Classical 24: Johan Strauss’ Waltzes

(A) Introduction

Listening to Also sprach Zarathustra, which I wrote about in my last post, made me want to rent 2001: A Space Odyssey again.  I think Stanley Kubrick was a big fan of guys named Strauss, because he used Johan Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz for the magnificent docking sequence early on in the movie.

 

(B) Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

First things first: Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss aren’t related.  I thought they were.  Oops.

 

Johann was known in his lifetime as “the waltz king”.  He wrote roughly 400 of them and almost single-handedly made it popular.  By the time he was done, the waltz had gone from being a grubby peasant dance to a favourite form of entertainment for the Hapsburg court.

 

His dad Johann I, also a composer, didn’t want his son to follow in his footsteps – he wanted him to become a banker instead.  But Junior rebelled.  It wasn’t easy – a lot of concert halls were reluctant to hire him in his youth because they were worried they’d make dad – already an established composer – pretty mad.  So he left home to compose in foreign lands.  Junior wasn’t just rebelling against his father, he also sided with the bourgeois revolutionaries in Austria at the time.  The Austrian royalty weren’t pleased (nor was dad, a pro-aristocracy guy).

 

Eventually, though, dad died of scarlet fever and Johann II took over his orchestra.  Junior eventually surpassed his father in popularity and influence.  In fact, Wagner and Richard Strauss were admirers.

 

A Strauss family ‘trademark’ was the “Vorgeiger” tradition of conducting with a violin in his hand.  Apparently the whole family did it, and some conductors who are Strauss enthusiasts still do it when playing his works.

 

(C) The Waltz

What is a waltz?  A waltz is a piece of music dance done in triple meter – that is, in 3/4 time (or sometimes 3/8 or 6/8), with the emphasis on the first note (one two three – one two three).  Kinda like a polka, but with more dignity and less lederhosen.  While the waltz can be danced to, it’s not always composed as a dance.

 

The waltz first became fashionable in Vienna in the 1780s, and spread to other countries.  Then Johann II came along and turned it into an art form.

 

Some pop waltzes, for your reference, are “Three Times A Lady” by the Commodores, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” by Simply Red, and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman by Aretha Franklin.  Also, Danny Elfman likes using the waltz, and did so in his soundtracks to the Batman and Spider-Man movies.

 

And now, a word about dancing.  The waltz is a partner dance in “closed position”: you and your partner hold each other and are facing each other.  The lead dancer’s right hand is on the follower’s back somewhere (no, not on the ass, lest you want a smack).  The follower’s left hand is on the lead’s right shoulder.  The other hands are clasped together.  Once you’ve assumed the position, you twirl around the dance floor.

 

The waltz became the template on which many other ballroom dances were based.  So, depending on whether or not you like ballroom dancing, you can thank or blame the waltz (and Johann Strauss the Second) for it.

 

(D) Johan Strauss II’s Waltzes

 

An der schonen, blauen Donau (The Beautiful Blue Danube), Op. 314

This is the music that accompanies Kubrick’s sci-fi-riffic docking sequence.  It was also used in an old cartoon with quacking ducks.  I prefer to remember it as the former.  The way it sways is fantastic.

 

It’s one of the most frequently played and recognized pieces of classical music – in fact, it’s the unofficial national anthem of Austria.

 

The main riff from this waltz is also used in Johan’s waltz Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Woods), Op. 325.  In fact, a lot of Blue Danube is used in Vienna Woods.  Maybe Johan meant there to be some thematic consistency between the two waltz about geographic locations near Vienna.

 

Wein, Weib und Gesang (Wine, Women and Song) Op. 333

What a great title!  Apparently, the melody is quintessentially Viennese.  I can’t really tell how or why, though.

 

Fruhlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring), Op. 410

When Johan wrote this he intended for part of it to be sung – a waltz with solo voice accompaniment.  In fact, it seems Johan wrote a bunch of waltzes with voice, but all I can find are the instrumental versions.  I wonder why?

 

I’ve heard this one!  It’s a jaunty, happily swinging piece, much like the Blue Danube waltz.

 

Kaiser Walzer (Emperor Waltz), Op. 437

Strauss wrote this to commemorate a visit between the Austrian and German heads of state.  I thought Strauss was a rabble-rouser?  You sold out, man.

 

It starts out quietly enough but quickly gets into some stately, almost martial, music.  The main theme is pretty well-known, as even I’ve heard it.

