The Blue Danube, Op. 314

The Blue Danube, Op. 314, waltz by Austrian composer Johann Strauss the Younger, created in 1867. The work epitomizes the symphonic richness and variety of Strauss’s dance music, which earned him acclaim as the “waltz king,” and it has become the best-known of his many dance pieces.

The Blue Danube was originally written as a choral piece for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association, but Strauss adapted it for orchestra soon after it debuted. The introduction—typically a simple functional passage serving to call dancers to the ballroom floor—is transformed into an airy, drifting prelude in which fragments of the main themes can be distantly heard. The composition then proceeds through five waltz themes, linked as intricately as they would have been in the era’s most-sophisticated concert music.