Perpetuum Mobile

Perpetuum Mobile is an arrangement, written in 2001 by Alfred Reed (see below) of a novelty polka written by Johann Strauss, Jr. (see also below) in 1861.

Johann Strauss Jr. wrote “Perpetuum Mobile”, opus 257, in 1861, inspired by a grand Viennese Ball. This event had been announced as a “Carnival Perpetuum Mobile” with non-stop dancing and music. The Strauss Brothers conducted alternately, so the music and the dancing never stopped. This composition consists of 24 variations on a theme of 8 bars, allowing a small solo part to almost all instruments. This ingenious musical satire, subtitled “A Musical Joke”, immediately became the big success of the Summer Concert Season of the Strauss Orchestra in the Russian town of Pavlovsk in 1862.

The Strauss dynasty (there is really no other name for it) has now lasted more than 150 years. In Vienna and throughout the world, this illustrious and continuing family is a long line of composers, conductors and performers whose efforts have delighted and entranced at least seven generations of musicians, music lovers, dancers and audiences in the world.

This piece is a tongue-in-cheek representation of the idea of perpetual motion: something once begun which goes on continuously without ever coming to an end. After a short, four measure introduction to set the tempo, the piece consists of a simple 8 measure theme built over just two chords, followed by twenty-three variations giving almost every instrument or section of the orchestra (or in our case, the band) an opportunity to play a solo or soli, almost like a tiny concerto grosso. But all of these technical considerations are never permitted to divert the listeners’ attention from the infectious melodies, dancing rhythms and colorful instrumentations that only a Strauss could have brought together successfully.

How to bring such a piece to an end? Well, it really doesn’t end! It just fades away gradually, as if it is moving on to another place without ever ending.

Johann Baptist Strauss II (1825 – 1899), also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son, was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well as a violinist. 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”, “Frühlingsstimmen” (Voices of Spring), and the “Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka”. Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus (The Bat) and Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) are the best known.

Strauss was the son of Johann Strauss I and his first wife Maria Anna Streim. His father did not want him to become a musician but rather a banker. Nevertheless, Strauss Jr. studied the violin secretly as a child with the first violinist of his father's orchestra. When his father discovered his son secretly practicing on a violin one day, he gave him a severe whipping, saying that he was going to beat the music out of the boy. It seems that rather than trying to avoid a Strauss rivalry, the elder Strauss only wanted his son to escape the rigors of a musician's life. It was only when the father abandoned his family for a mistress that the son was able to concentrate fully on a career as a composer with the support of his mother. Two younger brothers, Josef and Eduard Strauss, also became composers of light music, although they were never as well known as their older brother.

Alfred Friedman (better known as Alfred Reed) (1921 – 2005) wrote more than two hundred published works for concert band, orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensemble. He also traveled extensively as a guest conductor, performing in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Reed began his formal music training at the age of ten. During World War II, he served in the 529th Army Air Force Band, playing trumpet. Following his military service, he attended the Juilliard School of Music, studying under Vittorio Giannini, after which he was staff composer and arranger first for NBC and then for ABC. In 1953, he became the conductor of the Baylor Symphony Orchestra at Baylor University, where he received his B.M. in 1955 and his M.M. in 1956. His master's thesis, “Rhapsody for Viola and Orchestra”, was awarded the Luria Prize in 1959. From 1955 to 1966, he was the executive editor of Hansen Publications, a music publisher.

In 1966, Reed moved from New York to Miami, Florida, where he was a professor of music at the University of Miami. He was chairman of the department of Music Media and Industry and director of the Music Industry Program until his retirement in 2000. He established the first college-level music business curriculum which led other colleges and universities to follow suit. At the time of his death, he had composition commissions that would have taken him 31 years to complete.