Franz Schubert’s waltzes may seem small, but they bear more than meets the eye. Leopold von Sonnleithner tells us that Schubert ‘never danced, but was always ready to sit down at the piano, where for hours he improvised the most beautiful waltzes; those he liked he repeated, in order to remember them and to write them out afterwards’. The composer appears to have been inspired by the motion and joy he saw and caused, for certain waltzes communicate physical momentum and personalised interiority – reflections and echoes from the past.The effects expressed within Schubert’s waltzes arise from expectations elicited by their voice-leading, coupled with changes in texture, register, dynamics, metre and rhythm. This chapter will explore representative examples from Schubert’s Originaltänze, Valses sentimentales, Valses nobles, and the Zwanzig Walzer (Letzte Walzer) to demonstrate how they convey impressions of physicality and flow, perceptions of distance and disturbance, plus aspects of sonority and spatiality. In turn, these reflections and echoes offer insights regarding Schubert’s art and aesthetics, as well as the past they inhabited.

Symphonies that Berlioz would have known, including Beethoven’s and those of his predecessors, usually included a dance movement (the Minuet and Trio) or, especially with Beethoven, the faster movement known as ‘Scherzo’, usually placed third after a slow movement. Having decided to put the slow movement third, Berlioz replaces the Minuet or Scherzo with a waltz. He evokes the glitter of a ballroom by introducing harps to the orchestra. The idée fixe suggests that the beloved woman is there; it is transformed to fit the waltz rhythm, acting as a contrasting section and reappearing near the end. Berlioz added a brilliant coda when rewriting the whole movement from scratch during his stay in Italy (1831–2).

Viennese social dance culture was central to the court-sponsored festivities at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15). Traditionally, the dazzling balls of the final months of 1814 have been viewed as belonging to a festive culture that merely formed a backdrop to the serious political negotiations of Congress delegates. However, Congress balls also aligned with the political aims of the Congress organisers in ways that have not yet been fully appreciated. The Habsburg court drew from established traditions in Viennese public ball culture by using dance to shape the interactions between the allied sovereigns and public in the mixed-class environment of the ballroom, particularly in the ceremonial polonaise and the equestrian figure dances at the medieval Carousel. In doing so, the Habsburg court effectively blending traditional monarchical representation with the public domain of the ballroom. Social dance was not merely a distraction from its wider political aims of the Congress; rather, it proved a particularly effective means of bringing politics to the heart of social life

Viennese operetta, while partly modelled on Offenbach, was also shaped by the city’s role as the centre of a multicultural empire and by its vibrant earlier tradition of popular musical theatre. The Volkstheater heritage included an emphasis on Viennese identity and character types, the depiction of ethnic and class differences and ironic sociopolitical critiques. These blended easily with the French operetta tradition. Plots of Viennese operettas often emphasized the mixture of many types of people: rich and poor, masters and servants, country and city folk and, of course, the various ethnicities of Austria-Hungary, such as Czechs, Hungarians, Gipsies and Jews. Social dances were featured in both plot and music, with the typical Viennese waltz playing the key role of showing that no matter what foreign exotic characters crossed the stage, Austrian identity was the true centre of the universe and romantic love. Dramatic finales and simple couplets with improvised stanzas were additional musical staples. Sentimentality was central to Viennese operetta, but a good dose of realism lay behind it. Even though various peoples were represented as stereotypes, operetta brought out the empire’s diversity and presented the idealistic possibility that mutual understanding could help it endure.

During his lifetime, Brahms accumulated a sizeable fortune. Although the early days were not without difficulties, his finances then accumulated steadily and virtually uninterruptedly. When he died in 1897, he left behind not only manuscripts of his own works, but also an extensive collection of other composers’ autograph manuscripts (including of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) as well as bonds worth over 181,000 Gulden.The size of the sum is evident when one compares the rent that he paid his landlady Coelestine Truxa between 1887 and 1897 for his three-room apartment in Vienna’s Karlsgasse, which amounted half-yearly to 347 Gulden and 25 Kreuzer.

Brahms grew up in the Hamburg‘Gängeviertel’, an area of workers, small-scale artisans and tradesmen in modest circumstances [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’]. Later on, when he could determine his own lifestyle, luxury still held no appeal.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of private musical activity as a testing ground, a compositional setting and, indeed, as a pleasurable activity for Brahms. ‘Private music-making’ deserves a word of explanation first, since private spaces were not always in the home, performers were not always amateurs and repertoire was not strictly divided according to public or private consumption. While Brahms was clearly often concerned to write music suitable for amateur performers, such repertoire was not automatically excluded from the concert platform as a result. Indeed, since the public lied recital was an innovation during his lifetime, some of the pieces which had previously found readier advocates in the domestic space were pushed further into the limelight thanks to pioneering programmers such as Gustav Walter and Amalie Joachim [see Ch. 19 ‘Singers’].