EVERY GENRE PROJECT - September 25 - Waltz

Genre of the Day - Waltz

Album of the Day - The Jazz Album by Dmitri Shoshtakovich, performed by Amsterdam Royal Philharmonic / Riccardo Chailly (recorded 1992)

This next Tuesday, as I just found out, Americans will be served a Midwestern head-to-head in a Vice Presidential debate between Minnesota’s Tim Walz and Ohio’s JD Vance. In terms of musical last names, Tim Walz has already won the battle. At some point during this campaign run, I’d be pleased to see him undertake a waltz. Or, perhaps his last name will stimulate the public subconscious and usher in a new era of waltzes. Excuse this strange introduction—my brain is perhaps (beta) decaying a bit as I remained entrenched in a 700-page book about the origins of nuclear weapons as I mentioned the other day. Without further ado, we spin into the hallowed halls of today’s dance tradition.

Waltz music is synonymous with western classical music’s vision of dance music, and inarguably the greatest international triumph of German and Central European music to date. Ironically, Germany is still at the forefront of dance music; drawing a line from waltz music to Berlin’s world-famous techno scene may be a bit preposterous (we’re talking a triple rhythm versus a four-on-the-floor, anyway), but I’ll have to consult this question further. International traditions ranging from Mexico’s mariachi to Brazil’s valsas brasileiras have their roots in waltz music, speaking to its dominant arc from pastoral beginnings in the German countryside.

The word pastoral may be a misleading descriptor, though—the dance’s famed dynamism in its twirls, slides, and flows that roll like the slopes of verdant hills have been its integral components since its medieval origins. That mesmerizing dance style made it the pinnacle and scandal of Viennese ballroom fare by the 1700s. Some naysayers at the time lambasted it as an unsavory and indecent dance, given its speed and nature as a couples’ dance that leaves little room for Jesus, as they say at Catholic school dances. However, its rhythmic distinction has been the main driver in its persistence as a compositional medium. Waltzes are typically composed like their stylistic Polish cousin mazurkas, in a ¾ rhythm, set apart by their emphasis on the first beat that creates a certain unignorable propulsion. This sense of flowing movement fit the musical era of romanticism perfectly as composers tackled new musical ground as in the other day’s tone poems, and waltzes flourished at the highest level of composition as the dance trend took Europe by storm during the early 1800s.

Dmitri Shostakovich was a beacon of individual eccentricity, which was both his strong point as a composer and weak point as a celebrated composer coming to international fame during the early Soviet years. Despite a looming personal Cold War of his own with Stalin, his musical output and broad, strange visions remarkably did not waver. The Jazz Album may not consist cohesively of waltzes, but it also isn’t particularly recognizable as jazz either. It remains my choice for the album to represent waltzes, though, because we get to appreciate them in contrast to parallel and perpendicular forms. The Jazz Suite that opens this composition remains his most listened-to work, and the waltz launches into action at the forefront. Its triple rhythm sounds oh-so-plucky, richly expanding with a balance of piano and brass gusto and flute and chime softness. He jolts the comparatively hokey-sounding polka awake with xylophone. The subsequent three waltzes that appear in this collection of suites illustrate the form’s adaptability to tones, with vivacity as a common denominator, from the romantic whirlwind of “Lyric Waltz” to the triumphant spectacle of the second Jazz Suite’s “Waltz I.” Whether with a partner or not, to follow and twirl along to these songs is an all-time musical joy; waltzes are a triumph of form and sound’s ability to make human movement sound as embodied and grand as it feels.