by John Suchet
Johann Strauss, the locals said, often joined them, albeit later in the day. And do you know what the great composer liked to eat, they’d ask? Crayfish and goose-liver pâté, served with very dry champagne. Kathi always made sure she had it available to serve to him.
It’s impossible to know exactly how much of this is true, though stories like that are usually founded on at least a modicum of truth. In fact only one conversation between Strauss and the emperor is actually authenticated, because it was witnessed by a number of people.
It took place on a glittering occasion. In 1894 Vienna celebrated the golden jubilee of Johann Strauss’s career as a musician. It was fifty years since, as a nervous and apprehensive young man, he had stood in front of his orchestra at Dommayer’s Casino, expressly against his father’s wishes, and performed his first public concert.
Now, in his seventieth year, he was the object of veneration and admiration. A week of festivities was held in the city he had portrayed so many times in music, and the Viennese people, from lowest to highest, joined in the celebrations. The highest being the emperor himself.
The high point of the celebrations was a gala performance of Strauss’s operetta Der Zigeunerbaron. To the surprise of the sophisticated audience in the Vienna State Opera, and to their delight, the emperor himself took his seat in the royal box.
Visits to the opera not being a regular feature of the emperor’s duties, on the rare occasions when he did attend he would slip discreetly away during the second act. Since it was customary for the composer, or noted actor or singer (as with Katharina Schratt) to be presented to the emperor, this would happen during the first intermission, since by the end of the performance he would no longer be there.
As was usual, therefore, the theatre manager entered the royal box during the first intermission of Der Zigeunerbaron and asked the emperor if he wished to receive Johann Strauss immediately.
‘No,’ replied Franz Josef, ‘I shall wait till the end and then I will receive Herr Strauss.’
To the surprise of his staff, and that of the theatre, he did as promised. During the thunderous applause that greeted the end of the performance, Johann Strauss was ushered into the royal box.
Franz Josef greeted him warmly. The emperor was in jovial mood and spoke loudly, words that were later recorded by one of his courtiers.
‘I enjoyed myself immensely, Herr Strauss. You know it is strange, but your music ages as little as you do. You haven’t changed at all in the long years I have known you. I congratulate you on your opera.’
What further words were uttered between the two men we do not know. But friends of Strauss, to whom he later relayed the experience, reported that one word, one particular word, had leapt out at him and caused him untold joy.
‘Opera! The emperor said opera!’ Probably unwittingly the emperor had paid Strauss the highest compliment he could.
If today we picture the encounter, we might well imagine one of them as elderly, with careworn face, balding, elaborate sideburns and moustache, somewhat stooped from personal cares and worrying matters of state, dressed in traditional military garb adorned with medals and sash, addressing a younger dark-haired individual, sprightly, darting eyes, nattily dressed, almost restless.
That is certainly how I see the emperor and Johann Strauss, and every word of my description is true, except one. Younger. Johann Strauss was five years older than the emperor.
Johann Strauss, perhaps surprisingly for a composer of such genial music, did not have many close friends. Despite appearances to the contrary, he was not a convivial man. He did not enjoy company, absented himself as much as he could from the occasions his profession obliged him to attend – necessary evils, as they were to him – and made as swift a departure as he could get away with.
His wife Adèle recognised this in him, and did all in her power to make sure he was content. She smoothed his path constantly, protecting him from outside influences that might cause him stress. A different kind of wife – Lili, for instance – might have bemoaned his lack of sociability, badgering him to allow her to arrange parties and soirées.
But not Adèle. She jealously guarded her husband’s privacy at their house in the Igelgasse. Few people were allowed to cross the threshold who were not welcome visitors for her husband, and those who qualified were usually those with whom Strauss enjoyed a game of billiards or tarot, his favourite card game.
“Johann Strauss, perhaps surprisingly for a composer of such genial music, did not have many close friends.”
Alexander Girardi was one, the comic actor who brought so many of Strauss’s characters to life on the stage.
