Emile Waldteufel (1837-1915) Famous Waltzes Like Johann Strauss, Emile Waldteufel came from a family of dance musicians, being preceded in the business by...
Emile Waldteufel
(1837-1915)
Famous Waltzes
Like Johann Strauss, Emile Waldteufel came from a family of dance
musicians, being preceded in the business by his father Louis (1801-84) and
brother Leon (1832-84). Despite their Germanic surname, the family were French.
This is explained by their German ancestry and the fact that they hailed from
Alsace, which despite strong German traditions had been fully integrated into
France since 1793.
Emile Waldteufel was born in Strasbourg on 9th December 1837, just seven
weeks after the elder Johann Strauss gave his first concert on French soil in
that very city. When he was seven the family moved to Paris for his brother
Leon to take up a place as a violin student at the Paris Conservatoire. Emile
Waldteufel was to live in Paris for the rest of his life, and he in turn
studied piano at the Conservatoire from 1853 to 1857, his classmates there
including Jules Massenet.
Meanwhile the family dance orchestra was becoming one of the best-known
in Paris, increasingly in demand for Society balls during Napoleon III's Second
Empire. In 1865 Emile was appointed court pianist to the Empress Eugenie in
succession to Joseph Ascher (composer of 'Alice, where art thou?'), performing
at Court functions not only in Paris but in Biarritz and Compiègne. From 1867
the Waldteufel orchestra played at Napoleon III's magnificent Court balls at
the Tuileries.
After the Franco-Prussian War the orchestra again presided at the
Presidential balls at the Élysee. Yet so far Emile Waldteufel's dances had been
known only to a relatively limited Society audience. By the time international
fame came he was almost forty. In October 1874 he happened to be playing at a
soiree attended by the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. The Prince
complimented him on his waltz Manolo and agreed to help launch his music
in London. The result was a long-term publishing contract with the London firm
of Hopwood & Crew. Since the firm was half-owned by Charles Coote, director
of Coote & Tinney's Band, the premier London dance orchestra, this also
gave access to the musical programmes of Queen Victoria's State Balls at
Buckingham Palace. For several years Emile Waldteufel's music dominated the
programmes there, generating him world-wide fame as he turned out a string of
works that enjoyed huge popularity - including his best-known work Les
Patineurs ('The Skaters') in 1882. His French publisher Durand, Schoenewerk
was now forced to buy the French rights to these works from Hopwood & Crew.
So later did the German firm of Litolff, in whose editions the works sometimes
appeared under slightly different German names. In addition, to suit Germanic
custom, in 1883 Litolff retrospectively began an opus numbering system. This
began at 101 to make arbitrary allowance for early works, and for various
reasons many works were numbered out of chronological sequence, thereby
providing a source of much confusion ever since.
Waldteufel appeared in London in 1885 and Berlin in 1889, and in 1890
and 1891 he conducted at the Paris Opera Balls. His orchestra continued to
provide dance music for Presidential Balls, as well as for other Society
functions, until 1899, when he retired. He continued to compose, but his style
was by then outdated. He died in Paris on 12th February 1915 at the age of 77.
His wife, a former singer Celestine Dufau, whom he married in 1873 and who bore
him two sons and a daughter, had died the previous year.
Waldteufel was recognised as a good-natured person, with a ready sense
of humour - characteristics that are readily perceivable in his music. Unlike
the music of Johann Strauss, Waldteufel's perhaps scales no great architectural
heights, but rather seeks to enchant by the grace and charm of his melodies and
their gentle harmonies. By comparison with Strauss's very masculine creations,
there is undoubtedly more of a feminine feel about Waldteufel's waltzes. Unlike
Strauss, he conducted with a baton rather than a violin bow, and he composed at
the piano, his works being orchestrated later. The standard Waldteufel orchestration
was for strings, double woodwind, two cornets, four horns, three trombones and
ophicleide (or tuba), plus timpani and percussion.
After Waldteufel's death his music continued to hold a place in the
affections of ordinary music-lovers alongside that of Johann Strauss. The
conductor of these recordings, Alfred Walter, recalls having a lot of
Waldteufel's music at his childhood home in Southern Bohemia - not only for
piano but also in arrangements for piano trio which were played in his musical
family. If in recent decades Emile Waldteufel's music has been overshadowed by
that of the Strausses, it is with correspondingly greater freshness that we are
able to rediscover its grace and charm today.
