (1940), Bourmeister's Straussiana (1941), Balanchine's Vienna Waltzes (with additional music by Lehár and R. Strauss, New York, 1977), J. Burrows's Stoics (London, 1991), Naharin's Perpetuum (Geneva, 1992) and De Frutos's Jota Dolce (Barcelona, 1993). The German Wiesenthal sisters were well-known interpreters of his waltzes.

German Literature Companion: Johann Strauss
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Strauss, Johann (Vienna, 1825-99, Vienna), composer of waltzes and other dances and of operettas, is often called the Walzerkönig, king of waltzes. Among his best-known works are the waltzes ‘An der schönen blauen Donau’ (adapting a poem by K. J. Beck), ‘G'schichten aus dem Wiener Wald’, ‘Wiener Blut’, and ‘Rosen aus dem Süden’, and the ‘Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka’.

Encouraged by Offenbach's successes in Paris, Strauß composed a number of operettas, including Die Fledermaus (1874, libretto by C. Haffner and R. Genée), Cagliostro in Wien (1875, libretto by G. Quedenfeld), Eine Nacht in Venedig (1883, libretto by F. Zell and R. Genée), Der Zigeunerbaron (1885, libretto by J. Schnitzer), and Wiener Blut (1899, libretto by V. Léon and L. Stein).

Strauß is often referred to as Johann II, since his father (Johann I, 1804-49), brothers (Joseph 1827-70, and Eduard, 1835-1916), and nephew (Eduard's son, Johann III, 1866-1939) were all composers of waltzes.

Fine Arts Dictionary: Strauss, Johann, the Younger
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(yoh-hahn strows, shtrows)

An Austrian composer of the nineteenth century. Strauss, sometimes called the “Waltz King,” is the most famous composer of Viennese waltzes, such as “The Blue Danube” and “Tales of the Vienna Woods.” He also composed the music for the popular light opera Die Fledermaus (The Bat).

Artist: Johann Strauss II
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Johann Strauss II
  • Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
  • Country: Austria
  • Born: October 25, 1825 in Vienna, Austria
  • Died: June 03, 1899 in Vienna, Austria
  • Genres: Ballet, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Vocal Music

Biography

Johann Strauss, Jr. is the first truly well-known composer in those classical genres particular to his hometown, the Viennese waltz and Viennese operetta. The Blue Danube Waltz is not only the most popular of his works in the former category, but is among the most widely played and arranged pieces of its time, known to the most casual listener today from many radio, film and television uses of it.

Johann Strauss, Jr. was born in Vienna on October 25, 1825. He showed remarkable skills early in his childhood, despite his father's opposition to any career in music for any of his three sons. Johann, Sr. wanted him to become a banker, but the younger Strauss had his own ideas, taking violin lessons in secret from a player in his father's band. When Strauss was 17 his father left the family, thus allowing him to begin serious study without encumbrance. His mother, a good amateur violinist who had always encouraged him, remained supportive. Strauss now studied theory with Joseph Drechsler and took violin lessons from Anton Kohlmann. In 1844 young Johann led his first concert and a year later formed his own band, thereby competing with his father's orchestra. He was also writing his own quadrilles, mazurkas, polkas, and waltzes for performance by his ensemble, even conducting works by his father, and receiving praise from the press. He was given the honorary position of Bandmaster of the 2nd Vienna Citizens' Regiment (his father was bandmaster of the 1st regiment) in 1845, and in 1847 began composing for the Vienna Men's Choral Association.

His real success began in 1849 after Johann Strauss, Sr. died. Johann, Jr. merged his father's orchestra with his own and took up his father's contracts. His career moved along smoothly for the next several years, but in 1853 he became seriously ill and turned over conducting duties to his younger brother, Josef, for six months. After his recovery he resumed fully both his conducting and his composing activities, eventually gaining the respect of such composers as Brahms, Wagner, and Verdi for his seemingly unlimited imagination for using melodies.

