The Last Waltz
Page 13
It appears Strauss knew what was going on and did his best to win his wife back. On 28 July he wrote an imploring letter to her while she was in Franzensbad – whether with Steiner we do not know. The tone is not that of a world-famous musician at the height of his career and creative powers, more that of a lovelorn cuckold: ‘Let yourself be well and truly kissed, dear Lili, but do not run away from me! Please stay!’
The language suggests he was even prepared to allow the affair to continue, as long as Lili stayed with him. She did not. She moved first into the Theater an der Wien with Steiner, achieving her ambition of helping him to run the theatre, then followed him to Berlin, where she leaves our story.56
Despite that letter, it transpires that Strauss himself might not only have been aware of his wife’s infidelity but – as in his first marriage – might not have been entirely faithful himself.
In early November 1882, just four months after imploring Lili to stay with him, Strauss left Berlin, where he had been conducting Der lustige Krieg, for Pest to conduct the same operetta there. He did not travel alone. Accompanying him was a widow aged twenty-six – thirty-one years his junior – by the name of Adèle Strauss.
51 See chapter 12, page 125.
52 I believe that in this painting Lehnbach gives us a more insightful portrait of Strauss than any photograph.
53 Today the Johann-Strauss-Gasse.
54 As always Strauss knew better than to waste a good tune. He reused several pieces from Blinde Kuh, most successfully the waltz ‘Kennst du mich?’, which was played by salon orchestras for decades afterwards.
55 Strauss once again used the best material from it, fashioning it into one of his most popular waltzes, ‘Rosen aus dem Süden’ (‘Roses from the South’).
56 In Berlin Lili and Steiner separated, and she ran her own photographic studio, ‘Atelier Lili’. She later returned to Austria (though not Vienna), where she opened another studio. During the First World War she fostered two daughters abandoned by their mother and whose father had been sent to the Front. Lili often said she wished she had not left Strauss. Her foster daughters were fond of her, erecting a gravestone on her death in 1919, which read, ‘Your goodness is not forgotten.’
Johann Strauss had known Adèle for the best part of eight years, for the simple reason that after she married one Anton Strauss (no relation to the musical Strausses, the name was a complete coincidence) she moved into the rooms he occupied in the Hirschenhaus, the same capacious house into which Johann Strauss the elder had moved his growing family many decades before. The Strauss family had long since moved out, but Anton’s father had acted as financial adviser to them, and it is likely there will have been meetings, or at least social gatherings, at the Hirschenhaus.
What is certain is that Johann Strauss and Adèle knew each other, and Adèle had frequently let Johann know she admired both him and his music. It was therefore natural, when Anton died suddenly after less than three years of marriage, leaving Adèle with a two-year-old daughter, that she would turn to Johann Strauss for comfort and advice.
A mutual attraction developed, and swiftly turned into something more. Johann declared his love for Adèle, deciding he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, and she was eager to reciprocate.
It is worth pausing for a moment to look at how unlikely a match this was. Johann Strauss, now aged fifty-seven, married twice before, no children, world-famous composer and orchestral leader, and Adèle, aged twenty-six, widowed with a small child.
A cynic might say they each had plenty to gain, with an obvious affection for each other but no question of love. After all, they could be father and daughter. It is true there was mutual benefit. For Johann there was once again companionship, with the hope that – if the gods were smiling – Adèle might be able to organise his diary, keep house so he could devote himself to his music, generally look after him.
“My dear Adèle! I shall change the tempo from maestoso to allegro so I can hurry back to you all the sooner.”
Johann Strauss
For Adèle, well, it would have been hard to resist Johann’s gesture of love – an irrevocable annuity for life of 4000 gulden (roughly equivalent to £11,000 today). Also she must have known that a widow with a small child would be unlikely to attract an admiring young suitor. In these circumstances, when a comfortable and secure life beckoned, the enormous age difference was nothing more than a minor issue for her.
All true, but let us wind fast forward many years and see what actually happened. In the first place Johann and Adèle stayed together until Johann died seventeen years later in her arms. In the interim she more than filled the void left by Jetty, providing him with perfect conditions in which to work. In fact progress on Eine Nacht in Venedig, which had stalled due to domestic tensions with Lili, resumed and Strauss swiftly brought it to completion. The autograph score shows that Adèle herself copied out parts of the song texts. She was the perfect successor to Jetty, and more.
Johann’s transformation, once Adèle moved into the house on the Igelgasse, was noticed by everyone. Friends commented that he had shed years, with the energy of a man half his age. It was now he began to dye his hair and moustache black, augmenting the youthful look. It was even rumoured he took to riding his horses at Schönau, which toned him up physically.
If anyone doubted Johann was in love, we have written proof. Almost daily he wrote her little love notes. On one occasion before going to the theatre to conduct, he left her a note saying, ‘My dear Adèle! I shall change the tempo from maestoso to allegro so I can hurry back to you all the sooner and kiss you a few minutes earlier. Your Jean.’ On another occasion: ‘You are the queen of my happiness, of my life!’ And again, when he was away in Berlin: ‘Cherchez la femme. Sleep well, you black-eyed Adèle, the only woman on earth.’ In what is quite possibly a rare acknowledgement of his age, one note read, ‘Let us be merry, Adèle, on ne vit qu’une fois.’
