Johann Strauss I
Johann Strauss I was one of the two waltz kings of Vienna bearing that name. The more famous one, the composer of “The Blue Danube” was the son. But the father was also one of Vienna’s most popular composers and café-house conductors. He was born in Vienna on March 14, 1804, and as a boy he studied both the violin and harmony. His love for music, combined with the decision of his parents to make him a bookbinder, led him to run away from home. When he was fifteen he joined Michael Pamer’s orchestra which played at the Sperl café; another of its members was Josef Lanner, soon also to become a major figure in Vienna’s musical life. As Lanner’s star rose, so did Johann Strauss’. First Strauss played in the Lanner Quartet at the Goldenen Rebbuhn and other cafés; after that he was a member of the Lanner Orchestra which appeared in Vienna’s leading cafés. When Lanner’s mounting success made it necessary for him to create two orchestras, he selected Johann Strauss to conduct one of them. Then, in 1826, Johann Strauss formed an orchestra of his own which made its debut at the Bock Café. For the next two decades he was the idol of Vienna, Lanner’s only rival. By 1830 he had two hundred musicians under him. His major successes as a café-house conductor came at the Sperl and the Redoutensaal. But his fame spread far beyond Vienna. In 1833 he toured all Austria, and in 1834 he appeared in Berlin. After that he performed in all the major European capitals, achieving formidable successes in London and Paris. Meanwhile, in 1833, he had become bandmaster of the first Vienna militia regiment, one of the highest honors a performer of light music could achieve in Austria. In 1845 he was appointed conductor of the Viennese court balls. He died in Vienna on September 25, 1849.
Like Lanner, Strauss wrote a considerable amount of dance and café-house music, over 250 compositions. His first composition was the Taeuberlwalzer, named after the café Zwei Tauben where he was then appearing. After that he wrote waltzes, galops, polkas, quadrilles, cotillons, contredanses, and marches—which Vienna came to love for their rhythmic vitality and appealing lyricism. People in Vienna used to say that the waltzes of the first Johann Strauss were made for dancing because their rhythmic pulse excited the heart and made feet restless.
Not much of the father Strauss’ library of music has survived. The exceptions are the following waltzes: Caecilien, Donaulieder, the Kettenbruecken, and the Lorelei Rheinsklaenge. To the waltz, the older Johann Strauss brought a symphonic dimension it had heretofore not known, particularly in his spacious introductions of which the thirty-bar prelude of the Lorelei Rheinsklaenge is an outstanding example. He also carried over to the waltz a variety of mood and feeling and a lightness of touch new for this peasant dance. “This demon of the ancient Viennese folk spirit,” wrote Richard Wagner after hearing Strauss perform one of his own waltzes in Vienna, “trembled at the beginning of a new waltz like a python preparing to spring, and it was more the ecstasy produced by the music than the drinks among the enchanted audience that stimulated that magical first violin to almost dangerous flights.”
Of his other music the most famous is the Radetzky March. Count Radetzky was an Austrian military hero, victor over the Italians in 1848-1849. In honor of his Italian triumphs and suppression of the Italian nationalist movement, Strauss wrote the spirited, sharply accented march in 1848 which almost at once became the musical symbol of Hapsburg Vienna and Austrian military power. The following programmatic interpretation of this music by H. E. Jacob is of interest: “Drunk with triumph, the Generalissimo’s battalions hurl themselves down into Lombardy. They are close on the heels of the fleeing troops of King Albert, the King of Sardinia. And then comes a new phase of the march to accompany the victorious troops. A different sun shines down on this, a memory of Vienna, a lingering trace of the feel of girls’ arms; scraps of a dance song with a backward glance at three-quarter time. But on they go, still forward. There are no more shots, there is laughter. The trio follows. The... superdominant... hoisted as if it were a flag.... Finally comes the return of the principal theme with the laurels and gaiety of victory.”