The Last Waltz

by John Suchet

  If the revolutionary mania of Austria has unsettled Germany, at least England has no reason to lament the political mischief …

  And it found itself beguiled by the Viennese Waltz King:

  Time has dealt kindly with him, for his broad, honest Teutonic face is still full of intelligence, and his fire and energy have not a jot abated.

  To some extent, though, the newspaper had allowed the dazzling exterior that Strauss wore like comfortable clothing to obscure the truth that lay beneath. Strauss remained depressed. Pained and tortured by the hostility shown towards him closer to home, he wrote anguished letters to close friends in Vienna. To Emilie he prophesied that this would be his last tour.

  Once again, the strain of a relentless schedule, coupled with the chill and damp of the English climate, had affected his health. A flotilla of small boats that accompanied him and his orchestra as it sailed out of the Thames Estuary might have lifted his spirits temporarily, but it was an exhausted, depressed, unwell Johann Strauss who arrived back on 14 July at the small apartment in Vienna where, now a divorced man, he lived openly with Emilie and their five children.

  Within days of his return, Strauss was back on the podium in front of his orchestra at Unger’s Casino.22 Legend has it that in the first piece, the overture to the new opera Maritana by William Vincent Wallace, Strauss’s bow snapped. The audience gasped at this ill omen. It is likely that the legend is an exaggeration. Maybe a string on his violin snapped. Maybe the ill omen came into being in the knowledge of what was to follow.

  There are no reports, as far as I can tell, of how the performance went, what other pieces were played, whether Strauss was visibly unwell. What is certain, though, is that this was Johann Strauss’s last concert.

  In the late summer of 1849 the victorious Field-Marshal Radetzky returned from Italy to a hero’s welcome from the old guard, who were once more in control after the failure of the street revolutions of the year before. A grand banquet in his honour was planned for 22 September in the Redoutensaal, the huge ceremonial hall of the Hofburg Palace, seat of the emperor.

  Johann Strauss was engaged for the event. He and his orchestra were to provide suitable musical entertainment for the distinguished guests. Strauss would, naturally, perform his famous ‘Radetzky March’, as well as a newly commissioned work in the Field-Marshal’s honour, the ‘Radetzky-Bankett-Marsch’ (‘Radetzky Banquet March’).

  But it was not to be. Strauss’s health had worsened, and a telltale rash spreading across his body was diagnosed as scarlet fever. For the rest of her life Strauss’s illegitimate daughter Clementina, eleven years old in the summer of 1849, blamed herself for passing on the scarlet fever that killed her father. But the fact that she survived, while her younger sister Maria did not, has led to suggestions that it might have been Strauss himself – given he was run down, depressed, generally unwell – who contracted the fever and passed it on to his children.

  Early on the morning of 27 September, Anna Strauss, who it appears knew nothing of her ex-husband’s illness, received news that he had died during the night. Her youngest son Eduard wrote many years later in strangely detached language that ‘the poor deceased lay on wooden slats which had been taken from the bed and laid on the floor’, and that Emilie had stripped the apartment in the Kumpfgasse of ‘whatever could not be riveted or nailed firmly down’. A lengthy inventory of personal effects found in the apartment suggests this was at best an exaggeration.

  Two days later members of Strauss’s orchestra bore his coffin from the Kumpfgasse first to St Stephen’s Cathedral for a funeral service, and from there to Döbling cemetery, where he was buried alongside his old friend and sometime foe, Joseph Lanner. A hundred thousand Viennese lined the funeral route.

  The news was greeted with dismay in London. The Illustrated London News carried a lengthy obituary, in which it stated, ‘Hosts of imitators have sprung up since Strauss, but to him will remain the glory of originality, fancy, feeling and invention.’

  In Paris, Strauss’s great admirer Hector Berlioz wrote his own tribute: ‘Vienna without Strauss is like Austria without the Danube.’

