The Last Waltz

by John Suchet

  Clearly Anna knew Amon well enough to know that he would not divulge the plan to her husband. She was right. Amon agreed to teach the young Johann, and to keep it secret from his employer. Discretion was obviously paramount but an indication of just how little interest Strauss took in his children is evidenced by the fact that Johann left the Polytechnic Institute within a year to take lessons from Amon and devote himself full time to music, and his father had no idea.

  It was a fairly remarkable act of faith on the part of Franz Amon. He was presumably risking his job in teaching a teenager who seemed to have a precocious musical talent, but can hardly have yet shown signs of the compositional genius he would later display. It is possible Amon had some grudge against Strauss senior, or even that he disapproved of Strauss’s treatment of his family.

  Whatever lay behind it, Amon not only began giving Johann secret lessons, he also tutored him in exactly the skills of his father – not simply to play the violin, but to stand up and sway in time to the music, in effect to lead from the violin. He also taught him to perform the three-four rhythm of the waltz, to create a yearning and languid phrase, to slow down towards the middle, to give just a moment’s hiatus at the high point of the melody before continuing – all details that would later instantly identify a piece as being by Johann Strauss the Younger.

  Amon was, of course, able to do this only because of Johann’s innate and extraordinary musical talent, which the older man quickly recognised. He soon realised, too, that there would come a point when he no longer had anything to teach Johann, particularly in the field of composition, and so after a while he passed Johann on first to an organist who was an experienced composer, and then to a professional violin teacher who played at the Vienna Court Opera.

  Johann Strauss II was becoming a seriously good violinist, with a natural talent for composition, and in a city such as Vienna this could not stay secret for long. Sooner or later word was bound to reach his father, and reach him it did. Johann recalled later in life that one fine day he was playing the violin in front of a mirror in his room, swaying as he played, ascertaining which particular bodily movements were more elegant than others, when the door opened and his father walked in.

  ‘What?’ Johann recalled his father shouting. ‘You play the violin?’ Johann said his father had heard on the musical grapevine that he had ambitions to become a professional musician, but regarded it as a ridiculous idea since he had no idea in the first place that his son even played the violin. According to the son there was ‘a violent and unpleasant scene’. He apparently tried to reason with his father, to interest him in his aims, but his father ‘wanted to know nothing of my plans’.

  One can imagine the hurt this must have caused the teenage boy. Every boy hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps wants to make him proud, and the total rejection must have seriously wounded him. It is true that Johann was recalling the incident many years after it happened, but the actions that Strauss would go on to take suggest that Johann was not exaggerating. In fact it is hard to believe that a father could be as callous, uncaring and vindictive as Strauss was about to show himself to be.

  Strauss senior spared barely a thought for his precociously talented eldest son. He had no need to. He had never been as busy or as popular. In the first half of the new decade he made guest appearances with his orchestra in Austria, Hungary, Austrian Silesia, Saxony, Prussia and Germany, as well as fulfilling numerous engagements in Vienna.

  In 1843 his former friend and rival Joseph Lanner, the only other musician who had ever come anywhere close to challenging him, died of typhus infection two days after his forty-second birthday. Johann Strauss now stood alone as composer and orchestra leader, the undisputed master of his genre in the city of music. To cement this unrivalled reputation, he was about to earn the title ‘Waltz King’ with the most masterly waltz he had composed to date, the ‘Lorelei-Rhein-Klänge’ (‘Echoes of the Rhine Lorelei’). The opening phrase, crowned with a fortissimo chord, then repeated, immediately secured the audience’s attention, before the waltz launched into a melody so beguiling it was soon being whistled and hummed on the streets of Vienna.

  Vienna had its Waltz King. It was Johann Strauss the Elder. Nothing and no one could displace him.

  “From the moment he put together an orchestra, Strauss the Younger left no one in any doubt as to who was in charge.”

