Mailer's Strauss

I interrupt the hommage series for a book review. Franz Mailer's annotated works-catalogue for Johann Strauss, jr., is a delightful find. It reminds me very much of the dedicated, knowledgeable fan literature that is at least as important to film studies as anything written by academic scholars. There's very little room left for such writing in concert music studies. Granted, as in most fan literature, Strauss can do no wrong, but one knows the attitude going in and, as in the best of the fan literature, Mailer's catalogue wraps a great deal of interesting information around his advocacy.

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.

Milestone

Today is the 150th post in this blog. The total number of analyses of D779n13 is 90.

This may be the right moment to gather some bits of information about publication dates:

(1822). Ash Wednesday in 1822 fell on 20 February. D365 was announced by Cappi and Diabelli on 29 November 1821 and again on 11 February 1822, where it was advertised under the sales heading Neueste Tanzmusik zum Carneval 1822 (Schubert: Dokumente, item 143).

(1823) Ash Wednesday in 1823 fell on 12 February. D145 was announced by Diabelli on 31 January 1823 and again on 5 February (Schubert: Dokumente, items 191-192). The three dances in D971 were published by Sauer and Leidesdorf in the collection Neue Tanzmusik: Carneval 1823, advertised on 10 January 1823 (S:D, item 188).

(1824) Ash Wednesday in 1824 was unusually late; it fell on 3 March. D779 was announced by Diabelli on 21 November 1823 (S:D, item 357). Some dances eventually included in D146 were first published by Sauer and Leidesdorf in the anthology Halt's enk z'samm in 1824. The volume was advertised on 12 January, 29 January, and 21 February (S:D, items 236, 244, 250).The ads note that the collection is available in four versions: piano solo, piano 4-hands, piano and violin, and two violins and bass -- in other words, in all the arrangements necessary for domestic and small venue performance for listening and dancing.

(1825) Ash Wednesday in 1825 fell on 16 February. Another collection of the same name was advertised on 27 January 1825 (S:D, item 308). D783 was announced by Cappi on 8 January 1825, as Deutsche Tänze und Ecossaisen under the sales category Tanz-Musikalien für den Carneval 1825 (S:D, item 301). These pieces were apparently arranged by J. B. Scheidemayr in Linz as cotillions, in which form they received a favorable review on 11 March (S:D, item 319). The score is lost, but Deutsch (410) takes it for granted that they are ensemble arrangements. The same review complains that Scheidemayr's own Deutsche, although lively and solidly written, are "rather too pompous," and some will find his "light and uplifting Ländler" more to their taste [my translation].

(1826) Ash Wednesday in 1826 fell on 8 February. In December 1825, Sauer and Leidesdorf advertised three collections: Krähwinkler Tänze für das Pianoforte (18 December), Seyd uns zum zweyten Mahl willkommen! and Ernst und Tändeley: Eine Sammlung verschiedener Gesellschaftstänze für den Carneval (29 December; again on 20 January 1826) (S:D, items 363, 364, 370). The first of these was issued in two volumes, waltzes in the first and galops and ecossaises in the second. Seyd uns was a collection of 50 waltzes, one each by 50 composers, plus a coda and an introduction based on the title song (from Mozart's Magic Flute) (a set of 40 waltzes had been published a year earlier: S:D, item 298). Ernst und Tändeley was equally ambitious: it contains 6 each of menuets, quadrilles, ecossaises, and galops, as well as 8 cotillons (Schubert's only dance of this name was included here). The publisher's description notes that the collection is good for dancing parties "where one simply wishes the music to be played by amateurs at a piano"; thus the virtue of a "collection in which all those dances appear that serve to delight those at a social party" [my translation]. Remarkably, within two weeks, Seyd and Ernst were the subjects of a favorable review in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung (S:D, item 371).

(1827) Ash Wednesday in 1827 fell on 28 February. On 23 December 1826, Sauer and Leidesdorf advertised the Neue Krähwinkler Tänze für das Pianoforte as well as the Moderne Liebes-Walzer, both sets for piano solo (S:D, item 430). D734 was announced by Diabelli on 15 December 1826 and again on 14 February 1827 (S:D, items 425, 453). D969 was announced by Tobias Haslinger on 22 January 1827 (S:D, item 444).

