In Our Time - The Waltz

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

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.WithSusan Jones Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of OxfordDerek B. Scott Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of LeedsAndTheresa Buckland Emeritus Professor of Dance History and Ethnography at the University of RoehamptonProducer: Simon TillotsonReading 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 BucklandZelda 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 LambDerek 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)

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, when the waltz reached Britain in the early 19th century,

it revolutionised the role of dancing and music in our society, fracturing old ways and giving rise to new. 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 the room to the blue Danube. And soon the waltz expanded the creative world in poetry, ballet, novellas, and in music that was neither exclusively classical nor vulgar, but popular. We meet to discuss the waltz are Susan Jones, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford,

Derek 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. Theresa, can you give us some clear idea of the origins of the waltz? Of course, 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 dancers of couple dancers,

a man and a woman turning together. But it's not until the mid-18th century that we start to get more and more references to dancers such as Valtzer and Dreia. And these are mostly in the Germanic lands that we hear about them. These dancers then are taken sometimes by aristocrats, sometimes by soldiers returning from the Napoleonic Wars to Britain. And by the end of the first decade of the 19th century, the waltz had arrived and was here to stay,

and it actually permeated throughout the whole of society. Prior to this, the main ceremonial dance in high society was the minuet. And in that, people stood side by side, i.e. a man and a woman stood side by side. And they traced elaborate patterns on the floor. And 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 bore room. So this was totally revolutionary.

They're not only face each other, they held each other. They held each other, often very closely. Very closely, sometimes a bit too closely for the likings of pastors and moral commentators. But it's such a revolutionary move. In fact, it's often been referred to as a shift in body paradigm. And in a way, it's... What do they mean by that? Body paradigm. It's the shift of the whole way of moving,

a whole corporeal relationship to space and to other people. And from that, a whole new realm of dancers came out, which were known as round dancers. And there were lots of these dancers, not just the waltz. There was later followed by the polka and the mazurka. And there's a whole century of these round dancers. But the waltz was the first and the most stable. So, Trasier, can you describe what it's like the dancer waltz?

There are lots of waltzes, but the main one in the 19th century was what was known as the rotary waltz, i.e. revolving around. And in that, the dancers took six steps over two bars of music. And, of course, the key thing about the waltz is that it's in triple time. So it's one, two, three, two, two, three. And in that time, you've done a whole circle. But at the same time, you're progressing around the room. And the sensation depends, of course, on the music.

And the sensation typically, if it's fast, you can get easily out of breath. And it's a very exhilarating feeling. But if the music's slower, of course, there's more of a sense of dreaminess, a dreamy quality, a sense of being lost in your own space. But of course the couple was actually locked into their own space, and that's the radical aspect of the waltz. Thank you. Derek, Derek Scott. From early on, the waltz was associated with the Germanic world.

At first, yes, the waltz very much associated with the German dance. Often a German dance meant a waltz to the British. But what intrigues me is the 1820s, when Josef Lanna and Joseph Strauss the Elder come on the scene, then we have a revolutionary scene. style of music that goes with the waltz and in the hands of Johann Strauss the father, new things happen which create the chasm that then opens up in the 19th century between what is seen as entertainment music and what is seen as art music or serious music.

There's also the folk traditional kind of music, but now we have this third type of music. and if no one objects to my singing examples, I can give you an idea of some of the new things that Johann Strauss Sr. did, for example, his waltz, High Mat Klengo, the sounds of home begins, da, da, da. Well, that note is known as the leading note in music.

Da should go to la, it's the note T, which will bring us back to do. But no, he goes, da, da, da, da. da da da da da da da da da it falls downward this was regarded as very very unusual at the time in fact it became as known as the veneresia noter or in england the viennese note he soon does the same with the sixth degree of the scale the la in Doremi Vassau la. If I quote from Johann Strauss, the younger, De Philida mouse, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. That note, da should resolve downwards on da da da da da.

He leaves it hanging like that. That becomes a marker of the walls and of the new populist style that if you're a serious art musician, avoid that note. And finally, the umpapa accompaniment. That was very rare before Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss

the elder. In fact, if you hear the umpapa in late Schubert, you bet that it's because he's been listening to Lanner or Strauss. Can you account for that combination of music and the dance? I mean, they seem made for each other. Who made them for each other? Well, of course, Strauss was a very proficient and dance violinist.

