DeepSummary
The podcast episode discussed the history and impact of the waltz, a dance that revolutionized the relationship between music, literature, and people in Britain from the early 19th century onward. Guests explained how the waltz's informal and daring nature, with couples holding each other closely as they spun around the room, drove its immense popularity despite initial moral opposition.
The waltz expanded creative expression in various art forms, from the music of the Strauss family to poetry, ballet, and novels. Its influence can be seen in works like the Ballets Russes, Moon River, and Are You Lonesome Tonight? The guests explored the waltz's association with modernity, fragmentation, and the changing role of gender and social class in dance.
The discussion covered the waltz's origins, its spread across society and geography, and its continual reinvention and reinterpretation over time. The guests highlighted the waltz's enduring cultural significance, its ability to unite and divide, and its embodiment of themes like freedom, harmony, and the urban experience.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The waltz revolutionized dance and music in 19th century Britain by introducing a new informal and daring style of couples dancing closely.
- The waltz's popularity spread rapidly across social classes and geographic regions, inspiring creative expression in various art forms.
- The waltz embodied themes of modernity, gender roles, sensuality, and the urban experience, provoking both enthusiasm and moral opposition.
- Composers like the Strauss family were instrumental in developing the distinct musical style associated with the waltz.
- The waltz's enduring cultural impact can be seen in its continual reinterpretation and reinvention over time in different contexts.
- The waltz united people across social divides through its cosmopolitan appeal but also revealed class distinctions in dance styles.
- Literary works engaged with the waltz as a symbol of freedom, fragmentation, harmony, and the changing dynamics of human character.
- The waltz's association with both grace and immorality reflected complex societal views on gender and the role of women in the era.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “It's very difficult to pinpoint the origins of any popular dance, but we know that during the Renaissance and the baroque period in Europe, there were several turning dances of couple dancers, a man and a woman turning together.“ by Theresa Buckland
- “The revolutionary aspect of the waltz was that the man and woman turned to face one another and then they spun round on their own axis, going clockwise, but progressing anti clockwise around the ballroom.“ by Theresa Buckland
- “Salome, Richard Strauss, the dance of the seven veils. The striptease is a waltz, really, with some orientalist features to it.“ by Derek Scott
- “The waltz can go either way, as you say.“ by Susan Jones
- “There's something about the waltz that made it a cosmopolitan genre.“ by Derek Scott
Entities
Product
Book
Person
Service
Episode Information
In Our Time
BBC Radio 4
4/11/24
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dance which, from when it reached Britain in the early nineteenth century, revolutionised the relationship between music, literature and people here for the next hundred years. While it may seem formal now, it was the informality and daring that drove its popularity, with couples holding each other as they spun round a room to new lighter music popularised by Johann Strauss, father and son, such as The Blue Danube. Soon the Waltz expanded the creative world in poetry, ballet, novellas and music, from the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev to Moon River and Are You Lonesome Tonight.
With
Susan Jones Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
Derek B. Scott Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Leeds
And
Theresa Buckland Emeritus Professor of Dance History and Ethnography at the University of Roehampton
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Egil Bakka, Theresa Jill Buckland, Helena Saarikoski, and Anne von Bibra Wharton (eds.), Waltzing Through Europe: Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth Century, (Open Book Publishers, 2020)
Theresa Jill Buckland, ‘How the Waltz was Won: Transmutations and the Acquisition of Style in Early English Modern Ballroom Dancing. Part One: Waltzing Under Attack’ (Dance Research, 36/1, 2018); ‘Part Two: The Waltz Regained’ (Dance Research, 36/2, 2018)
Theresa Jill Buckland, Society Dancing: Fashionable Bodies in England, 1870-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Erica Buurman, The Viennese Ballroom in the Age of Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Paul Cooper, ‘The Waltz in England, c. 1790-1820’ (Paper presented at Early Dance Circle conference, 2018)
Sherril Dodds and Susan Cook (eds.), Bodies of Sound: Studies Across Popular Dance and Music (Ashgate, 2013), especially ‘Dancing Out of Time: The Forgotten Boston of Edwardian England’ by Theresa Jill Buckland
Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz (first published 1932; Vintage Classics, 2001)
Hilary French, Ballroom: A People's History of Dancing (Reaktion Books, 2022)
Susan Jones, Literature, Modernism, and Dance (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Mark Knowles, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (McFarland, 2009)
Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz (first published 1932; Virago, 2006)
Eric McKee, Decorum of the Minuet, Delirium of the Waltz: A Study of Dance-Music Relations in 3/4 Time (Indiana University Press, 2012)
Eduard Reeser, The History of the Walz (Continental Book Co., 1949)
Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 27 (Macmillan, 2nd ed., 2000), especially ‘Waltz’ by Andrew Lamb
Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris and Vienna (Oxford University Press, 2008), especially the chapter ‘A Revolution on the Dance Floor, a Revolution in Musical Style: The Viennese Waltz’
Joseph Wechsberg, The Waltz Emperors: The Life and Times and Music of the Strauss Family (Putnam, 1973)
Cheryl A. Wilson, Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (first published 1915; William Collins, 2013)
Virginia Woolf, The Years (first published 1937; Vintage Classics, 2016)
David Wyn Jones, The Strauss Dynasty and Habsburg Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Sevin H. Yaraman, Revolving Embrace: The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound (Pendragon Press, 2002)
Rishona Zimring, Social Dance and the Modernist Imagination in Interwar Britain (Ashgate Press, 2013)