A lot of what we call classical music started out as popular music. Most of the non-religious Renaissance pieces performed now by scholarly early music groups are nothing more than extremely old oldies - pop songs and dance tunes that hit the charts before 1600.
And one of the most beloved of all 19th-century composers, a man whose music is now played by symphony orchestras around the world, was actually a dance-band leader.
Johann Strauss Jr. was more than just the Glenn Miller of the late 19th century. Strauss and Miller were the most commercially successful band leaders of their periods, but Miller and other swing-era musicians played the work of other arrangers. Strauss wrote his own material, and delectable stuff it is.
Strauss' prosperous home town of Vienna went waltz mad in the early 19th century. Spectacular dance palaces were everywhere. The privileged classes threw one opulent party after another, while the working classes congregated at tradesmen's balls.
In the 1820s, Johann Strauss Sr. and his partner Josef Lanner were the first men to corner the Viennese waltz market. They wrote their own music and conducted their own small dance orchestras to great adulation and profit.
Despite his success - or perhaps because he feared the competition - Strauss insisted that his sons pursue non-musical careers. Two of them, Eduard and Josef, obeyed, but wrote waltzes and polkas on the side.
His eldest son, Johann Jr., secretly rehearsed 15 musicians and made his debut in 1844. For the occasion he'd written four waltzes, two quadrilles and three polkas, which were immediately hailed as equal to his father's work. Before long, the young Strauss would far surpass the efforts of his father.
The first original waltz Strauss played that night was called ``The Favor Seekers''; the last was titled ``Thought Poems.'' Those titles became his career's dual theme.
All Strauss waltzes are, in effect, thought poems, with an expressiveness and elaborate detail that transcend dance music forms. One reviewer of a Strauss concert at the 1867 Paris Exhibition wrote, ``No one thought of dancing, for everyone wanted to listen.''
Strauss was and remains known as ``The Waltz King,'' but he wrote several different kinds of pieces - polkas, marches, quadrilles and others, as well as sparkling operettas including ``Die Fledermaus'' and ``The Gypsy Baron.''
It's easy to tell most of these forms apart. (We'll disregard the operetta, which is a stage work - a ``little opera,'' usually light and comic - rather than a dance.) The march needs no introduction. It's a two-step that's so simple it can't be danced to; you merely, well, march to it.
The polka was originally a lively Bohemian peasant dance that sent couples bounding and twirling all over the dance floor. Most polkas are in ternary, or three-part, form. The first and third parts are identical, and the second often brings in a contrasting mood. The two most famous Strauss polkas are ``Thunder and Lightning'' and ``Tritsch-Tratsch.''
A quadrille is a group dance, requiring an equal number of couples. It seems to have originated in France and may have begun as music to accompany displays of horsemanship. The quadrille is not only a group dance, but a group of dances - five, usually, in different rhythms and tempos. At first, quadrilles used folk tunes, but Strauss' quadrilles employ songs and opera arias that were popular in his day.
Finally, the waltz. The basic waltz is in 3/4 time with the emphasis on the first beat (count: ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three). While the polka is a boisterous, jerky dance, the waltz is characterized by gliding and smooth rotation.
The Viennese waltz has a special rhythm. It's still a three-count, but the second beat is rushed a little, leaving a short breathing space between the second and third beats. A truly authentic performance of a Strauss waltz will rush the second beat in this manner, imparting a special lilt to the music.
To understand Strauss' distinction as a composer of waltzing thought poems, consider one of his most popular works, the ``Emperor Waltz.''
Most waltzes begin with a little introduction to give couples time to get onto the dance floor. The ``Emperor Waltz'' opens with an extended intro. First there's a distant march tune, rather jaunty but decidedly military.
A waltz melody tries to surge forward but is interrupted by the march, which now comes up front and full regalia.
The march tune recedes, and is followed by a swirling transitional passage with a little cello solo. This leads quietly into the waltz theme that appeared in the introduction. There's no grand announcement; it just subtly begins.
Now comes a whole series of waltzes, all featuring singing melodic lines. Orchestral flourishes occasionally billow like women's ball gowns, but there are quiet sections,too.
Each new tune is a little more extroverted than the last, but near the end the wistful, nostalgic opening waltz returns. It's all about to end in a noble blaze, but everything suddenly dies away into that poetic cello solo from the introduction. It's very slow, not easily danced.
Finally comes a brief uplifting coda, louder and a bit faster than the cello solo and full of brass fanfares.
Strauss' melodic gift assured him of the public's unflagging favor throughout Europe and the United States. The waltz was a social opiate, and each Strauss waltz provided a deeply satisfying high.
Waltzing was, in modern parlance, an escape mechanism. During Strauss' life, Vienna's opulence and its glitterinng balls masked a pervasive xenophobia, political oppression, epidemics of cholera and scarlet fever, and financial crises.
But who could worry about such things while dancing to music given titles like ``Carefree'' and ``I Couldn't Care Less''?
Johann Strauss listening suggestions
For Strauss done in that special Viennese style on compact disc, Willi Boskovsky's recordings on the London label with the Vienna Philharmonic are among the best currently available. These discs are better-played than Boskovsky's Angel/EMI versions with the Johann Strauss Orchestra of Vienna.
It's also worth sampling the ``Johann Strauss Edition'' on the Hong Kong label, which will eventually offer all Strauss' music on more than 30 separate CDs. Best of the bunch are the discs conducted by Alfred Waiter. And hope that someday someone will reissue all the mono 1950s recordings by the Vienna Philharmonic under Clemens Krauss, the finest Strauss conductor since Strauss himself.