Strauss Blue Danube, step by step

The son far exceeded the father. We remember the father for the Radetzky March. We remember the son for the 500 and more dance pieces, including over one hundred waltzes and as many polkas and marches, composed between 1840 (at fifteen) and 1899, the year when death reached him while he was focused on the composition of a ballet.
Johann Strauss, Jr., is the promoter of the endeavour that took the waltz from its original condition of peasant dance until its conversion into a consensual dance piece, in the Habsburg court in Vienna in the mid-19th century.

His most famous dance piece is, of course, the waltz By the Beautiful Blue Danube, whose nome de guerre, "The Blue Danube", is not unknown to anyone. The work was composed on demand: a sung waltz for the Viennese to forget the recent defeat suffered at the hands of Prussia, during the war of picturesque name – the "seven-week war" – of the previous year, 1866. The work did not please many. Nor did Johann have much confidence in it: "It was not sticky enough," he said. However, shortly thereafter, being invited to conduct in Paris, Johann decided to include in the program this battered waltz, but without the choirs. It was a resounding success. To this day.

Johann Strauss Jr (1825 - 1899)

The famous waltz, of course, celebrates the incomparable beauty of the very long Danube river, flowing through five capitals of Europe and which at some time will have been blue, although almost certainly it was not in Strauss's time either. In the twentieth century, it was set up a joint venture between neither more nor less than Romania and the former Yugoslavia in order to build a dam, there, in the very same and "beautiful blue Danube." Work began in 1964 and at the end, in 1972, the second-largest hydroelectric power station in Europe stood next to the dam. It was not heard of demonstrations or social networks claiming for a "Danube without dams."

The rendition is by the Vienna Philharmonic, 2009. The waltz is made up of five small waltzes. Its linkage and development are detailed below. We have heard it thousands of times, it is worth knowing what it is made of.

00: Introduction, largo, delicately outlines the unmistakable main theme.
0:42  Forte passage, majestic, which quickly lowers its intensity and then returns to the calm of the first bars.
1:38  After a brief accelerando at 1:17, the rhythm slows down and three descending notes by the strings, in staccato, welcome the main melody.
1:45  Section 1A. The celebrated theme played by cellos and horns, accompanied by the harp, in D major.
2:27  Section 1B. In the same tone, a somewhat playful theme.
2:42  Section 2A. A new theme slides, calm, without pimps.
2:58  Section 2B. Sub-theme, melodious, by the violins. Goes back to 2A.
3:29  Section 3A. A new theme, a little more alive, in G major.
3:58  Section 3B. A melodic passage of eighth notes; after its repetition, it will lead to a spirited intrata (4:27) that leads to:
4:37  Section 4A. The most sensual or romantic passage. Its repetition leads to:
5:15  Section 4B. A livelier moment, in the same key.
5:41  Very brief intrata that will lead to:
5:51  Section 5A. A touching melody. Its repetition ends with another intrata that will lead to climax.
6:24  Section 5B. The climax, punctuated by a vibrant clash of cymbals (propitious moment to go through the lounge from end to end, in big jumps if possible).
6:52  The coda begins. The first sections (3A and 2A) are quoted, then furious chords give way to the recapitulation of the romantic fragment 4A (7:34).
8:08  A silence that lasts a full measure precedes the repetition of the initial tune, 1A, very slow. It will suffer an abrupt cut at 8:49, to give way to the final codetta, based on an ingenious variation of 1A.
9:25  Passage in accelerando. Fast eighth notes, loudly underlined by the snare-drum roll, rise and fall and then route resolutely to the three final chords.