Before the 200th Birthday of Strauss: The Blue Danube Waltz in Profile

The waltz, as one of the first hits in music history, still enjoys unbroken popularity today - practically as on the first day.

Blue Danube Waltz Premiere Without Strauss

The term "hit" first appeared in print in connection with the premiere of the waltz, which bears the civil name "On the Beautiful Blue Danube," in a review of the Vienna "Neues Fremdenblatt" on February 17, 1867: "The opening number of the second section was a definite hit." Thus, a new term was born in the music world. What few people know: The Waltz King himself was not present at the premiere, he was too busy, and the Strauss Orchestra did not participate either. This did not detract from the success.

The legend that the waltz flopped at its first performance persisted for a long time, although it was reported differently in the newspapers. The journalists unanimously stated at the time: "The waltz was truly magnificent, full of bouncing melodies, which flowed from the singers' lips like a crystal-clear mountain spring ...", "On the Beautiful Blue Danube," for choir and orchestra by Johann Strauss, was a resounding success."

Even fellow composers from the "serious" music world recognized it as a work of art. Johannes Brahms, an admirer and friend of Johann Strauss, scribbled on a lady's fan next to the immortalized opening notes of the Blue Danube Waltz: "Unfortunately not by me".

More Patriotic Text by Franz von Gerneth

Johann Strauss originally wrote the waltz to help the disheartened Austrians get back on their dancing feet and smooth out a worry line or two. The Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 was lost. The country was militarily and morally on the ground. It was carnival season when the Vienna Men's Choral Society sang the waltz for the first time, in the ballroom of the then Dianabad. Police commissioner and club poet Josef Weyl wanted to make it a satirical carnival waltz. "Viennese be happy! - Oh, how so?", he wrote. "Therefore defy the times! Oh God, the times! The gloom." Two decades later, Franz von Gerneth provided the more patriotic text that is still sung today. And here the line "Danube so blue ..." appears for the first time - even though the Danube was never really blue, but rather dirty green and muddy brown.

AUA, New Year's Concert, "Titanic"

For Austria, the Blue Danube Waltz became a kind of unofficial anthem. Austrian Airlines have been playing the melody for many years before takeoff and landing. It is the obligatory conclusion of every New Year's concert. But far beyond Austria, the melody has become a pop-cultural emblem. The Tom and Jerry cartoon "The Cat Concerto" won the Oscar in 1953 for Best Animated Short Film. In James Cameron's "Titanic," the noble ship's society dances into the abyss in three-quarter time. In one of the most legendary scenes in film history, in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," a spaceship and a space station dance through space in three-quarter time. The director thus paid homage to the "waltz of all waltzes".

(APA/Red)

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