Johann Strauss II

Forbidden a musical career by his father, Strauss studied in secret and made his public debut in 1844 at the head of his own orchestra, in open competition with him. The rival family bands were united after his father's death, and the tours that followed reached Russia and the United States. He wrote some five hundred waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and marches, among them The Blue Danube, Tales from the Vienna Woods, the Emperor Waltz, Voices of Spring and Wine, Women and Song. From the 1870s operetta took over: his works include Die Fledermaus of 1874 and Der Zigeunerbaron of 1885. He died in Vienna in 1899. Enrolled in the commercial department of the Polytechnic Institute from 1841, he learned the violin in secret with his mother's help, and his first regular appointment was as bandmaster of the Second Vienna Citizens' Regiment, a post Joseph Lanner had held before him; the court title of director of ball music came only in 1863. A breakdown in 1853 left the orchestra for a time to his brother Josef, a composer like their brother Eduard, and he met Offenbach in 1864; the story that Offenbach urged him to write operetta is disputed. His first operetta, Indigo and the Forty Thieves, came in 1871, later Cagliostro, The Queen's Lace Handkerchief, A Night in Venice, and in 1892 the comic opera Ritter Pásmán. Wiener Blut was assembled from his music by Adolf Müller junior and first staged after Strauss's death in 1899.