vative musical style, are still matters of uncertainty. It has been com-
mon, for instance, to emphasize the importance of the Ländler to the
waltz and neglect the influence of the Dreher. The whirling type of dance
had been popular in the German countryside since at least the mid–six-
teenth century, and various authorities attempted to prohibit dances
with unseemly turns (unziemblichen Verdrehen).
2
The Dreher, in particu-
lar, was opposed by ministers of religion, and it was this dance that led
most directly to the waltz.
3
Turning or rotating dances (drehen means to
turn, walzen to rotate) were regarded as morally reprehensible in high
society because they were likely to cause a woman’s skirt to fly up.
However, they were not banned in Vienna, where the aristocracy liked
to believe they had not lost touch with ordinary people, an attitude
they were able to sustain because Vienna at the end of the eighteenth
century did not suffer the poverty found in London or Paris. There was
already a mania for dancing at that time, and it was satisfied by a large
number of suburban dance halls. One energetic dance was the Langaus,
which had a slide instead of the Ländler’s hop and could thus be danced
at faster speed. The waltz, which also had a gliding movement, devel-
oped in bars and taverns along the Danube. The river was much used
for transport, and musicians from the country sailed downriver playing
to passengers and in establishments close to where the boats were
moored. Strauss Sr.’s father was an innkeeper on an island in the Dan-
ube in the suburb of Leopoldstadt.
4
J. H. Kattfuss’s Taschenbuch für Freunde und Freundinnen des Tanzes
(Leipzig, 1800) says that the only difference between the steps of the
Dreher, Ländler, and waltz is that the pace of the Ländler is slower. Yet
the waltz had already developed other differences. In the Ländler, the
woman revolved beneath the man’s raised arm while he stamped a
foot, and each of them revolved in opposite directions and around each
other back-to-back, as well as performing other figures that do not ap-
pear in the waltz. Moreover, the feet are dragged in the waltz, giving a
gliding motion to the whirling that marks it out as an indoor dance;
hopping movements in the Ländler were suited to rough terrain, and
country shoes with nails lent emphasis to the stamping. A gliding mo-
tion could be faster on wooden floors, and outdoor boots were frowned
on in dance halls.
5
The first parquet floor was laid at the Monschein
Hall in 1806, although in 1797 the Journal des Luxus und der Moden was
already claiming that the Viennese waltz was the fastest.
6
Naturally, the
faster the waltz, the tighter the grip that was needed on the bodies of
each partner; it meant that, allowing for due decorum, waltzes tended
to be played more slowly for the aristocracy. The tempo of the waltz al-
tered to suit fashions in women’s dresses. It slowed down for the nar-
rower styles of the early nineteenth century, but when fuller skirts
began to develop in the 1820s it speeded up again.
The waltz entered France (via Alsace) in the late eighteenth cen-
tury, and came to England at the same time, but possessed many Ländler-
118 Sounds of the Metropolis