Waltzing across the ‘Great Divide’: Exploring Continuities of Art Music and Popular Musics through Convention-orientated Analysis

Recent developments in music theory point to broad continuities of idiom across art-music and popular genres in modern Western music history. Eighteenth-century conventions proved remarkably resilient, given the otherwise profound changes in Western musical culture over the last 250 years. The Viennese waltz was a key link in this evolutionary process, as it adapted eighteenth-century conventions to new formats that remained in place for generations. In the Viennese waltz a distinctive ‘accent’ emerged, based around well-consolidated divergences from Classical models. This idiom can be identified in the waltzes of Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss Sr. A survey of later genres gives a preliminary mapping of the legacy of the Viennese waltz in art music and popular music. Case studies from the long nineteenth century examine the legacy in more detail in the music of Glinka, Chabrier, Mahler, and Joplin.