Vienna Nights 3
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770-1827
Ludwig van Beethoven
1770-1827
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, “Emperor”

Two of the signature aspects of Western thought are the importance of progress and individuality. Nowhere are these concepts more apparent than in the history of music, where we give special attention to innovation in form and harmony. While not always appreciated at first hearing – witness the audience riot over Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – innovators eventually receive their due – in hindsight.

In his greatest works, Beethoven was both an innovator and an individualist who attempted to put his personal stamp on everything from harmony and musical structure to advances in piano construction. While retaining the three-movement form of the concerto, he expanded the internal structure of the individual movements, especially in the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos. The dramatic use of the piano in the opening phrases of these concertos was tried only once before – by Mozart in his Piano Concerto in E-flat major, K. 271 – and did not occur again in any major piano concerto until the B-flat major Concerto of Brahms. The thunderous opening of the Fifth Concerto was without precedent, as was Beethoven's refusal to allow the performer to improvise a cadenza.  

Beethoven composed the Concerto in Vienna during the summer of 1809, under conditions hardly conducive to creativity. Following a day of heavy bombardment, Vienna surrendered to the French army under Napoleon, and those citizens who could afford to flee did so, including Beethoven's patron and friend the Archduke Rudolph. Prices and taxes skyrocketed, food was scarce, parks were closed to the public and Beethoven remained in the city, alone and lonely. In spite of the hardships during those trying months, he managed to compose some of his greatest works: the Piano Sonata Op. 81a (“Les adieux”), the Quartet in E-flat, Op. 74 (the “Harp”) and the “Emperor” Concerto (the title bestowed on it by one of the publishers, without Beethoven's approval.)

The Fifth Piano Concerto was premiered in Leipzig in 1811 to an enthusiastic reception. It was the only one of Beethoven's piano concertos without the composer himself at the keyboard, since by that time his hearing had deteriorated too far for him to perform in public, especially with an orchestra. Two months later, however, the first performance in Vienna was a total failure, primarily because the Concerto was on the program of a Charity Society performance featuring three living tableaux on Biblical subjects – hardly a suitable milieu.

The concerto opens with a powerful and assertive orchestral chord, followed by a sweeping cadenza-like flourish by the piano solo. Example 1 Only after two more orchestral chords interspersed in the piano outbursts, does the orchestra introduce the principal theme. Example 2 The movement is stormy and propulsive with some of the same harmonic ambiguity as in the first movement of the Fourth Concerto. At the point where traditionally we would have expected a cadenza, the pianist’s score bore Beethoven’s directive: "Do not play a cadenza!" The music that follows, however, has all the characteristics of a cadenza; the composer wanted to be sure that his ideas, and not the performer’s would prevail, including the horn accompaniment that would certainly not have been part of a classical cadenza. Example 3

The hymn-like lyrical second movement opens with the muted violins introducing the theme, Example 4 followed by an aria pianissimo on the piano. Example 5 There follow two variations, the first on the piano, the second by the orchestra. Then follows one of Beethoven’s most mysterious musical moments, the hushed transition to the exuberant rondo third movement. Example 6 He builds up immense tension and mystery by subtle changes in key and tempo, until the finale bursts out in its jubilant mood. Example 7 Now, if you click on the first example in this commentary, you will see how the opening arpeggios of the Concerto return as the beginning of the main theme of the finale.
Johann Strauss II 1825-1899
Johann Strauss II
1825-1899
Johann Strauss II
Nineteenth Century Vienna and the Strauss Family

One of the major consequences of the Napoleonic wars was the rise of nationalism, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. The Austro-Hungarian Empire never really recovered from the devastation of these wars, and all through the nineteenth century it fought a rearguard action to maintain its integrity against nationalist movements from within and encroachment by its neighbors from without.

But in Vienna, the capital, you would have seen little of that instability and gradual decline. For those at the Habsburg court, the well-to-do and the upper class of the civil service, it was a century of glitter and joie de vivre, the most brilliant and prosperous period of the monarchy.

Opulent parties and balls were all the rage, while dance halls sprung up in Vienna for middle class dancers. And nothing reflects the age better than the era’s dance music, especially the waltz.

The waltz also became an expressive medium for classical composers; Mozart and Schubert published waltzes, although they were often entitled Deutscher (German Dances). Not surprisingly, the waltz quickly made its debut in the concert halls – often in undanceable form – as in Carl Maria von Weber’s Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance) and especially in Chopin’s unique and original waltzes for piano. At the same time it continued its popularity in the ballroom with Weber’s work expanding the structure of the waltz.

Originally, the waltz, like the minuet and most other European dances from the Middle Ages through the 18th century, consisted of two repeated eight-bar sections. Weber expanded the form, creating a sequence of waltzes using entirely new themes, bound together with a formal introduction and a coda referring back to themes heard earlier.
The honor of making the waltz into the symbol of Viennese society fell primarily to Joseph Lanner (1801-1843) and Johann Strauss I (1804-1849). They introduced these dances to the society’s ballrooms, at first against strong objections, especially from the clergy. But in the end, pleasure prevailed and they succeeded in making them respectable. Although Lanner and Strauss eventually parted and went into competition with each other, they were both instrumental in setting the expanded form into sets, as well as lengthening the individual waltzes within the set. They tied up the whole package with a title.

