Karl Michael Ziehrer
Karl Michael Ziehrer, beloved Viennese composer of waltzes and operettas, was born in Vienna on May 2, 1843. He was completely self-taught in music. In 1863 he formed a café-house orchestra with which he toured Austria and Germany, often featuring his own dance pieces and marches. He later expanded this orchestra into an ensemble numbering fifty players with which he gave a series of successful concerts of semi-classical music in Vienna. In 1907 he became music director of the court balls. After World War I he suffered extreme poverty, his personal fortune having been lost with the collapse of the Hapsburg monarchy. He died in want and obscurity in Vienna on November 14, 1922.
Ziehrer wrote more than five hundred popular pieces for orchestra, including numerous marches and waltzes. His waltzes were particularly favored, many of these in the style of Johann Strauss II. Some are still extensively played. Probably the most famous of all his waltzes is Wiener Maedchen (“Vienna Maidens”), which must rank with Lehár’s “Merry Widow Waltz” as one of the most popular such dances produced in Vienna since the time of Johann Strauss II. Its first melody sounds like a Schubert Laendler, with the peasant vigor of its rhythm and its robust tune; but the main subject is a soaring waltz in the finest traditions of Viennese café-house music. The following are other famous Ziehrer waltzes: “Alt Wien” (“Old Vienna”), “Faschingskinder” (“Carnival Children”), and “Wiener Buerger” (“Viennese Citizens”), all three of which come closest among his works in assuming the structural outlines and the melodic identity of the Johann Strauss waltz classics. Also popular are the “Donauwalzer” (“Waltzes from the Danube”) and “Evatochter” (“Daughter of Eve”).
Ziehrer’s most famous operetta is Die Landestreicher (The Vagabonds)—book by L. Krenn and C. Lindau, first performed in Vienna on July 26, 1899. In upper Bavaria two tramps—Fliederbusch and his wife Bertha—manage to live by their wits. Disguised respectively as Prince Gilka and a dancer they visit a famous resort hotel and are involved in numerous adventures. By managing to retrieve a supposedly valuable lost necklace for the Prince they finally win his favor and enter his service. Of particular interest is the captivating waltz at the end of the first act, “Sei gepriesen, du lauschige Nacht.”
From several of Ziehrer’s other operettas there come other delightful waltzes, notably “Samt und Seide” from Der Fremdenfuehrer (1902) and “Hereinspaziert” from Der Schatzmeister (1904).