Карл Михаел Цирер

Groomed by the publisher Carl Haslinger as a rival to Johann Strauss II, Carl Michael Ziehrer had until then been learning his father's hatter's trade in Vienna and making music on the side. He conducted for the first time in 1863 and spent the next four decades moving between civilian concert ensembles and military bands, touring hard. Hundreds of waltzes, polkas and marches came out of it — Wiener Bürger, Weaner Mad'ln, the Schönfeld March — with more than twenty operettas beside them, and in 1908 he received the title of Imperial and Royal Court Ball Music Director, the last person to hold it. The First World War swept away the world his career had depended on. He died in Vienna in 1922, by then largely forgotten. He became bandmaster of the Hoch- und Deutschmeister regiment in 1885 and appeared at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and Die Landstreicher, Die drei Wuensche and Ball bei Hof are among his stage works. He took charge of the court orchestra on 4 January 1907 and received the title of Hofballmusikdirektor on 20 December 1908, following a probationary period. Financial hardship marked his last years after the war, and he was buried in an honorary grave at the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.