The city of Vienna has already begun celebrating the bicentenary of Johann Strauss Jr., known as the waltz king. Waiting in the wings is Constanze Geiger, who also composed successfully for the genre.
Her "Ferdinandus Waltz," written when she was 12, will be the first work by a female composer programmed by the Vienna Philharmonic in its New Year's Concert next week. The Philharmonic violinist Raimund Lissy led the rediscovery with his recently published biography, "'There Is a Magic to This Child Prodigy!' Constanze Geiger: Composer, Pianist, Actress From Vienna."
Geiger began performing her own compositions from the piano when she was 8, winning attention from the press in Vienna and abroad. Johann Strauss -- father and son -- both conducted her waltzes at balls in Vienna and dedicated their own works to the young star. The "Ferdinandus Waltz" was led by the elder Strauss in Vienna in 1848.
Among her works is a wedding march for the empress-to-be, Elisabeth, when she arrived with Emperor Franz Joseph I in Nussdorf (now a suburb of Vienna) in 1854.
While Geiger's dance music emerged after the Strauss dynasty's prolific output, she also forged her own path. "Every portion of her waltzes is something special," Lissy said in an interview. He compared them to pralines, a particularly refined confection.
The works were published as piano scores that must be arranged for orchestra (the Austrian conductor Wolfgang Dörner undertook the task for the New Year's Concert). Lissy has also set nine of her other compositions -- four waltzes, three marches and two polkas for string quartet -- which were performed for video recording by members of the Vienna Philharmonic and are being successively uploaded to YouTube through the end of January.
Geiger's activities were intertwined with those of leading figures in the classical music world at the time, including the Strausses and bel canto composers such as Donizetti. Her story also reveals that her gender did not create hurdles; if anything, according to Lissy, the fact that she was female might have created an allure.
In 1845, her "Preghiera" was sung in Paris by the tenor Alexis Dupont, who had premiered works by Rossini, Halévy and Auber. "It is fair and easy to predict a very great future for this child enormously endowed, by nature, with talent," reported the Paris journal Revue et Gazette Musicale.
Two years later, the opera singers Raffaele Mirate and Felice Varesi -- both of whom enjoyed close working relationships with Donizetti and Verdi -- performed her "Duettino for Tenor and Bass" at the Vienna Imperial Palace, or Hofburg.
Geiger was mentored by her father, the composer Joseph Geiger, who served as music teacher to the archduke (and future emperor) Franz Joseph. Constanze also studied counterpoint and composition with Simon Sechter, whose students included Schubert and Bruckner (Sechter was at the organ in 1846 for her "Ave Maria," together with the Vienna Court Orchestra and the tenor Joseph Erl).
That same year, the Geiger family visited Donizetti in Paris (he was already very ill and would die in 1848). Back in Vienna, Constanze sat at the piano to accompany the Italian contralto Marietta Alboni, a favorite of both Rossini and Meyerbeer, in her song "Schlummerlied" (Lullaby) at the Theater an der Wien.
In the Vienna press, Geiger was subject to both praise and mockery. While The Wanderer and Theaterzeitung were consistently favorable (the family had connections with the editorial board of the latter), The Humorist, Illustrirte Zeitung and others were generally hostile. In 1848, The Humorist compared one of her funeral marches to the marriage of a "drunk trout and a cracked leather boot."
Lissy explained that, according to the standards of the time, it was cause for suspicion that Geiger never wrote a string quartet, symphony, sonata or an opera. "Some asked why it was constantly reported about the child and what relevance she had," he said. "Her constant presence in the press set off a backlash."
As an actress, Geiger appeared at both the Society of Music Friends and the Theater an der Wien. In 1851, her waltz "Carlsklänge" was conducted by Johann Strauss Jr. on the same evening that she performed leading roles in two different plays. The next year, she appeared at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Städtische Theater (the modern-day Deutsches Theater) in Berlin as actress, composer and pianist, receiving positive reviews.
She took a break from the stage at 18 and in 1860, shortly before her 25th birthday, gave birth to a son. Her marriage to the father, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, followed shortly (she was given an aristocratic title, becoming Constanze von Ruttenstein, which entitled her to assets).
The composer Carl Michael Ziehrer dedicated the waltz "Harmonische Wellen" (Harmonious Waves) to the couple. And as the family moved into their castle in Gotha, Germany, in 1869, Josef and Eduard Strauss, brothers of Johann Strauss Jr., performed Geiger's piano work "Romanze" ("Romance") at the Kursalon in Vienna's City Park.
After a long pause, Geiger returned to activities as an actress in private performances at the castle theater. Two new compositions also appeared in 1873, the same year that Bruckner performed the organ part in her "Offertorium" at Vienna's Augustinian Church, or Augustinerkirche.
But after Geiger married, her activities as a composer dwindled. Lissy described her life with the prince between Gotha, Paris and Vienna as "carefree," also in terms of "happiness in her private life." She died in 1890 and is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
Asked why Geiger became a virtually unknown quantity, Lissy responded that this is the case for so many composers, although their music deserves to be heard alongside contemporaries who have entered the canon.
"We are just starting to get to know Constanze Geiger," he said. "We'll see where the journey goes."