If any doubters still needed persuading that Adèle was the perfect soulmate for Johann, it was provided in the unlikeliest of places, the pages of the normally scathing and satirical publication, Der Floh (‘The Flea’), which waxed positively lyrical:
Maestro Johann Strauss … needs a comfortable, gracious home, if he is to create with a joyful heart, if the refreshing spring of his lovely melodies is to flow unrestricted. Frau Adèle Strauss will offer him such a home. She will have a beneficial effect upon his nervous artistic temperament, and will be happy if she can give again to the honoured and beloved composer the peace of mind and happiness necessary for his creativity.
This paean is all the remarkable, even prescient, for the fact that it was published on 25 March 1883. Given that Johann’s divorce from Lili was granted on 9 December 1882, before which it would have been unthinkable for Adèle to move in with him, it must have been written at the most three months after the relationship became public. The effect of having Adèle living with him really did transform Johann Strauss.
But there was a problem, a huge problem. Johann and Adèle could not marry, as long as Lili lived. The divorce might have been granted by the civil authorities, but it was not accepted by the Roman Catholic Church in Austria to which Johann belonged. In fact Johann applied for papal consent to the divorce immediately after it was granted, but the Vatican refused.
There was another obstacle too. Adèle was Jewish. Under Austrian law, a Roman Catholic was forbidden to marry a Jew.57
In each case there was a solution, but it was drastic. Adèle did not hesitate: she gave up her Jewish faith and converted to Protestantism. As for Johann, well, then as now, there is no religious law that cannot be bent with a little incentive mixed with a dose of hypocrisy.
Twenty years previously Johann had dedicated a polka ‘Neues Leben’ (‘New Life’) to a member of the German aristocracy, Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg, himself an excellent musician and amateur composer, perhaps better remembered as the elder brother of Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert.
On 24 June 1886 his new citizenship was confirmed, and two weeks later he officially left the Roman Catholic Church and became a Lutheran Protestant. In July the following year Duke Ernst used the powers invested in him to dissolve Strauss’s marriage to Lili, and five weeks after that Johann and Adèle were married at the Coburg Register Office, with a religious service later that day in the ducal church.
The whole procedure had taken an inconveniently long time to come to fruition – almost two years from the time Johann first applied to relinquish his Austrian citizenship to the day he married Adèle – but come to fruition it had.
Johann Strauss was now married for the third time. And Johann Strauss, born in Vienna, whose music distilled the very essence of Vienna and the Viennese into musical notes, whose compositions were named for the Vienna woods, the Blue Danube, Viennese blood, even the city of Vienna itself, was now a German citizen!
Johann Strauss had once again found happiness at home, but there was another area of his family life where relations were less pleasant, and this concerned his younger brother Eduard.
‘Der schöne Edi’ had not had an easy time of it. Rather like brother Josef he had not initially wanted a musical career, preferring to study for the diplomatic service. But again, as with Josef, his mother stepped in, decreeing that it was essential Eduard study music and enter the family firm. As I have already stated, she must have been overjoyed to find he did indeed possess musical talent. Once she knew that, there was no choice for Eduard but to join his brothers. He studied musical theory, as well as piano and violin. But here Johann intervened and pointed out that while there was no shortage of pianists and violinists, what was really needed was a harpist – they were much thinner on the ground. Johann, as well as being an established musician, was ten years older than Eduard, who therefore looked up to his brother in every respect.
Eduard studied the harp, but again like both his brothers he was soon composing as well as playing. In what can only be described as a quite extraordinary, I am sure unique, occurrence in any field of the arts, Eduard composed literally hundreds of pieces in his lifetime, as did Johann, Josef and indeed their father. Combine their compositions – and I am referring to works with opus numbers, in other words published music, as opposed to sketches – and it runs into thousands. Not even the Bach family can rival that.
If Johann was king of the waltz, and Josef a waltz master too, Eduard specialised in the quick polka. Of all his compositions, it is polkas such as ‘Bahn frei!’ (‘Clear the track!’), ‘Mit Dampf’ (‘Steam up’), ‘Ausser Rand und Band’ (‘Out of control’), ‘Ohne Bremse’ (‘Brakes off’), which have remained in the repertoire – the novelty and excitement of rail travel clearly exercising a great influence on him.
“Eduard would one day take revenge on his two brothers, after their deaths, in a devastating way.”
Eduard, as we have seen, was soon playing harp in his brother’s orchestra, but it was as a conductor that Eduard Strauss truly made his name. Of his debut as conductor in 1862, at the age of twenty-seven, the Viennese periodical Der Zwischenakt commented:
Herr Strauss was enthusiastically greeted, and presented with rare feeling and accuracy all the waltzes composed by his brother Johann during this season. His conducting showed that in him we have a conductor of the same calibre. Long live the Strauss trinity!
One can imagine the mixed emotions this must have caused in Eduard. On the one hand praise for his conducting abilities, but always in the shadow of his eldest brother.
