Page 84 - Traveling 71 eng

THE WALTZ THAT TRAVELLED INTO SPACE
The Blue Danube travels into space
Word: Editorial staff - Photos: Jose A. Muñoz y Javier Estrada Gutiérrez
Vienna has long been the invisible capital of European music. Its
streets still echo with the waltz, the memory of gilded ballrooms,
and the elegance of an era that turned the city into a perpetual me-
lody. If there is one composition that captures that spirit, it is Johann
Strauss II’s “The Blue Danube.” Since its premiere, this waltz has
never stopped spinning — linking generations, crossing borders and
continents — until it became something greater than a musical piece:
the unofficial soundtrack of Austria and, by extension, a European
anthem.
But today’s story does not unfold on the banks of the Danube, nor in
a concert hall, but in the silent vastness of space. For the first time,
humanity has sent the waltz of all waltzes into the cosmos — settling
an old debt and opening a new chapter in the planet’s cultural history.
A cosmic oversight
The scene is well known: in 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1
and 2 probes, each carrying a golden record on board. Inside, a ca-
refully selected collection of 27 musical pieces meant to represent
the diversity of life and human culture. Among them were Bach,
Beethoven, and Stravinsky… but, surprisingly, no Strauss. The
Blue Danube was missing from that interstellar message, despite
the fact that Strauss’s music had already travelled through space
in the imaginations of millions, thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey.
That absence, over time, became symbolic: a cosmic mistake, an
inexplicable oversight.
84 -