So he's very immersed in the style. Strauss and Lanna played together. Lanner got the really the best job of being the leader of the court orchestra and playing for the court balls. But Johann Strauss, when he argued with Lano, split up, made his way successfully in playing for dance halls for the middle class in Vienna.

And he saw what was a true. He was very alert to what was going to attract audiences. And it has to be said that half of the reason he was alert was he wanted to make money. Well, it makes many people alert, doesn't it? I think the surprise in your voice which surprises me, really. Well, I do have a puritanical nature. Can we go to you, Susan?

You have the music. Yeah. Who was dancing it in the first place? And then why did it sort of spread across the plane? It was sponsored by the court. And we're talking about the Austro-Hungarian Empire here. And of course, famously, the Congress of Vienna is a moment when nations are coming together to solve the problem of the end of the Napoleonic era.

And a lot of diplomacy was going on during the day, and a lot of waltzing was a kind of relief at night. So you were getting diplomats in all sorts of people. And then, of course, it spreads to further. down the chain. But it's also associated with the lascivious, the rather racy side of the wolf's coupling. So when it's... You're suggesting that the lascivious and the basic side

is only when you go down the chain? I'm not suggesting that at all. And I think, for example, Lord Byron was one who did not, who thought that it was there all the way through. So when it comes to England, you know, you're really dealing with, I mean, okay, it's been, it has a kind of moral opprobrium attached to it, but at the same time it is acknowledged by the Hanoverian monarchs that this is doable, because they like doing it. And it becomes irresistible very quickly, doesn't it?

It becomes very irresistible, and it's interesting you use that word irresistible, because that's exactly what Jane Austen's narrator in Emma talks about the walls, when they're going to have a gathering which is hopefully going to generate some kind of romantic coupling and somebody's playing the irresistible waltz. It's very interesting the way Austin uses this particular word here. It seems to, the influence seems to spread outside dance

and into the other arts. Yes, I think it, particularly in, with relation to Byron, for example, who famously wrote, satire on walsing in 1812. He published it in 1813 and then really distance himself from this satire. He gave the poem, it's the long poem, a narrative voice by one gentleman farmer or gentleman, yeoman, Horace Hornum, and he's worried about his daughters, you know, engaging in this. So Byron kind of sets a certain tone for the literary responses to the walls,

particularly, I think, because he introduces into the poem a reference to Werta, to Goethe's Verta, which was extremely influential throughout literary revolutions in... Well, Verta, I think it was extraordinarily influential, a young man who took his own life. And this kind of anxiety comes out here. in Byron's reference to Verta, where he actually cites Verter's reference to the waltz. He and Lottie are getting together and having this amazingly out-of-body experience almost.

He said, I feel I'm not human, which is an extraordinary thing. Was this while he was dancing? I guess it was. We don't know exactly what Gertrta was thinking of there. But I think that's the idea that there's a kind of, of transportation of the body, beyond the body. I think that's true, Sue, that the idea of being out of your own body,

the sense of entering another world. But in the initial years, there was a lot of antagonism towards the waltz, but it then became the staple dance of the 19th century. It was so important. And it lusted, well, it still danced today, but it was the main dance on the ballroom. I mean, it went waltz, quadrille, quadrille, waltz, waltz, waltz.

By the end of the century, it was almost as though there was nothing other than waltz. And the problem was, by the end of the century, of course, was that young people were getting very tired of it, indeed. And there was... Tired of it or tired by it? Probably a bit of both, because by the end of the century, the military bands were the main music providers. And they, obviously, as professional musicians, got bored with the music,

and they wanted a bit more pep and go into it. And so they sped everything up. And of course that delighted the young people, but not the old people who were watching. And there was lots of complaints about rowdyism in the ballroom. So can you just tell us a little bit more in your view why there was, what you alluded to, this worrying side for parents

and the more staid in society that this was taking over? Well, obviously it's about young men. and young women being in very close proximity, they're dancing very often in ballrooms, which are lit only by candlelight, and they might sneak off and get up to illicit activities. You were to come in? Well, first of all, I would say that the earlier waltz,

when Byron gets annoyed about the waltz, is different to the waltz of the later 1820s. The waltz changes a lot, and yes, at first, the worry is about the face-to-face and hand contact, although gloves become mandatory to try and reduce fingers on bodies. But then you have to consider at that time the Empire line. There's not much corsetry or undergarments,

so men can kind of feel around if they choose when they're dancing. But as the 1880s progress and ballrooms are built and parquet flooring is introduced, the wall speeds up. The lander, it had hops in it, it had hops in it, it had some stamps in it. The walls has glides. It gets faster and faster.

