As anachronistic as they are for the eighteenth-century setting of the opera, the waltz tunes from Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier (1911) have become one of the most enduring features of the opera. The composer originally objected to such arrangements of music from the work, but eventually conceded to popular taste. He arranged waltz sequences from the opera in 1934 and in 1944, thus authorizing his own versions of the music for concert performance.

Waltzes, as extended and isolated numbers do not exist in Der Rosenkavalier, but they do figure prominently in the music of various scenes. In Der Rosenkavalier these waltz tunes occur more prominently in the second and third acts of the opera and have some associations with the character of Baron Ochs. Some of the more stylized waltz motifs occur near the end of the second act, when Ochs' extended monologue reveals his bourgeois character in all of its comic splendor.

Other waltz tunes emerge in the opening of the third act, which is set in a Viennese country inn. These a bit more jarring and angular, pointing up the raucous prank played on Ochs before the assignation with "Mariandel." Mariandel is in reality, Octavian, the knight of the rose; since Octavian is a trouser role, the deception affects a gender transformation worthy of Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It (a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman!).

The sequences excerpted from the opera are continuous, with one tune leading to another. The order of the pieces differs from their placement in the opera, with musical sense taking priority in the latter arrangement. By its nature, the music is infectiously jubilant and puts aside the more melancholy and poignant elements of the original score. Strauss' colorful orchestrations seem even clearer in this extracted format. In addition to the arrangements that Strauss himself made, various other excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier exist; some of these have been made by conductors like Antal Dorati, Rudolf Kempe, and others.

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