To this day, Johann Strauss II is known throughout the world as the “King of the Waltz”. Even in the 19th century, his dance music in three-quarter time drove the crowd crazy and won the hearts of women around the world.
Johann Strauss was a pop star of his time, attracting large numbers of youth and filling ballrooms. The violinist and composer performed for the Tsar’s family in Russia and even toured America. With violin in hand, he charmed the audience and even had his own merchandise including exclusive accessories and memorabilia.
He composed his famous waltz, “The Blue Danube”, for the 1867 Paris World’s Fair.
He achieved worldwide fame through his performance at the World Peace Jubilee Celebration in Boston in 1872. In that concert, he conducted an orchestra of 20,000 musicians in front of an audience of 100,000. To achieve this feat Strauss enlisted the help of 20 other conductors.
Even 200 years after his birth, the composer still enchants the city of Vienna. Several events have been organized for his 200th birthday year, including the premiere of a ballet of the same name by director-choreographer Roland Petit at the Vienna State Opera on 18 November, as well as season concerts and exhibitions of his opera “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) at the Vienna State Opera.
Occupation: Superstar
Viennese composer Johann Strauss built a vast entertainment empire with the help of his family.
“Strauss pursued his career and life’s work with tremendous passion, composing late into the night,” explains Marco Dissinger, research assistant in the music department of the Austrian National Library.
To celebrate the composer’s 200th birthday, Dissinger helped organize the “Vocation: Superstar” exhibit, which also includes letters and photographs of the composer.
The pressure of performing and the long nights eventually took its toll on Strauss. He collapsed on the stage several times and remained in isolation for several days. “A newspaper article mentioned his ‘strained nerves.’ His brother often took his place at concerts he was supposed to conduct,” says Deisinger.
In the shadow of your father
The lengths to which Johann Strauss II had to go to achieve his place in the music business were tremendous. He was born on October 25, 1825 in Vienna to parents who were soon to divorce. His father, Johann Strauss (senior), was a distinguished conductor and composer of Viennese light music, including waltzes, polkas and galops, including his famous work “Radetzky March”.
The younger Strauss stood under the tutelage of his father, who did not want his son to pursue a career in music and forbade him from performing. After his father’s death in 1845, Johann Strauss II gradually managed to make a name for himself in the Viennese music scene. His mother was busy with business affairs, and his brothers, Joseph and Eduard, were also involved in the family music business.
sympathy for the revolution
“He had a keen sense of how to develop the professional and social relationships that ultimately led to his success,” says curator Marco Dissinger. “His house was a meeting place for leading figures of the world of culture.”
Strauss was as close to Richard Wagner as he was to Wagner’s musical exponent Johannes Brahms, who had good relations with music publishers.
The only thing that slowed Strauss’s career somewhat were his two waltzes, “Freiheitslieder” (Song of Freedom) and “Revolutionsmarsch” – his tribute to the March Revolution of 1848. “That’s when he fell out of favor with the courts,” Deisinger says. It is believed that this was the reason why his first two applications for the important post of Royal Court Ball Director in Vienna were rejected. He was not accepted until 1863.
Internal turmoil and mood swings
While Johann Strauss enjoyed great success in Europe, Russia, and America, he also suffered from self-doubt and inferiority complex. This becomes clear from the letters he wrote to his wives. The musician was married a total of three times. Some of these letters are in the collection of the Austrian National Library.
A highlight is a letter written in 1882 to his second wife Angelica, known as Lily.
Dissinger explains, “The letter is incomplete, but in it we found a caricature of himself that was previously unknown.” Strauss reduced himself to tears; His wife wanted to leave him, and eventually she did. “This picture reflects his mental state,” says Dysinger. The curator described the image as, “She has a sad look on her face, she’s not wearing pants and you can see her thin, bony legs.” He explains that this vulnerable self-portrayal is about loss of control, wounded masculinity, and the musician’s desire to find love.
Strauss also wrote similar letters to his former girlfriend Olga Smirnitskaya. Since 1856, he had traveled to Pavlovsk, near Saint Petersburg, for several years to play for the Tsar and the Russian elite. It was here that he met Olga. Deisinger explains, “In the letters, you can see the same mood changes, and it’s quite rapid how he changes from one emotion to another.” Strauss depicted their tragic love story in his rousing waltz “Travel Adventures”.
Strauss’s waltz was adopted by the Nazis
By 1870, Johann Strauss wrote popular dance music such as waltzes and polkas, then he turned his attention to the stage and composed famous operas such as “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat), “Der Zigenerbaren” (The Gypsy Baron) and “Ein Nacht in Venice” (A Night in Venice). However, his only opera, “Ritter Passmann” (Night Pazma), was not successful.
The Nazis used the waltz as a traditional German folk dance for their political propaganda. During World War II, Johann Strauss’s cheerful waltzes served as a distraction from the horrors of war.
For this reason, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels also falsified documents that referenced Johann Strauss’s Jewish origins. Goebbels simply deleted the entries.
To this day, Strauss waltzes are still played in the traditional New Year’s concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Ninety public television stations broadcast the concerts worldwide. They can be heard in Europe, Japan, China and the United States, as well as in Brazil, the Caribbean islands and Kenya.
This article was originally written in German.