“The devil take the waltz, my only regret is for the coda — I wish that had been a success!” — Johann Strauss II

CODA: A musical “tail,” or a passage that brings a piece to an end. It is a traditional element of sonata form.

FURTHER LISTENING:

Johann Strauss II: Artist’s Life
Fairytales
Viennese Sweets

Buckle on your dancing shoes. This gets a little Oedipal.

Long before he composed his famous Blue Danube waltz, Austrian composer Johann Strauss II — also known as Johann Strauss the Younger or Johann Strauss the Son — had to square off with his fiercest opponent, his father. Johann Strauss I, also a noted composer, did not want his son to become a musician, and he even beat the boy with a belt upon discovering him practicing the violin for the first time.

Some historians have posited that Strauss I feared his son’s talent, but most scholars agree that Strauss I thought he was protecting the younger Strauss from the difficult, financially strained life of a working musician. At any rate, Strauss I abandoned his family for a mistress when Strauss II was a teenager, and the boy’s mother began nurturing and encouraging his burgeoning career. 

Back then, one had to obtain a license from the Viennese authorities to organize public concerts. Strauss II did so but struggled to find a venue in which to play his music, as many of the clubs had relationships with Strauss I. When Strauss the Younger finally did find a club, his father was so incensed that he refused to perform at that venue ever again. Father and son would continue to spar during the younger man’s career, but Strauss II ultimately eclipsed his father, earning the moniker “The Waltz King” for his aesthetic, fashionable waltzes, including the most famous waltz of all, The Blue Danube.

It was originally a choral commission with lyrics:

Danube so blue,
so bright and blue,
through vale and field
you flow so calm,
our Vienna greets you,
your silver stream
through all the lands
you merry the heart
with your beautiful shores.

The poetry here is sarcastic — Vienna had just lost a war to Prussia, and the country’s morale was low. Strauss II’s new waltz uplifted spirits and the composer’s fortunes. An arrangement for piano sold more than a million copies. Strauss also adapted an orchestra-only version, a glittering affair that begins with a high string tremolo while the horn foreshadows the main melody. Like Strauss II’s other waltzes, Blue Danube is a collection of five waltzes strung together, each as pleasing and serene as the last.

(C) Jeremy Reynolds