Josef Strauss

Josef Strauss, born in Vienna in 1827, was the middle of the three composer sons of Johann Strauss I and, for many admirers, the most poetically gifted of the dynasty. Trained as an engineer, he designed machines (among them a horse-drawn street-sweeping vehicle) and published mathematical textbooks, and he was reluctantly drawn into the family business in 1853, when serious illness kept his brother Johann II from conducting. Sensitive and introspective by temperament, Josef brought a refinement and harmonic subtlety to the Viennese dance that set his music slightly apart: his brother Johann is said to have called him ‘the more gifted of us two.’ His finest waltzes, such as Sphärenklänge (‘Music of the Spheres’) and Dorfschwalben aus Österreich (‘Village Swallows from Austria’), are prized for their melancholy beauty and delicate orchestration. He composed nearly three hundred works in a short career, collapsing while conducting in Warsaw and dying in 1870 at only forty-two. His early death robbed Viennese music of its most lyrical voice.