(Ger. Wien).
Capital city of Austria. Originally a Celtic settlement, it later became a Roman military town and finally the capital of the Duchy of Austria in the 12th century. It came under Habsburg rule in 1278 and expanded greatly as the capital of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was dissolved after World War I; since that time the city has been the capital of the Federal Republic of Austria.
2. The rise of the imperial Hofmusikkapelle.
THEOPHIL ANTONICEK/R (1–3), DEREK BEALES (4), LEON BOTSTEIN (5), RUDOLF KLEIN/H. GOERTZ (6)
Long stretches of Vienna's history, particularly that of its music, are shrouded in obscurity; only for the modern period is the picture reasonably complete. Since Josef Mantuani (1904), the literature has been based largely upon analogies and assumptions, a failing due as much to the state of the historical data as to the loss of source materials and lack of systematic research, which is in turn the consequence of an overemphasis on the apparent highpoints of musical development.
Prehistoric relics have been found only in Vienna's more outlying areas, and even Roman traces are negligible. From the city itself Mantuani mentioned only one piece, representing a female figure playing a wind instrument (probably a flute or an aulos), and even that was probably imported. Certainly they offer no evidence of an indigenous musical culture and, together with remarks made in Eugippius's Vita S Severini (discussing Christian psalmody of the 5th century), testify to no more than the fact that there, as elsewhere, music was performed. Music emerges later than other disciplines from the uncertainty surrounding Vienna's fate during the post-Roman period. Source material remains scarce and unreliable in view of its late date and the existence of forgeries (as with the alleged 13th-century minstrels Wolfker and Eberhard). It may be assumed that liturgical music was performed in churches (the oldest of which are St Ruprecht, the Peterskirche and St Stephan) and in monasteries (the Benedictine Schottenstift, c1155), although no investigations relating directly to Vienna have yet been undertaken and important sources (including the Schottenstift's books, which were removed in 1418 when the Hibernian monks left) have been lost. The Austrian monasteries, some founded and some reorganized by the Babenberg court, were centres of plainsong, and of particular importance for Vienna was the Augustinian Klosterneuburg, the court residence until 1156. There is evidence of sacred song in the vernacular at Klosterneuburg (Christ ist erstanden, in 12th-century neumatic notation) and it may be assumed that the same practice existed in Vienna.
The first important period in Viennese music history that is reliably documented was under the last four Babenberg dukes (1177–1246). Their court in Vienna became a centre of Minnesang, with the presence there, for shorter or longer stays, of such prominent minstrels as Reinmar von Hagenau, Walther von der Vogelweide, Neidhart von Reuental and Ulrich von Liechtenstein. Their contemporaries and successors included Reinmar von Zweter, Ulrich von Sachsendorf, Tannhäuser and Hugo von Montfort (d 1423), who was a later exponent of Minnesang at the court of Leopold IV of Habsburg; and many others must have had connections with Vienna, stayed there or visited the court. Of particular importance were the wars between Rudolf of Habsburg (d 1291) and Ottokar of Bohemia, when the retinues of both rulers contained minstrels whose songs refer to the events and places involved. Of all the minstrels active under the Babenberg dukes, Neidhart is the only one to have written songs whose music has survived to any extent. Some of his melodies are contained in a manuscript dated 1457, formerly in the possession of Jörg Schrat, parish priest of the Peterskirche. This and other manuscripts attest to the continuity of the tradition.
Neidhart, Reinmar von Hagenau, Wernher der Gartenaere, Tannhäuser, Jans Enenkel and others also referred to the round-dance, which clearly involved both music and words and in which apparently even the duke's family took part. The music was played by minstrels and, according to Jans Enenkel, there was a minstrel at the Babenberg court as early as 1052. In the city laws of 1221 and 1244, minstrels were declared to have no legal rights, but that reference is chiefly to itinerant musicians; minstrels resident in a parish were expressly exempted. Their position secure, they were able to develop within the framework of municipal law; and in the Nicolai-Bruderschaft, founded by 1288 and based in the Michaelerkirche, they had their own organization, which lasted until Joseph II's general disbanding of all such brotherhoods in 1782. The post of Spielgraf also appears to date from the 13th century. In 1354 the post of Oberster Spielgraf was created. The Spielgrafen in Vienna and Lower Austria were subject to him and the Nicolai-Bruderschaft enjoyed his protection. The hereditary posts of both Oberster Spielgraf and Oberster Erbkämmerer (supreme hereditary treasurer) were held by the Eberstorff family until 1556 (the first incumbent was Peter von Eberstorff), by the Eytzingers from 1561 to 1619 and by the Breuners from 1620 until 1782.
The art of the minstrels, unlike that of their courtly contemporaries, seems to have survived the political and military upheavals between the death of the last Babenberg duke in 1246 and the Battle of Marchfeld in 1278, which resulted in the Habsburgs seizing possession of the country. Various references to ‘reciting, singing, playing string instruments’ and other such topics survive from the intervening years of Ottokar's rule, and the use of certain instruments and the names of the players are recorded from the end of the 13th century. Sacred music continued during that period, and records survive of hymns in the vernacular (In gotes namen varen wir), including a reference of 1260 to hymns sung by the flagellants (Ir slacht euch sere). There is no evidence of sacred drama until the 14th century. Easter plays are mentioned by Neidhart and were known in Klosterneuburg as early as the 13th century; they must have been performed in Vienna even earlier. One conservative 14th-century form of Easter celebration survives from the Augustinian convent of St Jakob. The Vienna Easter play of 1472 from the Augustinian monastery of St Rochus und St Sebastian is in a type of German whose dialect suggests a Silesian original. The earliest known performance was given in the duke's castle in 1432 by members of the university. Rudolf IV (d 1365) founded a Gottesleichnamsbruderschaft (‘Brotherhood of Corpus Christi’) for the performance of religious plays.
Education in schools was also in the hands of the clergy. Schools were attached to St Stephan, to the Schottenstift (where singing by the schoolboys was mentioned as an established custom in 1310), to the Michaelerkirche and to the Bürgerspital. The school of St Stephan, first mentioned in 1237, was no doubt in existence in the 12th century. In 1296 it passed out of the court's patronage into that of the townspeople, and in 1446 a set of regulations was established which provided for a Kantor and Subkantor. Polyphony (cantus figurativus) was first mentioned in a Bestelung und ordnung der Cantorey of 1460. There was a choirmaster named Gottfrid in 1287, followed in 1349 by Jacob and in 1360 by Ulrich. From 1365 there were two Kantors, Jacob (probably the one already mentioned) and Johannes (also attested in 1387). In 1356 the Kantor Thomas von Senging was connected with the Rathauskapelle.
The University of Vienna, founded in 1365, had close links with the St Stephan school; they shared the same teaching staff. In accordance with the medieval curriculum, music was one of the obligatory subjects of the Quadrivium. A supplement to the faculty of arts regulations referred in 1389 to Boethius and a Musica speculativa, probably the work of Johannes de Muris, as standard texts. There is documentary evidence that members of the university community officiated at services in St Stephan; individual teachers in the 14th and 15th centuries include Nikolaus von Neustadt in 1393, Georg von Hob in 1397, Johann Geuss von Teining in 1421 and Paul Troppauer in 1431, and writings on music by some of the other university teachers (Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühel and Thomas Ebendorfer) are extant.
