Strauss: The afterlife is awesome. As early as 6 years old, little Strauss played his own waltz on the piano at home.
Strauss was very uneasy about his son's musical talent. He banned all musical activities of his children. However, Anna is proud of her children's precocity in music. She quietly recorded the child's debut. Maybe from that day on, she began to imagine a plan to get back at her husband. She saved money from her meager family living expenses to hire teachers and give music lessons to her son, hoping that little John could challenge his father one day.
His father was not completely surprised that little Strauss entered the music industry. Many years ago, old Strauss occasionally came home and saw his son practicing the violin, so he beat him with a whip. From then on, old Strauss had doubts about his son and was deeply troubled. He asked his agent Hirsch to warn the major dance halls in Vienna that if someone received a performance by little Strauss there, the King of Waltz himself would disappear from that dance hall. Little Strauss was rejected by the major dance halls and had to go to an open-air concert in the garden of a cafe in the suburbs.
The nosy man told his father the news of little Strauss's rehearsal. In a rage, old Strauss announced that he would also hold a concert that night. But later, he learned that his concert tickets were not as popular as his son's tickets on the black market, so he canceled the plan to hold the concert. Old Strauss flew into a rage and finally fell ill.
In the turbulent years,1March 848, a revolution broke out in Vienna. Like the whole city, the Strauss family is divided into two factions. The old Strauss sided with the royalists, while the young Strauss sided with the insurgents. Ironically, however, neither of them has any firm political beliefs. Father became a royalist only because he had carried out orders; And his son's position is only out of sympathy for some of his friends. These young people just want to get rid of metternich, the prime minister who monopolizes power, and let the Habsburg dynasty come back to implement constitutionalism.
In that turbulent day, both father and son hung up the title of composer and conductor of military orchestra. In order to boost the royalists' morale, Lao Strauss wrote many brisk military marches, the most famous of which was the Radsky March. However, little Strauss's works have been given revolutionary titles, such as March of Freedom, March of Students, Song of the barricade and so on.
The Vienna Uprising finally failed. But dramatically, little Strauss was welcomed by people; Old Strauss, on the other hand, was devastated, and many people expressed indignation at his support for the royalists. In despair, old Strauss left Vienna with his band to look for the worship of the masses in the past. However, this hope has also become a bubble. In Prague, Munich and Heidelberg, people opposed him everywhere and even received letters threatening and scolding him.
When he returned to Vienna, the political atmosphere had greatly eased. People no longer bear a grudge against old Strauss. His concerts are still popular with people. But old Strauss often seems upset and at a loss. In the next few months, he has been depressed and isolated, and his tenacity, enthusiasm and vitality, as well as his charming inspiration and anger, seem to disappear at once.
His attitude towards his son has also changed. Although he still has no contact with his son and his legal family, the resentment has disappeared. He even secretly felt proud of his son's musical achievements and longed to shake hands with him, but his stubborn self-esteem prevented him from doing so.
1On September 25th, 849, old Strauss was killed by scarlet fever. When the son heard the news, he found that his father's naked body had fallen to the floor from an empty cot. All the drawers in the cupboard have been ransacked, and Emily has swept away everything she can take away-even the pajamas worn by the deceased and the bedding on the bed.
Two days later, the coffin of old Strauss was carried to the solemn St. Stephen's Cathedral. Hundreds of people from all over Vienna came to pay their respects, and hundreds of bells in bell towers rang everywhere, and their cries echoed in the air. On the last leg of the funeral, members of the Strauss Orchestra unloaded his coffin from a hearse pulled by four dark horses, carried it on their shoulders, and sent it to the cemetery of Doblin Church in Carenborg. At that time, as a teenager determined to become a musician, he escaped from the book binding workshop and lay on this grassy hillside.
The Blue Danube1862 On August 27th, little Strauss married the singer Katie, who was 10 years old. After marriage, little Strauss lived an isolated life, with only a few close friends visiting occasionally. His way of entertaining guests is to play a quiet game of billiards together. His wife's wealth enabled him to completely free himself from daily performances and devote himself to composing music.
Among all the waltzes in the world, The Blue Danube is the most representative work. The inspiration for the young Strauss to compose this world-famous song comes from a poem describing love, including the phrase "Danube, beautiful blue Danube". The fluent syllables of this poem strongly infected him. At that time, little Strauss was composing a song for the Vienna Youth Choir. He took "The Blue Danube" as the title of male chorus, and put it into the prelude of music, so that people can think of this gurgling river at the beginning of music. Strangely, this immortal masterpiece, which will become the symbol of Vienna music in the future, was considered as one of the few failed works when Strauss Jr. first met the audience. Hearing the news that the performance failed, little Strauss didn't care at all. At that time, he just mumbled, "well, let it go to hell." If little Strauss had not been invited to attend the international exposition held in Paris shortly thereafter, The Blue Danube would probably have been lost in his numerous musical manuscripts and forgotten.
In Paris, the newly released "le figaro" is going to advertise for little Strauss, and an editor suggested that a new song that Parisians have never heard will definitely add a lot of color to his concert. At this time, little Strauss remembered the Blue Danube, so he telegraphed to Vienna to ask for music scores and adapted them into orchestral music.
Thanks to the editor of le figaro, the premiere of The Blue Danube in Paris caused a great sensation in this World Expo. In the spectacular hall of the World Expo, little Strauss dedicated his masterpiece to thousands of audiences. Can it be successful this time?
With the development of light overture music, the passionate melody of "Blue Danube" is like this beautiful river, ups and downs, flowing and escaping, and finally gradually returning to a poetic peace ... The music is over, but the audience is still intoxicated with the music atmosphere-after a silence, the cheers of the room suddenly broke out. ...