The German Genius

pianist if not in Brahms’s class, accompanying them. The difference Wolf introduced lay in his use of melody. For him melody could contribute to the meaning of a poem, a good example being “Wer rief dich denn,” in which the singer sings one thing while the accompaniment suggests that the words he is mouthing are false. 16
    In the first instance, Wolf’s madness took the form of delusions that he had been appointed director of the Vienna Opera. From the asylum he wrote detailed plans for what he wanted to do now that he had succeeded Mahler. 17 He died in the asylum in 1903, his life never achieving the equilibrium of his best work.
    “T HE L AUGHING G ENIUS OF V IENNA”
     
    Brahms and Wolf, though rivals (at least in the latter’s eyes), were united in being serious composers. Harold Schonberg points out that in the nineteenth century three composers of “light” music have survived time and fashion “so triumphantly that they legitimately can be called immortals.” The waltzes and Viennese operettas of Johann Strauss II, the opéra bouffe of Jacques Offenbach, not to mention the operettas of Arthur Sullivan, remain with us, as charming, pert, and inventive as ever.
    The German form of light music, the waltz, originated in the 1770s from the Ländler , an Austro-German dance in three-quarter time. It took all Europe by storm, even though Vienna was always its “headquarters.” Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor who performed at the world premiere of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro , wrote in his memoirs (in 1826) that women “regularly waltzed from ten in the evening until seven in the morning,” and that special rooms were prepared near the dance floor “for heavily pregnant ladies to give birth should the need arise.” Schubert, Weber, Brahms, and Richard Strauss all wrote waltzes (there is even a waltz in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck ). But of course the waltz is forever associated with the name of Johann Strauss, father and son. 18
    Johann Strauss I was born in Vienna in 1804. By the age of fifteen he was a professional violinist, playing in a number of orchestras. In 1826, when he was still in his early twenties, he and one of his fellow violinists, a sensitive young man called Josef Lanner, formed their own dance group. 19 All went well until Strauss turned his hand to composing, when the two men fell out badly; Strauss stormed off to form his own orchestra, soon employing 200 musicians, servicing six balls a night. His compositions were also a success and he wrote one “hit” after another—the Donaulieder (op. 127), the “Radetzky-Marsch,” and so on.
    Despite the successes, Strauss did not want any of his six children to become a musician. Johann II, born in 1825, was therefore forced to take lessons in secret, at least until his father brought scandal on the family by moving out of the conjugal home to take up with another woman, with whom he had another four children. All Vienna was agog at the scandal but it was soon overtaken by another, namely that the elder Strauss saw his position threatened by his son, who began to outshine his father before he died in 1849. 20 Johann II was just nineteen when he decided to take on his father. He obtained a booking at Dommayer’s Garden Casino and Restaurant in Vienna and, on that first evening at least, he took care to end the concert with his father’s Lorelei-Rheinklänge . 21 But there were no secrets in gossipy Vienna, everyone knew about the divided nature of the Strauss household, and one Viennese newspaper summed up the situation with the headline “Good night, Lanner. Good evening, Father Strauss. Good morning, Son Strauss.”
    After Johann I died, Johann II merged his father’s orchestra with his own. At the height of his fame, he had six orchestras, dashing from one to the other, appearing for one or two waltzes at each venue. Eventually he gave up this exhausting routine to devote himself to composing, leaving his brother Eduard to take the baton. Now began his great series of compositions, which included “Perpetuum Mobile,” “Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald” (Tales from the Vienna Woods), “Kaiserwaltzer” (Emperor Waltz) and, not least, the “sound of the river”—“An der schönen blauen Donau” (On the Beautiful Blue Danube). 22 The orchestration and rhythms of these tunes have been much admired and mark them out “as much more than ‘mere’ dance music.” No less a figure than Brahms understood this, autographing