Evidence of polyphonic music in Vienna, as indeed throughout Austria, is relatively late. The 1460 reference cited above does not indicate its beginnings, and an argument against so late an introduction is the importance of French cultural influences, which were felt as early as the Babenberg period (in Minnesang, in Otto von Freising and the Cistercians, for example; Fichtenau has produced evidence of a French schoolmaster in Vienna in the 12th century). French influence continued throughout the ensuing period, as is clear from the dominant role played by university professors from Paris summoned to Vienna between 1383 and 1385 to reorganize the university. There was an organ at St Stephan by 1334, and between 1370 and 1397 an organist by the name of Peter. A new organ was built between 1391 and 1412 by Jörg Beheim (perhaps identical with ‘Giorgio del fu Giovanni da Vienna’, who lived in Tolmezzo, 1436–43; Beheim is attested in Viennese records until 1438). In 1507 Burkhard Tischlinger built another organ.
Not only the Church and the city but also the court employed musicians, although little is known about their activities. Between 1287 and 1291 there were court minstrels in the service of Duke Albrecht I and in 1291 a fife player, Gemperlein, was named. Albrecht's successor, Friedrich I, Duke of Austria (1308–30), had minstrels in his service. On one occasion they performed at the court of Jaime II of Aragon; the accounts show their names as Frefre, Feoli, Lorenço and Ibarri. A larger number of minstrels served the dukes Albrecht III and Leopold III, who reigned jointly from 1365. These minstrels travelled extensively, visiting France, Spain, Switzerland, Brabant and Burgundy. The most famous of them was one whose name occurs in a variety of forms, including Ewerl (in Vienna 1376–89) and Everli (in Spain); several princes were among his patrons. Most of the other musicians played wind instruments or drums, but there was also a singer-lutenist by the name of Hans and an artifex organorum called Nicolaus. Austrian musicians continued to visit foreign countries during the 15th century. Lutenists travelled to Spain and France, Viennese singers and instrumentalists to various towns in what is now southern Germany and Switzerland, to Hamburg and Mechelen and even to Richard III’s court in England.
No Kantorei, however, is known to have existed until the time of Albrecht II (d 1439). His court, possibly not in Vienna, included Erasmus Adam, Johannes Brassart, Martin Galer (or Martingale), Johannes de Sarto and Johannes Touront (the names, which appear in a motet written for Albrecht's funeral, are not all certain). Albrecht took them over from his father-in-law, Emperor Sigismund, though apparently not until after Albrecht's election as the German king the year before his death (1439). Nonetheless, musical performances on a large scale must have been possible in Vienna even before then, as seems to be indicated by a rather cryptic note (referred to by the writer J. Angerer) stating that to celebrate the end of schism following the election of Pope Martin V in 1417 in Vienna the Te Deum ‘in una ecclesia simul in octo locis cantabatur … humanis vocibus iuncto omni genere musicalium instrumentarum’. It seems reasonable to assume that the court played a part in these celebrations.
Albrecht's successor, Friedrich III (1439–93), retained the Kantorei and may even have had a French and German one, as did his son Maximilian. Friedrich's cantor principalis was Brassart, who died soon after taking up the position. Other members of the institution were the organist Gregor Valentinus, Nicolas Mayoul, Arnold Heron, Arnold Pikart, Hans Bubay, Albrecht Morhans-Artus and possibly also Arnolt Schlick. Friedrich's court also included Erasmus Lapicida, who was probably chaplain. The court is unlikely to have spent much time in Vienna, since Friedrich chiefly resided in Graz, Wiener Neustadt and Linz. But it was in Vienna, in 1462, that he was besieged by his brother Albrecht VI (who in 1449 was in Freiburg im Üchtland with 11 musicians in his retinue), an event remembered today for having produced the Buch von den Wienern; its subject is the Angstweise (‘fear-mode’) and it is the work of Michel Beheim, one of Friedrich's beleaguered followers.
Maximilian I (1493–1519) kept on a number of the musicians who had served his father and maintained a Kantorei in Upper Germany and in Burgundy. The latter, which had been under Mayoul's direction since 1486, passed to Philip the Fair in 1494, while the former was transferred to Vienna on Maximilian's orders in November 1496, apparently having previously been based in Augsburg. It was then under the direction of Hans Kerner and included Heinrich Isaac. Maximilian gave instructions for this Kapelle to be reorganized in 1498, by which date it was under the direction of Georg Slatkonia. Nevertheless, although the Kapelle was then based in Vienna, its members were far from spending all their time there. Isaac, court composer from 1496, had the emperor's authority to live in Florence from 1513; he was succeeded by Senfl no later than 1517. It is unlikely that Paul Hofhaimer spent more than a few years in Vienna after the removal of the Kapelle there.
Vienna under Maximilian witnessed a number of celebrations of musical significance. In 1504 C.P. Celtis's drama Rhapsodia laudes et victoria Maximiliani de Boemannis was performed with music. Maximilian had summoned Celtis to Vienna from Ingolstadt in 1497, so that humanism actually came to Vienna under imperial protection. For music this meant the introduction of humanist drama and odes, the latter no doubt being adopted by Celtis into the syllabus of Vienna University and actively encouraged there – Senfl, Hofhaimer and his pupil Wolfgang Grefinger, the organist at the Stephansdom and a member of the university, all contributed compositions. Latin drama, meanwhile, was encouraged by an impressive performance of Voluptatis cum virtute disceptatio, written by Benedictus Chelidonius, the abbot of the Schottenkloster, to celebrate the double wedding of Maximilian's grandsons in Vienna in 1515. Hofhaimer was knighted during the festival. He and the other imperial musicians had frequent opportunity to distinguish themselves in church, in the dance room and in processions and tournaments.
One art which was cultivated both by the court and the bourgeoisie was that of lute playing, a fact attested as early as the 14th century by the names of such lutenists as Wolfhart (1368–91), Henricus (1376–1460), Hans (1390–1414) and of the lute makers Konrad (1375–1418) and Nikolaus (1397). Hans Judenkünig lived in Vienna during the time of Maximilian, and Albrecht Morhans-Artus actually served the emperor. Hans Neusidler and Bálint Bakfark, who was lutenist to Maximilian II from 1566 until at least 1569, later spent some time in Vienna.
Printed music first began to appear in Vienna during Maximilian I's reign. Johannes Winterburger printed a Missa de Requiem in 1499, followed by other liturgical works, including the first printed music textbook in Austria, Simon de Quercu's Opusculum musices (1509). Winterburger's contemporaries and successors include Hieronim Wietor and Johann Singrenius, who was responsible for the publication of the work by Chelidonius mentioned above and for the first printed German lute tablatures by Judenkünig (1523). The earliest example of printing from type in Vienna is the only surviving musical publication from the printing works of Raphael Hofhalter, a canon by Jacobus Vaet, dedicated to Maximilian II.
