Johann Strauss II - Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, Op. 214

Shortly before Johann Strauss returned to Vienna after completing his third summer concert season at Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg, an announcement appeared in the Wiener Allgemeine Theaterzeitung on 24 September 1858: "Herr Kapellmeister Johann Strauss has completed the following compositions during his stay in St. Petersburg this year, and they will appear in due course from Carl Haslinger: 'Mes adieux à St. Petersbourg' [op. 210], 'Bon-Bon' - Polka française [op. 213], 'Tritsch-Tratsch' Schnellpolka, 'Szechenyi-Tänze' Walzer [= Gedankenflug Walzer op. 215]." Yet, while Tritsch-Tratsch may well have been sketched, or even completed, in Russia, Strauss did not perform it there until the following season, on 22 May 1859 (= 10 May, Russian calendar).

Upon returning to his native city, Strauss made his first public appearance at a concert in the Volksgarten on 21 November 1858, performing the Viennese premières of the Abschied von St. Petersburg Walzer op. 210, Champagner-Polka op. 211, Fürst Bariatinsky-Marsch op. 212 and Bonbon-Polka op. 213. Three days later, on 24 November, sharing the conducting with his brother Josef at a concert in the intimate surroundings of 'Zum grossen Zeisig', a tavern on the Burgglacis (today, Burggasse 2) in the suburb of Neubau, Johann played these pieces again, introducing an additional novelty - the Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka. The new work proved a sensation, prompting the Wiener Allgemeine Theaterzeitung to state in its edition of 27 November 1858: "Johann Strauss's enormously successful 'Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka', which has been received with the most tempestuous applause, will appear in the next few days from Carl Haslinger. No dance composition of such freshness, humorous colouring and piquant instrumentation can have appeared for years". Demand for the new work was so overwhelming that Haslinger was obliged to change his publishing programme: the piano arrangement of the polka was written out in just a few hours and its first printed edition was announced on 1 December 1858. By the time this advertisement appeared in the Fremden-Blatt, however, the first edition had been sold out and Haslinger was forced into the first of several reprints. The new polka also appealed to Vienna's folk singers - chief amongst them Johann Baptist Moser (1799-1863) - who immediately added lyrics and further helped to spread the work's popularity.

Although Strauss may have conceived the Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka in Russia, the stimulus for the polka's title most definitely stemmed from Vienna. On 7 March 1858 a new paper had appeared on Vienna's news-stands: entitled Tritsch-Tratsch and described as a "humorous, satirical weekly publication", it was a successor to the short-lived Der Teufel in Wien (The Devil in Vienna) which had ceased with its issue of 25 February 1858. The new publication was edited by the successful writer and folk singer Anton Varry and counted among its principal contributors O.F. Berg and Josef Wimmer - all three of whom were friends, or at least acquaintances, of Johann Strauss. The Wiener Allgemeine Theaterzeitung (7.03.1858) praised the appearance of this "Viennese popular weekly", noting particularly that "It is handsomely put together; paper, print and especially the woodcut met with very great approval". The woodcut referred to was A. Carl's entertaining masthead engraving on the front page, showing the title Tritsch-Tratsch and depicting an elephant clambering from the mouth of a jovial carnival jester - an allegoric portrayal of "telling whoppers" - together with a small inset of the Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral) in Vienna. Yet if Varry's publication was new, his choice of title for it harked back a quarter of a century to 1833 to Der Tritschtratsch, a one-act burlesque (with music by Adolf Müller senior) by the great Austrian dramatist and actor Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (1801-62), which was still in the repertoire of Vienna's theatres. A quotation from the farce, "... aus der Mücken einen Elefanten macht ..." (literally "to make a midge out of an elephant" but colloquially meaning "to make a mountain out of a molehill"), further explains the elephantine imagery in the masthead illustration of Varry's publication.

Such was the background to the charming engraving which adorns the first piano edition of Johann Strauss's Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka. The Haslinger issue reproduces the open-mouthed jester with the elephant and Stephansdom, and even borrows its lettering style from the humorous paper, but it also makes some charming additions: prominently featured are the gossiping wives from Nestroy's farce and - of course - that "Viennese popular weekly", Tritsch-Tratsch! Doubtless Varry and his colleagues wished they could have competed on more equal terms with Strauss's rumbustious and evergreen polka: the comic paper was to enjoy only limited success and ceased publication before reaching its second anniversary.

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