Annotation:Prince of Wirtemburg's Waltz

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PRINCE OF WIRTEMBURG'S WALTZ. English, Waltz (3/8 time). B Flat Major. Standard tuning(fiddle). AABB. The title honors Frederick William [1] (1754-1816), Prince of Württemberg-Stutgardt, who married the Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Princess Royal of England (the eldest daughter of George III), on the 19th of May, 1797. It was the second marriage for Frederick, whose first wife had died some ten years earlier. The Prince was remarkable for his obesity, and much ridiculed. Napoleon remarked that God had created the Prince to demonstrate the utmost extent to which the human skin could be stretched without bursting. He was described by some of the wits of the age as a great bellygerent, perhaps cognizant of the reports that Frederick had been violent towards his first wife on a visit to St. Petersburg in December, 1786 (for which he was ordered to leave the country).

In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte erected the Duchy of Württemberg into a kingdom, making the then Duke Frederick a king. His daughter, Princess Catharina, was married to Napoleon's youngest brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, which put the former Prince squarely in Napoleon's orbit for some years. The newly elevated king's alliance with France technically made him the enemy of his father-in-law, George III. However, in practical terms the family connections with both the King of England and the Emperor of France made him an ideal go-between.

There was a "Prince of Wirtemberg's March" (whole time, composed by François-Hippolyte Barthélemon) printed by Longman and Broderip in London in 1797, and "The Prince of Wertemberg" (6/8 time) in the 1800 music manuscript collection of William Patton, who was perhaps from Philadelphia, Pa.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Preston (Preston's Twenty-Four Country Dances for the Year 1800), 1800.

Recorded sources: