On The Beautiful Blue Danube: A Song History
"On the Beautiful Blue Danube," in German "An der schönen blauen Donau," is the waltz Op. 314 of the Viennese composer Johann Strauss the Younger, and Britannica says it was first written as a choral piece for the Vienna Men's Choral Association.[1] Strauss had promised the society a waltz as early as 1865, and it was first heard on 15 February 1867 in the Diana hall in Vienna's second district, at the choir's carnival-season concert, sung to comic, topical verses by Josef Weyl, a police commissioner who served as the society's resident poet.[2] The Fremden-Blatt reported two days later that the audience insisted on hearing it again, and the city's history wiki notes that a 1995 publication by Christine Klusacek and Kurt Stimmer refuted the widespread belief that the waltz at first fell flat.[2]
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Prater Landscape, oil on wood panel, c. 1831. A view of Vienna's Prater park, shown for the city of the waltz; it has no connection to Strauss.
Its international fame dates from later that year, when Strauss presented it in Paris at the 1867 World Exhibition as "Le beau Danube bleu" and an enthusiastic notice from the editor of Le Figaro helped launch it.[2] Britannica describes the piece as an introduction followed by five waltz themes and calls it the best known of Strauss's many dances.[1] The choir gave the first performance of a new text by Franz von Gernerth on 2 July 1890, and the waltz came to be treated as Vienna's secret anthem; a city press release for its centenary in 1967 even called it Austria's unofficial national anthem.[2] Among the early recordings in the Library of Congress's National Jukebox is a Victor disc of an orchestral arrangement played by the Metropolitan Orchestra, recorded in Camden, New Jersey, on 17 January 1901.[3] Stanley Kubrick later chose it for the space-station docking and moon-landing scenes of his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.[4]
Larry Conger arranges it in DAD tuning in The Classical Dulcimer, a Fingers Of Steel download of nearly 30 classical pieces whose list also includes The Gypsy Baron, likewise credited to Strauss.[5]
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: "The Blue Danube".
- Wien Geschichte Wiki (City of Vienna): "An der schönen blauen Donau".
- Library of Congress, National Jukebox: "The blue Danube" (Metropolitan Orchestra, Victor, 1901).
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: "2001: A Space Odyssey".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, The Classical Dulcimer".
- Image: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Prater Landscape, oil on wood panel, c. 1831. The Cleveland Museum of Art.