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Title: : Vienna


1
?? Vienna ???????
  • Strauss Waltz

2
Johann Strauss Jr 1825-1899
3
(No Transcript)
4
The waltz king
  • A lot of what we call classical music started
    out as popular music. Most of the non-religious
    Renaissance pieces performed now by scholarly
    early music groups are nothing more than
    extremely old oldies - pop songs and dance tunes
    that hit the charts before 1600.

5
The waltz king
  • And one of the most beloved of all 19th-century
    composers, a man whose music is now played by
    symphony orchestras around the world, was
    actually a dance-band leader.

6
The waltz king
  • Johann Strauss Jr. was the most commercially
    successful band leaders of his periods, Strauss'
    prosperous home town of Vienna went waltz mad in
    the early 19th century. Spectacular dance palaces
    were everywhere. The privileged classes threw one
    opulent party after another, while the working
    classes congregated at tradesmen's balls.

7
The waltz king
  • In the 1820s, Johann Strauss Sr. and his partner
    Josef Lanner were the first men to corner the
    Viennese waltz market. They wrote their own music
    and conducted their own small dance orchestras to
    great adulation and profit.

8
The waltz king
  • Despite his success - or perhaps because he
    feared the competition - Strauss insisted that
    his sons pursue non-musical careers. Two of them,
    Eduard and Josef, obeyed, but wrote waltzes and
    polkas on the side.

9
The waltz king
  • His eldest son, Johann Jr., secretly rehearsed 15
    musicians and made his debut in 1844. For the
    occasion he'd written four waltzes, two
    quadrilles and three polkas, which were
    immediately hailed as equal to his father's work.
    Before long, the young Strauss would far surpass
    the efforts of his father.

10
The waltz king
  • The first original waltz Strauss played that
    night was called The Favor Seekers'' the last
    was titled Thought Poems.'' Those titles became
    his career's dual theme.

11
The waltz king
  • All Strauss waltzes are, in effect, thought
    poems, with an expressiveness and elaborate
    detail that transcend dance music forms. One
    reviewer of a Strauss concert at the 1867 Paris
    Exhibition wrote, No one thought of dancing,
    for everyone wanted to listen.''

12
The waltz king
  • Strauss was and remains known as The Waltz
    King,'' but he wrote several different kinds of
    pieces - polkas, marches, quadrilles and others,
    as well as sparkling operettas including Die
    Fledermaus'' and The Gypsy Baron.''

13
The waltz king
  • It's easy to tell most of these forms apart. The
    march needs no introduction. It's a two-step
    that's so simple it can't be danced to you
    merely, well, march to it.

14
The waltz king
  • The polka was originally a lively Bohemian
    peasant dance that sent couples bounding and
    twirling all over the dance floor. Most polkas
    are in ternary, or three-part, form. The first
    and third parts are identical, and the second
    often brings in a contrasting mood. The two most
    famous Strauss polkas are Thunder and
    Lightning'' and Tritsch-Tratsch.''

15
The waltz king
  • A quadrille is a group dance, requiring an equal
    number of couples. It seems to have originated in
    France and may have begun as music to accompany
    displays of horsemanship. The quadrille is not
    only a group dance, but a group of dances - five,
    usually, in different rhythms and tempos. At
    first, quadrilles used folk tunes, but Strauss'
    quadrilles employ songs and opera arias that were
    popular in his day.

16
The waltz king
  • Finally, the waltz. The basic waltz is in 3/4
    time with the emphasis on the first beat (count
    ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three). While the polka is
    a boisterous, jerky dance, the waltz is
    characterized by gliding and smooth rotation.

17
The waltz king
  • The Viennese waltz has a special rhythm. It's
    still a three-count, but the second beat is
    rushed a little, leaving a short breathing space
    between the second and third beats. A truly
    authentic performance of a Strauss waltz will
    rush the second beat in this manner, imparting a
    special lilt to the music.

18
The waltz king
  • To understand Strauss' distinction as a composer
    of waltzing thought poems, consider one of his
    most popular works, the Emperor Waltz.''

19
The waltz king
  • Most waltzes begin with a little introduction to
    give couples time to get onto the dance floor.
    The Emperor Waltz'' opens with an extended
    intro. First there's a distant march tune, rather
    jaunty but decidedly military.

20
The waltz king
  • A waltz melody tries to surge forward but is
    interrupted by the march, which now comes up
    front and full regalia.

