City in Austria. It is the second-largest city in the country and capital of the province of Styria. The earliest reference to musical life in Graz occurs in the Reimchronik of Ottokar aus der Gaal, who in 1295 listed Graz musicians and their instruments. Polyphonic music in a style originating in the Netherlands was introduced through Frederick III’s Hofkapelle in Graz, whose first Kapellmeister was J. Brassart. The earliest documented organist is the chaplain Wernhardin, named in the records of the city parish church for 1497. In the 16th century a large section of the population became Lutheran, and Graz enjoyed a ‘golden age’ of Protestant music fostered by the evangelical collegiate church (1570–99). The most distinguished musicians of this period were Annibale Perini, Erasmus Widmann and Paul Homberger. The first printed music from Graz is the hymnbook of Andreas Gigler (1569), a minister of St Ägidius who inclined to Protestantism. It contains 20 four-voice arrangements of cantus firmi by the court Kapellmeister Johannes de Cleve, ten of which are well-known Protestant hymns. The Protestant era was also the heyday of the Styrian Landschaftstrompeter and of the Heerpauker. The Counter-Reformation curtailed these developments; Archduke Karl II (1564–90) remained strictly Catholic. The members of his Hofkapelle were chiefly Dutch and Italian, the most distinguished including Cleve, Lambert de Sayve, Annibale Padovano, Simone Gatto, Francesco Rovigo and Zacconi. Thus the artistic links that had existed with Vienna and Munich (Lassus) were replaced by ties to Venice, strengthened under the rule of the Archduke Ferdinand (1595–1619), later Emperor Ferdinand II at Vienna, who sent Graz musicians such as Poss and Tadei to Venice. The new Italian influence was largely responsible for the introduction of early monody in Austria. Between 1588 and 1614 the Graz printer Georg Widmanstetter brought out nine music publications, some of them wide-ranging; afterwards he brought out reprints of Nikolaus Beuttner’s Catholisch Gesang-Buch (1602, 7/1718) and many other hymnbooks, and leaflets with music. In 1619, when the court moved with its Kapelle to Vienna, Graz lost its importance as a royal residence.
During the 17th and 18th centuries some nobles maintained their own court musicians, for example the princes of Eggenberg employed J.J. Prinner and P.R. Pignatta as court Kapellmeister. From 1572, when they came to Graz, the Jesuits encouraged the musical activity of the Hofkapelle; they were assisted by Ferdinand’s protégés, including Fux, who were placed under them. In the mid-17th century they joined with the city choirmaster, succentor, city organist and the Stadttürmern (city watchmen, first mentioned in 1478) to form the Grazer Stadtmusikantenkompagnie, which Ferdinand III invested with a privilege in 1650 to ensure the furtherance of church music through the parish church. Its pre-eminent members were Franz Weichlein, J.M. Steinbacher and J.A. Sgatberoni; pre-Classical piano concertos by the last two survive and are still performed. Music was provided for the lower social classes by companies of fiddlers which consisted of two violins, a double bass and a dulcimer. During the 17th and 18th centuries there were several instrument makers in Graz, especially of organs, violins and lutes.
From the 17th century the secular theatre began to develop alongside religious drama, with productions mounted by English, German and Italian troupes. Opera first flourished in Graz through the activity of Pietro Mingotti, who built the city’s first opera house in 1736 and whose Italian company performed works by Galuppi, J.A. Hasse, Pergolesi, Vinci and others for the next decade. From 1776 the theatre was run by the city, which established the Landschaftstheater there, staging opera, Singspiele, drama and ballet. Mozart’s works began to predominate after 1785, when the last Italian opera company left Graz and R. Waizhofer and then J. Bellomo (1791) directed the theatre. Under the direction of F.E. Hysel, Beethoven’s Fidelio had its first local performance (1816). Public musical events of this period were sponsored by noble and bourgeois dilettantes; the Steiermärkischer Musikverein, founded in 1815, provided further support and maintained a music school. Anselm Hüttenbrenner, director of the Musikverein (1825–9, 1831–9), was the best-known Styrian composer of the first half of the 19th century and a great admirer of Beethoven and Schubert. Concerts were given by the Graz Männer-Gesangverein (founded 1846; Konradin Kreutzer was one of its first conductors) and by visiting virtuosos such as the younger W.A. Mozart, Bernhard Molique, Clara Wieck, Mendelssohn and Liszt.
