Today marks the 150th anniversary of the world’s most popular waltz, Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube, or formally, “An der schönen blauen Donau.” It wan’t a big hit when it was new, but it has become Vienna’s and Austria’s unofficial anthem.
Written in 1867 in part as a morale builder after a disastrous military defeat by Prussia, it was originally a choral work commissioned by the Vienna Mens’ Choral Society. It was well-received but didn’t take off until later in the year when it drew raves at performances in Paris and London.
Its U.S. debut came in 1872, when, in a moment of Gilded Age excess, Strauss conducted it himself, with a 2000-piece orchestra, a chorus of 20,000 and an audience of 100,000. Strauss is reported to have complained to organaizers, “How am I supposed to conduct this mess?”
In later years, it’s taken on even more serious roles; when Austrian authorities declared the country separate again from Germany in April 1945, it served briefly as a national anthem.
Oh, and for the alternate facts file: Beautiful Blue Danube is a bit of a, well, alternate fact. See below.
Photo: Johann Strauss Monument in Vienna Stadtpark (Wieninfo)