People worry about women's dresses, whirling up as they're going round. And all this begins to give the balls a very sensual kind of atmosphere to it. And I'm thinking the one thing that always comes to mind when I think of the walls in literature is Madame Bovary dancing the walls in Flobe's novel. You read that description. She's probably had to be. a couple of glasses of champagne.

The waltz makes you dizzy. It goes on for about seven or eight minutes. You get a five minute break then, and then another waltz starts. Her head falls on the Viscount's chest at one point. She notices her dress is rubbing against his trouser leg. And it's all very central. She collapses onto her chair at the end.

But when she's on her deathbed, you know, the remarkable thing is that this is, this is the one thing, the great thrill of her life. She remembers that waltz. Her life was a mess, but the waltz did it for her. They also carried their own kit little seamstresses were around the ballroom edges because if anybody stood on a dress and he got ripped,

they rushed on with a needle and thread. Men were not to wear boots in the dance hall. And especially military men were not to wear spurs. of course. But then there were these poor wallflowers who used to go to the ballroom expecting to have their first debutante dance and there were no men sometimes coming in

so the poor women would spend a lot of time in the ante rooms pretending they were having their dresses sewn when really it was because they couldn't get a partner because there weren't enough men in the ballroom by the end of the century. Now let's talk about not enough men. It was quite difficult to get men onto the men floor at the beginning, wasn't it? Because dancing, these are reasons, you'll tell me if I'm wrong, obviously. First of all, it was not thought to be manly to dance. Secondly, it was not

thought to be the don thing to clasp a woman to your bosom and dance. And thirdly, it was thought to be a rather lower class to dance like this. You should go back to the minuet and be good manner like your parents would be. Is there anything in that? There's a lot to say about this, because certainly in the late 18th, early 19th century, if you wanted to be regarded as a gentleman, you should be able to dance and have the appropriate training from a dancing teacher. So it had gone into a different phase, though.

It wasn't a sort of the rascals dance. It became a sort of important social accompaniment. It became so accepted in society that it was expected that a man knew how to waltz. And one of the issues, of course, was dancers always had a problem with Christianity and also with Cartesian philosophy about the body being lesser than the mind

and there being the mind-body split, etc. And of course the Victorians were wonderful using this sort of philosophy to justify things. So for the men, very often, they thought, well, that's to do with the body. It's what women do, dancing. And also they thought that it was unmanly to dance because from the mid-19th century in Britain, men were being sent away to public school.

And at that point, dancing lessons had been replaced by rugby and organised sports. So the boys would get a little bit of training at home with their sisters in dancing, go away to public school, then they would go to university, then they would go into men's clubs. And so it created by the end of the century this homosocial atmosphere where they didn't really want to be with women and do women's things. So consequently they just used to hang around in their London clubs. And turn up when supper was served at some of the balls. And the poor hostesses were getting very annoyed

because they had all these wallflowers and nobody to dance with them. I think Theresa is right about the unmanliness of music in general, actually, but dancing in particular. And I think that it was helpful that the waltz was easy to dance. I mean, Mark Twain said it was the only dance he could do. All you had to do was whirl your partner around and try not to bump into the furniture. Whereas a minuet, you could spend weeks trying to learn the steps of a minuet.

With a minuet, you really needed a dancing teacher or a dancing master. And because what you were trying to do was to demonstrate your social distinction because you could afford to employ somebody and therefore with these social skills you might be able to rise up the hierarchy. Susan? Yes, I think that whole improvisational quality of the walls is very important there. But going back to the issue of gender, of course we're jumping ahead here to the coming of the ballet ruse in Paris and London.

You know, one of the characters who was so formative. in thinking about male dancing is Nijinsky, Vasslov Nijinsky, of the Ballet-Rousse Company run by Serge Diagelev. Now, there were plenty of male dancers on stage before Nijinsky, but he had a particular hit with a ballet in 1911. The Spectre de la Rose, Spectre of the Rose, which was based on a Gaultier and Vaudouilliers, scenario and with choreography by Michel Fokine.