D969 was advertised by Haslinger again on 11 April 1827 and a month later a review appeared in a Frankfurt newspaper (S:D, items 472, 493). The review appears in Deutsch, p. 638. The final comment is "The reviewer feels that a dance should never consist of two parts only, as is the case here; for its repetition, often for hours on end, must result in unendurable weariness." To this the biographer retorts that "Schubert's dances, written for domestic balls, are to be played in series. [D969] comprises a dozen waltzes." The reviewer's comment is obscure, and the biographer probably misreads it -- but what is interesting is that it's taken for granted by both that D969, that most concert-friendly of Schubert's sets, was meant for dancing.

(1828) Ash Wednesday in 1828 fell on 20 February. D924 was announced by Haslinger on 5 January 1828 (Schubert: Dokumente, item 555) and received a review in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung, in which it was noted that "with respect to composition, the works of Schubert, Lanner, and Strauss stand out" [my translation] (S:D, item 590; also see Deutsch, 734).

Reference.

S:D = Franz Schubert: Dokumente, 1817-1830. Ed. Till Gerrit Waidelich, with Renate Hilmar-Voit and Andreas Mayer. Vol. 1: Texte: Programme, Rezensionen, Anzeigen, Nekrologe, Musikbeilagen und andere gedruckte Quellen. Veröffentlichungen des Internationalen Franz Schubert Instituts, vol. 10. Tutzing: Hans Schneider.

Deutsch, Otto. Eric Blom, trans. Schubert: A Documentary Biography. London: J. M. Dent, 1946.

Schubert's hand (holographs, that is)

On the Schubert-Autographe site mentioned in yesterday's post, you can find your way to dances for piano solo by the sequence: Notenmanuskripte / Alle Werke / Klaviermusik zu zwei Händen - Tänze. The two richest items are the [17] Deutsche mined for numbers in D 146, D 779, and D 783; and the [9 Tänze], with original versions of the opening numbers in D 779, along with the posthumously published D 973.

It's always fascinating to look at composer autographs, but here I am not interested in the stance of authenticity -- except to note that I was surprised to see how many expression marks, including accents, Schubert wrote into these pieces: I've always assumed they were mainly the work of later editors. The expression marks remind me of comments from Schubert-Kreis reminiscences about Josef von Gahy's "fiery" playing of the dances. Perhaps that style of playing was really in Schubert's mind, too (if not always in his fingers, given the tacit comparison in the description of Gahy's performances).

Not authenticity but rather the opposite, actually -- these autographs strike me as another part of the geography of Schubert's music making. First, he was ill: by early 1823 he was undergoing treatments for syphilis. Second, we note that in 1823 Ash Wednesday fell on 12 February. Imagine Schubert, before that date, rising in the morning to compose as usual. He decides (or follows up on friends' requests) to organize and write fair copies of several dances he played before he withdrew from social engagements, perhaps so that Gahy (or someone else) could play them during the final days of Carneval. Having finished the work, Schubert signs the first page, underestimating the space needed and his family name slants off on the corner. I'll be charitable and assume that the corrupted page edges came later. [this paragraph revised on 3-7-10]

Number 4 in the 17 Deutsche eventually became the last (n20) of the posthumous "Letzte Walzer" D146. What strikes me about this is the marked leftward slant of the handwriting at the left side of the page and how it gradually corrects itself by the right-hand side. This is as close as one can come to "embodying Schubert," to imagining oneself seeing with his eyes as he sits at the work-table, feeling the weight of the body's shift to the left as he fills the wide paper, and relaxing as he does while crossing the page to its right edge.

Here, as a postscript of sorts, is the beginning of n5 in the 17 Deutsche. As the black pencil marks show, this eventually became the trio to n4 above. Although that is plausible, nowhere is there is an indication that Schubert assumed the same.