Posted on 10/25/2025 10:46:54 AM PDT by Borges
Exactly two hundred years ago, on October 25th, 1825, Johann Strauss II, also known as the Waltz King, was born in Vienna. Waltz King or even Emperor: he truly deserves this title, as he is one of those very rare classical composers—like Mozart or Beethoven, but who else? –whose music almost everyone has heard at least a few bars of, even if they can’t always identify it. We owe him such immortal waltz masterpieces as The Blue Danube, Tales from the Vienna Woods, and Viennese Blood, which are still universally known today as embodying the Viennese way of life throughout the world.
Waltz music, and Strauss’s in particular, has the extraordinary quality of bringing light, joy, and smiles to those who take the time to let themselves be carried away by its irresistible three-beat rhythm. Strauss gave it its letters of nobility, with creations of unsurpassed melodic inventiveness, praised by the greatest musicians of his time. Under his nimble pen, ‘light’ music, which would be wrong to consider as mere entertainment, elevates the soul and borders on the sublime.
On October 25th, 1825, Johann Strauss was born in a small house on Rofranogasse (now Lerchenfelder Strasse, across Vienna’s 7th and 8th districts) to Anna Streim and Johann Strauss, the illustrious composer himself born in 1804—the very year the Austrian Empire was founded.
Like any self-respecting Viennese, his father, trained as a bookbinder, learned to play the violin at an early age and embarked on an artistic career once grown up. He joined the small musical ensemble led by Michael Pamer, a composer, violinist, and conductor who composed successful dance music, which he played in the ballrooms of the Austrian capital at the time of the Vienna Congress. There, Strauss met a certain Joseph Lanner, who would also give Viennese music some of its most beautiful waltzes.
Strauss’s father did not want his son to follow in his footsteps and experience the hardships and uncertainties of bohemian life and went so far as to forbid him from touching a violin. But the son also caught the music bug and gradually broke free from his father’s control. He learned, listened, and trained in secret.
The family conflict took on a whole new dimension when his father left the family home to live with his mistress. From then on, it fell to young Johann to take on the role as head of the family. He had no choice: he now had to replace his father, surpass him, and triumph on the Viennese stage if he wanted to be able to help his mother and support the abandoned household.
His first concert was scheduled for October 15th, 1844—just ten days before Johann’s birthday. He was not even twenty. The young Johann chose to perform at the Casino Dommayer, a cabaret renowned for its concerts, where his father often played. The official poster bears the words “Soirée dansante”—in French. But so many curious people turned up that it proved impossible to dance due to lack of space. Johann Strauss had cleverly anticipated the situation and prepared a concert program: opera overtures and concert pieces, interspersed with waltzes, which Strauss conducted in the traditional manner, with a violin in his hand.
The young Johann, who, like his father, played and composed, presented his own creations, including a purple patch specially conceived for the occasion, the waltz Sinngedichte (Epigram), which closed the programme. This was intended to be both a flamboyant tribute to his masters and inspirations, first and foremost his father, and an opportunity to display his own talent.
The composition of Sinngedichte, classified as opus 1 in the composer’s oeuvre, proves how Johann Strauss’s approach was anything but a brutal and obtuse rebellion against his father’s authority. To his great misfortune, the son adored and revered the father who had abandoned him and now stood in his way. The waltz was a triumph, followed by no fewer than nineteen encores: the phenomenon of Johann Strauss “son,” as the concert poster specified, was born. The irreparable had been done: from then on, there was ‘another’ Johann Strauss, and the first Johann Strauss became Johann Strauss “father.”
In 1849, the latter died prematurely of illness, but not before leaving behind one last masterpiece: the famous Radetzky March, which celebrates the triumphant Habsburg empire. From then on, the son was the only one to shine in Vienna, and he brought his two brothers, Josef and then Eduard, into his wake. The name Strauss was now that of a successful brand that was in high demand, and without which no one could hope to dance and celebrate in style.
Little by little, Strauss conquered the whole of Europe. He knew how to make himself indispensable in all the European courts: he composed the wedding waltz for the beautiful Elisabeth of Wittelsbach and Emperor Franz Joseph, had the Russian court dancing every summer in Pavlovsk, and even charmed the Shah of Iran, for whom he composed a Persian March.
In 1867, during the Universal Exhibition in Paris, he triumphed with The Blue Danube. Strauss brought the score with him, having composed it shortly before. It was received with rather moderate enthusiasm in Vienna. In Paris, the work was an incredible success: more than twenty encores honoured the composer and his creation. The Parisian acclaim sparked international enthusiasm, and more than a million scores were sold worldwide.