And it tells the story of a young woman coming back from the ball. She's asleep. So she has to dance as if she's asleep. But she's being driven by the spirit of the waltz. And the waltz is incarnated, embodied by Nijinsky, who is a very muscular dancer. But what he did was to kind of fern. feminized the idea of that muscular masculinity.

He made a pose with his arms in fifth position, O'Courne, which means the arms above the head, and he crossed the hands over and leant slightly to the side, as if he's about to fade, perhaps, or give the scent of the rose to the girl he's driving through this walls. So if we've referred a little to how the aristocracy took it to heart And the Queen Victoria even went yes But she did go she did she did she danced and she liked it

And we've talked about people who can go to ballrooms But one of the interesting things for me is that it went right across society So we're getting people in small towns and villages Saying we need and do these folk dances We'll actually we'll have a waltz now But the interesting thing is, is yes, they're all doing the waltz, but the question is where and how, because style distinguished who you were in the social hierarchy.

So there are lots of images from dancing teacher manuals which show you this is the correct way to stand, this is the aristocratic way to stand with an erect back at a respectful distance from your partner and glancing over the shoulder of your partner, and never looking at them intently. Whereas if you're low class, you are very close together, you clutch your partner.

And that was regarded as being the epitome of bad taste. Yes, I've certainly read reviews of dancing in some New York ballrooms in the 1870s, remarking on this very thing, they dance in such a vulgar way, these people. But the British seem to admit that the Americans dance better than they did. They did. They did. Well, that was because they took care over their lessons. And the problem, of course, as we've talked about, the men, of course, they're responsible for steering. And if you haven't had lessons, you don't always know how to steer your partner. And they weren't very good at going the other way around, even when they'd grasp the basics. So that's why a lot of people got very dizzy was because they did what's known as the natural. turn. You turn to the right all the time. And there's a very funny song by George Grossmith

called Do You Reverse, because it was thought to be the epitome, a bad taste, to reverse in front of Queen Victoria. And also actually in the Germanic courts as well. And I suspect that the reason for this is because people couldn't do it very well and they didn't want anybody falling over in front of royalty. I remember being taught and taught and taught to do it.

that. It's not easy, is it? Once you get the hang of it, it's all right. I mean, provided you don't want to be perfect. But perseverance. That's really interesting because, you know, James Joyce in Ulysses, in the CSA episode of Ulysses, actually talks about Walsing a lot.

He's talking about night down Dublin. Of course, and he's talking about the Red Light District. But there are reverse turns in that description. description there. And there's very much a sense that the waltz is driving this scene. So it still retains that association with doubtful morals in that particularly. Actually he mentions the hesitation waltz.

Perhaps that's one for... Well, now we're into a sort of a new style of waltzing, which occurred towards the end of the 19th century, Possibly from America. I'm in England or everywhere. Mostly from America, but it was perfected, if one can say that, in England. It was called the Boston, which suggests where it came from. And unusually, for a popular dance form, it was developed by the upper middle classes.

It wasn't one of those dancers that necessarily came from the peasantry or from a folk background. It was already the existing style of, not the style, it was the existing basis of waltz. It was done to waltz music, but there's a new style of waltz music comes in in the 1900s. And the response of that by the dancers was to glide more and also not to turn the feet out because the waltz had always been danced in the 19th century

using the ballet technique, toe down first, feet turned out, up on your toes, as you went down, up, up, down, up. And you use your third position to turn. Young people didn't want that in the early 1900s. And listening to these dreamy waltzes, they wanted to glide. So what they did was to walk. And you get this long stretched out walking on the diagonal to this dreamy music, which, Derek, I think, you know, like the Merry Widow and...

Oh, yes, two things happen, really. There is, as you say, the Boston waltz. It tends nearly always to be called the English waltz in England. And it doesn't matter who writes. I mean, James Malloy was Irish, but just a song, Twilight is the English voice. You know, it's a slower waltz, as Teresa's saying. Then with the Merry Wither in 1905, which is a sensation in London in 1907, we have the valse moderate.

It falls a little bit between the two, but the merry widow waltz, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. It's a little faster than the English waltz, slower than the venous waltz. It sets off another waltz, craze. And then we have that English school of waltz composers, Archibald Joyce. Of course. So it went down well on the Titanic, but then they also went down badly on the Titanic as well.

