Waltz (music)

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The waltz is a music in the 3 / 4 - stroke or 3 / 8 -Stroke, in Latin America and in older sources in 6 / 8 -Stroke. The name is derived from the dance figure " rolling ", which means "turning", and comes from the Swabian region.

term

The term "waltz" was first used in public by Friedrich Schiller in the ballad Eberhard der Greiner in 1781. The oldest known waltzes can be found in music manuscripts from around 1790, including a so-called “whale” in Stockholm in 1785. The first printed edition of waltzes appeared in Leipzig in 1806.

The term “rolling” for turning movements can already be found in medieval terms. In relation to dance, it has stood for couple dances since around 1750, from around 1760 "rolling dance" or "rolling". From the first two decades of the 19th century, the waltz as a dance became fashionable in all social classes. He ousted the minuet and had a reputation for being popular and German compared to the aristocratic and French of the minuet.

Meter and tempo

While the minuet, which is also in three-time, has a regular baroque pulse, the weights in the waltz are unevenly distributed, and the bass usually only plays on the first beat. While the minuet gives the impression of walking, the waltz gives that of swinging. Up to the beginning of the 19th century the waltz tempo was very fast, in its "classical" time after the Congress of Vienna it settled at about one second per measure and is danced even more slowly today.

The half as fast version of the dance, the slow waltz , was also printed for the first time in 1806, but did not spread until the end of the 19th century.

Examples

Dance waltz

Famous danceable waltzes come from Josef Lanner , Johann Strauss (father) , his son Johann Strauss (son) (e.g. the Danube Waltz , 1867) and from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky . Many operas and operettas contain waltz music danced on the stage.

Concert waltz

Franz Schubert , Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt wrote waltzes for piano that are to be performed in rubato or agogic playing style. Waltzes for orchestras that are not intended for dance are by Johannes Brahms and Johann Strauss (son). Even Carl Maria von Weber's piano piece Invitation to the Dance is a kind concert waltz , the rather portrays a dance, as aufzuspielen to dance.

Symphonic music

Among the songs and symphonic movements by Gustav Mahler there are some waltzes.

Maurice Ravel's work La Valse is a prominent self-reference to the epoch of the Viennese waltz . It is performed equally as a piano reduction and in the orchestral version.

As a symphonic movement , the waltz could not suppress the minuet; more or less veiled, it sometimes appears as a scherzo . The Viennese orchestral waltzes between Lanner and Strauss Sohn have an introduction in straight time and, after a high-contrast sequence of waltzes, a fast coda . French waltzes are in three parts with increasing tempo.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Norbert Linke : On the early history of the waltz - Symposium report by Thomas Nussbaumer & Franz Gratl - Book review In: New Life - Bulletin of the German Johann Strauss Society , No. 47 (2014/3), ISSN  1438-065X , p. 87 -90.
  2. The assertion of Simon Wascher in the waltzes of a Westphalian dance collection from 1767. In: Thomas Nussbaumer, Franz Gratl (ed.): Zur Frühgeschichte des Walzers. (= Writings on musical ethnology, Volume 3), Innsbruck 2014, p. 56, regarding a dance music manuscript from Dinker in Westphalia with the year 1767 was refuted by Linke. The collection can be dated to 1790 at the earliest. See: Norbert Linke : On the early history of the waltz - Symposium report by Thomas Nussbaumer & Franz Gratl - Book review In: New Life - Bulletin of the German Johann Strauss Society , No. 47 (2014/3), ISSN  1438-065X , p. 87– 90.
  3. Simon Wascher: The waltzes of a Westphalian dance collection from 1767. In: Thomas Nussbaumer, Franz Gratl (Ed.): Zur Frühgeschichte des Walzers. (= Writings on musical ethnology, Volume 3), Innsbruck 2014, p. 64.