Popular Culture
The specifically Viennese sentiment associated with Strauss's melody has made it a sort of unofficial Austrian national anthem. The waltz is traditionally broadcast by all public-law television and radio stations exactly at midnight on New Year's Eve, and on New Year's Day it is a customary encore piece at the annual Vienna New Year's Concert. The first few bars are the interval signal of Österreichischer Rundfunk's international programs.
The international popularity of the music was reinforced by its prominent use in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the waltz is heard as a Pan Am space plane docks with a space station while another spacecraft departs for the Moon. The music suggests a parallel between the intricate docking procedure and the role of dancers in a waltz. The waltz is also heard over the film's closing credits. This use of this piece has led to further use of the waltz in pastiche.
Read more about this topic: The Blue Danube
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“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)