Intended for the army by his father, Johann – the founder of the waltz dynasty – Josef Strauss instead turned first to engineering and then, in a glittering career from 1856 until his premature death in 1870, to full-time composition and conducting. Josef was especially enamored of the music of Offenbach whose operettas and operas traveled successfully from the Parisian stage to Vienna. It was Josef’s custom to take the most attractive and suitable motifs from Offenbach’s stage works and fashion them into quadrilles, works performed to huge acclaim by his virtuoso orchestra.