Another was one of the most celebrated composers of his age, Johannes Brahms. Surprising though it may seem to us – indeed, surprising as it was to acquaintances of both men – a real friendship developed between them.
Two more contrasting individuals, both as men and musicians, would have been hard to find. Brahms was notoriously curmudgeonly, icily cold to those to whom he took a dislike. While Strauss certainly had a difficult side, when it was diplomatic to hide it he was able to do so. Brahms made no such effort.
Their music, too, was worlds apart. Brahms’s works were deep, even dense, a musical commentary on philosophical issues that exercise the profoundest intellect. Not for nothing was he called Beethoven’s natural successor. His works were intended to engage the mind.
Johann Strauss, by contrast, was a showman. He wrote music primarily to entertain. It was music to dance to, or music to accompany the absurdity of operetta plots on stage. Brahms, if you like, wanted his listeners to frown, while Strauss wanted them to smile.
So what brought these two composers together, made of them good friends and matchless admirers of each other’s music? It is frankly impossible to explain, other than with clichés such as ‘opposites attract’.
Certainly Adèle played a part. Both men clearly adored her, though obviously on different levels. Brahms, the inveterate bachelor, relished her company on a platonic level, never making either her or her husband feel uneasy in his company. On one occasion at a charity fête, a tambourine was purchased by one of the men. On it Brahms wrote, ‘Service at the Court of Adèle’ and beneath it, ‘Brahms for fugues, Strauss for waltzes.’
On another occasion Adèle spotted Brahms in a restaurant. She went over to him and asked if he would sign a napkin for her. He took a pen, wrote out the opening bars of the ‘Blue Danube’ waltz, and signed underneath, ‘Alas not by Johannes Brahms’ (Leider nicht von Johannes Brahms).67
Brahms was no mere flatterer when it came to his praise of Strauss’s music. He would frequently sit at the piano and play the waltzes. The Hungarian composer Karl Goldmark once witnessed Brahms play the whole of ‘By the Beautiful Blue Danube’ on the piano. He described how Brahms played an improvisation of the introduction, and then proceeded to produce a ‘marvel of spontaneous evolution of the musical material’.
Both Strauss and Brahms had a favourite destination that they would go to in the summer to get away from the oppressive heat of Vienna – Strauss on the advice of his doctor to counter bouts of illness. It was the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl, some 170 miles south-west of Vienna, on the edge of the Salzkammergut mountain range, which stretches east from Salzburg across Upper Austria.
Both men had villas on the same slope leading up from the crystal-clear waters of the River Traun.68 On the other side of Bad Ischl, on a wooded rise, was the grand summer palace given to young Franz Josef as a wedding present from his mother. He loved to spend time there, describing it as ‘heaven on earth’. Sisi rarely, if ever, went there – it held too many bad memories. In her eyes it represented the beginning of her ‘enslavement’ as a member of the imperial royal family.
“Brahms’s works were deep, even dense, intended to engage the mind. Johann Strauss, by contrast, was a showman.”
The palace was conveniently placed for the emperor. A short walk along the river, through a gate, and he was in
side a villa that his mistress Kathi Schratt had acquired. The convenience was mutual. Kathi was given a key to the emperor’s villa – by Sisi herself. A photograph taken in 1910, when the emperor was eighty years of age and Kathi approaching fifty-seven, shows them walking as a couple in the grounds of the imperial villa in Bad Ischl.
The emperor, in dark military uniform with resplendent whiskers, looks weighed down by matters of state. His mistress, in smart suit, fur stole round her shoulders, stylish hat, parasol in right hand, is talking to him. It looks as though she, a retired actress who left her youth and looks long behind, is counselling him, offering advice to this man who had ruled his empire for more than sixty years. Not for nothing was she known as ‘the uncrowned Empress of Austria’.69
Johannes Brahms and Johann Strauss spent many a summer month in Bad Ischl, often planning their visits so they would be there at the same time. It is not known whether either of the composers met the emperor in Ischl, though it seems more than likely. What is known is that towards the end of his life, Brahms would stroll to the elegant Café Zauner to join Kathi Schratt for tea and pastries.
