Concert in Beijing

Johann Strauss II
At the Double! / Quick polka
op. 348 (1871)

Ever since his début in October 1844, almost a quarter of a century before he arranged this quick polka, Johann Strauss II had built up an extraordinarily good reputation as a composer of dance music — both at home and abroad. It was not until the fifth decade of his life that he turned to the then modern genre of operetta. Any number of anecdotes surround his decision to go for success as a composer of operetta in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Most of these stories have no basis at all in reality. What is generally left unmentioned is that one of Strauss’s motives had to be to ensure a respectable income to be able to keep up the standard of living to which his wife and other members of the extended Strauss family were accustomed. He was no longer engaged to perform in Russia, while during the 1860s in Vienna the military bands, with their cheap but excellent musicians, had come to be serious competitors for the Strauss Orchestra. Looking at the great success of Jacques Offenbach’s operettas in Vienna, Strauss realised that there was good money to be earned in the field of musical entertainment in the theatre, especially as the melodies of an operetta could also be recycled and sold as dances.
Strauss had, however, at that time had no experience of setting words to music, let alone of putting their content into music. It was a happy chance that an experienced theatre conductor and stage composer in the person of Richard Genée could be found to assist Johann Strauss II with the composition of his first nine operettas, providing advice and above all practical help. Finally, on 10 February 1871, Strauss’s first operetta, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (Indigo and the Forty Thieves), had its premiere in the Theater an der Wien.

The quick polka Im Sturmschritt! Is one of nine arrangements made from the melodies of the operetta Indigo und die vierzig Räuber. The first performance was given at a May Festival in the Volksgarten establishment in Vienna on 19 May 1871 by the Strauss Orchestra conducted by Johann’s youngest brother, Eduard. The publication of the piano arrangement had already been announced in the Fremden-Blatt newspaper on 2 May.

Synopsis: Prof. Norbert Rubey

English translations: Dr. Leigh H. Bailey

Johann Strauss II. : On the Double / Polka schnell op. 348
© by «Kulturverein Wiener Blut»

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