Waltzing Down the River with Johann Strauss II's The Blue Danube
The Backstory
The Blue Danube, Op. 314
I'm Johann Strauss II, and this is the backstory of my waltz The Blue Danube. You'll learn how a choral song that was only a mild success at first became the orchestral waltz that triumphed at the Paris World's Fair in 1867. Because my fellow composers and I teach you on this site to recognize our pieces when you hear them, come and try it .
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A Choirmaster Knocks on My Door
In 1865 a man named Johann Herbeck, who led the Vienna Men's Choral Association, asked me to write a piece for his singers. I said yes, the way anyone says yes to a job that seems comfortably far away. Then I did what plenty of people do with a distant deadline, which is nothing at all. The idea sat quietly at the back of my mind while Vienna carried on dancing.Then Austria Lost a War
In 1866 Austria lost its war with Prussia, and the mood in Vienna sank very low. Suddenly a cheerful commission looked like a rather awkward one. But I decided a gloomy city needed a good waltz more than ever, so I turned the commission into a joyful waltz song. Dancing is a fine way to stop staring at your shoes.Words Nobody Wanted to Sing
That first version was meant for a carnival choir of bass and tenor voices, and it came with satirical words about the lost war. Josef Weyl, the poet of the choral association, wrote those first lines. Making fun of a defeat is harder than it sounds when everyone is still sore about it. Later Franz von Gernerth wrote more official-sounding words, which were a good deal safer to sing in polite company.A Premiere With Very Polite Applause
The choral version had its first performance on 15 February 1867, at a concert of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein in the Diana Baths in Vienna. Rudolf Weinwurm conducted, and I'll admit it's an odd address for a premiere. The reception was only mild, with a single encore, and both the choir and the audience disliked the words. It was a pleasant evening, but nobody could have guessed what the tune would become.The Ending I Still Grumbled About
The story goes that I regretted only the coda, the closing section where the music gathers itself up and says goodbye. I had hoped that ending would be a success, and it wasn't. A composer can forgive a lot, but he remembers an ending that didn't land. Luckily, the waltz had a long life ahead of it, and plenty of chances to make up for that.Paris Saves the Day
For the 1867 Paris World's Fair I made a purely orchestral version, with no singers and no awkward words. It was a great success there, and it is the version most often performed today. A typical performance lasts about 10 minutes, which is just long enough to feel you have been properly swept across a ballroom. It seems the music never needed the words in the first place.A Waltz With a Passport
The instrumental version reached New York on 1 July 1867. The choral version followed to London on 21 September 1867, at the Covent Garden promenade concerts. So within months of that modest first night in Vienna, my waltz was being heard on both sides of the Atlantic. There were no radios or aeroplanes in those days, and yet the tune travelled faster than most travellers.The Printer Runs Out of Plates
Sheet music was how a waltz reached people's homes, and families were eager to play this one on their own pianos. I'm told the publisher had to make 100 new copper plates, the metal sheets the notes were printed from, because the old ones wore out. In the end more than a million copies of the piano score were printed. I never quite managed to be modest about that number.Brahms and the Fan
My stepdaughter Alice von Meyszner-Strauss once asked Brahms to sign her fan. He wrote out the opening bars of my waltz and added a note saying, in effect, "unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms." I take it as a compliment from a colleague who wrote very different music from mine. It is a lovely way of saying he wished he had thought of that tune himself.From the Ballroom to the Moon
Today people often call the waltz Austria's unofficial second national anthem, though it is certainly not the official one. Stanley Kubrick used it in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, for the space plane docking and the lunar landing. I never imagined my waltz would accompany anyone floating through space. Not bad for a piece that began as a favour for a choirmaster that I kept putting off.---
When I look back at how this waltz began, I still smile at how unlikely its path was. It started as a choral song with words that the singers and the audience didn't much care for, and it earned only a mild welcome. Then I gave it a purely orchestral dress for the Paris World's Fair in 1867, and the music finally found the crowd it had been waiting for. Sometimes a piece needs to lose its words before it can really speak. I hope that thought stays with you the next time the first shimmering bars drift out of a concert hall or a radio. Did you enjoy learning about the story behind The Blue Danube? I'd love to think it gave you a new way to listen. There is still plenty more to explore, from the way the five waltz tunes follow one another to the places where the music has turned up long after my own time. If you're curious, please click on the links below and keep exploring The Blue Danube with me.