What seems to me is that it keeps being getting an extra charge. It's going well and then Baleu's coming. It goes in better. It seems to be hurting it. And then this English waltz comes in. Does it always sort of recharge yourself? It sort of recharge yourself, no. It does look strictly.

Exactly. Yes. And even today, this morning I was listening to the radio and I heard someone singing, Moon River. I thought, oh, it's a waltz. They must know I'm participating in a program about walls. Are you lonesome tonight, Elvis Presley?

I have the last waltz with you, and your husbanding. Save the last wars for me. Save the last walls for me. Save me the last waltzes. Zelda Fitzgerald's novel. But also I was thinking of the Mary Widow. Of course it gets into Beckett's Happy Days.

It's the last... Of course. Winnie is listening to the gramophone and they're playing. It causes another resurgence of the walls, but by the mid-30s, are getting a bit sick. Yes.

They prefer the fox trot by then much. Well, they had a big tussle to try and rest the waltz back from the fox trot. Can we go back to who is being pulled in by this? Who is following it, follow it like Poundez, young people follow particular groups and bands and so on. Who were people following the waltz? They'd go anywhere for a waltz, to see a waltz, to dance a waltz, obviously. There was a huge dance craze from about 1910. across Europe and North America,

mainly pushed along by, of course, the arrival of right-time music and the tango. And the waltz had a bit of a struggle keeping up. But then, of course, there were these people, these dancers, these social dancers, and also these teachers. What do you mean by social dancers? By social dancers, I mean people who are keen dancers, who belong to societies, who were these upper-class people,

mostly in the West End of London. And of course, again, it's this aspirational society. People wanted to look glamorous and dance. Like people, like Josephine Bradley. They were featured in all of the magazines, George Fontana, Victor Sylvester, of course. All of these people who had a hand in actually really, not quite cementing, but certainly tidying up

and saying, no, a waltz has got to be two steps and the third step, you pull the feet together. It's not a fox drop, which is more open-ended. I was going to say that, yes, that there were men who were good at dancing, whose services would be for hire in some ballroom. For a time, Victor Sylvester as well, although he became obviously a ballroom champion himself.

Interesting, you know, they were known as Gigolo sometimes, right? Yes. They were. I wouldn't like to comment on that. Well, no. You see, that's the... connotation of the word you're taking. But when I, I went my one holiday

Blackwell with my father, we went to the tower, the Tower Loram. And these men sitting around, and they were called the jugglers. They didn't mean they picked up the women to take them to bed. It meant that women were looking lonely, and they picked them up to dance with them, so that the thing would go with a bang. Well, I... You didn't hear of them. You know...

No, no. You don't know about that's amazing. I'm not hurt for Chigalos, but I'll obviously take your word for it, now. Yeah, I would if I'm... Because I talked to one of the blocs and he was very pleased about being a giggler. He called it a giggleo. That's exactly how my mother referred to them as well.

Yes, so you know about gigglers. There's two of us here, a warn of you. We're doing well. My ignorance is now on display for all. I'm on the fence because I think that whole issue of improvisation is so interesting. You know, the fact that anyone can do it and yet it... But there's an interesting aspect that the Victorian,

you couldn't really do much in the way of improvisation because you were still tied. But in this new style of waltzing, you could go stride off into new directions. You could go sideways if you're going to bump into somebody. Right. Well, that's interesting because, bizarrely enough, Virginia Woolf takes off on that notion of improvisation in the waltz, in her very first novel, Voyage Out, in 1915, which is interesting.

Well, do you mean, Jackson of what you do? I haven't read that. Well, she puts a waltz at the centre of the novel. I mean, it isn't foregrounded as such, but it tells the story of a young woman trying to find herself. And this is where, you know, a lot of the literati are using the waltz as a cultural figure or cultural symbol of the possibility of freedom, because you can do things with the waltz.

And she has a waltz being performed, formed by the guests at a hotel in South America. They're all in South America. And the female protagonist is playing the walls with a trio. And the trio dashes into simultaneously getting the walls at some point. And people just start doing their own thing. And then there's a crash, presumably the crash of symbols of the trio. And then people break up. What? is doing there is she's showing that there is a darker side to the walls. So there's a kind of potential

for fragmentation as well as for harmony and getting together. That is interesting because that has a history because List wrote four Mephisto waltzes where the waltz becomes the devil's genre and

there's a kind of seedy side to the walls that's always ready to emerge. Salome, Richard Strauss. The dance of the seven veils, the stripteases a waltz, really, with some oriental features to it. And even in more recent times, think of Tom Jones, Delilah. I saw the light on the night as I passed by the window.

