Eduard Strauss

Eduard Strauss, born in Vienna in 1835, was the youngest of the three composer sons of Johann Strauss I and the longest-lived. Like his brothers Johann II and Josef, he was at first intended for another profession, but the family’s musical enterprise drew him in. When Johann II withdrew to concentrate on operetta, it fell to Eduard to take over the Strauss Orchestra, which he led until he disbanded it in 1901, touring widely across Europe and, in 1899, to North America and keeping the family’s dance music before the public. A brisk, energetic conductor, he was especially admired for his fast polkas. He composed several hundred works of his own, though he is remembered as much for sustaining the dynasty’s performing tradition as for his compositions. In a notorious act, in October 1907, years after the orchestra’s end, he had a large part of the family’s manuscript archive burned. He died in Vienna in 1916, the last of the brothers.