The Classical Music Minute

The Blue Danube: Lifting A Country's Spirit

March 06, 2023 Steven Hobé, Composer & Host Season 1 Episode 105
The Classical Music Minute
The Blue Danube: Lifting A Country's Spirit
Show Notes Transcript

Description
The Blue Danube is the most famous waltz ever written. It is considered Austria’s second national anthem. Take a minute to get the scoop!

Just for fun you may want to check out:
The Vienna boys choir,
On the Beautiful Blue Danube 🎶

Fun Fact
The Blue Danube premiered in the United States in its instrumental version on 1 July 1867 in New York, and in the UK in its choral version on 21 September 1867 in London at the promenade concerts at Covent Garden.

About Steven, Host
Steven is a Canadian composer & actor living in Toronto. Through his music, he creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his music website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.
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The Blue Danube is the most famous waltz ever written. It is considered Austria’s second national anthem. 

In 1865, Johann Herbeck, choirmaster of the Vienna Men’s Choral Society, commissioned Strauss to write a choral work, but he never got it.

The following year, Austria was defeated by Prussia in the Seven Weeks’ War. Viennese morale was at a low and so Strauss was encouraged to revisit his commission and write a joyful waltz song to lift the country’s spirit. 

The premiere of the Waltz For Choir took place in 1867, but its reception was lukewarm at best and Srauss considered it a flop. This may have been due to the fact that both the choir and the audience hated the words. But later that year, Strauss introduced the waltz in its orchestral form. It was an instant success. 

It’s said that Strauss’s publisher received so many orders for the piano score that he had to make 100 new copper plates so that he could print over a million copies.