Johann Strauss’ ‘Blue Danube’ waltz to be beamed to Voyager 1

telcodad · 2025-05-26T11:39:59+00:00

2001: A Space Odyssey’s balletic waltz to be beamed to Voyager 1 By David Szondy, New Atlas - May 25, 2025 https://newatlas.com/space/2001-a-space-odysseys-balletic-waltz-to-be-beamed-to-voyager-1/ On May 31, Voyager 1 will be the guest of honor at what may be the most exclusive concert in history. To mark the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss II, ESA will beam a live performance of “By the Beautiful Blue Danube” to NASA’s deep space probe. When Stanley Kubrick filmed the sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, he did what many directors do. During the editing, he used classical library music to fill in for the original score being composed by Alex North. To his pleasant surprise, Kubrick found that the library music worked much better than the planned score, so he kept the pieces in. One of these was Strauss’s “By the Beautiful Blue Danube,” which was used during the sequence where the Pan Am space shuttle docks with Space Station V in what has often been called a space ballet. : It also caused a bit of a kerfuffle in 1977 when Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 lifted off on their mission to Jupiter and beyond that would eventually see them leave the solar system, never to return. Bolted to the hull of both spacecraft was a copy of NASA’s Golden Record, which was a gold-plated copper LP disc containing images and sounds from the planet Earth as a cosmic postcard to any beings who might find it eons in the future. It was an ambitious enterprise, but when it came to the music selections the NASA committee opted for eclecticism and a certain ideological puritanism, which meant that entire genres of music were excluded. The inclusion of folk tune selections that would have stumped a music ethnologist meant the Blue Danube didn’t make the cut. Now the Vienna Tourist Board, ESA, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra hope to make some small amends by beaming the waltz to Voyager 1 as part of what is billed as an interstellar live broadcast. ….

GeekGirl1

egeezer InternetJeff
I remember that episode ‘To Serve Man’ as I recall the name of the book.

Yes, I watched that episode on Twilight Zone.

telcodad

Just a reminder that the livestreamed performance will occur at 3:30 PM EDT today.

You can see/hear it here: https://space.vienna.info/en-US

Astyanax

telcodad From the New Atlas article above, it is a joint project by the “Vienna Tourist Board, ESA, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra”

i.e. NASA isn’t having anything to do with foreigners sending superfluous radio beams towards their stuff.

telcodad

Astyanax NASA isn’t having anything to do with foreigners sending superfluous radio beams towards their stuff.

That’s right. But as it says in the NPR article above, the music is being transmitted “in the direction of Voyager 1,” basically just a symbolic kind of thing.

If the transmission is not of the proper modulation type and format, Voyager 1 will just see it as some elevated background noise from the direction of Earth. 😉

telcodad

telcodad You can see/hear it here: https://space.vienna.info/en-US

T minus 10 minutes and counting, 🙂

telcodad

Mission Accomplished!

I hope they did not use any DRM on this digital transmission, as handling that can be quite tricky at interstellar distances! 🙂

InternetJeff

telcodad Just a reminder that the livestreamed performance will occur at 3:30 PM EDT today.

Unfortunately my Jump Drive is down, so I won’t be able to get out there in time to receive the signal when it arrives in the vicinity of Voyager 1 in about 22 hours.
😁

telcodad

I must say that the performance by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra was light years beyond (pun intended) the first time I was exposed to the “By the Beautiful Blue Danube” as a kid with this Looney Tunes version: 🙂

A Corny Concerto - The Blue Danube (1943)

InternetJeff

telcodad A portion of my all-time favorite…

telcodad

InternetJeff A portion of my all-time favorite…

I also liked “The Rabbit of Seville”

Rabbit of Seville ⅓

Rabbit of Seville ⅔

Rabbit of Seville 3/3

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