Unfortunately Paris newspapers did not report the titles of dances
played at Society balls. Thus the best available dating of Emile Waldteufel's
works comes from publication records and dates of registration with the French
copyright collecting agency S.A.C.E.M. In the following notes, the original
French titles are given, together with English translations and the titles
under which the works were published in Germany.
[1] Les Patineurs ('The Skaters' / 'Die Schlittschuhlaufer'), Valse, Op.
183 (1882)
In years before increasing urbanisation and industrialisation created
any thought of global warming, ponds and rivers iced over far more commonly
than today. Ice-skating was a popular pastime, and the Cercle des Patineurs in
the Bois de Boulogne was a popular Parisian meeting place. The winter of
1879-80 was especially severe, and on 10th December 1879 Paris experienced a
temperature of -25.6°C - the lowest ever recorded there. The Seine froze over
completely, and omnibuses and carriages had to operate on runners. It was
against this background that, some two years later, Emile Waldteufel composed
his most famous waltz, Les Patineurs. Of them ail it is the one with the
most obvious programmatic content. The introduction, anticipating the main
theme, offers a sense of the sharpness and glitter of a wintry scene, with the
flute and answering violin glissandi helping to give the impression of skaters
trying out the ice. The main theme in turn presents a readily recognisable
picture of skaters gliding around, after which they build up their confidence
and try some daring leaps and falls. Then a sleigh, complete with sleigh-bells,
arrives to complete the wintry scene. Waldteufel delivered the waltz to Hopwood
& Crew on 27th July 1882, and it was published by them on 30th October
1882. He dedicated it to his friend Ernest Coquelin (1848-1909), the younger of
two celebrated actor brothers of the Comedie Française.
[2] Très jolie ('Very Pretty' / 'Ganz allerliebst'), Valse, Op. 159
(1878)
Yet another of the very finest Waldteufel waltzes from the years of his
great international success, Très jolie develops quite splendidly, with
the cumulative effect of the inflections of rhythm and dynamics building up an
irresistible climactic sweep. Note especially the third waltz section, in which
the violins flirt deliciously with the trombones, and the broadening of melody
in the fourth waltz section, where dotted minims make up 29 of 30 consecutive
bars of the 32-bar trio. The work carries a dedication to Vicomtesse Leonie de
Chabrol.
[3] Estudiantina, Valse, Op. 191 (1883)
Besides his original compositions, Emile Waldteufel made many dance
arrangements from currently popular songs and stage works. Thus it was that the
publisher Enoch commissioned him to arrange a set of waltzes around a highly
popular duet
Estudiantina ('Band of Students') composed by Paul Lacome
(1838-1920). The actual song was sufficient for only the first one-and-a-half
sections of Waldteufel's waltz. However, since Lacome and his lyricist Comte J.
de Lau Lusignan had made many French adaptations of Spanish popular songs
(including an 1872 collection
Échos d'Espagne), Waldteufel needed to go
on further than Lacome to find some genuine Spanish songs to complete a
four-part waltz with a consistently Spanish tang. The songs used in the various
waltz sections are: 1
Estudiantina (refrain); 2
Estudiantina (verse)
and
Chanson d'automne (another original Lacome composition); 3
Jota
de la Estudiantina and 'Tirana'; 4
De Cadiz al Puerto and
El
Tripili. Lacome's
Estudiantina was published in December 1881, and
Emile Waldteufel's waltz in April 1883.
[4] Pomone ('Pomona' / 'Herbstweisen'), Valse, Op. 155 (1877)
One of the most majestic and successful of ail Emile Waldteufel's
waltzes,
Pomone dates from the period when his reputation was being
established around the world. As usual, we do not know precisely when it was
first heard in Paris, but we know that it was introduced to London - along with
Toujours ou jamais - by Coote & Tinney's Band at the Prince and
Princess of Wales's wedding anniversary ball at Marlborough House on 21st March
1878. Pomona was an Italian goddess of tree-fruits such as apples (hence the
word
pommes), who was pursued by Vertumnus, god of the ripening fruits
of autumn. The autumnal country atmosphere is admirably captured in the
introduction, which is in
Landler tempo, but the waltz proper has a
particularly broad melodic sweep. This is especially true of the second part of
the third waltz section, which is marked
grandioso and which is repeated
fortissimo in the coda to bring the waltz to an especially exhilarating
conclusion. The work bears a dedication to the Comtesse Raphael Cahen d'Anvers.