Strauss married singer Henriette "Jetty" Treffz in August 1862, and they settled in Hietzing. Thereafter, she became his business manager and apparently a great inspiration, drawing him toward operetta, just as Viennese theater operators were becoming tired of the works of Offenbach. His first, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, came in 1871, and his most famous, Die Fledermaus, was staged three years later with great success. Eine Nacht in Venedig (1883) and Der Zigeunerbaron (1885) were his only other international operetta hits.

In 1872, he traveled to the United States and led highly successful concerts in Boston and New York. For all the success that came in the 1870s for Strauss, there was also much grief: his mother and brother Josef died in 1870, and his wife died suddenly of a heart attack in 1878. Her death devastated him, and the suddenly helpless composer unwisely married the much-younger actress Angelika Dittrich, six weeks later. The marriage lasted only four years, though it may have saved the composer from personal disaster in the months following his wife's death.

Strauss, a Roman Catholic, left the church and had to give up his Austrian citizenship to marry Adele Deutsch in 1887, owing to the Church's unwillingness to recognize his divorce. His new wife, with whom he had lived for a long period before their marriage, seemed to inspire him much like his first wife. In his last years, Strauss remained quite productive and active. He was working on a ballet, Cinderella, when he developed a respiratory ailment which grew into pneumonia. He died on June 3, 1899. ~ Robert Cummings, All Music Guide
Actor: Johann Strauss II
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  • Born: Oct 25, 1825 in Vienna, Austria
  • Died: Jun 03, 1899 in Vienna, Austria
  • Active: '30s, '60s, '80s-2000s
  • Major Genres: Music, Theater
  • Career Highlights: Die Fledermaus, Oh, Rosalinda!, Die Fledermaus
  • First Major Screen Credit: Die Fledermaus (1932)

Biography

One of the most celebrated composers of the 19th century, Johann Strauss II spent almost 50 years at the center of cultural life for much of Western world, from his native Austria-Hungary to such far-flung American territories as California. His work was embraced and acclaimed not only by Europe's upper and ruling classes, but also the working class and the growing middle classes of the era. He was the son of Johann Strauss I, who was the most lionized composer of waltzes in Vienna during the first half of the 19th century, and who also did his best to force his son into a profession other than music. The younger Strauss couldn't resist the calling, however, and quickly overshadowed his father as a composer of waltzes, polkas, and marches, and as orchestra leader. They were rivals until his father's death in 1849, and after that, the younger Strauss never had any potential rivals.

By the 1860s, Strauss had found an international public, on at least two continents, eager for his work. Essentially, he brought what amounted to a symphonic scope to the waltz, elevating it from light music to respectable concert music in the process. It's principally because of him that front-line orchestras have ever regularly played and recorded waltz music; essentially, he gave light music the depth of full-blown concert music, rather anticipating the best film music in some respects. He had the further advantage of impeccable timing, rising to prominence amid the rebuilding of the city of Vienna following the failed revolution of 1848. Although Strauss -- a man as naïve in the world of politics as he was adept in the composition of music -- had sided with the rebels, which caused the court of the Emperor Franz Josef to keep him at arm's length for decades, he was able to make his career in the imperial capital. In the process, his music became inextricably associated with Vienna's "golden age" and was one of the few attributes of the city and its culture to rise above the political ferment of the times. The diametrically opposed admirers of Brahms and Wagner, for example, might have been prepared to do bodily harm to each other in the streets, given too much beer and a wrong word on any given night, but both camps admired Strauss. Monarchists who loved the emperor and Democrats, Republicans, and would-be reformers of all stripes, even the most virulent anti-Semites (a great irony, since the Strauss family was Jewish), all loved his music.