It's all, you know, Delilah and seductiveness. The waltz is associated with women very much, and because it's regarded as very graceful, but of course with women, as we say, you know, there's these, the Victorians and later, the view the women, and earlier indeed, as having two sides, the angel and the devil, in their makeup. Yes.

So the waltz can go either way, as you say. You would have thought of the fact that it went through society in the way you suggested earlier in the programme might have given society some kind of cultural unity, did it? To an extent. If I jump in the end, say that, well, is it not interesting that the waltz spreads to so many countries? Australia, South America, China,

all over Europe, but people develop their own local waltzes. There'll be Scottish waltzes, Irish waltzes, cockles and mussels, you know, old English waltzes, pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green, which then becomes a Geordie Walsas, Cushy Butterfield.

You have these waltes everywhere, you know. So somehow, the unity, if there is one, I think there is, is the unity of the urban, experience. These are no longer country dances. These are urban dances and cities become more and more

like each other as the 90th century progresses and into the 20th century. And I think the waltz fits into that so well. Is that because of the rhythm partly though? I mean obviously it is to some extent. I'm thinking

that you know of John Cage writing 49 waltzes for five boroughs which of course there isn't a note of music in it anywhere. It's films of trains and urban noises that replicate

that waltz rhythm, that one, two, three. There's something atavistic about it. It's very difficult to know, but certainly there's something about the waltz that made it a cosmopolitan genre. The lenders, never. You play a lenders, people think of Austria. You play a strathspeer. People think of Scotland.

There are certain things. that don't seem to move globally. But then you'll get a place like Vienna, a new type of horse arises, goes around the world. You'll get a place like Trenchtown, Jamaica, reggae arises and goes around the world. And I've never found a satisfactory explanation

why that sometimes happens. New Orleans and jazz. But the similar thing happened with the polka, wouldn't you say? I would. In fact, I was singing the polka. When you were saying the waltz drove out everything, because the polka.

Polka in the 1840s. It's always been enormously. Johann Strauss the Elder didn't write many polkers, but his sons certainly did write loads of polkers. And yes, the polka is also a cosmopolitan. You get Native American polkas. You know, you get polkers everywhere. But I would say that the polka never ousted the waltz

as the epitome of the most romantic dance possible. No, and it's still, for many people, the polka seems more like a folk dance than... Yes. And then the dance with any sign of modernity. It's chirpy. And Edward Scott, the dancing master, said that he said, if you read any novel, you know, the hero is always the perfect waltzer.

Exactly. And so is the heroine, the perfect waltzer. That nobody, no words of love were ever uttered when they were dancing the polka. It's difficult to be taken seriously while you're hopping around the dance floated. I love you. Sue, how did it connect with modernism? Well, I think it's that issue of fragmentation that we mentioned, that the idea that there's a potential, as I said,

for the walls to break up, for the walls to insert gaps into itself, like the hesitation walls to syncopate. You can get a jazz waltz, a two-four time with a waltz rhythm over the top. Stravinsky wrote waltzes at the same time as Spector was being performed. So he did a waltz for Petrushka. And it's extremely dark.

It's the ballerina and the moor characters, puppet characters in Petrushka, waltzing together. And then it breaks up. ends in disaster, in fact, with the murder of Petritschka. But I think it's this idea that there's disintegration as well that's possible. I mean, I would think perhaps Ravel is someone to bring in at this point because of the idea of the turn of the century. Didn't Ravel say something about we're dancing on the edge of a volcano?

He wrote Lavals. And he wrote La Valle's, 1911, and then 1920. There were two, two. And, yeah. Then I think it picks up on some of those effects that, I mean, famously Diage Lave refused Ravel's Lavals, but Fredrikashton. Maybe you know.

No, I also think Deiagalep was unreliable in the way that he refused things. He would refuse things that we now think are greatly. is Vaughn Williams Job, for example, which is one of the best works, you know. And he asked Stravinsky was something, how long the piece of music like it, Stravinsky said, do the end, my dear.