  No one except his namesake: his eldest son. Johann II was about to launch a challenge, one that could, potentially, hardly be more devastating or humiliating. But a challenge was all it was. Strauss had nothing to fear. His son had a modicum of talent, nothing more. He most certainly did not have either the talent or the resources to see his challenge become reality.

  And what was this challenge? Strauss could hardly believe it when he heard about it. On 3 August 1844, a year and two months short of his twentieth birthday, Johann Strauss the Younger, armed with excellent testimonials from his two highly respected teachers, approached the Viennese authorities with an extraordinary request:

  I intend to play with an orchestra of twelve to fifteen players in restaurants, specifically at Dommayer’s in Hietzing, whose manager has already assured me that I can hold musical entertainments there as soon as my orchestra is in order. I have not yet determined the remaining venues, but I believe I will be able to secure sufficient engagements and income …

  Johann was being nothing if not bold. As yet he had no orchestra worthy of the name. He did the rounds of taverns where itinerant musicians played, particularly the Zur Stadt Belgrad (‘At the City of Belgrade’), which was well known for its musical entertainment. He hired musicians, trained them, dismissed some, kept others, engaged more.

  On 5 September Johann junior was probably as surprised as anyone when the municipal council granted his request. He now showed himself to be his father’s son. A month later, calling himself ‘Herr Kapellmeister Johann Strauss’,19 he drew up a carefully worded one-year contract with twenty-four musicians, detailing the rights and obligations of the parties under eight separate sections, including rules on punctuality and discipline at rehearsals and performances, as well as details of how issues such as illness, prohibition of substitutes, settlement of disputes, even the careful handling of musical instruments, should be dealt with.

  From the very moment he put together an orchestra, Johann Strauss the Younger left no one in any doubt as to who was in charge. It was his orchestra, not just in substance, but in name too, and woe betide any musician who thought otherwise.

  There were now two Johann Strauss orchestras in Vienna. One was thoroughly professional, with many tours behind it, garlanded wherever it went. The other was a motley bunch of ill-trained musicians with little or no experience, who had never played together before, certainly not in an orchestra of this size, with no understanding of the discipline and cooperation it would require.

  Furthermore, while Strauss senior could command the most prestigious dance halls in Vienna, it appeared his son had secured a tavern in the suburb of Hietzing, opposite the Schönbrunn park, with the unsophisticated name of Dommayer’s Casino. It was practically out of town. No one who really mattered would bother to make the journey. The audience would be regulars enjoying a drink and a chat.

  Johann Strauss senior was confident he had nothing to fear from his precocious and overly ambitious son. Just as well, because his attention was diverted in another direction. Anna Strauss, fed up with her husband’s misbehaviour and emboldened by her son’s extraordinary courage and willpower, sued for divorce.

  19 Not easily translatable. The closest might be ‘Concert Master and Conductor’, or ‘Music Director’. At any rate, the most senior musician.

  There was a lot of ill will, venom even, flying around over Johann the Younger’s proposed debut concert, and it was entirely in one direction – from father to son. Legends have abounded from that day to this of the measures Strauss took to prevent his son’s concert from even taking place.

 
It was said he sent a loyal colleague around all the main dance halls to tell the manager that if Johann was allowed to stage his concert there, he – the famous Strauss – would never perform there again. It is more than likely something of the sort took place since, although Dommayer’s was hardly a prime venue, Strauss, who had played there many times in the past, was never to do so again.

  Tickets for the concert were selling extremely well, despite the relative difficulty of getting to the venue. Strauss senior, stunned by this news, came to the conclusion his son was achieving this by sheer fraud. The posters advertising the concert had the name JOHANN STRAUSS in large capital letters in bold print, with the word Sohn [‘Son’] in small letters, not bold, in brackets underneath. Strauss and his supporters accused Johann of deliberately trying to pass himself off as his father, to ensure a good audience.

  Unable to prevent the concert from taking place despite his claims, Strauss senior announced that he would give a concert on the same evening. In the end this did not materialise, possibly because ticket sales had gone so well that he feared his own concert might be less well attended than his son’s.