Strauss' contribution to operetta was somewhat more uneven than his work in orchestral music, principally because of his inexperience in theatrical matters -- he simply could not, intuitively or intellectually, distinguish a good libretto from a bad libretto. There was also, from the point-of-view of the theater producers, an irrelevancy to that "blind spot"; after his success with Die Fledermaus in 1874, which introduced Viennese operetta to the world (and is still produced regularly 130 years later), it became clear that the public would flock to a Strauss operetta of any quality, so far as the libretto was concerned. Publishers on at least one occasion deliberately stuck Strauss with a second-rate libretto, knowing it wouldn't matter, while reserving a superb, first-quality piece for a less well-known rival composer. As a result, apart from Die Fledermaus, The Gypsy Baron, and A Night in Venice (which really only came into its own after emendations by Erich Wolfgang Korngold early in the 20th century), few of his operettas proved durable, even in the German-speaking world, although their music has often endured in excerpts.

Strauss died in 1899, just as movies were developing into a proper storytelling form. His most immediate influence was in the form of his waltzes and polkas, which were interpolated into countless films during the silent era in the form of suggested cues and full orchestral scores provided by the studios, and carried over into the sound era, by which time the copyright had begun to dissolve on most of his work where it still existed at all. "The Blue Danube" is the most famous of his waltzes; it turns up, in whole or in part, in dozens if not hundreds of movies, in everything from Abbott & Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941) to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the latter utilizing the 1867 waltz before a 1968 audience to underscore the gracefulness of satellites' (and people's) movements in orbit. The overture to Die Fledermaus was used to delightful comic effect for the big finale of H.C. Potter's Hellzapoppin' (1941), and the list goes on and on: Spring Parade; the cartoon A Corny Concerto (1943); the comedy Dios los Cría (1953); The Little Fugitive (1953); Harry Munter (1969); Harold and Maude (1971); Heaven's Gate (1980); Les Bons Débarras (1980, aka Good Riddance); Strictly Ballroom (1992); True Lies (1994); The Jungle Book (1994); Dear God (1996); Earth (1998); Dogma (1999); and Rock 'n' Roll Frankenstein (1999). And those are just some of the more obvious films that have made use of some of his music. There are snatches of it spread far wider, with Carl Stalling and his scores for the Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1940s providing a very vivid canvas on which to place snatches of Strauss's music (thus quietly initiating several generations of young viewers to Strauss' work).

As to the operettas, they've mostly been filmed in the German-speaking world, starting with a 1923 version of Die Fledermaus directed by Max Mack. They obviously didn't come into their own until the advent of sound films in 1927, however, Germany's Ufa Studio produced an especially notable color version of Die Fledermaus in the early '40s. That film raises an interesting and ironic point about the status and meaning of Strauss' music in popular culture during the Nazi era. Hitler, who was of Austrian birth, personally liked Strauss' music (though his favorite operetta was The Merry Widow, by Franz Lehar), and Strauss' waltzes and operettas were embraced by the Nazi-run cultural apparatus of the Third Reich. In Austria, however, a lot of creative people and ordinary citizens who abhorred the Nazis and the occupying Germans, and who clung to their separate national identity, also embraced Strauss' work as their own, as a statement (veiled and subtle, as it had to be for their own safety) of their separateness from the Germans. Indeed, Strauss' music and the Imperial era that it evoked were a safe haven for the nationalists and anti-Nazis working quietly in Vienna, Salzburg, etc. And there was the odd, unspoken truth amid all of this, that the Strauss family was of Jewish descent -- in fact, when the Nazis marched in during the spring of 1938, descendants of the composer were protected from persecution by the timely, surreptitious creation of baptismal certificates, indicating conversions to Christianity generations earlier, which conveniently turned up in the public record.