 

(D) Commentary

I’d have to say the Blue Danube is my favourite of these.  There’s a reason why it’s so popular – it’s a great song.  However, I can take two, maybe three, waltzes in a row at the most.  All that oom-pa-pa oom-pa-pa really starts to get on my nerves.

 

I could watch the docking sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey all day, though.  What can I say, I’m a geek.  Maybe I’ll just stick to an occasional movie rental to get my waltz fix – if I ever start jonesing for waltzes in the first place.

 

(E) What I’ve Learned

 

-Johan and Richard Strauss weren’t related.

-Johan II was the greatest Waltz King, who had a troubled relationship with his father and authority in general.  It sounds like he really had to struggle to find his own voice, and I can sympathize with that.

 

“No Air” by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown

I don’t follow pop music much these days, but every now and then I stumble onto something.  In this case, it’s this ballad by American Idol winner Jordin Sparks and R&B singer Chris Brown.

 

Part of the reason I like the song so much was my first impression: I first heard it used on the reality show “So You Think You Can Dance”, one of the few reality shows that showcases talented people.  It was used as a modern dance number; the premise was a soldier being called off to war and leaving his girl behind.  The dancing was fantastic, very expressive, and really brought out the heartbreak of the song.  It was a stunning performance by Katee Shean and Joshua Allen.

 

One of my favourite bits is a little detail in the bridge – a nice chugging guitar riff worthy of Dokken, played softly in the background.  It was a nice bit of texture that makes the bridge a little more aggressive, a little more raw, and coincides nicely with the increased drama of Sparks’ singing.  Another great moment is the line, “leaving me with just me”, a simple, direct, nicely written punch.

 

The song loses its focus a little with some excessive wailing when the chorus outro hits, but then it settles back into place and fades out nicely.  I’ve got it on my iPod and I listen to it a lot.

 

On a cynical side note: nice bit of cross-promotion there, Simon Cowell.  The song from a contestant on one Cowell-produced show gets used in a dance routine on another Simon Cowell show!

Classical 23: The Tone Poems of Richard Strauss

(A) Introduction

We’re starting this post by paying a visit to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO).  The CSO has magnanimously put weekly radio broadcasts on its website; if you don’t catch the original broadcast, you can still listen online for a couple of weeks.

Each broadcast contains a variety of live performances and studio recordings.  Not only can you listen to the performances, they also include commentary and interviews – so you get an annotated version of the piece.

I listened to the CSO’s broadcast of a collection of orchestral works by Richard Strauss.  Strauss and the CSO had a history of collaborating together, having premiered several of his works for US audiences.  He was also the CSO’s first guest conductor way back in 1904.

Unfortunately, I only listened to it once before the CSO rolled it into the archive, and I can’t listen to it anymore – they moved on to Prokofiev.  So, I’m forced to make up my own Strauss program for this blog.  Back to the Naxos Music Library!

(B) Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Richard Strauss was a German composer who worked in the late Romantic and early Modern era of classical music.  He was also a successful conductor.

He started out heavily influenced by the Romantics, but moved away from them and started composing tone poems.  His development of the tone poem is considered his principal achievement in the canon of music; he developed the tone-poem to an unrivalled level of expressiveness.  Once he conquered the tone poem, he wrote some operas near the end of his life.

The big controversy surrounding Strauss is the nature of his relationship with the Nazis.  Some people say he was apolitical, and others claim he was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party.  Goebbels appointed him President of the State Music Bureau; while in that position he composed the theme for the 1936 Olympics and he got chummy with some high-ranking Nazis.

On the other hand, he seems to have been trying to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and some Jewish friends from persecution – in fact, he used his connections to have his daughter-in-law released from house arrest once.  This might explain why he pandered to the fascists.

However, Strauss never came out for or against Nazi anti-Semitism.  No one really knows where he stood on it – he kept his mouth shut.

Here’s a great quote from him in his late years: “I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer!”

(C) The Tone Poem

What’s a tone poem?  It’s a piece of orchestral music, in one movement, in which some extra-musical source provides a narrative or illustrative element. This source could be a poem, novel, folk tale, painting or some other work of art.  A symphonic poem may stand on its own, or can be part of a series combined into a suite.

The tone poem isn’t broken down into separate movements, like a concerto or symphony.  I assumed that meant the piece would be shorter than those other forms, but I’m wrong – they can clock in at over twenty minutes.  Not as long as a full symphony, but the same length of a concerto or a string quartet.

