David Wyn Jones is Emeritus Professor of Music at Cardiff University. He has written extensively on music and musical life in Vienna, including biographies of Haydn (2009) and Beethoven (1998). The relationship between music and society in three different epochs is explored in Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 (2016).

A zesty biography reassessing the Strauss family's musical achievements within wider Habsburg society and its cultural life as a whole.

List of Illustrations; List of Tables; Preface; Eingang The depth of the Blue Danube; Presenting a biography of the Strauss family; 1. 1804-1832 Johann Strauss and the making of a tradition; 2. 1833-1849 Father and son. Travel and revolution; 3. 1850-1870 Three brothers: Johann, Josef and Eduard; 4. Dance and march: music and culture; 5. 1871-1899 Two brothers: Johann and Eduard; 6. Staging comedy: Operetta and Opera; 7. 1900-1916. One brother: Eduard; Bibliography; Index of works by Johann Strauss (father), Johann Strauss (son), Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss; Strauss Family Tree: individuals mentioned in the biography; General Index.

The music of the Strauss family - Johann and his three sons, Johann, Josef and Eduard - enjoys enormous popular appeal. Yet existing biographies have failed to do justice to the family's true significance in nineteenth and early twentieth-century musical history. David Wyn Jones addresses this deficiency, engagingly showing that - from Johann's first engagements in the mid-1820s to the death of Eduard in 1916 - the music making of the family was at the centre of Habsburg Viennese society as it moved between dance hall, concert hall and theatre. The Strauss industry at its height was, he demonstrates, greater than any one of the individuals, with serious personal and domestic consequences including affairs, illness, rivalry and fraud. This zesty biography, spanning over a hundred years of history, brings the dynasty brilliantly to life across a large canvas as it offers fresh and revealing insights into the cultural life of Vienna as a whole.