Perhaps the most cinematically daring and challenging adaptation of Strauss' work came in the form of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's Oh...Rosalinda! (1955), which took the music and basic plot from Die Fledermaus and transposed both into a beautiful, albeit bittersweet, operetta/satire about life in postwar, Allied-occupied Vienna. No less a figure than Erich Wolfgang Korngold enjoyed one of his earliest popular successes, long before he thought of working in movies, by way of Strauss. His edition of A Night in Venice restored the work to the repertory, and his Strauss pastiche, Waltzes From Vienna, was not only a hit on-stage but was brought to the screen in the early '30s, including a notoriously uninspired British version directed by Alfred Hitchcock (his least favorite of all of his movies), and a Hollywood adaptation called The Great Waltz, starring Fernand Gravey. Onscreen, Strauss has been portrayed by numerous actors across the decades, including Gravey and Stuart Wilson in the 1972 miniseries The Strauss Family. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Wikipedia: Johann Strauss II
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Johann Strauss II

Johann Strauss II (October 25, 1825, St. Ulrich (now a part of Neubau) – June 3, 1899, Vienna; also known as fully Johann Baptist Strauss, and Johann Strauss, Jr., or Johann Strauss the Younger) was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century.

Strauss was the son of Johann Strauss I, another composer of dance music. His father did not wish him to become a composer, but rather a banker; however, the son defied his father's wishes, and went on to study music with the composer Joseph Drechsler and the violin with Anton Kollmann, the ballet répétiteur of the Vienna Court Opera. Strauss had two younger brothers, Josef and Eduard Strauss, who became composers of light music as well, although they were never as well-known as their elder brother.

Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include the waltzes The Blue Danube, Kaiser-Walzer, Tales from the Vienna Woods, the Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, and the Pizzicato Polka. Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron are the most well-known.

Contents

Early life

Strauss was born in Vienna, Austria, on 25 October 1825, to the famous composer Johann Strauss I. His father did not want him to become a musician but rather a banker;[1] nevertheless, Strauss Junior studied the violin secretly as a child, ironically with the first violinist of his father's orchestra, Franz Amon.[1] When his father discovered his son secretly practising on a violin one day, he gave him a severe whipping, saying that he was going to beat the music out of the boy.[2] It seems that rather than trying to avoid a Strauss rivalry, the elder Strauss only wanted his son to escape the rigors of a musician's life.[3] It was only when the father abandoned his family for a mistress, Emilie Trampusch, that the son was able to concentrate fully on a career as a composer with the support of his mother.[4]

Strauss studied counterpoint and harmony with theorist Professor Joachim Hoffmann,[1] who owned a private music school. His talents were also recognized by composer Joseph Drechsler, who taught him exercises in harmony. His other violin teacher, Anton Kollmann, who was the ballet répétiteur of the Vienna Court Opera, also wrote excellent testimonials for him. Armed with these, he approached the Viennese authorities to apply for a license to perform.[5] He initially formed his small orchestra where he recruited his members at the Zur Stadt Belgrad tavern, where musicians seeking work could be hired easily.[6]

Debut as a composer

Johann Strauss in his younger years

Johann Strauss I's influence over the local entertainment establishments meant that many of them were wary of offering the younger Strauss a contract for fear of angering the father.[4] Strauss Jr. was able to persuade the Dommayer's Casino in Hietzing, a suburb of Vienna, to allow him to perform.[7] The elder Strauss, in anger at his son's disobedience, and at that of the proprietor, refused to ever play at the Dommayer's Casino again,[8] which had been the site of many of his earlier triumphs.

Strauss made his debut at Dommayer's in October 1844, where he performed some of his first works, such as the waltzes "Sinngedichte", Op. 1 and "Gunstwerber", Op. 4 and the polka "Herzenslust", Op. 3.[1] Critics and the press were unanimous in their praise for Strauss's music. A critic for Der Wanderer commented that "Strauss’s name will be worthily continued in his son; children and children’s children can look forward to the future, and three-quarter time will find a strong footing in him."[1]

Despite the initial fanfare, Strauss found his early years as a composer difficult, but he soon won over audiences after accepting commissions to perform away from home. The first major appointment for the young composer was his award of the honorary position of "Kapellmeister of the 2nd Vienna Citizen's Regiment", which had been left vacant following Joseph Lanner's death two years before.[9]

