“Happy is he who can forget what cannot be anymore changed.”
You would think that a successful musician would welcome his children’s inclination to follow in his footsteps. Not so in the case of Johann Strauss, a popular composer and conductor in the first half of the nineteenth century. He wanted his namesake son to become a banker, hoping to spare him the frustrations of the life of a professional musician. In fact, Johann I subjected Johann II to a whipping on one occasion, when he found the boy secretly practicing on a violin. Not exactly the image we usually have of the often romanticized Strauss family.
When his father abandoned the family for a mistress, the younger Johann, christened in the Catholic rite as Johann Baptist Strauss, finally began to pursue a rigorous training in the art and business of music, encouraged by his mother. He had already received lessons from Franz Amon, the concertmaster of his father’s orchestra. He augmented them with studies at a private music school in Vienna, gathering references along the way (including the chief mentor at the Vienna Court Opera). He composed his only sacred work at the age of eighteen, before turning his attention to dance. He recruited players for his first small orchestra, and they got a license to perform at one of the imperial city’s most popular taverns, located on Belgrade Street.
He made his official debut at Dommayer’s Casino in the suburbs in October, 1844, the month of his nineteenth birthday. The orchestra introduced his very first published piece: a waltz titled Sinngedichte (Poems of the Senses). It had to be repeated a record nineteen times! One leading critic wrote that “three-quarter time will find a strong footing in him.” All the same, his father fumed at what he considered treachery by his son and the proprietor, and he vowed to never perform at that venue again.
The rivalry between the two generations of Strausses reached its peak in 1848, the year of revolution across Europe. Johann I composed his Radetzky March as a show of loyalty to the Austrian monarchy. Johann II was arrested, although later acquitted, for publicly performing La Marseillaise. In the following months, his father died of scarlet fever; a new emperor, Franz Josef I, ascended the throne; and Johann, Jr. consolidated the family orchestras for highly successful and lucrative tours. A legend was born.
After multiple rejections (and compositions intended to flatter the imperial family), Strauss finally earned the coveted title of Music Director of the Royal Court Balls in 1863. His younger brothers, Eduard and Josef, joined the orchestra as assistant conductors. His fame spread beyond the Austrian Empire to Germany, Poland and Russia, where he played every year for a decade.
Strauss came to this country for the World’s Peace Jubilee and International Music Festival, held in Boston in 1872. At a “Monster Concert” featuring more than a thousand performers, he conducted his iconic On the Beautiful Blue Danube waltz. Six years earlier, after it had received an indifferent response at its Vienna premiere, the composer declared; “The devil take the waltz, my only regret is for the coda.”
In all, Strauss wrote more than five hundred dance pieces (waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, quadrilles), as well as a ballet (Cinderella) and several operettas, most notably Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron. Richard Wagner admired the waltzes. Richard Strauss described him as a “laughing genius.” Johannes Brahms became a good friend.
Strauss’ father had not been entirely wrong, though. The life of a famous musician could be demanding. Johann, Jr. suffered a nervous breakdown and experienced hypochondria and several phobias. He married three times, changing religions and nationalities after the Roman Catholic Church refused to annul the second one. His life, which lasted until 1899, has inspired many film and television productions, including The Great Waltz (1938) and Waltzes from Vienna (1934), directed by a young Alfred Hitchcock.
To paraphrase the composer, happy are we who can experience his glorious music to this day. Happy are we, too, who can appreciate his sense of humor. During his American tour, for example, many fans requested personal mementos, often in the form of a lock of hair. Strauss had his valet comply by clipping his black Newfoundland dog to meet the demand.
Johann Strauss, Jr. was born in an outlying district of Vienna two centuries ago, on October 25, 1825. His music has been celebrated at the annual New Year’s concerts given by the Vienna Philharmonic since 1939. Champagne glasses at the ready, then. Let’s raise a toast to the immortal “Waltz King.”