  Johann Strauss senior had led an extraordinary life. Born into comparative poverty in a tavern by the Danube, losing his father and mother tragically early, brought up by step-parents, he rose to be, in effect, an honorary member of the highest Viennese aristocracy. He had played before royalty and could number the likes of the Duke of Wellington, not to mention Queen Victoria, among his admirers.

  His music, it is not an exaggeration to say, had changed Vienna for ever. It captured an era and achieved a popularity, not just in his home city but across Europe, that no other composer could equal.

  But he had died, prematurely, at the age of forty-five. The way was now clear for his son, one month short of his twenty-fifth birthday, to take over where his father had left off. A young man spurred on by his father’s opposition and intransigence, and who would go on to eclipse him totally.

  Vienna now had just one Waltz King, one Johann Strauss.

  21 Metternich and his wife settled first in London and then Brighton. He was regularly visited by the Duke of Wellington and Benjamin Disraeli, both of whom he briefed on European affairs. He openly resented not being contacted for advice by his successors in Vienna, and is said never once to have admitted any faults in his long career.

  22 Some reports give the date as 15 July, the night after his return, though this seems unlikely.

  His reign as Vienna’s new Waltz King did not begin easily for Johann Strauss the Younger. The would-be revolution of 1848 had failed and his past was catching up with him. There was a new emperor on the throne and the ruling classes had once more taken control, with the backing of the military.

  Johann’s overt sympathies for the firebrands counted against him. Things might have calmed down in Vienna, but the Austrian army was now fully stretched trying to quell a rebellion in Hungary. The survival of the Habsburg Empire itself was at stake, and with a new emperor on the throne this was no time to harbour republican sympathies.

  To compound this, the elder Strauss’s death unleashed a torrent of personal attacks on Johann. When he announced that he intended to take over his father’s orchestra there was furious reaction, not least from the orchestral players themselves. What right did he, a young man of limited experience, have to assume the exalted position his father held? There was even a suggestion in some quarters that Johann’s ruthlessness in pursuing his own career had hastened his father’s premature death.

  Johann was stung by the criticism and the force with which it had erupted, to such an extent that just eight days after his father’s death he wrote what amounted to an extensive and heartfelt apologia in the mass-market Wiener Zeitung, appealing for sympathy and understanding of his circumstances: those of a young man struggling to make a career for himself against intractable opposition from an exalted musician who had broken up his family, yet to whom as a son he still felt deep love and loyalty:

  Any son is to be pitied who weeps at the grave of his prematurely departed father; even more to be pitied, however, is one whose fate is determined by hostile elements of shattered family circumstances, who … has to listen to judgement on himself and on those who have remained faithful to him from the strongly condemnatory mouths of his opponents, while he has no other weapon at his disposal other than to point to a deserted mother, and brothers and sisters who are not yet of age … It was not a case, as hostile opponents have suggested, of entering into a prize fight with the far superior powers of the most skilful master of the craft, who was, at the same time, always my beloved father … I chose the art for which I felt a vocation … I only wish to earn the smallest part of the favour which my deserving father so richly reaped! … and thus, at the same time, to fulfil my duty to my mother and my brothers and sisters.

  “I chose the art for which I felt a vocation … I only wish to earn the smallest part of the favour which my deserving father so richly reape
d!”

  Johann Strauss II

  It was a remarkable outpouring of emotion to lay before the wider newspaper-reading public. In fact, given Johann’s character, it seems improbable that he would have gone into print in such a manner without a certain amount of advice from a quarter he respected.

  That quarter is likely to have been the now ageing Franz Amon, the man who had secretly taught Johann the violin all those years ago and who still led the Johann Strauss Orchestra. As well as advising Johann to lay his emotions bare in public, he also reasoned with fellow members of the orchestra. What if they employed a new musical director and could no longer call themselves the Strauss Orchestra? Why throw a name away that was famous throughout Europe, when a younger member of the same family was exhibiting a talent and showmanship that might one day be as great as that of his father? What if the orchestra was to disband, and they were to find themselves without regular employment?