Vienna was racked by a bourgeois revolution on February 24, 1848, and the intense rivalry between father and son became much more apparent. Johann Jr. decided to side with the revolutionaries. It was a decision that was professionally disadvantageous, as the Austrian royalty twice denied him the much coveted 'KK Hofballmusikdirektor' position, which was first designated especially for Johann I in recognition of his musical contributions. Further, the younger Strauss was also arrested by the Viennese authorities for publicly playing the La Marseillaise, but was later acquitted.[10] The elder Strauss remained loyal to the monarchy, and composed his "Radetzky March", Op. 228 (dedicated to the Habsburg field marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz), which would become one of his best-known compositions.[11]

When the elder Strauss died from scarlet fever in Vienna in 1849, the younger Strauss merged both their orchestras and engaged in further tours.[1] Later, he also composed a number of patriotic marches dedicated to the Habsburg monarch Franz Josef I, such as the Kaiser Franz-Josef Marsch Op. 67 and the Kaiser Franz Josef Rettungs Jubel-Marsch Op. 126, probably to ingratiate himself in the eyes of the new monarch, who ascended to the Austrian throne after the 1848 revolution.[1]

Career advancements

Strauss Jr. eventually surpassed his father's fame, and became one of the most popular of waltz composers of the era, extensively touring Austria, Poland, and Germany with his orchestra. He applied for the KK Hofballmusikdirektor Music Director of the Royal Court Balls position, which he eventually attained in 1863,[1] after being denied several times before for his frequent brushes with the local authorities.

In 1853, due to constant mental and physical demands, Strauss suffered a nervous breakdown.[1] He took a seven-week vacation in the countryside in the summer of that year, on the advice of doctors. Johann's younger brother Josef was persuaded by his family to abandon his career as an engineer and take command of Johann's orchestra in the absence of the latter.[1]

In 1855, Strauss accepted commissions from the management of the Tsarskoye-Selo Railway Company of St. Petersburg to play in Russia for the Vauxhall Pavilion at Pavlovsk in 1856. He would later return to perform in Russia for every year until 1865. [1]

Later, in the 1870s, Strauss and his orchestra toured the United States, where he took part in the Boston Festival at the invitation of bandmaster Patrick Gilmore and was the lead conductor in a 'Monster Concert' of over 1000 performers,[12] performing his "Blue Danube" waltz, amongst other pieces, to great acclaim.[12]

Marriages

Strauss married the singer Jetty Treffz in 1862, and they remained together until Jetty's death in 1878.[1] Six weeks after her death,[1][13] Strauss married the actress Angelika Dittrich. Angelika was not a fervent supporter of his music, and their differences in age and opinion, and especially her indiscretion, led him to seek a divorce.[1]

Strauss was not granted a divorce by the Roman Catholic church, and therefore changed religion and nationality, and became a citizen of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in January 1887.[1] Strauss sought solace in his third wife Adele, whom he married in August 1882, and she encouraged the creative talent to flow once more in his later years, resulting in many famous compositions, such as the operettas Der Zigeunerbaron and Waldmeister, and the waltzes "Kaiser-Walzer" Op. 437, "Kaiser Jubiläum" Op. 434, and "Klug Gretelein" Op. 462.

He is a Distant relation of England cricket Captain Andrew Strauss.[citation needed]

Musical rivals and admirers

Johann Strauss and Johannes Brahms photographed in Vienna

Although Strauss was the most sought-after composer of dance music in the latter half of the 19th century, stiff competition was present in the form of Karl Michael Ziehrer and Émile Waldteufel; the latter held a commanding position in Paris.[14] Phillip Fahrbach also denied the younger Strauss the commanding position of the KK Hofballmusikdirektor when the latter first applied for the post. The German operetta composer Jacques Offenbach, who made his name in Paris, also posed a challenge to Strauss in the operetta field.[15]

Strauss was admired by other prominent composers: Richard Wagner once admitted that he liked the waltz Wein, Weib und Gesang Op. 333.[16] Richard Strauss (unrelated to the Strauss family), when writing his Rosenkavalier waltzes, said in reference to Johann Strauss: "How could I forget the laughing genius of Vienna?"[17]

