"It is hard to believe, in these days of rock-'n'-roll, that the waltz was at one time seriously described as a 'fiend of German birth,' and considered a peril to both health and morals,
"But the pleasure-loving Viennese of a hundred years ago had no worries on that score. For almost a century their hearts beat in there-four time to the violins and batons of the Strauss dynasty: first the great Johann, than the even greater Johann II, aided by the younger Johann's brothers, Josef and Eduard.
"Because Johann the Great, perhaps jealously, wished his sons to become respectable businessmen instead of fiddlers like himself, Johann II, a savings-bank clerk, was forced to learn the violin in secret. He was not quite 20 when he brusquely unveiled his talents and challenged his father's supremacy by leading a band he had surreptitiously assembled for a soirr dansante at Dommayer's restaurant. The evening was a tempestuous success. The crowd cheered widely when he magnanimously played his father's greatest waltzes, Strains of the Lorelei and the Rhine. His own Opus No. 1 the Epigram Waltzes, was encored 19 times. The King if not deposed, had at any rate to share the throne. Johann I died in 1849. for half a century more, thanks to his son, the name Strauss remained synonymous with waltz all over Europe.
"For many years, from May to September, Johann II took his dance band to a resort outside of St. Petersburg. during the brief, intoxicating northern summer, the Russians would keep him playing until a bell announced the departure of the last train for the capital. The night he first played his new polka, In Pavlovsk Forest, they let the last train go off empty, kept him playing until two, and for the rest of the 'white night' walked up and down the park by the thousand while nightingales continued the concert form the trees.
"In 1827, Strauss-who hated to travel so much that he would crouch on the floor of railroad compartments when he did-forgot his aversion and sailed away to Boston to conduct at a world peace festival for a fee of $100,000. But instead of being the conductor of an orchestra, he found himself the manager of a natural cataclysm. At some of the performances the chorus numbered 20,000, the instrumentalists over a thousand. Strauss was glad to have 20 assistant conductors relaying the beats of his baton to the outlying districts. The signal for the playing his already world-famous Blue Danube waltz was given by a cannon shot. He conducted 14 of these mammoth concerts in Boston and four in New York, always with stupefying success. In order not to disappoint the American ladies who demanded a lock of his hair, Strauss had swatches snipped from the coat of his equally sable Newfoundland dog.
"Thanks to the money his first wife brought him, Strauss was able to leave the conducting of waltzes more and more to his brothers, and devote himself to writing them. He was always composing, and would jot down ideas in his nightshirt, in the dark, to be decoded in the morning. He helped to free the waltz from over-insistent rhythm; he took, as it were, its feet off the dance floor, and often gave it the piquancy of romantic dialogue between the waltzer and his fair partner."
Johann II will forever be known as the Waltz King for his more than four hindered irresistible Viennese waltzes, polkas, operettas, and so on, but he must also share honors with his father and two younger brothers, all of whom were part of the unique family that has become synonymous with concert dance music.
by Robert Littell, Roving Editor of the Reader's Digest, 1959
