Joseph Lanner: Hans Jorgel Polka Op. 194, for Wind Ensemble

Composer(s)

Joseph Lanner
(b St Ulrich, Vienna, 11 April 1801; d Oberdöbling, nr Vienna, 14 April 1843). Austrian composer and violinist. The son of a glover, Martin Lanner (1771–1839), and a housekeeper, Maria Scherhauff (1772–1823), Joseph Lanner was largely self-taught as a violinist and composer. In the late autumn of 1816 he and the Drahanek brothers, Anton (1797–1863) and Johann (1800–76), formed a trio, sometimes expanded to a sextet, to play music in the yards and small taverns of Vienna. In the spring of 1823 Johann Strauss (i) joined the ensemble as a viola player. Lanner divided his orchestra into two on 1 September 1825, with Strauss becoming conductor of the other half, and in the spring of 1827 Strauss left Lanner and founded his own orchestra. On 28 November 1828 Lanner married Franziska Jahn (1800–55), but marital difficulties led to their separation in 1838, and Lanner moved to a house in Oberdöbling with his mistress Maria Kraus. Early in 1829 Lanner became music director of the Redoutensäle in Vienna, and he also introduced promenade concerts into the Vienna Volksgarten in 1831. In 1833 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Second Viennese militia regiment.

Lanner went on several concert tours to Pest (now Budapest) (1834 and 1835) and Graz (1837 and 1838), to Brno and Pressburg (now Bratislava), and on the occasion of the coronation festivities for Crown Prince Ferdinand in 1838 he undertook a long journey to Milan (by way of Linz, Innsbruck and Venice). His ensemble played in all the major dance cafés of Vienna, particularly the Sperl, the Dommayer, Zögernitz Casino and the Goldene Birn, and at many court festivities in the Redoutensäle. On 16 January 1840 he was conductor at the chamber ball in the Hofburg for the first time. He was known and highly regarded all over Europe, and his compositions were even played in America. At the height of his career he was managing several ensembles during the carnival season, employing some 200 musicians. Lanner gave his last concert on 21 March 1843, and died three weeks later of a typhoid infection at the age of 42.

Of his surviving children, Katharina Lanner (b Vienna, 14 Sept 1829; d London, 15 Nov 1908) became a famous ballerina, making her début at the Kärntnerthortheater on 17 July 1845; at the peak of her career she was known as ‘the Taglioni of the North’. On retiring from the stage she founded a successful children’s ballet in London. Lanner’s son August (b Vienna, 23 Jan 1835; d Vienna, 27 Sept 1855) appeared as a violinist and conductor of his father’s orchestra at the age of eight. He made his début with a newly founded orchestra on 19 March 1853 and within a short time became one of the leading light musicians of Vienna, but then died at the age of 20. The 33 compositions printed and published by Spina in Venice, show that he was a talented composer, and his D’ersten Gedanken op.1 and Amalien-Polka op.14 are still sometimes played.

With Johann Stauss (i), Lanner was the most important dance composer of the Biedermeier period, and the two musicians have rightly been called the fathers of the Viennese waltz. Even Lanner’s early work shows further development of the waltz form introduced some years earlier by Joseph Wilde and Michael Pamer. Broad, sweeping melodies, rich harmonies and daring rhythmic subtleties are typical of his compositions. Above all the frequent use of minor keys gives Lanner's works a touch of melancholy, although the composer himself was cheerful and outgoing. After 1833 Lanner took over the classic waltz form developed by Strauss in 1830, with its introduction, five double waltzes and coda, and developed it further. In particular, he often set the introduction in several parts, sometimes achieving a symphonic effect by frequent changes of key and tempo. The coda also acquired larger dimensions, bringing the preceding waltzes together and thereby giving unity to the composition as a whole.

Lanner was an excellent violinist, and sometimes played technically demanding violin concertos, such as that of de Bériot, in the intervals of his concerts. He was also an outstanding orchestrator, combining the classical instruments of the orchestra with many mechanical sound effects and the human voice (his orchestral musicians were quite often called on to sing), especially in his many popular potpourris. Despite a lengthy period of some neglect, there has been an increasing awareness of Lanner’s music. Small ensembles in particular have taken a greater interest in his work and tried to reproduce the original sound, and many new recordings have been made.