Johann Strauss II

The Waltz King. His father forbade him a career in music, so he studied in secret with his mother's help and ended up competing head-on with his father's orchestra in Vienna. He wrote close to five hundred dances while running a business that spanned Europe.

Do not hear this as background music. The introduction to The Blue Danube is a blurred, almost keyless daybreak, and the waltz theme does not surface for more than a minute. His second beat always arrives fractionally early — the Viennese lilt cannot be notated and survives only as an orchestral habit. Brahms once wrote the opening of The Blue Danube on a lady's fan and signed it 'unfortunately not by Brahms'.