Concert waltz

The concert waltz is a type of waltz music that is suitable or intended for a lecture in a concert hall instead of in the ballroom . This music genre was in vogue from the beginning of the 19th century until around the First World War, and for promenade and spa concerts well beyond the middle of the 20th century.

Characteristic

Similar to the way in which the music of the minuet was used as a symphonic movement without being used for dancing, there were waltzes that were either intended to be performed in concert from the outset or were then used as the basis for virtuoso improvisation from dance music to concert music (for example with Franz Liszt ). The sheet music editions of dance waltzes were also published as "concert waltzes" because this designation upgraded them to concert music.

Concert waltzes for piano or for solo instruments with piano accompaniment were popular in salon music , which reached its peak around the mid-19th century. Virtuosos like the pianist Johann Nepomuk Hummel also performed waltzes as the highlight of their performances. According to audience expectations, some concert waltzes are designed as character pieces or as program music , such as Carl Maria von Weber's Invitation to Dance (1819). The French composer Emile Waldteufel wrote many once popular concert waltzes as salon pieces for piano.

You can dance to some of Franz Schubert's concert waltzes for piano. The waltzes by Frédéric Chopin , on the other hand, are not suitable for ballroom dancing due to their fluctuations in tempo ( agogic ) if properly interpreted. It is similar with the waltzes by Johannes Brahms . Concert waltzes often exist in different versions. Brahms' love song waltzes are available for piano with and without a choir as well as for orchestra.

Symphonic waltz

Symphonic concert waltzes had the greatest social significance in the later 19th century and could often serve as dance waltzes at the same time as the works of Johann Strauss (son) : for example On the Beautiful Blue Danube (1867), Tales from the Vienna Woods (1868) or the Kaiserwalzer (1889). It was similar with theatrical overtures in which waltzes appeared, as in the operetta . This created a kind of intermediality between theater, ballroom and concert hall, whereby the music for concert and theater was socially higher than pure dance music. For Strauss, his career from dance music director to orchestral conductor of individual concerts and operetta performances marked a social advancement and relief from night-long music making.

Even Ferruccio Busoni calls his concert Waltz op. 53 (1921) for large orchestra still "dance waltz". There is also symphonic waltz music that is completely different from ballroom dancing. The waltz from the second movement of Hector Berlioz ' Symphonie fantastique (1830) is the background of a program musical event.

Maurice Ravel's “choreographic poem” La Valse (1920) is a prominent self-reference to the era of the Viennese waltz . It is performed equally as a piano reduction and in the orchestral version.

literature

• Karl H. Wörner: History of Music , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1993, p. 495.