Carl Michael Ziehrer

Carl Michael Ziehrer, born in Vienna in 1843, was one of the leading Viennese dance composers of the generation after Johann Strauss II, and for a time his most prominent rival. A pupil of Simon Sechter, he was promoted by the publisher Carl Haslinger as a challenger to the Strausses and formed his own orchestra in 1863, building a following with waltzes, polkas, and marches in the popular Viennese idiom. From 1885 to 1893 he was bandmaster of the Hoch- und Deutschmeister infantry regiment, and his military marches became enormously popular. Late in the Habsburg era he received the title of k. u. k. Hofballmusikdirektor, director of music for the imperial court balls, a title once held by the Strausses themselves; he was the last to hold it. Ziehrer composed more than six hundred works, including numerous operettas. His fortunes collapsed after the First World War and the fall of the monarchy, and he died in poverty in Vienna in 1922. His tuneful, good-humoured dances have kept a modest place in the Viennese repertoire.