21
The waltz king
  • The march tune recedes, and is followed by a
    swirling transitional passage with a little cello
    solo. This leads quietly into the waltz theme
    that appeared in the introduction. There's no
    grand announcement it just subtly begins.

22
The waltz king
  • Now comes a whole series of waltzes, all
    featuring singing melodic lines. Orchestral
    flourishes occasionally billow like women's ball
    gowns, but there are quiet sections,too.

23
The waltz king
  • Each new tune is a little more extroverted than
    the last, but near the end the wistful, nostalgic
    opening waltz returns. It's all about to end in a
    noble blaze, but everything suddenly dies away
    into that poetic cello solo from the
    introduction. It's very slow, not easily danced.

24
The waltz king
  • Finally comes a brief uplifting coda, louder and
    a bit faster than the cello solo and full of
    brass fanfares.

25
The waltz king
  • Strauss' melodic gift assured him of the public's
    unflagging favor throughout Europe and the United
    States. The waltz was a social opiate, and each
    Strauss waltz provided a deeply satisfying high.

26
The waltz king
  • Waltzing was, in modern parlance, an escape
    mechanism. During Strauss' life, Vienna's
    opulence and its glittering balls masked a
    pervasive xenophobia, political oppression,
    epidemics of cholera and scarlet fever, and
    financial crises.

27
The waltz king
  • But who could worry about such things while
    dancing to music given titles like Carefree''
    and I Couldn't Care Less''?

28
The waltz king
  • Nothing changes, does it? When Dr. Burney in 1805
    described the waltz as a riotous modern
    invention, whose very name implied to wallow,
    welter, tumble down or roll in the dirt or mire,
    he could just as easily have been denouncing rock
    'n' roll in 1956. When he wondered how uneasy an
    English mother would be to see her daughter so
    familiarly treated, he could have been
    commenting on the lambada or Dirty Dancing.

29
The waltz king
  • This salacious popular entertainment hit the big
    time when Johann Strauss Vater formed his rock -
    sorry, dance - band in 1825, whereafter it
    gradually gained acceptance as a social activity.
    In 1844, Johann Strauss Sohn, who was born the
    same year as his dad's band, formed one of his
    own, the key step in his transformation from bank
    clerk to Waltz King, and embarked on a career
    which was to elevate the waltz from the coffee
    house (c.f. disco) to the regal ballrooms of
    Europe. 

30
The waltz king
  • While nothing assures respectability more than
    recognition by the Establishment, Strauss also
    won admiration from some surprising quarters,
    namely the avant-garde of the next generation.
    Mahler was a great fan, even paying tribute in
    his Fifth Symphony, though he wryly observed that
    Strauss' very facility prevented his becoming a
    great composer (presumably in the sense of
    Beethoven or Brahms) - he had no need of
    symphonic development, because when one tune had
    run its course, he simply pulled another, equally
    memorable, out of his hat! Crying shame!

31
The waltz king
  • Schoenberg was so incensed at the stodginess of
    the palm-court arrangements of the 1920s that
    he organised a concert, to show that it was not
    compulsory for piano, harmonium and string
    quartet to mangle Strauss' elegant tunes. The
    arrangements by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are
    well worth searching out, believe me! 

32
The waltz king
  • You could say Strauss made an art form out of the
    pot-pourri. He exercised immense skill in
    coordinating the tunes pulled from his capacious
    headgear, combining them with imaginative
    introductions and bridging phrases to transmute
    mere dance sequences into exquisite tone-poems. I
    believe that Strauss remains so universally
    well-loved because his music is not just stylish
    and attractive, but also edifyingly well bolted
    together. 

33
The waltz king
  • The names given to these pieces were often just
    fanciful handles, but sometimes reflected the
    character of the music. Thus the introduction to
    the Emperor Waltz (or Kaiser-Walzer, if you want
    to be picky), written in honour of Franz Josef in
    1888, is in a march-like 2/4 giving it a regal,
    even pompous feel. It also has a certain
    fussiness which, if I were Franz Josef, I might
    wonder about.

34
The waltz king
  • How effortlessly it leads, via a cadential 'cello
    solo, into the first waltz tune - cunningly
    pre-echoed in the introduction - and on into a
    colourful and varied full dress ball. The stately
    processional of the introduction is brilliantly
    reflected in a central, majestic, tune,
    resplendent in weighty brass, which you just know
    will come back to form the sonorous climax (but
    surprisingly not the conclusion). If you feel the
    urge to dance in the aisles, go ahead!
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