Strauss delighted in playing ideas to Brahms on the piano, and they chatted and drank for many an hour. Proof of just how comfortable these two great musicians, two such different individuals, were in each other’s company is another photograph, this one earlier than that showing Franz Josef and Kathi, taken in September 1894.
It shows Strauss and Brahms standing on the veranda of Strauss’s villa. Brahms, on the right, has receding grey hair exposing a high domed forehead and a full snowy white beard falling to his chest. He is heavily built – grossly overweight in today’s terms.
His all-black suit is shapeless. His black shoes are dull and unpolished. The only concession to anything not black is a gold or silver watch chain. His left arm is stretched onto the balcony balustrade, causing his jacket – already several sizes too long, reaching almost to his knees – to fall open and appear several sizes too big.
What a contrast Johann Strauss provides! Dark dyed-black hair swept luxuriantly back, neatly trimmed black moustache, his clothes looking as if they might have come straight off a showroom mannequin. Stylish dark jacket, immaculately creased black-and-white-checked trousers, dark waistcoat, white winged-collar shirt with flamboyantly knotted silver tie, shoes polished like mirrors.
He has a trim figure, with not an ounce of spare flesh on him. His left arm is also on the balcony balustrade, but casually bent at the elbow, matching the left leg seductively bent at the knee.
Neither man is smiling, but I am ready to bet that if Strauss’s upper lip were not entirely hidden by his moustache, it would reveal a suppressed smile.
As with Strauss and the emperor, if you were challenged to put an age to each man, you could quite easily say that Brahms was around seventy years of age, whereas Strauss might be somewhere around fifty, quite possibly even in his late forties.
When the photograph was taken, Johannes Brahms was sixty-one years and four months, whereas Johann Strauss was just one month short of his seventieth birthday!
Another photograph taken the following year shows Strauss at work on the same veranda of his house in Bad Ischl. There is the tall desk that he liked to stand at to compose, which befitted his restless nature. Manuscript papers are on the desktop, a pen is in his right hand. The forearm of his bent left arm rests on the desktop. This time the anxious look is back on his face.70
The picture is totally posed. One can almost hear the photographer telling him to try to relax, to bend the left knee, rest the left arm on the desktop. Equally I am sure Strauss is muttering under his breath, ‘Just hurry up and be done with it. I have work to do.’
Johann Strauss at work was a very different individual from the man relaxing with his good friend Johannes Brahms.
Despite his youthful appearance, age was taking its toll on Johann Strauss. Always with an edgy, difficult side to his character, now as he approached seventy he had no need to hide or curb it. He was world famous; his compositions were adored across continents. He hobnobbed with royalty. If he wanted to be difficult, unsociable, who was to tell him not to be? Most certainly not his wife, who was more than content to indulge her famous husband.
If this side to his character was now exhibited in public, what did it matter? He could survive anything that his detractors might say against him. And some of them had very harsh things indeed to say.
The Viennese newspaper Die Presse, unimpressed with the elaborate celebrations of Strauss’s golden jubilee, made its views known in unrestrained language:
Strauss is nervy and a hypochondriac. He has every possible and impossible illness, especially suffering from the same malady as some acquaintance who has just died. In actual fact, there is nothing wrong with him. But one is never quite as ill as when one is suffering from an illness one doesn’t have.
Die Presse was at least partly right. Strauss was a hypochondriac, and always had been. His brother Josef had practically accused him to his face of feigning illness during his trips to Russia all those years ago.
But as old age crept over him, there is no doubt that his health did actually suffer. Always with the caveat that any kind of retrospective diagnosis more than one and a quarter centuries after the event is fraught with danger, a doctor today might well find on examining him that Strauss suffered from neuralgia, arthritis, chronic bronchitis and influenza.