The Hofkapelle was disbanded on Maximilian I's death, as always happened in such cases. At first Ferdinand I had to struggle to consolidate his political power, and it was not until the beginning of 1527 that he issued a decree re-establishing a Hofkapelle. Its direction was entrusted to the 82-year-old Heinrich Finck, then living in the Schottenkloster, but he died six months later. His successor, Arnold von Bruck, who held the position from 1527 to 1545, was the first of a number of Netherlands musicians to hold the post of Hofkapellmeister; Bruck's successor Pieter Maessens (1546–62) supervised the largest number of Netherlanders. Other Netherlands musicians connected with the Kapelle were Stephan Mahu, Jacques Buus, Johannes de Cleve and Jean Guyot, who was also Hofkapellmeister for a short time.
Not only the court but also the Schottenstift had eminent musicians. Finck and Lapicida committed themselves to the care of the monks, intending to spend their declining years there. The monastery's organist was Johann Rasch, better known for his chronicle. The activities of the schoolmaster Wolfgang Schmeltzl are important for a number of reasons: his much quoted Lobspruch der Stadt Wien (1547) indicates Vienna's importance as a centre of music, and his quodlibet collection, Guter seltzamer und kunstlicher teutscher Gesäng (1544), includes a wealth of songs; further, it was Schmeltzl who introduced vernacular Schuldrama to Vienna.
When Ferdinand died in 1564, his estates, including the court musicians, were divided among his sons at the various Habsburg residences. It has generally been assumed that the Hofkapelle's centre of activity moved to Prague under Ferdinand's three successors; this may have been true for Rudolf II, but not in the case of Maximilian II (see Pass, 1972) or, probably, Matthias. Countless documents were drawn up in Vienna during Maximilian's reign, no doubt because the sacred chapter resided in Vienna (the Hofkapelle was primarily a religious body). It may therefore be assumed that the imperial Kapelle performed at least intermittently in Vienna under its Kapellmeister, Vaet, Monte, De Sayve and Christoph Strauss. Matthias, who, while he was still archduke, had been served by Alard du Gaucquier and De Sayve as Kapellmeister and by Christoph Strauss as organist, lived for a time in Vienna before his accession.
Compared with the Kapelle of archdukes Karl II and Ferdinand II of Styria, that of the imperial court was throughout the 16th century the embodiment of musical conservatism. Nevertheless, instrumental music had often and increasingly been entrusted to Italians from the time of Ferdinand I onwards, and the appointment of P.P. Melli as court lutenist to Matthias indicates that the court did not shun the latest musical trends. With Ferdinand II's accession in 1619, Baroque musical ideals came to be accepted in Vienna and the city became established as a European musical centre. Ferdinand made Vienna his capital and place of residence, although neither he nor his immediate successors liked to reside there permanently; other towns such as Prague, Regensburg (site of the Imperial Diet) and Graz shared Vienna's reputation as one of the places where the imperial Kapelle gave outstanding performances.
It was also under Ferdinand II, however, that prominent Italian musicians began what was to be a 200-year association with Vienna. Giovanni Priuli and Giovanni Valentini, the two Hofkapellmeister, were both pupils of Giovanni Gabrieli, as was the organist Alessandro Tadei. Musicians were engaged not only in Venice but also in other centres of Italian music, including Florence, Mantua and Rome, sometimes by envoys specially dispatched or authorized for the purpose. Ferdinand's marriage in 1622 to Eleonora Gonzaga was of crucial importance in Vienna's musical life and in its culture generally, for it led to the imperial court's establishing links with Monteverdi and to consequences far exceeding those still discernible today. The ‘Fedeli’, who had given the first performance of Monteverdi's Arianna in 1608 in Mantua, were attached to the imperial court from 1626 to 1628 and must have performed the first opera Arcas there in 1627, at a time when the court was in Prague. Il ballo delle ingrate may also have been associated with the Fedeli, if the supposed date of its performance in Vienna, 1628, is correct. The Hofkapelle engaged its first female singer in 1631 – Margherita Basile, who was to have taken the title role in Monteverdi's La finta pazza Licori (1627). Monteverdi's Selva morale (1640) was dedicated to the Empress Eleonora and his eighth book of madrigals to Ferdinand III. This contained Il ballo delle ingrate and a ballo to celebrate his coronation in 1637. It is not clear what purpose was served by the Vienna score of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria; there is no evidence that a performance of the work ever took place there.
The influence of Valentini was considerable (and not confined to music): he was music teacher to Ferdinand II's children and continued as Kapellmeister under Ferdinand III, with the latter's own Kapellmeister, Pietro Verdina, having to make do with the post of Valentini's assistant. Ferdinand III (1637–57) was the first of the composing Habsburg emperors, who later included Leopold I (1657–1705), Joseph I (1705–11) and (though no work by him has survived) Charles VI (1711–40). All four had a sound musical training and were able to take part in and even direct performances. Not only the emperors but also the empresses had their own Kapelle. The most important patron apart from the emperors was Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who had in his service numerous musicians, including Orazio Benevoli and Antimo Liberati, as well as the librettist Orazio Persiani. Giacinto Cornacchioli was twice sent to Italy in order to engage musicians for his court. The archduke employed Valentini to teach the young Kerll, and Leopold Wilhelm was the dedicatee of Kircher's Musurgia universalis.
Even after Valentini's death, leading Italian musicians continued to be engaged as Kapellmeister and for other court posts. When Giovanni Rovetta declined the appointment, Antonio Bertali, who had been working in Vienna since about 1623, was appointed Valentini's successor. His opera L'inganno d'amore was performed by the Vienna Hofkapelle at the Regensburg Imperial Diet of 1653 and caused something of a sensation. His vice-Kapellmeister and successor was G.F. Sances, who had acquired a knowledge of opera during his years of service with the Obizzi family.
Many of the documents relating to the output and repertory of the Hofkapelle are lost, particularly those regarding operas and other dramatic genres performed during the first half of the century. It must, however, have been only slowly and with a good deal of interruption that such works could become a permanent feature of the repertory; and every performance was in any case dependent on some external event, usually family celebrations (such as birthdays) or official ceremonies. The earliest genuine operas given in Vienna were probably La Maddalena (1629), with a text by Giovanni Andreini and music either by Valentini or Ludovico Bartolaia, and La caccia felice (1631), to a libretto by Cesare Gonzaga, Prince of Guastalla. The revivals of Cavalli's Egisto (1642–3) and Giasone (1650) were outstanding among opera revivals of this period. The first oratorio performed in Vienna was probably the anonymous Il secondo Abramo disformato nel riformare il primo, in 1649. Complete records begin with the reign of Leopold I and show that from that time all the dramatic genres were regularly performed. The emperor's love of music was known throughout Europe, and his musical tastes are shown not only by his own compositions but also by his library, which has survived. His reign divides, musically speaking, into two parts; the first was characterized by a large number of composers and a varied repertory, the second by the dominant though not exclusive influence of Antonio Draghi. Draghi, who at the beginning of his career in Vienna had also been a librettist (even supplying the emperor with librettos), was astonishingly prolific in all forms of vocal music. By 1674 he could list his occupations not only as conductor to the dowager empress but also as director of theatre music. His many-sided talents must have been recognized long before his appointment as Hofkapellmeister in 1682.