Johannes Brahms was a personal friend of Strauss, and to whom the latter dedicated his waltz "Seid umschlungen, Millionen!" ("Be Embraced, You Millions!"), Op. 443.[18] A story is told in biographies of both men that Strauss's wife Adele approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan. It was usual for the composer to inscribe a few measures of his best-known music, and then sign his name. Brahms, however, inscribed a few measures from the "Blue Danube", and then wrote beneath it: "Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms."[19]

Stage works

Main article: List of operettas by Johann Strauss II

The most famous of Strauss' operettas are Die Fledermaus, Eine Nacht in Venedig, and Der Zigeunerbaron. Notwithstanding their general lack of modern popularity, there are many dance pieces drawn from themes of his operettas, such as "Cagliostro-Walzer" Op. 370 (from Cagliostro in Wien), "O Schöner Mai" Walzer Op. 375 (from Prinz Methusalem), "Rosen aus dem Süden" Walzer Op. 388 (from Das Spitzentuch der Königin), and "Kuss-Walzer" op. 400 (from Der lustige Krieg), that have survived obscurity and become well-known. Strauss also wrote an opera, Ritter Pásmán, [20] and was in the middle of composing an operetta, Aschenbrödel, when he died in 1899.[21]

Death and legacy

A statue of the Waltz King in Stadtpark, Vienna

Strauss was diagnosed with double pneumonia in the spring of 1899,[21] and died on June 3, 1899, at the age of 73. He was buried in the Zentralfriedhof. At the time of his death, he was still composing his ballet Aschenbrödel.[21]

Strauss's music is now regularly performed at the annual Neujahrskonzert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as a result of the efforts by Clemens Krauss who performed a special all-Strauss programme in 1929 with the Viennese orchestra. Many distinguished Strauss interpreters include Willi Boskovsky,[22] who carried on the "Vorgeiger" tradition of conducting with violin in hand, as is the Strauss family custom, as well as Herbert von Karajan and the opera conductor Riccardo Muti. In addition, the Wiener Johann Strauss Orchester, which was formed in 1966, pays tribute to the touring orchestras which once made the Strauss family so famous.[23]

Most of the Strauss works that are performed today may once have existed in a slightly different form, as Eduard Strauss destroyed much of the original Strauss orchestral archives in a furnace factory in Vienna's Mariahilf district in 1907.[24] Eduard, then the only surviving brother of the three, took this drastic precaution after agreeing to a pact between himself and brother Josef that whoever outlived the other was to destroy their works. The measure was intended to prevent the Strauss family's works from being claimed by another composer. This may also have been fueled by Strauss's rivalry with another of Vienna's popular waltz and march composers, Karl Michael Ziehrer.[25]

Strauss' public perception took an unexpected turn in the 1930s after the Nazi's came to power. Some of Austria's pro-Nazi leaders arranged for the removal of a baptism book from a cathedral that documented Strauss' Jewish roots in an effort to hide his ancestry.[26] During the process of Aryanizing Germanic culture and history, Hitler declared: "I decide who is Jewish".[27]

Portrayals in the media

The lives of the Strauss dynasty members and their world-renowned craft of composing Viennese waltzes are also briefly documented in several television adaptations, such as The Strauss Dynasty (1991)[28] and Strauss, the King of 3/4 Time (1995).[29] Many other films used his works and melodies, and several films have been based upon the life of the musician, the most famous of which is called The Great Waltz (1938).[30] Alfred Hitchcock made a low-budget biopic of Strauss in 1933 called Waltzes from Vienna.[31] After a trip to Vienna, Walt Disney was inspired to create four feature films. One of those was The Waltz King, a loosely adapted biopic of Johann Strauss, which aired as part of the Wonderful World of Disney in the U.S. in 1963.[32] In Mikhail Bulgakov's 1967 novel, The Master and Margarita, Johann Strauss conducts the orchestra during Satan's Great Ball at the invitation of Behemoth.
"The Blue Danube"
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Works