But there was quite possibly more to it than physical ailments. Beginning in 1983 the Austrian musicologist and Strauss specialist, Professor Franz Mailer, published ten annotated volumes of Strauss family letters and documents over almost thirty years. He wrote, ‘Many signs lead one to infer [that Johann Strauss suffered from] severe psychiatric illness.’
Contemporary accounts are similar. The author Ignaz Schnitzer, who wrote the libretto for Der Zigeunerbaron and therefore worked closely with Strauss, relates how Strauss’s mood could suddenly, and dangerously, change:
Morose, unspeaking, hardly looking up, he would skulk for days or weeks on end unsociably around the house, or keep himself cocooned in his work room. His own wife hardly dared to speak to him then, since to be disturbed in this ill-humoured silence could bring him to furious agitation.
“Alongside Johann’s obsessive fear of death, he also developed a phobia of disease and avoided anything that could bring him into contact with it.”
In the last decade of his life Strauss would spend the summers in Bad Ischl, the winters at his house in the Igelgasse. While he enjoyed the warm scented air in the Salzkammergut, in the city during winter he would complain of pain and tiredness and more or less confine himself to his room.
Both in Bad Ischl and Vienna he continued his habit of composing mostly at night, as he had told the American journalist in New York many years before. Beside his work desk in the Igelgasse house was a bell, which he rang to summon Adèle at any hour of the night to hear a new tune he had created.
Inevitably his nocturnal habits affected his eyesight, and increased his overall melancholy. In October 1894, just days after his golden-jubilee celebrations, he wrote to his brother Eduard:
I see everything double. If I take a toothpick, I always see two before me. If I should have the misfortune to go blind, I shall shoot myself. Of all physical ailments, this is the most insurmountable. Not to read – [or] be able to write, would take away from me all joy of life.
Alongside Johann’s obsessive fear of death, he also developed a phobia of disease and avoided anything that could bring him into contact with it. One of these possible sources of illness was Adèle’s daughter Alice. Johann adored her as if she were his own child, but he strictly forbade her to invite her friends into his house for fear of catching some childhood ailment from them.
Of one fact Johann Strauss was acutely aware, and it was unique to him among composers. Strauss owed more to the city of his birth, Vienna, than he could ever repay. No great composer of the nineteenth century had rooted his music
so firmly in the city of his birth.
As I have already noted, only one other truly great musical name of the nineteenth century was actually born in Vienna, as opposed to moving to live there, and that was Franz Schubert. Describe Schubert’s music in any way you wish, but to call it typically Viennese would be wrong. It is typically Schubertian.
Strauss’s music alone distils the essence of Vienna into musical notes, and he knew it. At the festival banquet held at the Grand Hotel in Vienna for his golden jubilee, in the company of two hundred people, including composers, writers and artists, he responded to a toast in his honour with these words:
If it is true that I have some talent, then I have to thank for its development my dear native city of Vienna, in whose earth my whole strength is rooted, in whose air lie the sounds which my ear gathers, which my heart takes in and my hand writes down … Vienna, the heart of our beautiful, God-blessed Austria … to her I give my cheer: Vienna, bloom, prosper and grow!
Vienna was not to obey his command. The city, the country, the empire, was heading inexorably towards oblivion. Johann Strauss would not live to witness that. But he would live to see the next great personal tragedy unfold, a tragedy so profound and unexpected that Emperor Franz Josef, on being informed, would visibly shrink and age.
‘Am I then to be spared nothing?’ the emperor would ask, trying with all the military discipline he could muster to contain his grief.
65 Grandson of Nikolaus Simrock, friend of Beethoven in Bonn, and founder of the music-publishing house that bears his name.
66 In fact several Strauss biographies mistakenly state that the ‘Emperor Waltz’ was specifically composed for the Jubilee.
67 Other versions of this famous anecdote have Brahms signing Adèle’s fan, or a score of ‘By the Beautiful Blue Danube’.