During the early years of his reign, Leopold I maintained close links with his uncle Leopold Wilhelm and his stepmother Eleonora Gonzaga II. The latter was responsible for a second great wave of Italian culture at the imperial court, particularly in the academies which owed their foundation to Eleonora's influence and in which music was widely taught. Eleonora maintained her own Kapelle, its members including Draghi, Pietro Ziani, Giovanni Pederzuoli and Giuseppe Tricarico. Numerous performances were given in the emperor's honour at what the librettos refer to as Eleonora's ‘comando’. Oratorio and sepolcro were encouraged both in her Kapelle and at the imperial court. The Italian sepolcro tradition dates back in Vienna to Valentini's Santi risorti of 1643 and soon became a feature of Vienna's musical life (see Gruber, 1972); only in the late Baroque period did it become increasingly confused with the oratorio. Oratorio and sepolcro were reserved for Lent, and it was opera and its related genres (such as the serenata, which stands in the same subordinate relationship to opera as the sepolcro does to the oratorio) which were predominant in the court’s musical culture. Composers such as Bertali, Ziani, Sances, Antonio Cesti and others established a repertory comparable to that of Venice. Although Cesti held an appointment only briefly in Vienna, he composed a number of works there, including Il pomo d'oro, written for the marriage of Leopold I – the most famous opera in 17th-century Vienna (fig.4). Gualdo Priorato, Aurelio Amalteo, Nicolò Minato, Donata Cupeda and Domenico Federici were the leading librettists. Jesuit drama involved a separate repertory, which developed increasingly in the direction of opera and whose music was written by Kerll (Pia et fortis mulier, 1677), F.T. Richter, J.M. Zächer and J.B. Staudt, among others, until well into the 18th century. Both opera and oratorio were occasionally written to German texts (including those of Emperor Leopold). There was also vocal chamber music in the vernacular, popular ever since the Gesellschaftslied of Maximilian's day and represented in the 17th century by the collections of Nikolaus Zangius (Vienna, 1611) and of the Lutheran organist Andreas Rauch (1627). The monodic settings of vernacular texts which followed are the work of J.J. Prinner and of Andreas Knechtl (although it is not clear whether he was the poet, composer or editor of the Ehrliche Gemueths-Erquickung of 1677–86), together with J.H. Schmelzer and the Emperor Leopold. All these works, however, were far exceeded by the amount of vocal chamber music in Italian, to which Vienna's earliest contribution is Valentini's collection of 1621; and a vast number of other printed editions and manuscripts attests to the genre's popularity throughout the Baroque period.
It was Italian musicians who introduced instrumental music to Vienna as an independent genre. Again the way was shown by Valentini, who was followed by Bertali, G.B. Buonamente (probably more important to Austrian musical history than is generally realized), Verdina, Ziani and, finally, by such dedicatory works as Legrenzi’s Cetra op.10 (1673). Schmelzer, who drew on both the Italian tradition and that of German-speaking countries, was the leading composer of the school of instrumental music which was developing in Vienna and its surroundings. He wrote polyphonic ensemble music as well as solo sonatas and trio sonatas, and his collection of solo sonatas was the first to be printed outside Italy (1664). During the last year of his life (1679–80), Schmelzer held the post of Hofkapellmeister between Sances and Draghi, and succeeded Wolfgang Ebner as ballet composer at the court theatre. Dance was of considerable importance in court life generally, whether performed on its own or within the context of independently organized celebrations such as Wirtschaften and Bauernhochzeiten. Equestrian ballets were as popular as they were in Italy; the first to be given in Vienna was probably Jacomo Paradis's Il sole, e dodici segni del zodiaco, for Ferdinand III's wedding in 1631. The wedding festivities of 1666–7 were accompanied by spectacular performances of the equestrian ballets La contesa dell'aria e dell'acqua by Bertali and Schmelzer (for illustration, see Tourney) and La Germania esultante by Cesti. French influence in dance and in ballet was important despite political differences and the emperor's obvious aversion (see Nettl, 1929–32). But the chief influence was that of Italian ballet, represented by Santo Ventura from 1626 and then, until 1694, by his son Domenico. Ebner and Schmelzer were followed as court ballet composers by the latter's son Andreas Anton, and by Nicola Matteis (ii) and J.J. Hoffer, who held the post well into the 18th century.
The foundations were also being laid for a long tradition of keyboard music; the establishment of a Viennese school can be traced to 1637, when both Wolfgang Ebner, who had been employed as organist at the Stephansdom since 1634, and Froberger were appointed to the Hofkapelle. The tradition was continued by F.T. Richter, F.M. Techelmann, Georg Reutter (i) and Alessandro Poglietti, and by Kerll and Pachelbel, both of whom were for a short time organists at the Stephansdom; and in the 18th century the same tradition led to Fux, Gottlieb Muffat and Wagenseil and eventually to the Viennese Classical period. Church music throughout the Baroque period was characterized by the coexistence of the old and the new. Masses ‘in the style of Palestrina’ were chiefly performed during Lent, but others called upon the entire musical apparatus of the Baroque, later becoming operatic in style, especially in their treatment of vocal and instrumental solos. Even as late as the reign of Charles VI, however, one finds in Matteo Palotta the appointment of a composer who was very much at home in the style of Palestrina.
Draghi's commanding position under Leopold I did not prevent the engaging of other leading composers, including the Bononcini brothers, C.A. Badia, for whom the post of Hofkomponist was revived, and Marc'Antonio Ziani, who was later promoted to Hofkapellmeister and who at the time of his Vienna engagement was one of the leading composers of the Venetian school of opera. Draghi's immediate successor, Antonio Pancotti, seems not to have distinguished himself as a composer.
It was the reign of Charles VI that formed the close and culmination of the age of courtly magnificence. After the Turks had been driven from the gates of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburgs' dominions had expanded to include greater Hungary and parts of Italy and the South Netherlands. Their capital, Vienna, had been sumptuously rebuilt, and the Hofburg was extended under Charles VI by the addition of the grand imperial library. The Hofkapelle was now larger than ever before and one of its members, J.J. Fux, was to leave his mark upon the whole age. Fux took over the post of Hofkapellmeister from Ziani in 1715 and found himself in the company of two musicians whose standing was equal to his own, Antonio Caldara, the vice-Kapellmeister, and F.B. Conti, the court composer. Opera soon came to be dominated by these three, although the works of Attilio Ariosti, Pier Francesco Tosi and Giuseppe Porsile were also performed. The librettists of the period were Silvio Stampiglia, Pietro Pariati, P.A. Bernardoni, Zeno and Metastasio. Thus the Italians and the Italian language were dominant, despite the appointment of Fux. The introduction of intermezzos in court opera dates from 1713; they were chiefly the work of Conti and performed in his own operas. Later they were taken up by the bourgeois theatre at the Kärntnertor.
