Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald op.325 (Tales from Vienna Woods) by Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Johann Strauss II (born Johann Baptist Strauss; 25 October 1825 – 3 June 1899), also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger, the son of Johann Strauss I, was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century. Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer" (Emperor Waltz), "Tales from the Vienna Woods", and the "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka". Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron are the best known. 

tales from the Vienna Woods original music sheet, 1868

​Composed in 1868, "Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald", Op. 325, was one of six Viennese waltzes by Johann Strauss II which featured a virtuoso part for zither. The title of Strauss' dance recalls the folk music of the inhabitants of the Vienna Woods.

The decorative first piano edition of Johann Strauss's evocative waltz Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald carries the composer's respectful dedication to his Highness Prince Constantin Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1828-1896), and the work was almost certainly given its world première at a private soirée in the prince's 16th-century palace in the Augarten, Vienna, during summer 1868.

An undated letter from that year, written to the composer by Princess Marie Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, reads: "Dear Sir, The performance of your beautiful waltz gave me such pleasure recently -- that I cannot help asking you kindly to accept a small memento of the unforgettable evening. It is to remind you of another of your finely-chiselled masterpieces, by the blue Danube -- whose sound reminds us all of happy hours. With repeated thanks and greatest respect. Fürstin zu Hohenlohe".

Since May 1867 Prince Constantin had held the position of First Master of the Royal Household and had lived in the Augarten residence with his wife Marie (née Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein), the daughter of Franz Liszt's long-term mistress Princess Carolyne Wittgenstein. Through Marie's connections the Augarten Palace, situated on the opposite side of the Danube Canal from the inner city of Vienna, became a focal point of cultural life in the Austrian capital. (After the Second World War it became, and has remained, the home of the Vienna Boys' Choir).

On 22 June 1868 Johann Strauss conducted a public performance of Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald before an audience of five thousand at the 'Sommerliedertafel' (Summer Song Programme) of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein (Vienna Men's Choral Association) held in Karl Schwender's 'Neue Welt' entertainment establishment in the Vienna suburb of Hietzing. Yet this was no public première: three days earlier in the Volksgarten, at an 'Extraordinary Novelty Festival with Fireworks, for the Benefit of Josef and Eduard Strauss' on 19 June, Johann himself conducted the new work to great applause and was obliged to repeat it four times.

A particularly strong impression was made by the waltz's expansive Introduction of 122 bars, a rustic tone-poem evocative of the countryside of the Wienerwald, the wooded eastern foothills of the Alps, situated just north-west of Vienna.

Through the use of zither and Ländler-style rhythms in the Introduction and Coda, Strauss emphasises the close ties between the Viennese Waltz and the peasant music of Lower Austria. 
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The Kleist Prize-winning drama Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (1931), by Ödön von Horváth, and the films Tales from the Vienna Woods (1928) and Tales from the Vienna Woods (1934) take their titles from this waltz.

Johann Strauss II in his early years