Important teachers in Graz during the second half of the 19th century were W.A. Rémy (who taught Busoni, Weingartner and Rezniček), E.W. Degner (Mojsisovics, Joseph Marx and Holenia) and Martin Plüddemann, who founded the Grazer Balladenschule with other composers. Herzogenberg, Adolf Jensen, Noren and Guido Peters were also active in Graz. Hugo Wolf went to school in Graz from 1870 and studied the piano there with J. Buwa (1828–1907) and others.
Following the success of the first Austrian performance of Tannhäuser in Graz in 1854, Wagner remained popular in the town. The Graz Opera became a springboard for musicians to Austria’s and Germany’s most important theatres. Some of its conductors, such as Karl Muck, Ernst von Schuch, Franz Schalk, Clemens Krauss and Karl Böhm, and many of its singers, such as J.A. Tichatscheck and Amalie Materna, later achieved international fame. The Thalia-Theater (from 1870 the Stadttheater) opened in 1864; it concentrated at first on operetta, burlesque and farce, but in the 20th century it became the town’s main opera house. On 16 May 1906, at the instigation of the Graz music critic Ernst Decsey, Richard Strauss conducted the first Austrian performance of Salome in the rebuilt Stadttheater (opened in 1899). In the 20th century the theatre gave premières of works by Austrian composers including Wilhelm Kienzl, as well as Austrian premières of operas by Britten, Kodály, Dallapiccola, Henze and others. The Musikverein expanded through the efforts of Hermann von Schmeidel during the years before World War II. In 1939 the music school (since 1927 called the Konservatorium) withdrew from the society, which remained a publicly subsidized concert organization. In 1963, when Erich Marckhl was its director, the conservatory became an academy, and in 1970 it became the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, including five musicological institutes: ethnomusicology, performance practice, jazz research, aesthetics of music and electronic music. It became part of the university in 1998. In 1947, on the 65th birthday of Joseph Marx (born in Graz), the Styrian provincial government founded an annual Joseph Marx Prize. Music organizations in Graz include the Jugendkonzerte, started in 1949 by E.L. Uray, and the Steierische Tonkünstlerbund. The city is the home of the Johann Joseph Fux Gesellschaft (founded 1955), which publishes Fux’s collected works, of the International Society for Jazz Research (founded 1969) and of the International Society for the Promotion and Investigation of Band Music (founded 1974). The Musikprotokoll, organized by Österreichischer Rundfunk (ÖRF), promotes the interests of the avant garde, and organizes events each year within the framework of the Styrian Autumn Festival (Steirischer Herbst, founded 1968). Since 1985 the summer festival Styriarte Graz under the musical direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt has become internationally known. At the university musicology has been taught by Friedrich von Hausegger, E.F. Schmid, Herbert Birtner, Werner Danckert, Hellmut Federhofer, Othmar Wessely, Walter Wünsch, Rudolf Flotzinger, Wolfgang Suppan and Josef-Horst Lederer.