[5] Espana, Valse, Op. 236 (1886)
Besides his original compositions, Waldteufel's contract with Hopwood
& Crew permitted him to make dance arrangements of other composers' music
for other publishers, and
Estudiantina and
Espana are merely the
best-known of many such works. Without for a moment suggesting that Emmauel
Chabrier needed any help from Emile Waldteufel, it is a fact that Chabrier's
rhapsody and Waldteufel's waltz arrangement have shared popular acclaim for
over a hundred years. It was in November 1883 that the rhapsody was published,
and some two years later that Waldteufel made his waltz arrangement. Not only
the themes are taken over, but also details of orchestration such as the
distinctive whirring of the cellos in the second waltz section and the famous
barking trombone theme in the fourth. At the same time, so skilfully are the
melodies integrated that few realise that not all the material is from the
rhapsody. Short of sufficient themes for the standard four two-part sections,
Waldteufel found material for the third section in a duet in Chabrier's
charming one-act operetta
Une Éducation manquee (1879). The waltz
arrangement of
Espana was published in France in 1886, but Litolff's
belated acquisition of the German publishing rights resulted in the
misleadingly high opus number.
[6] Solitude, Valse, Op.174 (1881)
Solitude is a most delightful waltz, offering a lovely broad opening melody and
some wonderfully varied and delicately shaded themes to follow. It was
dedicated to Henry Blount, younger son of Sir Edward Blount (1809-1905), a
British banker who became President of the Societe Generale in Paris. In later
years Henry Blount was to be a leading figure in a Parisian tragedy. In May
1897 he was chief organiser of a Grand Charity Bazaar that was held annually in
the Rue Jean-Goujon. Usually Emile Waldteufel and his orchestra performed at
the bazaar, but on this occasion the organising committee introduced a new
attraction - the kinematograph. At 4 p.m. on the first day of the bazaar a fire
broke out, started by lamps used in connection with the kinematograph and
fuelled by the tarpaulin above the apparatus. The flames spread rapidly, and
there was panic in the crowded arena as everyone pressed for the exit. Some 120
people died in the disaster, with many others burned - among them Henry Blount.
[7] Les Sirènes ('The Sirens' / 'Sirenenzauber'), Valse, Op. 154 (1878)
The legend of the sirens who enticed unwary seafarers with their
enchanting music has long fascinated composers and artists. Emile Waldteufel's
evocation has justly remained one of his most popular waltzes. Indeed, of all
Waldteufel's waltzes, this was the one that had the greatest initial success in
Britain, the piano edition far outselling other Waldteufel titles. Les
Sirènes is full of enchantment, with a haunting siren's call in the
introduction and a main theme that is of interest for using the same rhythm as
for the opening themes of Les Patineurs and Acclamations. The
waltz was first published in London in 1878 and introduced there, together with
Hommage aux dames, at a State Ball at Buckingham Palace on 22nd May 1878. It is
dedicated to the Composer's friend Louis Dufour, who in 1874 had succeeded
Olivier Metra as musical director at Montmartre's leading dance-hall, the
Élysee-Montmartre in the Boulevard de Rochechouard. Dufour was to achieve a
sort of immortality not only through this dedication but also by being
depicted, with baton raised, directing the music for a q~adrille in Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec's drawing Le Quadrille de la Chaise Louis XIIIl à
l'Élysee-Montmartre.
[8] Pluie de diamants / Pluie d'or ('Golden Rain' / 'Goldregen'), Valse,
Op. 160 (1879)
The original title of this waltz was apparently Pluie de diamants, which
means not only 'diamond rain' but also a 'shower of diamonds' such as might be
found suspended from a lady's neck at any elegant Parisian ball. In London,
however, the title was changed to Pluie d'or ('Golden Rain'), which for
British minds has given it associations with fireworks. The British title was
in turn translated into German when the work was published by Litolff. Whether
associated with jewels or fireworks, the work begins with a suitably dazzling kaleidoscopic
display in polonaise rhythm, prefacing another of the best-known and most truly
inspired of all Emile Waldteufel's waltzes. The work carries a dedication to
the Baroness Hoffmann.
[9] Mon rêve ('My Dream' / 'Mein Traum'), Valse, Op. 151 (1877)
Mon rêve is yet another waltz that might justifiably challenge for the accolade
of being the finest Waldteufel waltz of all. In addition to the way in which it
builds up progressively from its beautifully dreamy introduction to the superb
melodic sweep of the coda, the delicacy of the orchestration is particularly
striking. Dating, like Pomone, from Waldteufel's most inventive period,
it was dedicated to Mme Michel Ephrussi, a member of a Parisian banking family.
Andrew Lamb
Author of Skaters' Waltz: the Story of the Waldteufels (1995)