Johann Strauss II wrote the melodies that define Viennese elegance, yet his own father, the celebrity composer Johann Strauss I, whipped him for practicing violin and vowed to beat the music out of him. This episode follows the boy who took secret lessons from the first violinist of his father's own orchestra, was bankrolled by his mother Anna after his father abandoned the family, and debuted with his own orchestra at Dommayer's Casino in 1844 while venues across Vienna feared to book him. It also explains why the waltz, with its close hold and dizzying spins, was the scandalous pop music of its day.

We cover the 1848 revolution that split the family politically, his arrest for playing rebel anthems, the merger of the two orchestras after his father's death in 1849, and the 180 patriotic marches that eventually won him the court ball direc ...