It's a great answer. Yeah, but then Ashton and Balanchet to go back to Melvin's question, they choreographed La Valce, and it was, again, its open-endedness, its bizarre kind of sense of drifting into, in Balanchine's case, into the arms of death. You know, there's this worry about character changing,

as you know, Wolf talked about in 1910, human character. And I do think a lot of people think that about Laval's, but Ravelle himself denied it. Exactly. But one thing I'd like to say that, I'm glad you've mentioned jazz modernism, because it's a raggy walls, but Dave Rube, great.

But the other thing, I think we have to be clear that the wals is seen as modern, not necessarily modernist. You know, if we're talking about modernism, the second Viennese, Schoenberg wrote a waltz, you know. It's different to the modernity of the waltz. And when you think that something like Johann Strauss's waltz, accelerations, accelerates, the owner, inspired by the electric motor. It's part of the modern age.

Electricity is part of the time when the strassers arrived. and electrical references are found in their waltzes. So they're aware of modernity. And there's a school of thought, isn't there? And that the rhythm of the waltz is industrial in tone, that it's mechanistic. People do think that, but I think that it's so wrong. I don't agree with it, but it's an argument.

People look at notes on a page, or they hear a calliope, a steen-worgan playing a waltz, and it's boom, bing, bing, boom, bing. But you listen to an orchestra like Viennese Philharmonic that know their waltzes. It's not boom, chink, chink, but it's often ahead of the beat, boom, chink, boom, chink, ching, just slightly ahead. And not all the time, you have to have the feel of it.

It's just like in jazz, if you've got no feel for swing, it doesn't work. If you've got no feel for that Viennese rhythm in the waltz, it doesn't work as a Viennese waltz. So, fine, you think it's in no danger to become a museum piece? What I worry about is when I hear see strictly come dancing, and they use pieces that are not waltzes to dance the waltz, just because you can divide something into threes. For example, memory of Lloyd Webber.

They've used this a couple of times. It's a slow song, memory, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But each thing goes into da-da-da-da-da-da. So you can think of it as umpapa, um-papa. But it's not at that speed. It's a slow four. It's not a fast three. And I wish strictly would use the right meters for their dancers.

Anything? Well, I do agree. But of course, it's about attracting an audience with popular music, music that they can recognise music of now. So I understand why they do it. Thank you very much indeed. Thanks to Theresa Buckland, Sue Jones and Derek Scott, and to our studio engineer, Sue Mayu.

Next week, Julian the Apostate, the Roman Emperor who removed Christianity as a straight religion and restored paganism. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What would you like to have said you didn't say in the programme?

I've only just thought of this, but probably I'd like to say something about showmanship and show business and, you know, Johann Strauss. How did he portray himself? Why did people go into ecstas at his concerts? But sometimes they were concerts and at his plane. What was it about him? Why did he do what he did, you mean? And why did it thrill people? You're supposed to be an expert. What's your view? Oh, well, I... You are an expert. You're not supposed to be an expert. You are an expert. You are an expert.

What's your view? I thought you were going to go around and find out one every... Just when you... Well, briefly, it was the way that... He did not conduct his orchestra with a baton. He led from the violin, because he was a violinist, and he was renowned for moving about. His whole body moved with the music. He tapped his foot to the music.

A classical musician shouldn't tap their foot to the music. And when he gave performances, for example, in public parks, he had the idea of ticketing the events, paying police to rope things off, and then paying for spectacular. displays lighting, fireworks, all that kind of thing. And because this all gave him a kind of superstardom. And he became, I think, the first global musical superstar.

I know Paganini toured, but Johann Strauss's father could tour with an entire orchestra. People wanted him so much. I would like to add something about the waltz being associated with modernity all the time. Not necessarily modernism, modernity. It seems to reinvent itself. So that when it comes back again in the early 20th century, it's associated with all those qualities which were thought to be modern,

that is natural movement and a lack of artificiality. And that's so important in terms of the concept of Englishness. And why? Because the English, whoever the English are, there is this notion that develops in the 19th century that the English are true characters. When they looked at people from France, say, which had retained a more, they would argue,

affected etiquette and style of dancing. There was a very widespread notion that a national character could be seen in the way than which people dance. And so for the English, it was restrained, it was elegant, it was natural, lack of showmanship. but in total control. And that accords very much with the Victorian notion of the upper-class gentleman.

