In 19th-century Europe, there was scarcely a dull moment.

Revolutions, wars and advancements such as rail and steamship travel roiled the Continent.

Imperial boundaries were drawn and redrawn.

Dance halls overflowed with patrons seeking the latest craze.

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-99) was uniquely suited to his dynamic age. Born to the most celebrated musical family in Europe's cultural capital of Vienna, Austria, he spun the light dance music of the time into enduring orchestral masterpieces and a legacy eclipsing even that of his famous father.

The father cast a long shadow indeed. Johann Sr. is duly credited with making the waltz, with its lilting three-quarter rhythms, a popular concert hall staple and not merely a ballroom affair.

The most popular bandleader of his day, the elder Strauss toured incessantly and performed to frenzied crowds in London, Paris, Berlin and the Low Countries.

Back at home, young Johann had discovered his own musical talent and was eager to follow in his father's footsteps.

His mother, Anna — a gifted musician in her own right — encouraged her son to follow his dream, but Johann Sr. was adamantly opposed. He wanted a banking career for his son.

Up Against Dad

The son's passion won out. Johann Jr. formed his own orchestra to compete directly with his father's.

Adding to the strain on his family, Johann Sr. left Anna for a mistress who bore him five illegitimate children, the first of whom she had the chutzpah to name Johann.

Anna Strauss never wavered in her support of her son's career choice. In his book "The Waltz Kings," Hans Fantel theorized that Anna, "consciously or otherwise, conceived a plan to revenge herself on her husband" by training young Johann "so that someday he might dispute the Waltz King's crown."

When Johann Sr. died in 1849, the son combined the two orchestras under his leadership as a conciliatory gesture. Now there was just one Strauss in town, and the black-haired, wild-eyed conductor was well on his way to becoming a sensation in Vienna.

Like his father, Strauss toured Europe constantly, earning great renown. He also composed some of the world's best-known music.

Strauss' signature waltz, "On the Beautiful, Blue Danube," written in 1867, marked a turning point. Like many of his works, it was a love letter to the great city of Vienna.

But this song was singular. Egon Gartenberg, in his exhaustive history "Johann Strauss: The End of an Era," wrote that the composer "freed the waltz from the tyranny of the dance rhythm and carried it beyond the empty, regulated beat."

The result, Gartenberg wrote, was a "waltz tone poem" in a symphonic setting, with a subdued introductory passage that evoked the morning mist.

The listening public knew "Blue Danube" was something special. By Gartenberg's account, the demand for the sheet music amounted to a million copies; 80 huge boxes were shipped to America. Strauss had scored history's first platinum hit.

He followed with classics such as "Tales From the Vienna Woods" and the operettas "Die Fledermaus" (The Bat) and "Der Zigeunerbaron" (The Gypsy Baron).

Strauss was popular with the other music giants of his era. He counted Johannes Brahms as a close friend, and had a devoted fan in no less a genius than Richard Wagner, who reveled in performing Strauss' "Wine, Women and Song" waltz at his own concerts.

While Strauss appreciated the admiration of his peers, his sights were set beyond Europe. When he was invited to conduct an orchestra at Boston's Peace Jubilee in 1872, he set aside his dislike of ocean travel and accepted the honor.

Upon his arrival in the New World, Strauss was greeted like a rock star.

According to Gartenberg in "Johann Strauss," crowds went wild when he appeared in public: In Boston, "women rushed up to kiss his hand or the hem of his coat, men cheered wherever he appeared."

Inside the festival hall built for the Peace Jubilee, the conductor was taken aback by the numbers. His orchestra would be accompanied by 20,000 singers in front of an audience of 100,000.

As Strauss put it: "Now just imagine my position, face to face with a public of a hundred thousand Americans. . . . Suddenly a cannon shot rang out, a gentle hint for us 20,000 to begin to perform the 'Blue Danube.' "

Performing all of his greatest hits — plus the "New Jubilee Waltz," written especially for Boston — Strauss and his musicians hit the right note. The Boston Herald praised the concert and the "activity, firmness and judgment" that made Strauss "a model conductor."

With all his success, Strauss was haunted by difficulties in his private life. He rarely spoke to his father during their rift, then later watched in horror as Johann Sr. died of scarlet fever in the bed of his mistress.

Then there was Johann Jr.'s marriage soap opera. Strauss' third marriage was cause for considerable angst in Austria, which was officially Roman Catholic. He was nominally Catholic; his wife, Adele, was Jewish. This prompted their temporary move to the German city of Coburg, where Strauss converted to Protestantism, obtained a divorce from his second wife and married Adele.

The problems in the composer's personal life paled next to those of his country. For all its hard-earned prestige in the fine arts, Austria in the late 19th century was a country in decline, economically and militarily. Its empire, whose ungovernable boundaries extended to Venice in the south and Hungary in the east, took a back seat to the more robust regimes in Prussia and France.

Music For Austria

The nationalism of Johann Strauss never faded. In 1888 he composed his "Emperor Waltz," commemorating 40 years of rule by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. With its regal Viennese bearing, muscular horn arrangements and melodic strains hinting at melancholy, the piece was a perfect coda for an empire in its last gasp of eminence.

Just weeks before his death in 1899, Strauss received a visitor who had traveled 4,000 miles to meet him. In a note of condolence to Adele Strauss, Mark Twain paid tribute to the waltz king:

"When I talked and smoked with him in your home only 12 days ago he seemed in all ways his old natural self: alert, quick, brilliant in speech, and wearing all the graces of his indestructible youth; and now, why, it seems impossible that he is gone! I am grateful that I was privileged to have that pleasant meeting with him and it will remain a gracious memory with me."

BY CHRISTOPHER CAILLAVET