Johann Strauss II - Freiwillige vor! - Marsch

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• published: 16 Sep 2011
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On 23 March 1881 the Nice Opera House burned down, claiming the lives of ninety-two people. In the light of this disaster, the Austrian Prime Minister, Count Eduard von Taaffe, ordered an examination by the fire police of all theatres in Vienna. The resulting report concluded that the existing building and fire regulations were inadequate and made a number of demands, amongst them: that emergency exits should be marked as such and be fitted with emergency lighting (at that time oil lamps) as well as being left unobstructed during performances; that all doors serving as exits for the audience must open outwards; and that the wire-mesh safety curtain (today made of iron) separating the stage from the auditorium had to be lowered at all times except during rehearsals and performance. With the growing use of gas lighting in theatres throughout Europe from the middle of the nineteenth century there had been a dramatic increase in the number of theatre fires - the tubular gas lighting used on stage, for example, could cause scenery to reach temperatures of 70 degrees centigrade (=158¢XF) - and the Vienna report contained additional regulations applying specifically to gas lighting, with particular recommendations regarding separate gas mains for the stage and auditorium. During the examination initiated by Count von Taaffe deficiencies relating to fire safety at Vienna's Ringtheater were repeatedly highlighted. But before the authorities were able to enforce the required improvements, tragedy struck on the evening of 8 December 1881. As a capacity house at the Ringtheater waited for the curtain to rise on Offenbach's opera Hoffmanns Erzählungen (The Tales of Hoffmann) - which the previous night had enjoyed its triumphant German-language première at the theatre, attended by Johann Strauss - the electro-pneumatic ignition failed to ignite the gas burners in the tubular lights immediately and evenly, and when the gas which had escaped suddenly flared it set alight a piece of hanging scenery and the flames quickly spread. The gas was turned off, but without emergency lighting the whole house was plunged into darkness and in the ensuing panic 386 people perished, burned, suffocated or were trampled to death. The first detachment of firemen, each clenching a wet sponge between his teeth, only arrived on the scene a full forty minutes after the alarm was first raised. By this time, all was over. The very next day, 9 December 1881, saw the launch of the Vienna Voluntary Life-Saving Association (Wiener Freiwillige Rettungsgesellschaft), an organisation founded by three men: the landed proprietor, Count Hans Wilczek, a doctor, Jaromir von Mundy and Count Eduard Lamezan-Salins, the president of an assize court. (Almost a decade earlier, in 1873 and 1874, Count Wilczek had organised the funding of a North Pole Expedition led by Karl Weyprecht and Julius Payer, an undertaking chronicled in Eduard Strauss's Weyprecht-Payer-Marsch op. 120. The Count's name lives on also in Wilczek-Land, part of Franz Josef-Land discovered by the two explorers off the east coast of Spitzbergen). The Vienna Voluntary Life-Saving Association became the model for all other organisations of this kind abroad. Johann Strauss's march Freiwillige vor! came into being some five years after the Ringtheater holocaust. Its first edition, privately printed and in small format, complete with the composer's facsimile signature, was prepared as a presentation gift, and details its genesis: "Dedicated to the memory of the first charity ball of the Vienna Voluntary Life-Saving Association on 30 January 1887". The event took place in the Sofienbad-Saal and the performance was given under Johann's direction. The march may be compared with the composer's earlier Jubelfest-Marsch op. 396 of 1881, both works closely resembling one another in their structure and character. A brass fanfare in each heralds an imperial opening, balanced by a more melodic section. In Freiwillige vor! a third, still more dance-like passage follows before a restatement of the august opening section. The first commercially published edition of the march appeared with the imprint of the Josef Weinberger and Hofbauer publishing house, and with an amended inscription: "Dedicated to the Vienna Voluntary Life-Saving Association".