The Blue Danube, Op. 314

composition by Strauss
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Share
Share to social media
URL
https://mainten.top/topic/The-Blue-Danube
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

Also known as: “An der schönen blauen Donau”
Original German in full:
An der schönen blauen Donau (“On the Beautiful Blue Danube”)

News

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.

Betsy Schwarm