Fux and Caldara also continued the tradition of instrumental music. Lute playing (Conti played the theorbo) and virtuoso performances on various other instruments were popular, and that in turn influenced the solo writing in operas and other vocal forms. The Hofkapelle was made up not only of musicians engaged on a permanent basis but also of other leading musicians, who spent shorter or longer periods in its service and who included Emanuele d'Astorga and Giuseppe Torelli, and also Antonio Vivaldi, who died in Vienna in 1741 and may have visited the city on previous occasions.
A consistent feature of the Baroque period in Vienna was a certain conservatism, in later years represented particularly by Fux, who, largely as a result of his Gradus ad Parnassum, became the custodian of tradition (although that work was to remain influential for many years to come). The instrumental works of Mathias Monn and Christoph Wagenseil, with their embryonic sonata forms, constitute a partial exception.
By 1740 most of the great aristocratic palaces that still dominate the centre of Vienna had been built, the city's central churches had been totally or partially rebuilt in Baroque style and, outside the walls, Charles VI's votive Karlskirche completed. In the small area within the vast fortifications resided over 50,000 people, but already some 100,000 lived in the surrounding suburbs. Vienna was the largest German-speaking city, and growing fast: by 1806 the suburbs had almost doubled in population. The essential reason for this expansion is that since the mid-17th century Vienna had been the Residenzstadt of the Habsburg dynasty, whose territories had enormously grown in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and, in addition to Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, now included modern Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, most of Lombardy and Belgium. Maria Theresa ruled this immense complex, known as ‘the Austrian Monarchy’, from 1740 to 1780, followed by her sons Joseph II (1780–90) and Leopold II (1790–92) and by Leopold's son, Francis I (1792–1835, Austrian emperor from 1804). Except for the years 1740–45 the elected Holy Roman Emperor, the senior sovereign of Christendom whose shadowy authority extended over the whole of Germany, also resided in Vienna: from 1745 to 1765 the Holy Roman Emperor was Maria Theresa's husband, Francis I or Francis Stephen, formerly Duke of Lorraine, followed by Joseph II (1765–90), Leopold II (1790–92) and Francis, as Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (1792 until the abolition of the empire in 1806).
The emperor's court, in principle and to some extent in practice distinct from that of the head of the monarchy even when they were the same person, was a cynosure for German nobles and princelings, mainly but not entirely from Catholic areas, and for the higher Catholic clergy of southern Germany. The imperial administration and system of justice, notorious for its complexity and dilatoriness, employed many hundreds of officials in Vienna and required the attendance there of numerous petitioners and litigants. The monarchy's government, in contrast to that of the decaying empire, grew even more powerful and centralized throughout the period, with only a brief relaxation after Joseph II was forced on his deathbed to rescind much of his reforming legislation. It employed about 10,000 officials based in Vienna. In partnership with the court, it was these two bureaucracies, accustomed to conducting business mainly in German, and the thousands of resident or visiting nobles, cultivating the use of French, whose affluence and diverse origins made possible the rich and varied musical life of the city. Moreover, links with Italy remained close: the city contained a sizeable Italian community; and, as well as the Italian lands that formed part of the monarchy, Tuscany was ruled by Francis Stephen from 1737 to 1765 and by Leopold II from 1765 to 1790, and children of Maria Theresa married the rulers of Parma, Modena and Naples.
At her accession Maria Theresa faced a desperate international situation with virtually no financial resources, and she was forced to economize. But, after her position improved in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), the changes she made at court had at least as much to do with her and her husband's taste as with economy. She abandoned two of Charles VI's palaces: the Favorita in a suburb of Vienna and the monastery of Klosterneuburg, which he had begun to convert into a palace in 1730 but had come nowhere near completing. On the other hand, she refurbished the Hofburg and, on a truly lavish scale, Schönbrunn, 4 km out of the city, which she used as her main summer residence (fig.7).
Pious though she was, she did not fully share her father's love of elaborate religious ceremonies, though during the first half of her reign the court still formally attended grand services in various churches on 78 occasions each year. These visits commonly involved processions, notoriously frequent in Vienna, in which, as with the celebrations for dynastic landmarks like births and marriages of princes and princesses, all ranks could take pleasure and some part. Musical accompaniment (mainly wind and brass instruments) was normal. Maria Theresa, however, allowed the 100-strong imperial Hofkapelle to dwindle in numbers and standing. Even so, Fux's successors as Hofkapellmeister normally had charge of the court's theatre and concert music as well as of its church music. They were: L.A. Predieri (1741–67, but in retirement after 1751), Georg von Reutter (ii) (1751–72), F.L. Gassmann (1772–4), Giuseppe Bonno (1774–88) and Antonio Salieri (1788–1825, but effectively Hofkapellmeister from the late 1770s). These men were treated like civil servants and virtually guaranteed their positions for life at the top of the rigid musical hierarchy. Hence there was usually a period in their old age when the work was in fact done by a deputy, and hence too the long delay in finding any court employment for Gluck and Mozart, despite their acknowledged pre-eminence. The composition of new church music for the Hofkapelle remained important during Maria Theresa's reign, and the roughly 500 part-time musical employments as players and singers provided by the churches and religious brotherhoods of the city gave secure though usually inadequate incomes to nearly 300 musicians, which they could enhance by doubling up jobs, by teaching and by secular performance. The use of trumpets and drums in certain parts of the mass was forbidden by the archbishop's consistory in 1753, but these instruments and others continued to be widely used in church, and little if any attention was paid in Maria Theresa's reign to papal and other attempts to reduce the ‘theatrical’ character of much church music. Many musical performances associated with the liturgy were barely distinguishable from concerts and included instrumental sonatas and symphonies as well as elaborate choral settings.
Maria Theresa was herself a pupil of Wagenseil and a good and enthusiastic singer and dancer. Although she had the grandiose baroque Hoftheater (built by Galli-Bibiena and dating back to 1700), dismantled in 1747, she replaced it with the more intimate Rococo Burgtheater at the gates of the Hofburg, where operas of various kinds were more regularly performed than in the past (fig.9). She also built theatres at Schönbrunn and at the more distant summer palace of Laxenburg. During another time of financial difficulty, in the midst of the Seven Years War in 1759, she declared ‘Spectacles must continue; without them one cannot stay here in such a great Residence’. She did not, however, as her father had done and many rulers still did, bear the entire cost. Her nominees ran the theatres, but some of the seats were put on sale – a highly significant change, that first made it possible for ‘public taste’ to affect what was performed there. Previously, lucky representatives of the lower orders had sometimes been allowed into royal apartments to hear Tafelmusik, for example, but it was quite a different matter to allow anyone who was rich enough the chance to buy a ticket for the royal opera house. Metastasio remained the court poet until his death in 1782 and continued to produce new or revised librettos for opere serie, which were mounted on special occasions, though in less extravagant fashion than under her father. At the inauguration of the Burgtheater the opera performed was La Semiramide riconosciuta, Metastasio's libretto with music by Gluck, who was making a first visiting appearance in Vienna. Francis Stephen encouraged a more general aristocratic demand for French opera and ballet, and in the years 1752–65, 1767–72 and 1775–6 the Burgtheater was the seat of a French theatre company (though not all the works they performed were in French or of French origin). The Kärntnertortheater, built by the municipality in 1709, was the home of ‘German comedies’, which routinely involved music. It was taken over by the court and rebuilt after it had been burnt down in 1761.
