Here's something you might be interested in.
New Year's Eve 1939 was not the first time the Viennese found solace in the waltz.
When the waltz was at it's peak, Austria also had tremendous worries. The Prussians had defeated the Austrian forces at The Battle of Königgrätz in 1866.
The final result of this defeat was the Austrians playing second fiddle to the North Germans and the loss of Austria's Italian province of Venetia.
Austria's response was, in a nut shell, to waltz their worries away.
In his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, historian Karl E. Shorske asserts that composers like Strauss, Jr. and Franz Lehar partook in a culture of propaganda that the Hapsburgs used to beguile their citizens.
When Strauss, Jr. writes a piece entitled Wine, Women, and Song, can that be anything but an appeal to distraction as Austria lags behind the rest of Germania in developing infrastructure and loses ancient possessions like Venice?
It would be like the U.S. losing Texas (not necessarily a bad thing) and then the nation getting swept away in a macarena-esque dance craze fueled by a techno-beat remix of Ian Drury's Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll.
Initially, The Vienna Philharmonic eschewed the music of the Strauss family because they didn't want to associate the orchestra with "popular" music. As Strauss, Jr's. influence began to grow, a reluctant relationship formed.
We might speculate about the emotions Austrians must have been experiencing as they watched their country dissolve into Germany in the late 1930's. A concert of waltzes reminiscent of the age when Austria was supreme amongst German-speaking-nations must have been like a heroine-hit of nostalgia in 1939.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV5JBrRZvTE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfp8xrNAS6I
New Year's Eve 1939 was not the first time the Viennese found solace in the waltz.
When the waltz was at it's peak, Austria also had tremendous worries. The Prussians had defeated the Austrian forces at The Battle of Königgrätz in 1866.
The final result of this defeat was the Austrians playing second fiddle to the North Germans and the loss of Austria's Italian province of Venetia.
Austria's response was, in a nut shell, to waltz their worries away.
In his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, historian Karl E. Shorske asserts that composers like Strauss, Jr. and Franz Lehar partook in a culture of propaganda that the Hapsburgs used to beguile their citizens.
When Strauss, Jr. writes a piece entitled Wine, Women, and Song, can that be anything but an appeal to distraction as Austria lags behind the rest of Germania in developing infrastructure and loses ancient possessions like Venice?
It would be like the U.S. losing Texas (not necessarily a bad thing) and then the nation getting swept away in a macarena-esque dance craze fueled by a techno-beat remix of Ian Drury's Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll.
Initially, The Vienna Philharmonic eschewed the music of the Strauss family because they didn't want to associate the orchestra with "popular" music. As Strauss, Jr's. influence began to grow, a reluctant relationship formed.
We might speculate about the emotions Austrians must have been experiencing as they watched their country dissolve into Germany in the late 1930's. A concert of waltzes reminiscent of the age when Austria was supreme amongst German-speaking-nations must have been like a heroine-hit of nostalgia in 1939.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV5JBrRZvTE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfp8xrNAS6I