Waltz Kings

In the early 19th Century, Vienna, imperial city of the Habsburgs, was about the size of Dayton, Ohio. For a little city, it had big appetites. In an average year its 200,000 citizens ate 12,967 suckling pigs, drank 382,578 barrels of beer, 473,339 barrels of wine. Even more impressive than the way they ate and drank was the way the Viennese waltzed. Every night in the week, a quarter of the entire population whirled themselves dizzy in Vienna's dance halls.

Over Vienna's jitterbugs in 3/4 time ruled two men with more power than the Emperor himself. They did not make Vienna's laws, but they wrote its waltzes. These two men were Johann Strauss, father & son, subjects of a joint biography (Johann Strauss, Father and Son -- Greystone Press; $3.25) published last week by Viennese Exile H. E. Jacob.

Greater of the two was bewhiskered Johann II, who wrote the Blue Danube and the operetta Fledermaus. One cause of his greatness was the jealous ambition of his mother, Frau Anna Strauss. Her husband Johann, one of the doggiest of Vienna's gay dogs, transgressed (to the extent of five illegitimate children) with an attractive milliner named Emilie Trampusch. Frau Strauss kept a stiff upper lip, concentrated on making her Johann II a better man than his father. So while Johann I gadded about, Johann II composed and practiced the organ in church. His teachers, who expected him to write Masses and oratorios, were scandalized to find him playing a waltz on the organ. "It had been intended for a fugue," he explained, "but it had somehow slipped."

But Johann himself did not slip, was soon turning out waltzes to beat the band. At the peak of his career he visited the U. S., conducted one gigantic concert with a chorus of 20,000 and 100 assistant conductors, was so frightened by the experience that he scurried back to Vienna for good. Seventeen years later, in 1889, a new popular musical movement had begun to sweep Johann and his waltzes into history. It came from the U. S. and it was in 4/4, not 3/4, time. The Waltz Kings were succeeded by a March King: John Philip Sousa.

To Author Jacob there is a close connection between popular music and politics. He concludes: "The music made use of by mankind, though it marches slowly and haltingly, quite decisively attaches itself to the political hegemony of the epoch. The royal minuet held sway while France was supreme; the waltz became the undisputed monarch of the ballroom when Napoleon was overthrown with the help of the Germans. One hundred years later the German-Austrian waltz died out when the victorious troops of America streamed across the ocean to the battlefields of Europe."

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