  The most persistent legend is that Strauss, with the help of that same loyal colleague, organised a ‘claque’, a group of supporters to attend the younger Johann’s concert and disrupt it. This seems an unnaturally harsh course of action for a father to take against his son. But should there be any doubt about the sheer antagonism Strauss felt towards Johann, he summed it up himself in a comment he made to his publisher on the Sunday before the concert: ‘I hope I don’t live to see Tuesday.’

  Despite the worst Strauss could do, interest in Johann’s concert was not just intense; it had reached something approaching fever pitch. The journal Der Wanderer reported that getting a seat for Johann’s debut was as difficult as getting a seat in the House of Lords in the British Parliament.

  “Johann himself confessed later to feeling sick with fright as he waited to go out onto the stage.”

  Why might this be? Well, Johann was due to turn nineteen years of age ten days before his debut concert. He had been taking violin lessons for around four years, first from Strauss’s own first violinist and later from a senior violinist at the Vienna Court Opera. He had also been receiving instruction in harmony and counterpoint from a music professor who ran his own private music school, and then with a certain Joseph Drechsler, organist and choirmaster at the Am Hof church, shortly to be appointed kapellmeister at St Stephen’s Cathedral, composer of around thirty-five operas and musical comedies, and one of the most respected musicians in Vienna.

  In other words, Johann’s musical talent was not exactly unknown in Vienna’s musical circles. More than that, word was spreading fast, accompanied no doubt by a raft of superlatives. The fact that he shared the name and bloodline of Vienna’s most famous orchestral leader was causing excitement among the city’s cognoscenti long before the announcement of his inaugural concert.

  Those facts alone would surely have been sufficient to guarantee a respectably sized audience at Dommayer’s. But underlying this commendable musical inquisitiveness was an understandable, if slightly dubious, desire to pay Strauss back for his appalling behaviour towards his legitimate family. Everyone with even the smallest interest in musical matters was aware of his attempts to stop his eldest son pursuing his talent for music, of how Johann had formed an orchestra despite his father’s opposition, and secured permission from the authorities to hold the concert. They will have known, too, of the efforts Strauss had gone to in the hope of ensuring the concert failed.

  Knowledge of his unconventional domestic life was widespread – of his many illegitimate children, his wife’s humiliation. A woman suing for divorce was almost unheard of at that time, but Anna did not need to fear that her decision would rebound against her. There was universal sympathy for her situation and the divorce was granted with no complications.

  Whatever the motive – and for many it might have been no more than the chance to enjoy an evening of music in the gardens around Dommayer’s on a lovely autumn evening – there was a steady stream of concertgoers leaving the centre of the city, passing through the gates of the massive city wall, the Bastei, across the green spaces of the Glacis, and out towards the suburb of Hietzing. Some reports said people left the city in their thousands, though hundreds seems more likely.

  Such was the crush inside Dommayer’s that attempts by waiters to serve food and drink were quickly abandoned, a fact resented by several music critics, threatening to darken their mood before a note had been played.

  Johann himself confessed later to feeling sick with fright as he waited to go out onto the stage. He was convinced of failure, fearful even that he might be laughed off stage. He had no idea how many of his father’s supporters were in the audience, or how vocal they might be.

  He knew he already had one fact militating against success. His orchestra consisted of a mere fifteen musicians, nothing like the size of his father’s orchestra. He had rehearsed them as well as he could, but how much could be done in a matter of weeks? With personnel changes and other administrative problems, serious rehearsal had probably not taken place for more than a matter of days.

  But he knew the biggest hurdle lay with his own compositions. He had put together a programme of music by established composers – Meyerbeer, Auber, von Suppé – as well as pieces of his own.20 It was these pieces he would be judged by. Orchestral players come and go. If the orchestra was not up to scratch, he would sooner or later be able to improve it. Critics were aware of that. What the critics wanted to know, above all, was how good a composer Johann himself was, even at this early age. A good showing, and they could presume he would follow in his father’s footsteps. If his compositions were not up to the mark, well, there was time for improvement, but he would probably be unlikely to progress beyond being a band leader. Good composers started young.

