Austrian composer Eduard Strauss, (1835 - 1916), who, together with brothers Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss formed the Strauss musical dynasty. The family dominated the Viennese light music world for decades, creating many waltzes and polkas for many Austrian nobility as well as well as dance-music enthusiasts around europé. He was affectionately known in his family as 'Edi'.
Strauss' style was individual and did not attempt to emulate the works of his other brothers or his contemporaries. But he was primarily remembered and recognized as a dance music conductor rather than as a major composer in the Strauss family, and his popularity was overshadowed by that of his elder brothers. Realising this, he stamped his own mark with the quick polka, known in German as the "polka-schnell". Among the more popular polkas that he ever penned for the Strauss Orchestra, which he continued to conduct until its disbandment on 13 February 1901, were "Bahn Frei" op. 45, "Ausser Rand und Band" op.168, and "Ohne Bremse" op. 238. He also found time to pen a few lovely waltzes, of which only a handful survived obscurity. The most famous is probably the "Doctrinen" op.79.
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