Strauss was, of course, renowned for his dance music, waltzes and polkas, but he also successfully ventured into operetta, imitating his French rival, Jacques Offenbach. His gem for the stage, Die Fledermaus (The Bat), has been performed continuously since its premiere in 1874.
His pen brought extraordinarily rich melodies to life. He developed an ingenious system of derivative products, reinterpreting the best pieces from his operettas between balls and concerts, transforming them into successful waltzes and polkas.
Strauss performed in Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and even Boston. However, his personal life was marked by a series of painful failures. He married three times, which led to his ostracism from Viennese society. He was never named an honorary citizen of Vienna, his hometown—even though he contributed more than anyone else, with the possible exception of Sissi, to the worldwide renown of Austria and its capital.
Two hundred years after his birth, Strauss continues to charm with the incredible liveliness of his melodies and embodies an irresistible joie de vivre that has become inseparable from the image of Vienna.
One might have thought that when the Austrian Empire, a colossus with feet of clay, heir to a thousand-year-old tradition, collapsed without revolution on a gray day in November 1918, the accents of waltz music, made to resound in the prestigious balls of the court as well as in the popular festivals that imperial Vienna knew so well, would fall silent forever. This was not the case. The music of Johann Strauss II, his father, and his brothers was too powerful to disappear like the fragile flower of a bygone era, and Austria, which survived the empire, quickly realized that it was in its best interest to draw on this priceless treasure to preserve its soul despite the thousand and one vicissitudes that history still had in store for it.
Today, the Radetzky March and The Blue Danube have achieved the status of masterpieces of universal art. Through these immortal melodies, Austria continues to shine throughout the world; with the Strausses, this music born on the banks of the Danube still manages, year after year, to seduce even the most hardened hearts, sometimes tempted to believe that “classical music” is just a nice little thing for slightly mawkish old ladies, which will eventually disappear.
In certain circles, those who profess their admiration for the music of Johann Strauss II are sometimes met with a certain condescension, as it is considered only good enough to set the mood at Christmas or to fill the silence of a doctor’s office… And yet. Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Strauss: the 19th century was rich in musical personalities who are sometimes wrongly pitted against each other, but whose genius continues to inspire us today. They complemented and rivaled each other in the same creative spirit. It is often overlooked that Wagner was an unconditional admirer of Strauss, both father and son. Brahms was one of Strauss’s closest friends, and Strauss himself was the discoverer of Tchaikovsky—the first to perform a work by the young Russian prodigy in public.
Let’s play a game of reading the titles of the Strauss waltzes and polkas. An incredible vitality emerges from them. Nothing is missing from the picture: joys and sorrows, technique and poetry, love and grace, cheerful young ladies and carefree students, the stock market and the press, the sea and the skies, trains and horses, thunder and lightning—a whole world that draws us into an irresistible and uninterrupted whirlwind. Perpetuum mobile: it is the very rhythm of life.
Let us be convinced of this, and seize the opportunity offered by this bicentennial to listen again to these masterpieces by the Viennese dance master and convince ourselves: there is nothing more serious than light music!
Fledermaus was his masterpiece. I would go just about anywhere to see it. I can’t say that of any other Opera.
Classical Music Ping
Edvard Grieg. Almost everyone knows "Morning Mood" and "In the Halls of the Mountain King".
Rachmaninoff, "Flight of the Bumblebee" Shostakovich, "Second Waltz"
It is not really rare at all.
Flight of the Bumblebee was by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto was used for the Soundtrack for the Marilyn Monroe Movie “The Seven Year Itch”, and also had at least two Pop songs derived from it. “Full Moon and Empty Arms” and “All By Myself”.
But you’re right about Grieg. :-)
Vinheteiro is a youtube channel that does "music you heard without knowing the name" for a bunch of songs.
However people are losing that, mostly because they make "music lists" and listen to only that songs or that type of music. You are creating your own musical echo chamber which is fine except there is a lot of great stuff that you are missing.
Also a bunch of junk, so there is balance.
Please add me to the classical music ping list.
Never mind. I see I’m already on it.
When Vienna tore down the walls surrounding the old city, they made the areas where the walls had been into a series of parks. When I was there many years ago they had free concerts every night in one of the parks, mostly if not entirely music by Strauss.
Andres Rieu who conducts his “Johann Strauss Orchestra” has a lot of posts on You Tube. He has huge audiences in his travels around the world and can be quite entertaining.
Amen to that!
Warner brothers cartoons have a lovely soundtrack...everything from Smetana and Wagner, to, of Course, Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt.
I was raised on Classical, sing and play Rock for a living.
My FAVORITE is Bach Cantatas.
I prefer the Kaiser-Walzer..
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