From 1752 to 1764 the court's theatre director or Spielgraf (or Musikgraf), under the nominal control of the great chamberlain Count Khevenhüller, was the Genoese Count Durazzo. He was a protégé of Count (later Prince) Kaunitz, from 1753 Maria Theresa’s chief minister. Durazzo was a dedicated promoter of French opera and of the work of Gluck, whom he frequently brought to Vienna and finally had made ‘court composer’ in 1760. Durazzo had many contacts with Italian opera reformers, and it was important that, in order to please Austria's new ally, France, Isabella or Elizabeth of Parma, granddaughter of Louis XV, was selected as the future Joseph II's bride. The court of Parma was opera-mad, and the composers it favoured, especially Traetta, were experimenting with a less artificial and grandiose genre than opera seria, emulating the French opéra-comique. When Joseph married Isabella in 1760 the two wedding operas were Metastasio's Alcide al bivio, with music by Hasse, and Gluck's Tetide. For the princess's birthday early in 1761 a work by Traetta, Armida, was produced. It was against this background, and with the castrato Gaetano Guadagni at his disposal, that Durazzo was able to mount the most significant musical event of Maria Theresa's reign, the première of Gluck's reform opera Orfeo ed Euridice in the Burgtheater on 5 October 1762. It has sometimes been suggested that the initiative and the welcome for this innovation came from below and that the court did not appreciate it, but in fact the opposite is true. Most unusually, several royal comments on the opera and its emotional impact have come down to us.
Vienna had a less well developed public concert life than London. But recent research, especially on the lists made for Durazzo by Philipp Gumpenhuber of court musical performances between 1758 and 1763, has revealed that during that period many concerts (well over 50 a year) took place on a more or less regular basis in the theatres. Many more are known to have been held in the palaces of the nobility, such as Prince Hildburghausen's Palais Rofrano (later Prince Auersperg's palace). They became ever more frequent in later decades, and an important landmark was the foundation in 1771 of the Musicians' Benevolent Society, the Tonküstler-Societät, which from 1772 mounted an annual concert series.
Durazzo was forced to resign in 1764 and Francis I died in 1765. The new emperor, Joseph II, also named co-regent of the monarchy, was placed by his mother in charge of court functions. He abolished the old frigid Spanish etiquette, took to wearing plain uniform and encouraging others to do so, drastically reduced the number of religious ceremonies in the court calendar and opened the royal hunting reserves of the Prater and the Augarten to the public. As for the theatres, he tried to solve their financial difficulties by leasing them to entrepreneurs. He was a competent performer on several instruments and a passionate, opinionated follower of music. He loathed opera seria and ballet and disliked employing a French opera company. But it was only after bitter struggles with Kaunitz and others that in 1776 he himself took over the running of the theatres and appointed a close friend and ally, Count Rosenberg, to be Musikgraf. Joseph declared the Burgtheater a Nationaltheater where only German works would be performed by a German company and, to create a repertory for it, he offered prizes to writers of German plays and operas (known as Singspiele). The establishment of the national theatre, though perhaps chiefly intended as an economy measure and to spite the aristocracy, was taken as a symbol of literary nationalism and identified with the campaign by moralists such as Joseph von Sonnenfels to purify the crude German comedy. It was important in Mozart's career in encouraging the writing of Die Entführung aus dem Serail. However, although Joseph became sole ruler in 1780, he could not ensure the success of the German troupe, which proved unpopular and was disbanded in 1785. An Italian company had been brought back in 1783, and Lorenzo Da Ponte had been made its court poet. But the monarch's attitude kept opera seria and ballet out of the court theatres throughout the 1780s: Mozart's Idomeneo could be performed in Vienna only in Prince Auersperg's theatre. However, another aspect of Joseph's policy, ‘theatre freedom’, permitted the establishment of suburban theatres, in the Leopoldstadt (1781), in the Josefstadt (1788) and the Freihaus-Theater (1787, also known as the Theater auf der Wieden; see fig.10), for which Die Zauberflöte was to be written.
When Mozart decided to leave the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, he wrote to his father on 4 April 1781 that Vienna was ‘the best place in the world for his profession’. In the first place, he had high hopes of winning the patronage of the emperor. Joseph obliged, though not at first with regular employment, but it was the emperor's predilection for Mozart and his music that made possible the scale of his success in Vienna, and in particular the production of the three operas composed in collaboration with Da Ponte (fig.11). Mozart told his father that by taking a few pupils and playing in concerts he could earn vastly more money than in his home town. Since he was to appear as a soloist in at least 71 public and private concerts in the years 1781 to 1786, he was surely right in his calculation that nowhere else could he have been given so many opportunities. The numerous wealthy patrons competed for the services of performers and composers of quality and originality, as for example with the Harmoniemusik, or wind bands, fashionable from 1782 onwards. Though there was no hall specially set aside for concerts, they took place more or less regularly in many aristocratic palaces, in the theatres, in certain other buildings such as the Trattner apartment block, in restaurants and in the public gardens. Nearly all Mozart's piano concertos were written for this milieu. As far as we know, he performed them most often in the Burgtheater, but also in the Augarten, the Kärntnertortheater, the Mehlgrube dance hall, Jahn's restaurant in the Himmelpfortgasse, and the Trattnerhof, as well as at private concerts in the houses of J.M. Auernhammer and G.I. Ployer. More specialized concerts were given in the masonic lodges, which flourished in the early 1780s, and by Baron van Swieten, head of the educational commission and director of the imperial library (where he broke new ground by putting on programmes of old music, especially works of J.S. Bach and Handel). With all these opportunities as a freelance composer and performer Mozart was able to earn (and spend) an income far above that of almost all salaried musicians. At the end of 1787, in order to prevent Mozart from leaving Vienna, the emperor created a post for him at a salary of £800 per annum. The composer turned this duty of writing dances for court balls into an opportunity to revivify the form.
There were other purely musical advantages to be gained from living in Vienna. The first Viennese collection of German-language songs had been published in 1778, and the genre became ever more popular. Artaria began to publish music in Vienna in 1778, and the steady growth of music printing expanded opportunities for the public to acquire music, though it by no means superseded the flourishing music-copying industry. As well as high-class production of pianofortes by such makers as Stein and Graf, there was much experimentation with new or unusual instruments like the jew's harp, glass harmonica, mechanical clock, baryton, basset horn, basset clarinet and arpeggione.
