My orchestration from the Haslinger piano score of this waltz by Carl Bendl (not to be confused with Karel Bendl, a later composer)

All I know about Bendl is from Wikipedia like snippets – He played in both Johann Strauss I’s and Joseph Lanner’s orchestras and ran his own commercial orchestra in the 1840’s, later becoming a military bandmaster in the 1850’s. He fades from view in the 1860’s.

He seems to have been quite successful in the 1840’s and is noted for his performances of the music of Lanner. If this waltz is anything to go by, his music is very much in the style of Lanner but lacking the imagination of the latter’s works. Most of the tunes in here could have turned up in a Lanner waltz but just about every Lanner waltz would have some better ones. The harmonies are mostly tonic/dominant/relative minor and most of the tunes have four bar phrases at most. This doesn’t make this a terrible waltz. It is quite jolly. It does mean it’s a bit short of first rate though.

It does seem that the second rank composers of this generation fare less well historically than later generations.