Letters
Reading Brian Wise’s feature about 2001: A Space Odyssey (March), I was surprised that there was no mention made of the probable reason that The Blue Danube Waltz is used. That reason is that it’s a musical joke. The music plays as we see the large circular space station rotating sedately into view. The joke? The music is an allusion to another large, circular, gracefully rotating structure, this being the Giant Ferris Wheel in the Prater, Vienna, built 1897, a major landmark which overlooks both the city and the Danube. An ex-colleague, living in Vienna at the time, saw the film when it came out. The moment the space station appeared to a soundtrack of local boy Johann Strauss II, there was a round of laughter and applause. It’s probably no surprise that, in Vienna, they spotted the joke straight away. Mark Jones, Bristol