My orchestration from the Witzendorf piano score of this waltz by Ludwig Morelly. It dates from the early 1860’s. It’s a perfectly pleasant, pretty, professionally written waltz of the period but it’s a bit run of the mill. There’s not much chance that you’ll remember the tunes for long after you’ve heard it. I’m struggling to do it and I have just lived with it for a week.

I did have a cynical moment, though. Morelly started his career in the 1830’s and there are a few pieces published by Diabelli then. There is a huge gap till about 1860 where he doesn’t seem to have found a publisher for his work, although he continued to write and perform successfully. Then there’s a flurry of pieces published by Witzendorf. Morelly’s brother Franz was very successful in the 1830’s and his work was published regularly until he went to Bombay to work for the British East India Company. He was a success there and wrote over two hundred works but they were not published. Franz died in 1859 and it crossed my mind that a box of good music made it’s way from Bombay to Vienna and was published under Ludwig’s name. A bit of Googling shows that Witzendorf began to publish Ludwig’s work starting in 1858 so I was doing him a disservice. Ludwig was sufficiently respected that all three Strauss brothers attended his funeral.