The Blue Danube, written by Johann Strauss, is set to be played into space to mark the 200th birthday of the composer and the 50th anniversary of the European Space Agency (ESA). The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will perform the piece on 31 May, with the live performance streamed for free in Vienna, Madrid, and New York. To prevent any technical hiccups, a pre-recorded version from the orchestra’s rehearsal will be transmitted, while a live performance will provide the accompaniment. The music, famously featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, will zoom past the moon in just 1.5 seconds. It will start its journey from the ESA’s large antenna dish in Spain, which is part of the agency’s deep-space network. The music will pass by Mars in 4.5 minutes, Jupiter in 37 minutes, and Neptune in four hours. If all goes according to plan, NASA’s Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft in the world, will receive the signals in 23 hours, when they will have traveled over 15 billion miles into interstellar space.
Vienna, where Johann Strauss was born in October 1825, is thrilled about sending “the most famous of all waltzes” into space to correct the “cosmic mistake” of his music being excluded from past interstellar broadcasts. Strauss was left out nearly fifty years ago when the Voyager Golden Records were launched into space on gold-plated copper phonograph records aboard NASA’s Voyagers 1 and 2. These records contain sounds and images of Earth, along with 90 minutes of music. The late astronomer Carl Sagan led the committee that selected works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Stravinsky, as well as modern and Indigenous music. Strauss was among those neglected in the 1977 broadcasts. In 2008, NASA celebrated its 50th anniversary by beaming The Beatles’ Across The Universe directly into deep space, and last year, Missy Elliott’s The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) was sent towards Venus.
Overall, the decision to broadcast The Blue Danube into space is a momentous occasion that celebrates the legacy of Johann Strauss and the technological advancements of the European Space Agency. While past interstellar broadcasts may have overlooked Strauss, this latest initiative aims to correct that oversight and pay tribute to the composer’s enduring influence on classical music. Not really sure why this matters, but it’s interesting to see how music can transcend earthly boundaries and resonate in the vastness of space. Who knows, maybe extraterrestrial beings will be tapping their tentacles to the rhythm of The Blue Danube as it travels through the cosmos.