  A combination of Johann’s humility and Amon’s diplomacy seems to have done the trick. We can surely discount the story that members of the orchestra presented Strauss’s baton on a cushion to his son. What is fact, though, is that the ‘Orchestra of the late Strauss’ elected Johann its leader, and on 7 October 1849, in the Kolonadensaal of the Volksgarten, Johann stood for the first time at the head of his father’s orchestra. If any doubters still needed to be won over, that was achieved by Johann’s decision to devote the concert entirely to works by his father.

  Yet Johann Strauss II’s rehabilitation was not entirely complete. Resentment of his revolutionary sympathies still existed at the very highest level. His father’s death had left vacant the prestigious post of Music Director of Imperial Court Balls. Johann put himself forward, but was rejected. It went instead, on the recommendation of the emperor’s parents no less, to one Philipp Fahrbach.

  Johann, ever one to trim his sails according to prevailing winds, composed a patriotic march designed to praise the emperor himself, ‘Kaiser Franz Josef’. Several other compositions were similarly designed to flatter. Yet it was to be a further eleven years before he was finally elevated to the position his father had held.

  This did not prevent Johann performing in the very highest circles. When Emperor Franz Josef met the Russian tsar, Nikolai the First, during an autumn festival in Warsaw, it was Johann and the Strauss Orchestra who provided musical entertainment. And though he did not yet officially hold the title, Johann was invited to conduct at a charity ball in the Redoutensaal of the Hofburg Palace during the Carnival of 1851 – a sign of the gradual softening of official policy towards him.

  In these early years after his father’s death, Johann found himself again and again compared to his famous father, and often unfavourably. It is true that as yet, musically speaking, his compositions did not rank with those of the elder Strauss, though that was soon to change. But for flamboyance and flair, and sheer magnetism on the podium, swaying with his violin under his chin, he was every bit the equal of his father. His younger years, sparkling eyes, thick black hair, soon made him the undisputed darling of Vienna.

  In another way too, he was his father’s son. He seemed to have an endless capacity for sheer hard work. He was churning out compositions at an extraordinary rate. By the time of the 1851 Carnival he had the best part of a hundred compositions to his name, and he was not yet twenty-six years of age.

  In constant demand, Johann was called on to organise engagements, compose new pieces, arrange others, rehearse the orchestra, and frequently conduct at several different venues on the same day. It was his father all over again, and the effect it had on him was very similar.

  Despite his youth, his energy was not limitless. He soon paid the price. At the end of February 1851, four months after his twenty-fifth birthday, he suffered a collapse. He was reported in early March to be ‘dangerously ill’ from typhoid and ‘nervous fever’. Amid a frenzy of speculation, one newspaper even reported the rumour that he had died.

  In a further echo of his father, instead of convalescing he embarked on a concert trip to Germany, composing new pieces to take with him. This was soon followed by another concert tour through Prague, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden.

  Not surprisingly his health gave way again. This time it was more serious. He was unable to perform during the busy Christmas period of 1852. Several times, no doubt on his insistence, it was announced he was well enough to return to the podium, but each time it was postponed.

  He did not return until six weeks later, and when he did it was characteristically with a vengeance. Two concerts back to back in different venues, with new compositions to premiere at each. When, on 18 February 1853, Emperor Franz Josef, strolling with a fellow officer on the Bastei, survived an assassination attempt – the sturdy high collar of his military uniform withstanding the knife of a Hungarian nationalist – Johann saw it as an opportunity to curry favour with the court, and composed his ‘Kaiser Franz Josef I Rettungs-Jubel-Marsch’ (‘March of Rejoicing at the Deliverance of Emperor Franz Josef I’).23

  In the post-Metternich era, under a new emperor, Vienna was celebrating a new freedom. New dance halls were opening across the city, ever more grand and attracting more and more revellers. Johann and his orchestra were in demand everywhere. The rivalry with his father, the resentment towards him, were things of the past. Still from his father he retained one essential quality: the inability to say no.

