Richard Strauss and Pauline Maria de Ahna

Richard Strauss

Guntram, Op. 25, TrV 168: Prelude ( 1893 )

4 Lieder, Op. 27, TrV 170 (1894) No.2 Cacilie

Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), Op. 40, TrV 190 (1898)

Symphonia domestica, Op. 53, TrV 209 (1903)

After sampling the sexual exploitations by some members of the Viennese Strauss family, it might be time to restore our faith in humanity—especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner—by taking a look at a different Strauss, namely Richard from Munich. As a celebrated international conductor, Richard Strauss enjoyed an impressive female following, particularly in the gallery of heroines that he brought to the stage as a composer. Yet by the time of his 37th birthday he was still a bachelor with no scandalous love affairs to his name. And so it came as a complete surprise when Richard proposed to his former student and operatic soprano Pauline Maria de Ahna in the middle of a turbulent rehearsal for his opera “Guntram” in 1894. Apparently, his student Heinrich Zeller was unable to master the insanely taxing vocal part and Strauss had to repeatedly interrupt the rehearsal. Then came the time for Pauline’s scene in Act III, which she knew well. In spite of this, she did not feel sure and envied Zeller because he had been given so many chances of repeating. Suddenly she stopped singing and asked Richard, to whom she had been secretly engaged since March 1894, why he was not interrupting her. Richard replied, that she knew her part well. Pauline retorted, “but I want to be interrupted” and threw the piano score at Richard’s head, but to the delight of the orchestra it landed on the desk of the second violinist. Having thus made her point, she stormed off the stage and locked herself in the dressing room, with Richard hurriedly following her. Once Richard returned to rehearsal the orchestral musicians enquired as to what kind of reprimand he had in mind for the temperamental soprano, to which Richard replied, “I am going to marry her”! And so he did, with the wedding taking place in a small chapel adjacent to the castle in Marquartstein on 10 September 1894.

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Johann Strauss II, Henriette Angelika Diettrich “Lily”, Henrietta “Jetty” Treffz and Adele Deutsch

Johann Strauss II

Eine Nacht in Venedig (A Night in Venice) (1883)

Kaiser Walzer (Emperor Waltz), Op. 437 (1889)

Aufs Korn, Op. 478 (1898)

Psychoanalytical models suggest that a human being, emotionally responding to the loss of a loved one, undergoes a process of grieving that involves various stages. The first two stages, so we are told, involve denial and anger. As it happens, the death of his beloved wife “Jetty” Treffz on 8 April 1878 elicited a textbook response from Johann Strauss Junior. Initially, he refused to believe that she was dead, and did not even attend her funeral, which had to be organized by his younger brother Eduard. Once denial turned to anger, which seemingly happened in a matter of minutes, the female population of Vienna bore the brunt of his rage. At least, the profits of the local bordellos skyrocketed over the next couple of weeks!

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Johann Strauss II, Olga Smirnitskaya and Henrietta “Jetty” Treffz

Johann Strauss II

Abschied von St. Petersburg (1858)

An der schonen, blauen Donau (The Beautiful Blue Danube), Op. 314 (1867)

Die Fledermaus (1874)

I am not entirely sure who coined the saying “like father, like son”, but they certainly could have had Johann Strauss the father, and Johann Strauss the son in mind. Like any good son, junior tried to outdo his father in all aspects of life, particularly in music and sexual promiscuity. And like any good father, senior desperately tried to prevent his son from duplicating his own mistakes. That’s probably the reason senior insisted that his son — despite displaying remarkable musical skills at an early age — become a banker. But with senior Strauss frequently out of town to regale the European countryside with his musical and sexual prowess, junior secretly took violin lessons. Once senior left the family to have his trousers mended by the seamstress Emilie Trampusch, junior quickly begun to study music in earnest, and by the tender age of 19 established his own dance orchestra, competing directly with the band of his father. The “new Strauss” mesmerized Viennese audiences, and in a blatant repeat of history, Vienna’s female population would swoon at the mere mention of his name. Once his father passed away, junior merged both orchestras, and took the show on the road. His annual summer pilgrimages to Russia were highly successful, however, his popularity with the ladies soon got him into trouble. On more than one occasion, jealous husbands challenged him to duels, and once he even had to seek refuge in the Austrian Embassy, barely escaping a double-barrel shotgun gently inviting him to marry a young Russian maid. Regardless, during his first Russian tour, he passionately fell in love with the young Russian aristocrat Olga Smirnitskaya. The wedding dress was selected, bells were ringing and the honeymoon bed extensively used, yet junior Strauss had somehow forgotten to get permission from Olga’s parents. Not surprisingly, the aristocratic Russians told the Austrian commoner to get lost. Olga quickly fell in line with her parents, and a dejected junior Strauss composed his doleful
Abschied von St. Petersburg (Farewell from St. Petersburg).


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Johann Strauss and Maria Anna Streim

Johann Strauss

Täuberlin-Walzer, Op. 1

Kettenbrücken-Walzer, Op. 4

“Homage to Queen Victoria of Great Britain”, Op. 103 (1838)

“Radetzky March”, Op. 228 (1848)

One would be hard pressed not to agree with the assessment of a contemporary music critic, who described the Viennese Waltz as a direct expression of sensuality. Originally clergymen and the aristocracy condemned the waltz, which evolved from the rustic “Ländler” in the middle of the 18th century. They primarily objected to the close bodily contact between dancers. Eyewitnesses report, “the men dancers held up the dresses of their partners very high so that they should not trail and be stepped on, wrapped themselves both tightly in the covering, bringing their bodies as closely together as possible, and thus whirling about went on in the most indecent positions”. This vertical expression of horizontal desire, which reflected the pleasure-seeking and carefree spirit of imperial Vienna, was eagerly practiced in the great dancehalls of the city. And members of the Strauss family gleefully provided the musical background, which gaily sent the Viennese population into throbbing gyrations.

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Bedřich Smetana and Kateřina Kolářová

Bedřich Smetana

String Quartet no. 1 in E Minor “From My Life” (1876)

Piano Trio in G minor, Op.15 (1855)

By the summer of 1874, Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) was fighting an apparently minor throat infection that resulted in a blockage to his ears. By September, however, he had lost all hearing in his right ear, and by October he was profoundly deaf. Like Beethoven, he sought medical treatment abroad—ingesting large quantities of mercury and enduring electric shock therapy— and also contemplated suicide. Hastily he wrote in his journal: “If my disease is incurable, then I should prefer to be liberated from this life”. Unlike Beethoven, however, Smetana’s deafness was the result of an advanced syphilis infection, which would ultimately rob him of his eyesight as well. Yet both composers somehow found solace in the creative process of writing music. In fact, Smetana embarked on a musical project that would offer an autobiographical account of his life. This composition—his String Quartet No.1 in E minor —was completed at the end of 1876 and carries the subtitle “From My Life”. From a letter Smetana wrote to his friend Josef Srba, we actually get a detailed and graphic description of all four movements. The opening “Allegro vivo” depicts, according to Smetana “my youthful leanings towards art, the Romantic atmosphere, the inexpressible yearning of something I could neither express nor define, and also a kind of warning of my future misfortune.” In the second movement, Smetana instructs the viola to “sound like a trumpet, as this quasi-polka brings to mind the joyful days of youth when I composed dance music”. The “Largo sostenuto” depicts, according to Smetana, the “happiness of my first love, the girl who later became my first wife”. However, the music of this movement is entirely pensive and contemplative, and seems to contradict Smetana’s joyful description. To understand this apparent contraction, we have to return to the summer of 1840.

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