When Mozart wrote his enthusiastic letter about Vienna, the emperor had scarcely embarked on the hectic programme of wide-ranging reforms which he imposed during the 1780s. The suppression of the Jesuits, an important preliminary, had been carried through in 1773 by order of the pope. With the proceeds from their lands, a fairly successful attempt was being made to increase the number of primary schools and to reorganize secondary and higher education, which the Jesuits had largely controlled. In 1781–2 Joseph introduced measures of toleration for both Protestants and Jews, and greatly relaxed the censorship regulations. These changes had an almost revolutionary effect. A flood of pamphlets poured out during the 1780s, many of them anti-clerical and some critical of Joseph's regime. In the 1770s the average number of German-language periodicals being published in Vienna was 19; during Joseph II's reign it was 44; in the following 10 years it fell to only 15. The degree of intellectual freedom enjoyed in the 1780s was to be unknown again in Austria until the late 19th century. The emperor also forbade most religious processions and pilgrimages, and dissolved all religious brotherhoods and half the monasteries of the capital. Moreover, in the monasteries that remained, as in all churches, choral and instrumental music were severely restricted. The numerous new parish churches paid for by these suppressions needed for their music only organists of very modest attainments. These measures doubtless promoted Enlightenment, but they led to the halving of the total expenditure on church music in Vienna and to hardship for many musicians. No doubt they also account for Mozart's virtual abandonment of church music during Joseph's reign. Late in 1785 the emperor decided to restrict freemasonry; and by the end of his life, partly because of the financial crisis caused by the war against the Turks that began in 1788, his regime was looking distinctly less benevolent. The musical life of the city was certainly adversely affected, but to what extent is controversial.
Leopold II brought the Turkish War to an end and pursued a subtle policy of moderate conservatism at home. But after the accession of Francis and the outbreak of war with France in 1792, which continued with short breaks until 1815, reaction set in, a strict censorship was re-established, and it became dangerous to show sympathy with any attitude identifiable with the French Revolution.
Leopold was less hostile than his brother to opera seria and to traditional church music, but he did not reign long enough to bring his musical plans to fruition. Francis seems to have interfered little in musical matters. So, with the very important exception of opera performed in the royal theatres, the court was eclipsed as a source of patronage by a small number of noble connoisseurs, and it was they who maintained Vienna's pre-eminence, especially in instrumental music. Haydn, given extended leave of absence on full salary by Prince Anton Esterházy in 1790, made Vienna his home. But his last 12 symphonies were all composed for his London audiences on his two visits to England. His late masses, however, were written for the Esterházys. At one of the worst moments of the war, in 1797, when a citizens' patriotic army was being raised in Vienna, he and van Swieten worked with the government to provide Austria with a national anthem, which Haydn set to music. The two great oratorios, The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), had complex origins: they were inspired by Haydn's English experience of the choral works of Handel, and the librettos were based on English originals; but the works were commissioned by van Swieten, who also translated the texts into German; and they were first performed in the palace of Prince Schwarzenberg. They were usually given in secular buildings and were sometimes thought unsuitable for churches, but they represent a remarkable transplantation of early 18th-century English natural theology into a formerly strict Catholic milieu, where the religious policies of Joseph II were still being pursued even after most of his other aims had been abandoned. Even more than Haydn's symphonies and his chamber music (which was now becoming a common feature of public concerts instead of just a private diversion), his oratorios became enormously popular.
Beethoven was equally confident in 1792 as Mozart had been in 1781 that Vienna was the place where his genius could best flourish. Coming from the court at Bonn where Max Franz, the brother of Joseph II and Leopold II, was elector-archbishop, it is not surprising that the composer was drawn to Vienna, but it would appear from the early, unperformed works that he wrote in 1790 to lament the death of Joseph and welcome the accession of Leopold that he was then a supporter of the former's radical policies. He found in Vienna similar performing opportunities to Mozart's, though it is significant that nearly all Beethoven's dedications were to aristocrats, whereas many of Mozart's had been to commoners. So far as the sources permit conclusions about the level of musical activity, it seems to have remained much the same as under Joseph II, so far as both operas and concerts are concerned. However, partly because of the careers of Mozart and especially Haydn, but also because of the growing acceptance of both the idea of artistic genius and the moral and aesthetic significance of purely instrumental music, the attitude of great aristocrats to great musicians changed. Almost from the start, Beethoven was able to assert for himself a social position which Mozart and Haydn barely achieved by the end of their lives. Emperor Francis's brother, Archduke Rudolph, was his adoring pupil. In 1804 the ‘Eroica’ Symphony was first performed, like many of his works, in the palace of Prince Lobkowitz. At the première of Leonore in 1805, the audience consisted mainly of an unenthusiastic group of Napoleon's officers, part of a French force occupying Vienna. But soon afterwards, in the house of the Russian ambassador, Prince Rasumovsky, the three string quartets dedicated to him were first performed. However disturbing and revolutionary Beethoven's music was, he now showed little sign of political radicalism; and it was the high aristocracy of Vienna who were his principal patrons.
During the period 1740–1806 and for the next century, more music of recognized greatness was composed in Vienna than in any other city in the world. Few of the composers concerned were Viennese by origin, though the greatest of those, Schubert, was born there in 1797. All the principal names came from the catchment areas of the empire and the monarchy. In no other political entity, or overlapping pair of entities, were there nearly so many serious musical institutions, religious and secular; and all of these had links, practical as well as symbolic, with Vienna as their ruler's capital. The city itself did not spawn many of the composers who resided there, but it offered them a uniquely rich range of opportunities to practise and mature their genius.
During the first years of the 19th century, Vienna’s self-image and international standing as a centre of musical culture, together with the prestige of Viennese Classicism, were bolstered by Haydn’s presence in the city and the growing reputation of Beethoven. After 1809, the year of Haydn’s death and the Napoleonic invasion, the social and economic underpinnings of the city’s musical life underwent considerable change. In the arena of instrumental music, the 18th-century pattern of individual aristocratic patronage supporting ensembles and composers (as in the cases of Auersperg, Lobkowitz and Esterházy) disappeared quickly. Although Beethoven continued to depend on aristocratic subvention for the rest of his life, Schubert did not. The institution that would play the most significant role in the city, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, was officially founded in 1814. It signalled the beginning of an alliance between the old aristocracy and an urban middle class representing a growing public for music, which included élite Jewish banking families. The Gesellschaft sponsored concerts, an archive, the conservatory (beginning in 1817) and a choral programme, directed initially by Salieri.
By the end of the 1820s, Vienna boasted a significant infrastructure in music publishing and instrument manufacture (including over 32 violin makers, 25 brass instrument makers and 147 keyboard manufacturers) that met the needs of a more broadly based literate public of active amateurs from whose ranks Schubert’s friends and supporters came. Joseph Sonnleithner and Ignaz von Seyfried, both of whose lives intersected with Beethoven, were leaders in the creation of a new public musical culture; their interests extended to scholarship and journalism. From 1806 a series of periodicals flourished, from the short-lived Wiener Journal für Theater, Musik und Mode to the more durable Wiener Theater Zeitung (which covered music). In 1834 R.G. Kiesewetter (who headed the new conservatory) published the first popular music history connecting past and present. Kiesewetter also maintained one of the most prominent middle-class salons where large ensemble house concerts took place.