See List of operettas by Johann Strauss II and List of compositions by Johann Strauss II.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "Strauss: Johann Strauss II". Grove Music Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/52380pg2?q=johann+strauss+ii&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit. Retrieved 28 September 2008. 
  2. ^ Fantel, Hans. The Waltz Kings. William Morrow & Company. p. 75. 
  3. ^ Gartenberg, Egon. Johann Strauss — End of an Era. Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 124. 
  4. ^ a b Gartenberg, Egon. Johann Strauss — End of an Era. Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 121. 
  5. ^ Gartenberg, Egon. Johann Strauss — End of an Era. Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 126. 
  6. ^ Fantel, Hans. The Waltz Kings. William Morrow & Company. p. 76. 
  7. ^ Jacob, H. E.. Johann Strauss, Father and Son: A Century of Light Music. The Greystone Press. p. 127. 
  8. ^ Gartenberg, Egon. Johann Strauss — End of an Era. Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 125. 
  9. ^ Alabama Symphony
  10. ^ Fantel, Hans (1972). The Waltz Kings. William Morrow & Company, Inc.. p. 96. 
  11. ^ Fantel, Hans (1972). The Waltz Kings. William Morrow & Company, Inc.. p. 89. 
  12. ^ a b Gartenberg, Egon (1972). Johann Strauss — End of an Era. Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 246. 
  13. ^ "Johann Strauss II 1825–1899); AUT". Classical Archives. http://www.classicalarchives.com/composer/3411.html#about. Retrieved 13 April 2009. 
  14. ^ WALDTEUFEL, EMILE BIOGRAPHY
  15. ^ "THE VIENNESE OPERETTA". http://www.theatrehistory.com/misc/vienneseoperetta.html. Retrieved 14 April 2009. 
  16. ^ Jacob, H. E. (1940). Johann Strauss, Father and Son: A Century of Light Music. The Greystone Press. p. 226. 
  17. ^ "Vienna Tickets >> Johann Strauss". http://www.viennaticket.com/viennatickets/?p=10. Retrieved 3 October 2008. 
  18. ^ Rubey, Norbert. Seid umschlungen, Millionen!. Diletto Musicale, Doblinger. 
  19. ^ Jacob, H. E. (1940). Johann Strauss, Father and Son: A Century of Light Music. The Greystone Press. p. 227. 
  20. ^ Traubner, Richard. Operetta: A theatrical history. Routledge. p. 131. 
  21. ^ a b c Jacob, H. E. (1940). Johann Strauss, Father and Son: A Century of Light Music. The Greystone Press. p. 341. 
  22. ^ "Willi Boskovsky, 81, Waltz Violinist, Dies", New York Times, April 24, 1991.
  23. ^ Vienna Johann Strauß Orchestra
  24. ^ Jacob, H. E. (1940). Johann Strauss, Father and Son: A Century of Light Music. The Greystone Press. p. 363. 
  25. ^ Crittenden, Camille. Johann Strauss and Vienna. Cambridge University Press. p. 89. 
  26. ^ Crittenden, Camille. Johann Strauss and Vienna: Operetta and the Politics of Popular Culture. 2006: Cambridge University Press. pp. 96-108. ISBN 0521027578, 9780521027571. 
  27. ^ Knowles, Carvin Curtain Rises on Mozart’s Jewish Tie, JewishJournal.com website, January 19, 2006. Retrieved 2009-09-03. Note quote: "Mozart's music was too valuable to the Third Reich, so like Johan Strauss, Mozart's collaborator was "Aryanized." Hitler reportedly told critics: "I decide who is Jewish."
  28. ^ The Strauss Dynasty (1991) at the Internet Movie Database
  29. ^ Strauss, the King of 3/4 Time (1995) at the Internet Movie Database
  30. ^ The Great Waltz (1938) at the Internet Movie Database
  31. ^ Waltzes from Vienna (1934) at the Internet Movie Database
  32. ^ Chronology of the Waltz Disney Company

References

External links

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