GroveO (R. Flotzinger); MGG2 (I. Schubert)
F. Bischoff: Chronik des Steiermärkischen Musikvereins (Graz, 1890)
A. Seydler: ‘Geschichte des Domchores in Graz’, KJb, xv (1900), 26–65
R. Baravalle: Hundert Jahre Grazer Schauspielhaus (Graz, 1925)
R. Baravalle: 50 Jahre Grazer Opernhaus, 1899–1949 (Graz, 1949)
H. Federhofer: ‘Die Grazer Stadtmusikanten und die privilegierte Stadtmusikantenkompagnie’, Zeitschrift des historischen Vereines für Steiermark, xlii (1951), 91–118
H. Federhofer: ‘Die Musikpflege an der evangelischen Stiftskirche in Graz (1570–1599)’, Jb der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte des Protestantismus in Österreich, lxviii–lxix (1953), 68–97
H. Federhofer: ‘Graz Court Musicians and their Contributions to the “Parnassus musicus Ferdinandaeus” (1615)’, MD, ix (1955), 167–244
W. Suppan: Steirisches Musiklexikon (Graz, 1962–6)
W. Suppan: ‘Grundriss einer Geschichte des Tanzes in der Steiermark’, Zeitschrift des historischen Vereines für Steiermark, liv (Graz, 1963), 91–116
H. Kaufmann: Eine bürgerliche Musikgesellschaft: 150 Jahre Musikverein für Steiermark (Graz, 1965)
R. List: Oper und Operette in Graz (Graz, 1966)
H. Federhofer: Musikpflege und Musiker am Grazer Habsburgerhof der Erzherzöge Karl und Ferdinand von Innerösterreich (1564–1619) (Mainz, 1967)
H. Federhofer: ‘Musikleben in der Steiermark’, Die Steiermark: Land, Leute, Leistung, ed. G.D. Hasiba and B. Sutter (Graz, 1956, 2/1971), 614–60
H. Federhofer and G.M. Schmeiser: ‘Grazer Stadtmusikanten als Komponisten vorklassischer Klavierkonzerte’, Historisches Jb der Stadt Graz, iv (1971), 73–90
W. Suppan: ‘Folklore im Grazer Konzertleben des Biedermeier’, Historisches Jb der Stadt Graz, v–vi (1973), 119–46
H. Federhofer: ‘Blasinstrumente und Bläsermusik in der Steiermark bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Fachtagung zur Erforschung der Blasmusik I: Graz 1974, 61–101
O. Kolleritsch and F. Körner, eds.: Festschrift zum zehnjährigen Bestand der Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz (Vienna, 1974)
W. Suppan: ‘Schulebildende Persönlichkeiten in der Grazer Musikgeschichte des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts’, 850 Jahre Graz, ed. W. Steinböck (Graz, 1978), 207–22
R. Flotzinger, ed.: Musik in der Steiermark (Graz, 1980) [exhibition catalogue]
E. Brixel and W. Suppan: Das grosse steirische Blasmusikbuch (Vienna, 1981)
O. Hafner: Wissenswertes über Graz von A-Z: kleines Graz-Lexikon (Graz, 1984)
H. Valentinitsch and F. Bouvier, eds.: ‘Theater in Graz’, Historisches Jb der Stadt Graz, xv (1984) [whole issue]
G. Stradner: Musikinstrumente in Grazer Sammlungen (Vienna, 1986)
F.W. Riedel: ‘Die Musik bei der Erbhuldigungsreise Kaiser Karls nach Innerösterreich 1728’, Florilegium Musicologicum: Hellmut Federhofer zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. C.-H. Mahling (Tutzing, 1988), 275–86
I. Schubert: ‘Archivalische Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte der Barmherzigen Brüder in Graz, von der Gründung des Konvents bis 1900’, SMw, xxxix (1988), 63–129
E. Brixel: ‘Lanner in Graz: ein Beitrag zum urbanen Gesellschaftsleben und zur bürgerlichen Musikkultur im biedermeierlichen Graz’, Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Wolfgang Suppan, ed. B. Habla (Tutzing, 1993), 35–50
T. Graff: Bibliographia Widmanstadiana 1586–1805 (Graz, 1993)
E. Kolleritsch: Jazz in Graz (Graz, 1995)
HELLMUT FEDERHOFER, WOLFGANG SUPPAN