  There might well have been a small gasp of recognition as Johann walked self-consciously out onto the stage. The same hair, jet black and curly, as his famous father, dark gleaming eyes, and a similar swagger of self-confidence, even if it masked an inner nervousness. The clothes, too, no less flamboyant than his father’s – blue tailcoat with silver buttons, embroidered silk waistcoat, grey trousers looped under buckled shoes – even if they were, as rumour had it, borrowed for the night.

  The similarity went much further, as one reviewer remarked in print the following day. Not just a similar facial expression, but the way he held and played his violin, the bow grasped with the tips of the fingers, graceful gestures of the lower part of the arm, swift energetic bowing. And, in the most noticeable influence of his father, a sudden turning to the audience, spraying sparks from his violin ‘as if from a galvanic battery’. This was the son, proving as adept and mesmerising a performer as his father. So far.

  A polite, respectful reception for works by other composers. But Johann braced himself for what he knew was the most important moment of his nascent musical career. He had scheduled a waltz of his own. Originally entitled ‘Das Mutterherz’ (‘The Heart of a Mother’) in tribute to the one person who had made it possible for him to pursue his dream, the sensible and down-to-earth Anna had persuaded him to alter it. He chose ‘Die Gunstwerber’ (‘Seekers of Favour’).

  Johann raised the violin and settled it comfortably under his chin. The whole top part of his body bent into the opening triplet of chords, played fortissimo. The audience could not but pay attention. The chords repeated, leading into a gentle lyrical passage which itself led into as beguiling a waltz as this audience had heard, instantly as charming as anything his father had written. Turning at the crescendo to face the audience, forcing them to sway with him, he looked back to the orchestra, before turning again and playing a beautiful, melodious solo passage on the violin, gazing out at the audience and smiling as he did so.

  They were mesmerised. Another waltz theme, before returning to the first that had followed the opening chords, this tim
e met with a smile of recognition by the audience. Solo violin again, played as if for each individual member of the audience, leading to a final quickened flourish calculated to bring on applause.

  Which it most certainly did. Applause and more applause. An encore, and another, and another. Johann had to repeat ‘Die Gunstwerber’ no fewer than four times. After that he could do no wrong. More pieces by established composers, then another waltz of his own, ‘Die Sinngedichte’ (‘Poems of the Senses’). Contemporary reports said this piece had to be repeated nineteen times. Whether an exaggeration or not, the message was clear. Johann junior had triumphed.

  But the single most moving moment of the whole evening came quite unexpectedly, catching the audience unaware. It was a calculated gesture on Johann’s part, which he had rehearsed with his orchestra. It needed no introduction. There must have been a collective gasp of recognition as the orchestra played the opening bars of Strauss senior’s latest and most popular work, ‘Lorelei-Rhein-Klänge’.

  The import was not lost on the audience. This was son paying tribute to father, a younger man acknowledging the musical debt he owed to his father. Johann had not simply triumphed, he had done so without rancour, and he had done so on his own terms. The piece had to be repeated three times.

  “Johann had not simply triumphed, he had done so without rancour, and he had done so on his own terms.”

  For those who could not be at Dommayer’s that evening, the music critics of Vienna left them in no doubt as to what they had missed, and they were unanimous in their praise.

  Ernst Decsey, music historian and music critic of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, said of Johann’s ‘Die Gunstwerber’ that it was ‘as if singing had broken out from all three storeys of the house’, and that it contained ‘the same modest piano, the same reverberating forte, as the father … Basses rumble, intermediate parts woo, and the main violin theme vibrates across to the ladies.’ Strauss senior had never received a more laudatory accolade for one of his compositions.