Apparently, the scene at a Viennese dance hall, whether with Strauss or Lanner presiding, was something akin to a modern rock concert.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899) took over where Lanner and his father left off. He is by far the best-known of nineteenth century Vienna’s composers of dance music, adored by high society who fondly named him the Waltz King. He was by nature shy, self-effacing and insecure, far removed in nature from the lightheartedness and exuberance expressed in his music. He was a close friend of Brahms, who always tried to convince him that posterity would remember his music, but to no avail – he was sure his music would be soon forgotten. Brahms, however, got it right.

Strauss enriched the dance menu with other newly gentrified dances, especially the polka, which he structured in the same manner as the waltz sets. Around the 1871, Johann embarked on a new career as composer of operettas, many of which contained melodies that the composer arranged as separate compositions for the dance floor.


Perpetuum-Mobile, a Musical Joke, Op. 257

Strauss composed this musical romp in 1861, giving solos to nearly every instrument of the orchestra during the loop of variations of the eight-measure ditty while mixing instruments that play in the most disparate ranges. Example 1


Overture to Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron)

The Gypsy Baron, composed in 1885, is one of the few of Strauss’ 17 operettas that still makes it occasionally to the stage. Set in eighteenth-century Hungary, it is the story of a displaced peasant, Barinkay, whose son Sandor returns to his village after 20 years to reclaim his property with its purported hidden treasure. He is aided by a Gypsy girl, Saffi, who declares him the leader of the Gypsies, the Gypsy Baron. All ends happily, with Sandor getting both the property and Saffi – who turns out to be the daughter of a Turkish Pasha.

The overture was received so enthusiastically at the premiere, that it was interrupted by applause after every new theme. The opening theme suggests a not very serious plot, Example 2 followed by the requisite Gypsy melody taken over by an oboe rather than a fiddle (note especially the rhythm and the cadence). Example 3 And, of course, this is Strauss, so we need a waltz, this one often extracted as a stand-alone piece. Example 4


Kaiser-Walzer (Emperor Waltz), Op. 437

The Kaiser-Walzer, composed in 1888 in honor of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef, ironically premiered under Strauss in Berlin, the capital of the Prussian Kaiser, Wilhelm II. It is no longer a traditional dance, but rather a complex suite of melodies. It opens with a pompous march in 2/4 time, using a motivic kernel of the waltz melody to come. Example 5 A cello solo leads into the first waltz tune Example 6 and on into a colorful array of five additional waltz themes. Example 7 The opening melody returns in the middle, leading to a condensed and slightly varied reprise of two of the subsidiary waltzes, followed by a coda with a final sleepy repeat of the opening melody, again featuring the solo cello, and an imperial flourish to conclude the piece.


Overture to Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus, composed in 1874, is the best known of the 17 three-act operettas Strauss composed for the Vienna stage and is still frequently staged around the world today. All Strauss’s operettas reflect the decadence, frivolity and license that permeated the city’s comfortable burgher class, disguised by Strauss’s luscious music. But Die Fledermaus, called by Austrian writer Hermann Broch a “merry apocalypse,” was brash even by Strauss’s standards and the script was bitterly criticized for its flaunting of the adulterous shenanigans of the heroine Rosalinde, her cuckolded husband Eisenstein, the androgynous Prince Orlovsky, not to mention the machinations of Dr. Falke (the Bat himself).

The bubbly overture is full of melodies from the operetta itself, starting with the three-note motif from an Act III trio Example 8, which is repeated numerous times throughout. Waltzes Example 9 Example 10 and a bit of lovelorn music follow Example 11, and the polka – another of Vienna’s favorite dances – is not forgotten as well. Example 12


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

An der schönen, blauen Donau was composed in 1867, and became Vienna’s consolation prize for the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the hands of Prussia the year before. It was originally composed for the Viennese Men’s Choral Society for a Society celebration but when premiered in Vienna the response was only lukewarm. It was the orchestral version that became a best seller, selling millions of copies in Johann Strauss´s lifetime. Later generations have also been fascinated by the melancholy grace of this unintentional “requiem” for the Austrian monarchy. When a music lover once asked Brahms for an autograph, the composer wrote down the first two bars of the waltz and signed “Leider nicht von Brahms” (Unfortunately not by Brahms).

The Viennese waltz was basically an ABA form with the A section consisting of a single theme and the B section including an arbitrary number of sections of new music. each one repeated. The effect was of constantly changing music and a resulting forward momentum. To give further shape to the work, any of the subsidiary sections could be repeated. The Blue Danube opens with a slow introduction, typical for Strauss’ major waltz number, in this case, revealing the principal theme. Example 13  After the main theme, there follow eight sections of new music, one of them Example 14 repeated at the end of the series and leading back to the famous theme and a coda. Example 15
Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2011