Hans Christian Lumbye

Hans Christian Lumbye, born in Copenhagen in 1810, was Denmark’s foremost composer of light dance music and is affectionately known as ‘the Strauss of the North.’ Inspired by hearing a Viennese orchestra in 1839, he devoted himself to the waltzes, polkas, and galops of the Strauss-Lanner style and became the resident composer and conductor of Copenhagen’s celebrated Tivoli Gardens pleasure park, a post he held from its opening in 1843 until 1872. There he produced a steady stream of dances that delighted Danish audiences and gave the nation its own branch of the Viennese tradition. His Champagne Galop, which opens with a popping cork, became a signature work, and his witty, pictorial dances (above all the Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop, which imitates a locomotive) show a flair for orchestral mimicry and good humour. Lumbye died in Copenhagen in 1874. His music remains a cherished part of Danish musical life and an occasional welcome guest at the Vienna New Year’s Concert.