Tanzende Muse

Josef Strauss

Die tanzende Muse (The Dancing Muse) polka-mazurka Op.266

If Josef Strauss had not been plagued by illness, which resulted in his death at the age of forty-three, and if he had been as ambitious as his brothers, he might well have turned out the greatest composer of the three - not necessarily of dances but of more ambitious forms of music. Even so, he was a brilliant exponent of the polka, including the hybrid form the polka-mazurka, which ingeniously combines the polka step with the uneven triple-time of the mazurka. Die tanzende Muse - in which the faintly lugubrious outer sections so effectively offset Josef’s lyrical inspiration as the muse smiles on him in the middle section - is one of the most interesting examples of the form.