Sue? I would like to have added something about the novelist George Elliott in the 19th century, whom we didn't get to talk about. But she actually uses the dance as form in several of her novels, and particularly in Adam Bede. But she uses the dance form as a way of showing moral turpitude to some degree, you know, when Arthur Donner Thorne is organized a dance to get off with Hetty Sorrel, you know. And it leads to the demise of Hetty Sorrel, I mean, to her tragedy, particularly because it's at the center of the novel.

It's not like Shakespearean comedy where you have a dance at the end. But what's interesting about Elliot is that she does, peasant. references to the waltz here and there because she's talking about rustic dances but she's also talking about waltzes as artificial which is quite the opposite of teresa's point she references the bird waltz for example when people are discussing before the big dance in adam bd i was in 1859 she's actually looking back to an earlier time where the the waltz was looked down upon at the beginning of the century. And the birdwals is, she sees as something as highly artificial, that it has nothing to do with real birds. And of course, that was Elliot's structuring of her novel around the whole issue of what is real. Realism.

You know, she was very interested in thinking about ordinary people as well as the aristocracy. And Maggie Tulliver and Milan the Floss famously doesn't know how. to waltz. She does the rustic dances. And Gwendolyn Harleth in Daniel Duranda in 1876, it has physical antipathy to the closed position of the waltz. There's a particular character she wants to avoid and she refuses to waltz even though people tell her she can waltz very well. I've thought of another thing that I wish I'd said, and that's the business of the waltz. Johad Strauss' father and the publisher Tobias Hasslinger

just thought young women in middle class households are all playing the piano why don't we do a waltz series for girls and they published waltzes for them to play and these waltzes are then easy because they're learning so the term is

lighter music and it's that term that term light music that gives us the term light music although we're no longer think it means the easy music We think we know what light music means, and that's why someone then invented easy listening is another one. And another thing on the subject of the business and music, I wish I'd credited Anna Strauss, Johann Strauss,

the eldest wife, because he left her, he left the kids, and she had to take over. And she was the one that set them on very good business careers. She was the one that was in charge of, of over 200 staff running the Strauss business. And I think following on from that, to highlight the role that the theatre played in popularising these tunes

and also in developing the sheet music industry, which went back and forth particularly across the Atlantic, didn't it? And I have to say, because they popularise it so much, and the dancehorse that did that as well, the nobility in Vienna began to be worried because if they went to the spell dance hall

in Leopoldstadt, they could end up bumping into a green grocer or something like a dreadful. Well, Mr. Buter was not happy about that at all in the Diary of a Nobody. The Diary of a Nobody, where he thinks he's made it because he's going to the mayor's ball

and when he gets there, he finds that there's, you know, he's dancing with green grocers and he thought that he was going somewhere You see, they didn't get invited to the hunt balls, did they know? The hunt ball was something else. And you know, in the mid-19th century, they were still in some places putting a rope across the ballroom

so that the aristocracy could be at the high position, which is nearest the musicians, and tradespeople, but of course they're quite elevated tradespeople, would be at the bottom and near the twain should meet. It was all very strictly controlled. It gets very, very hierarchical in the 19th century, in British. And people put up in it, did they? Obviously.

They didn't tear the place down. Yes, but then I think they got more subtle means by getting stewards at MCs to make sure that the right person was in the right set because, of course, you had the quadrille. And when you called for another couple, you had to make sure they went from the bottom of the room. Right, really.

Yes. And when you mention the theatre, the importance of the theatre, I'm thinking of the musicals as well at the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th century, you know, someone like Arthur Sullivan was doing... It became quite gentrified, didn't it, the musical? Yes, it did, but then there were the, you know, you could sit in the gods as well. Yes.

And you could see waltzes being performed in the ballets in part of the music hall. And there's some wonderful footage from the late Victorian period of street girls dancing in the East End of London, doing waltzes. But backing up on what? Sue has just said, you'll remember that in patience, the line, in the end, he was lost to Tully and married a girl from the court of ballet. Very unfair. I do remember that. Some research has shown that was a very unfair remark about ballet girls.

Well, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you. I think we enjoyed it. Oh, I love a cover. It's quite dry in here. Four teas. Yeah.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Forgive us, listeners, for we have sinned. And we want to know why. I'm Becky Ripley. And I'm Sophie Ward. And we're here to tell you about our new podcast series. Seven Deadly Psychologies. Now available on Seriously from BBC Radio 4. So, ready? Born ready. Where we take a cold, hard look at the psychology behind each.

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