Strauss gets his own special classifications.  Many of his works are given a TrV number: the Richard-Strauss-Werkverzeichnis.  They were compiled by Franz Trenner based on Strauss’ diaries.

Don Juan, Op. 20, TrV 156 (1889)

Let’s go back and revisit Don Giovanni with this tone poem, which Strauss wrote at only 24 years old.  It’s written for a full orchestra.  Classical music buffs consider this piece to be the coming out party for Strauss’ formal style and tone.

It starts out nice and slow, but you get an occasional dramatic swirl in the early going.  Then the trumpet really kicks in about half way through, leading up to a crescendo drum roll.  By the end it’s soaring, climaxing the slow build that’s been going on since the beginning of the piece.  It ends very, very quietly.  Nice pacing, Strauss!

Macbeth, Op. 23, TrV 163 (1888/1890)

Written between 1886 and 1888, Macbeth was Strauss’s first tone poem.  Even though it’s listed after Don Juan.  I dunno…  It marks Strauss’ transition from his conservative style early works to his progressive later period.  Strauss used Macbeth as an aesthetic manifesto, describing it as “the precise expression of my artistic ideas and feelings”.

It starts out as a flourish, unlike the quiet intro of Don Juan.  It meanders back and forth, coming to a crashing end – much like Macbeth himself, who slowly goes mad as he gathers power.  Lady Macbeth, his crazy-ass wife, lurks in this piece somewhere, too.

Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), Op. 24, TrV 158 (1889)

Strauss wrote this as a rumination on the last hours of a dying artist.  Many years later, he was to say on his own deathbed that his feelings mirrored the mood of the artist in this piece.

This piece is divided into four sections – each one representing a different part of the dying man’s struggle.  Unlike symphonies or concertos, the piece is meant to be played uninterrupted, so as to form one continuous song.  The sections are:

I. Largo begins the piece with the sick man lying on his bed in his dimly lit room, near death.

II. Allegro molto agitato things pick up as the battle between life and death offers him no rest.

III. Meno mosso has the artist’s life passing before his exhausted eyes.

IV. Moderato Death wins, as always, but the soul gains redemption.

The piece really conveys the deathbed struggle well, with lots of ups and downs.  It starts out so quietly that I wondered if my headphones were working properly… and ends with a beautiful, uplifting final movement.  Even in death, it’s a happy ending.

 

Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30, TrV 176 (1896)

The camera soars above the moon and the Earth, with the sun breaking across the curves of the planetary spheres… yes indeed, this piece was the one used by Stanley Kubrick in the opening scene of the epic film  2001.  Strauss’ inspiration for this piece was Nietzsche’s book by the same title.  This is the book where Nietzsche declares that “God is dead” and talks about the übermensch (and is subsequently misunderstood by devout Christians, objectivists and goth wannabes ever since).

 

Strauss organized this longer tone poem (roughly 30 minutes) into nine parts.  As with Tod und Verklärung, it’s to be played without pausing between parts.

 

Part I (Also sprach Zarathustra) is the famous three-note rising intro that’s forever associated with Kubrickian glee.  Those three notes recur throughout the rest of the piece.

Part VI (Song of Science) contains some gut-crushing low notes by the basses.  Apparently the basses have to play the “contra-b”, that is, the lowest key on the piano; this hardly ever happens in an orchestra.  As a former rock bassist, I say, long live the bass!

Part VII (The Convalescent) is pretty spirited for its title – you’d think you’d get some nice mellow hospital recovery music.  But no, the patient doesn’t get much rest.  It ends with a massive orchestra-spanning chord.  The title makes me think of Tool’s The Patient.

Part VIII (The Dance Song) has a sinister-sounding dance for the most part.  More sinister than anything all the Nietzsche-reading goth punks listen to, but not nearly as aggressive and pounding.  Eat this, KMFDM and Apoptygma Berzerk!

 

(D) Commentary

The tone poem is a versatile little form of music.  It can be long or short, one single piece or a series of connected ‘mini-poems’.  I find the crossover with other art forms particularly fascinating: Shakespeare, Kafka, folklore…  The structure of a tone poem is pretty loose, and can be made up according to the whim of the composer.  It’s a weird entity, and weird is good.

 

If tone poems and Edgar Varese are any indication, then 20^th century/modern music really blows the traditions and structures of classical music apart.  Anything goes!

 

(E) What I’ve Learned

-Strauss was a crossover artist between the Romantics and modern music… and he may or may not have been a Nazi.

-the tone poem is a one-movement orchestral piece that draws its subject matter from a non-musical source