A waltz in space
The provincial organization for the promotion of Viennese tourism has decided to correct « great musical injustice ». For decades, they have been disappointed in the Austrian capital because there are no « space anthem » on the famous gold plates that have voyager 1 and 2 space probes equipped. On a beautiful blue Danube Johanna Strauss of the younger. She will now send it to space European Space Agency (ESA).
Vienna has been a world metropolis of classical music for centuries. This year is the most important cultural anniversary in Austria 200 years of birth of Johann Strauss Jr., a prolific composer whose famous waltz On a beautiful blue Danube He also fascinates the Vienna New Year’s concert, the most popular concert of classical music in the world, which consumes tens of millions of spectators each year (recently broadcast in about 90 countries). The waltz was also used by the director Stanley Kubrick in the movie 2001: Odyssey in spacein a scene when a spacecraft with people in a weightless state approaches a rotating space station.
As part of the Valček project in space, the Vienna Tourism Organization has shot a shorter documentary in which eight music, film and aeronautical experts speak of Strauss Waltz as a space anthem, how he found himself in Kubrick’s film and why a great symbol of space movement is: in a walt, the dance couple revolves around their axes.
Golden plates
Nasa was launched in 1977 by the now legendary probes, which are currently the only human objects in the interstellar space. Both are equipped with a gold panel featuring different pictorial and soundtracks, from the speech of then -US President Jimmy Carter to the calls of humpback whales. There are also several songs on the records, which, like other content, was selected by a jury led by astronomer Carlo Sagan; Classical music includes some works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky. Vienna is therefore presented on gold plates with Mozart and Beethoven, who lived and created in this city, but not with the Strauss waltz.
A few months ago, the tourist organization presented a special website where anyone – free and easy – could become a « ambassador » of sending a waltz into space, as a sponsor of one of the 13,743 notes contained in this music work. Of course, this was the first to become Mayor of Vienna, the president of Austria and other celebrities.
This weekend, under the tactics of Peter Popelka in front of the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts, the Vienna Symphonies will play several « galactic » songs, that is, songs that are colored in one way or another by the theme of space, from Mozart’s Jupiter’s Symphony to Dvořákova 9. Symphony From the new world. The highlight of the concert will be the song On a beautiful blue Danubewhich ESA will send to space through the antenna. Antenna is located near the town of Cebreros in the Spanish province of Ávila, 85 kilometers west of Madrid. The waltz will be sent at light speed, in the form of electromagnetic waves. After a good 23 hours, the notes will reach and overtake Voyager 1. The concert will also be monitored online on different channels.
