Johann Strauss II
City Hall Ball Dances / Waltz
op. 438 (1890)
Although the final stone of the new City Hall in Vienna had been laid at a ceremony attended by Emperor Franz Joseph on 12 September 1883, its grand festive hall was not opened until 12 February 1890, when the first Ball of the City of Vienna was held there. It was for this occasion that Johann Strauss II wrote the waltz Rathhaus-Ball-Tänze and dedicated it to ‘his dear hometown of Vienna’. His brother Eduard conducted the first performance with Strauss Orchestra, which had been engaged for the ball together with the band of Infantry Regiment no. 4, the Hoch- und Deutschmeister, which was conducted by Carl Michael Ziehrer. His dedication for the ball was the waltz Wiener Bürger (Citizens of Vienna), which became extremely popular. The splendid title page of the piano edition of Rathhaus-Ball-Tänze shows not only the dedication but also the City Hall and the statue of the knight in armour on its tower – the so-called Rathausmann, who became a new emblem of Vienna.
To do justice to the memorable event, in his Rathhaus-Ball-Tänze Strauss quoted some well-known melodies which had become identified with Vienna: at the very beginning of the first waltz there is the distinctive opening phrase of the old Austrian national anthem, ‘Gott erhalte unseren Kaiser’ (God save our Emperor) by Joseph Haydn, and in the first part of the third waltz this is combined with a variation on a very well-known and popular Viennese song, ‘ ’s gibt nur a Kaiserstadt, ’s gibt nur a Wien’ (There’s only one imperial city, there’s only one Vienna). Into the introduction and coda Strauss weaves the best known of all his waltzes, The Blue Danube, which had become almost as popular as the old imperial anthem, in fact more or less a second national anthem. The end of the coda brings a musical apotheosis of the themes from Haydn’s anthem, framed by the opening phrases of the third and first waltzes of The Blue Danube.
Synopsis: Prof. Norbert Rubey
English translations: Leigh H. Bailey
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