By all accounts Eduard was something of a tyrant on the podium. He would accept nothing but the very best from his musicians, and he was not afraid to show who was in charge. When, in the spring of 1878, forty-one members of the orchestra refused to undertake a six-month tour of Germany and Sweden, Eduard unhesitatingly dismissed them.
He had a harsh tongue too. On receiving what he called a ‘perfectly impudent’ letter from the orchestra’s principal cellist asking for a pay rise, he unleashed a four-page torrent of abuse, blatantly impugning the unfortunate cellist’s musical talents: ‘… you dare to ask me for a salary increase? Must I remind you that there are twenty-three cello pieces here that you are unable to play?’
And one can imagine the tones in which he was accustomed to address his players, judging by a comment he made about the wind section in a letter to a friend: ‘This instrument [the ‘Flutophone’] is supposed to replace two flutes … Oh my dear honoured friend! Would that you could find an instrument that would replace all wind players …’
You have to conclude that Eduard Strauss, excellent conductor though he might have been, was not well liked by his musicians, and was certainly nowhere near as loved as his eldest brother.
What made matters worse for the players was that it was Eduard, not either of his brothers, who most often conducted them. Johann was averse to touring. When he did so, it was under protest. Josef had always resented standing in for his eldest brother and, following his untimely death, touring duties fell to the youngest, Eduard, who was equally resentful.
You can see why. Such was the universal popularity of the Johann Strauss Orchestra, it was in demand literally across the world. Eduard himself estimated later in life that in twenty-three years of touring with the Strauss Orchestra he visited 840 towns in two continents and gave concerts at 14 Exhibitions.
And therein lay the problem for Eduard. It was the Strauss Orchestra, and that meant only one thing for audiences. Even before Josef’s death, although it was acknowledged in Vienna that there were three Strauss brothers, it was always a case of Johann – the eldest – and the other two. After Josef’s death, Johann’s pre-eminence was all the more assured.
Eduard had one eye on posterity, and there was only one way to ensure that as a musician: as composer not conductor. Here Johann’s name was assured in perpetuity, such was the brilliance of his compositions, and Eduard was a good enough musician to know that as composer he simply was not in his elder brother’s class.
We know of at least 300 published pieces by Eduard, but it would appear there could have been many more. Difficult though it might be to believe for a Strauss, Eduard was not always able to get his work published. Johann remarked in 1892: ‘[Edi’s] compositions are not bad – but nobody wants to buy them.’
As a conductor, though, he was feted wherever he took the orchestra, nowhere more so and at a higher social level than in Britain. He played before Queen Victoria at both Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, as his father had done before him.
The queen, exhibiting either a formidable memory or an efficient briefing by her advisers, said to Eduard, ‘You remind me very much of your father. It seems like only yesterday that he played at my Coronation Ball.’ In fact it was fifty-six years earlier.
After a concert at Windsor Castle the queen presented him with a silver writing set, in the hope that he would use the pen in writing his next composition. In mentioning composition rather than conducting she will have pushed completely the right button. She certainly knew how to flatter him!
Eduard was himself equally adept at flattery. In his letter of thanks he described the evening at Windsor Castle as ‘one of the most beautiful and memorable of my artistic career’, adding, ‘I and my family will always remember Her Majesty and the Royal Family with undying veneration.’
Johann was well aware that, because of his nightly appearances on the rostrum at Vienna’s leading dance halls, Eduard was considerably better known in person than he was himself. Edi was frequently pictured and caricatured in the newspapers, with reviews describing his perfo
rmances in detail. The epithet ‘der schöne Edi’ had well and truly stuck.
Despite the fact that Johann had, in effect, engineered this situation by avoiding performing, it appears his brother’s popularity did occasionally get to him. There is anecdotal evidence that he would introduce himself by saying, ‘I am Edi’s brother.’
At times the tension between eldest and youngest brothers simmered over, and it seems it was usually Johann, playing the role of paterfamilias, who resorted to corrective action. In 1892, after what must have been close to a bust-up between them (we do not know the circumstances), Johann felt obliged to write to his brother:
You still see everything pessimistically – you always think that I am trying to score points over you. For goodness’ sake, why won’t you rid yourself of such foolish notions? How old do you have to become before you finally realise that your brother is not your enemy? … Sometimes our relationship has been worsened because of your sheer ambition, but you should know that my brotherly feelings towards you have never changed.
‘How old do you have to become … ?’ This admonishing note was written when Eduard was fifty-seven years of age!
Just how far relations between the two had deteriorated would become clear when Johann’s will, written in 1895, omitted his brother entirely, on the grounds that ‘he finds himself in favourable circumstances’.
It is true that Eduard earned a considerable amount of money as conductor of the Strauss Orchestra, not to mention a wide assortment of medals, decorations, medals of honour, golden snuffboxes, all the gifts a successful conductor can expect to have bestowed on him.
But Johann was not prepared to make changes to his will when, two years later, Eduard’s financial position suddenly changed, and much for the worse. A codicil stated bluntly and unforgivingly: