The foreword is a short pair of paragraphs, then follows a 360-page alphabetized list of Strauss's compositions, each of which receives at least a third to a half page of commentary (and, commendably, without bias toward the well-known pieces: The Blue Danube is given no more space than the Künstler-Quadrille, op. 201). The last 15 pages is another works list, this time by opus number and with place and date of the premiere. The usual stragglers (pieces without opus numbers, etc.) are given a separate spot at the end.
Mailer's writing is very clear, without the Viennese colloquialisms he might have been tempted to bring in, and he consistently offers context (historical, geographical, political, and biographical -- though by no means always in that order). There is little here that cannot be found in other books on Strauss and the Strauss family, but it is particularly appealing to find the focus squarely on the compositions. I can imagine writers of CD liner notes mining this book for many years to come.
Performance of the music is, understandably, given priority over the immediate social contexts of that performance, though one does learn a number of details of venues. And occasionally one gets a hint of dancing, as in the account of Die jungen Wiener, op. 7, a waltz set featured in a Carneval-ball on 22 January 1845. According to Mailer, Strauss used the contrast between a dramatic introduction and the first waltz's "rocking, caressing melody" as a device "to entice [his audience of] young Viennese onto the dance floor of the elegant Dommayer Casino" (170-71). A review of another ball two weeks later notes approvingly the 19-year-old's "playful, piquant, and dance-inviting [tanzauffordernden] melodies" (99) -- this in the commentary on Faschings-Lieder-Walzer, op. 11.
Schubert was 19 barely thirty years earlier. He would have been 48 when Strauss's op. 11 was first performed; his children might have attended the ball in the Sträußelsälen (Theater in der Josefstadt).
Link to a Johann Strauss website, which includes here a charmingly indignant retort to the many writers who have assumed that the composer began with 12-15 players; his first orchestra was 24 players. Because of their contracts, they would also have played at the two balls mentioned above.
Update 6-3-10: Apparently, Mailer is more than a fan: in the traditional philologically oriented manner of the Germanophone musicologist, he has spent 25 years writing a biography of Johann Strauss, jr., a work that has expanded into ten volumes: Grösste Strauss-Biographie aller Zeiten.
Reference.
Mailer, Franz. Johann Strauss: Kommentiertes Werkverzeichnis. Wien: Pichler, 1999.
