Johann Strauss I

Johann Strauss I was the first of Vienna's so-called "Waltz Kings", and although he has largely been eclipsed by his son Johann II, he was briefly one of the most celebrated and popular musicians in the whole of Europe. Strauss lost both his parents in childhood and trained as a bookbinder before joining Joseph Lanner's dance orchestra as a violinist. He rose to become Lanner's deputy and – after 1825, when he founded his own orchestra – his principal rival. Leading from the violin, he popularised the Viennese waltz across Europe, taking his orchestra on tour to Germany, France (where Hector Berlioz was an admirer) and Great Britain, where he drew huge audiences attracted as much by his own charisma as by the freshness of his melodies. In return, he brought the quadrille to Vienna, and his compositional style, as well as his business model, served as a template for his sons Eduard, Josef and Johann II, whose musical ambitions he opposed and from whom (after divorcing their mother in 1844) he was estranged. When he died in 1849 of scarlet fever he had aligned himself with the established order in the revolutions of 1848. The Radetzky March that he composed to celebrate the defeat of the rebels is now played more frequently than any of his (often delightful) waltzes.