  Returning from a concert in the early hours of the morning, at the end of a day that had begun before dawn, Johann Strauss lost consciousness. This was followed by a nervous breakdown. At the age of twenty-seven he was very seriously ill.

  This time there was no premature return to the podium. Johann’s doctors ordered a prolonged stay at a sanatorium in Bad Gastein in the mountains south of Salzburg, followed by a further period of convalescence in Bad Neuhaus bei Cilli in southeast Austria.24

  Crisis enveloped the Strauss family, the Strauss musical enterprise, in the Hirschenhaus. Step forward the matriarch of the family, Anna.

  You can surely forgive Anna if she felt a certain amount of satisfaction, smugness even, in the way her family had turned out. She had been abandoned by her husband, her distress compounded by humiliation at her husband’s open acknowledgement of a second family, her finances always difficult, the overt opposition of her husband to their eldest son’s musical ambitions, the sheer emotional pain and the practical difficulty of having an estranged, difficult, uncooperative husband living in the same house.

  What had she achieved in the face of all that? She had raised three sons and two daughters single-handed. One was proving himself to be a master musician, at least as good as his father and possibly better. And who could claim credit for that? Who was it who ignored the father’s opposition and arranged for secret violin lessons for the boy?

  The second son, Josef, had qualified as a mechanical engineer, achieving first-class grades in technical drawing and mathematics, and was now making headway in his chosen profession of architecture. Eduard, the youngest, was showing an aptitude for music, becoming a skilled harpist. Both daughters were attractive, lively, bright young women, and she had every reason to hope they would settle into good marriages.

  The tribulations she had suffered had instilled in Anna a driving ambition for her brood. Her eldest son Johann was undoubtedly the family breadwinner. It was the Johann Strauss Orchestra that not only supported the whole family but allowed them to remain in the large, comfortable Hirschenhaus and live a lifestyle worthy of the city’s most famous musical dynasty.

  Now, for the first time since her husband’s untimely – but probably not too unwelcome – death, the family enterprise was under threat. The new head of the household, the man on whom their continued existence depended, had succumbed to a debilitating illness, which had put him out of action.

  Something needed to be done, and quickly. Anna knew what was called for. She discussed it with Johann, and he was in full agreement. It is possible he had already reached the s
ame conclusion himself. The family business of music could not be allowed to falter. It needed someone new at its head, someone familiar with its ways, someone who could be relied on and trusted. It did not need at this stage to be permanent, but it would serve until Johann was fully recovered and could resume his duties.

  The choice of person was obvious. Who knew Johann and his ways better than anyone? Who understood the tensions and difficulties that existed in the Hirschenhaus more intimately than any other? Who would have the interests of the family closest to his heart?

  Josef Strauss the nascent architect. A Strauss himself. Anna and Johann laid out the situation before him. The future of the family, the future of the Johann Strauss Orchestra, lay in his hands. He needed to step forward and ensure the family’s wellbeing.

  The only problem was that Josef had never shown any interest in music. He was an engineer and would-be architect, not a musician. The family’s musical business would have to get along without him.

  He said no.

  23 The piece is typically upbeat, with the German national anthem sitting unsubtly at its heart. There is no record of whether the emperor appreciated the gesture.

  24 Today Slovenia.

  Josef was used to his own wishes being discounted by the family. Just as Strauss senior had tried to prevent his eldest son from pursuing a career in music, so he had early plans for Josef to enter the military. Josef reacted furiously, at the age of twenty-one banging off an angry letter to his father:

  Leave me where I am; leave me what I am; don’t snatch me away from a life that can bring me so many joys … Do not cast me into that rough, inconsistent world which destroys all feeling for humanity, a world for which I am not fitted, to which I was not born … I do not want to learn to kill people … I want to serve mankind as a human being …