Despite the shift from aristocratic patronage to a broader civic base beginning in 1812, the Viennese tradition of aristocratic connoisseurship, active participation and financial support characteristic of the Classical era of Gluck, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven would cast a considerable shadow on the evolution of musical culture in Vienna well into the 20th century. The prestige of music, particularly instrumental music, was associated with the aura of noble birth and cultivation. Maria Theresa and her direct descendants, as well as many prominent members of the high aristocracy living in Vienna during the winter season, were musically literate and discerning. Future generations of Viennese would link the cultivation of music with high social status and refinement long after the aristocracy abandoned, learning and the arts in the mid-19th century, for hunting and the high life in the spirit of the Jockey Club. The memory of a time when the highest segment of the social ladder could sing in oratorio performances, play sonatas and quartets and judge new music competently was invoked regularly from the mid-19th century onwards as subsequent generations of local critics lamented the debased skills and tastes displayed by the ever expanding middle- and working-class audience for music. Nonetheless, domestic music-making flourished throughout the city’s population. The enthusiasm shown by the Viennese for music in the 19th century reflected in part a middle-class agenda of social ambition for self-improvement against an image of aristocratic cultivation rooted in the myth and reality of Viennese musical life before 1809.
During the first decades of the century, public concert life took place in winter in the Mehlgrube and in summer in the Augarten; in inns (until 1822 the Gesellschaft had its headquarters in a section of an elegant restaurant, Zum roten Igel, and then renovated and expanded its space there on the Tuchlauben where in 1831 it opened a 500-seat hall), and in imperial theatres (the Kärntnertortheater and the Burgtheater) during Lent and Advent; in the Redoutensaal of the Hofburg (fig.15), the great hall of the university; and in the Spanish Riding School, the space in which, until 1848, the festive, large mixed amateur and professional oratorio performances, often organized on behalf of charitable causes, took place. In 1819 F.X. Gebauer and Eduard von Lannoy founded the concerts spirituels with an orchestra made up of amateurs; the series continued until 1848. The quality of these regularly scheduled public performances came under fire, particularly in the 1830s, an era that prized virtuosity. Their presentation of Classical works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven was substandard. In 1833 Franz Lachner organized professional orchestral concerts using opera house players, but with little success; only four performances, each including a Beethoven symphony, were given. In March 1842, with the support of Otto Nicolai, the chief conductor of the Opera, an association made up of opera musicians came into being (which later would evolve into the Vienna Philharmonic), even though between 1842 and 1860 there were no regular seasons; only 14 Philharmonic concerts were given between 1842 and 1848.
Most concerts until 1848 took place in generous noble and middle-class private spaces, much in the tradition of the Schubertiads, in part for political reasons; censorship and the repressive police state in place between 1815 and 1848 (especially after 1819) helped restrict the number of large public events. Among the notable private non-aristocratic venues were those of Pettenkopfer, Dollinger and Röhrich, all either men of commerce or civil servants. The policies of the Metternich era inadvertently helped to deepen the Viennese attachment to music, particularly chamber and vocal music. Instrumental music and vocal music celebrating nature and personal emotions served as a mode of expression and communication comparatively immune from political scrutiny and therefore one in which the widest range of sentiment could be expressed without fear. Franz Grillparzer, the great dramatist and himself an avid amateur musician, ironically expressed regret, after having been censored, that he was not a composer. Nonetheless, Schubert’s friend Johann Mayrhofer ended up as a police agent, and A.J. Becher, one of the city’s leading critics (who had helped organize the Vienna Philharmonic in 1842 with Nicolai, Beethoven’s friend Karl Holz, and the poet Nikolaus von Lenau) was executed for his role in the revolution of 1848. The reactionary authorities before 1848 understood the link between liberal ideas and the wider social acquisition of culture and learning. Yet music remained relatively privileged; in 1843 they permitted the founding of a new institution, the Wiener Männergesangverein (in large part the work of August Schmidt, the editor of the Wiener allgemeine Musikzeitung), at the inn Zum goldenen Löwen. By 1848 it had nearly 400 members and had held dozens of concerts in the Redoutensaal, at Schönbrunn and in dance halls, hospitals and private homes. This group, whose motto was ‘free and loyal in song and deed’, was both devoted to the monarchy and liberal; it was also the harbinger of a significant amateur choral movement that flourished after 1848. Among its leaders were Franz Egger, a lawyer, and Nikolaus Dumba, an industrialist who later spearheaded the campaign to build Vienna’s main concert hall, the Musikverein, in 1870.
Although Beethoven’s funeral in 1827 was among the largest public events in Vienna’s history, by the time of his death his music had fallen considerably out of fashion. A taste for Italian opera, particularly Rossini (whose Otello was a sensation in 1819), developed rapidly in the 1820s; the première of Weber’s Der Freischütz in 1821 also signalled a new direction in musical culture, as did the triumphant appearances of Paganini in 1828 and Chopin in 1829. Euryanthe was written in 1823 for Vienna. The 1820s also witnessed the spread of interest in dance music (the waltz, galop and quadrille) and the popularity of the comic theatre of Ferdinand Raimund (Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt, 1826) and, later, J.N. Nestroy (whose farces such as Lumpazivagabundus, 1833, or Der Talisman, 1840, came with musical accompaniment). This distinctly local form of theatre took place at the Theater an der Wien (fig.16)and at smaller suburban houses in an annual repertory that featured light opera by such composers as Conradin Kreutzer, Joseph Drechsler, F.A. Kanne, Adolf Müller and Adrien Boieldieu. The evolution of Schubert’s music in the 1820s, particularly his efforts at opera and incidental dramatic music, can be understood as reflecting these contemporary Viennese theatrical tastes. By the 1840s there was considerable concern expressed about the relative neglect of classical traditions. The Gesellschaft, a self-governing association, positioned itself as a counterweight, continuing to present works of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Cherubini as well as more contemporary music, including Schubert’s. In 1839 it performed Mendelssohn’s Paulus with a chorus of 700 and an orchestra of 320. The repertory also included music by Joseph Eybler, Eduard von Lannoy, Ferdinando Paer, Simon Mayr, I.F. von Mosel, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Vàclav Tomášek, Louis Spohr, Maximilian Stadler, Rossini, Salieri and Hugo Worischek. Between 1812 and 1848 the Gesellschaft sponsored 131 regular concerts, 36 large-scale choral events, 8 operas and 240 salon-style evenings.
Opera (as part of a local affinity with theatre dating back to Baroque times) remained a crucial component of Vienna’s musical life. The use of incidental music in productions of tragic theatre was common. The Hofoper at the Kärntnertortheater and Burgtheater flourished. Performances were also held at the Schönbrunn Palace theatre. A system of leasing the opera house to impresarios who favoured Italian repertory existed; this offered a complement to German repertory, including works by Joseph Weigl and Mosel. The Hofoper remained directly under the administrative control of the crown and high aristocracy until 1918. The repertory at the Kärntnertortheater between the mid-1820s and 1848 included Spohr, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Auber, Halévy, Marschner, von Flotow and Donizetti. Fanny Elssler’s fame (and that of Marie Taglioni) in the 1830s and 40s helped spark wider interest in the ballet productions of the Hofoper. The Theater an der Wien (where Fidelio was first produced in 1805 and 1806 and Lortzing conducted in the late 1840s) was the location for the premières of Schubert’s Zauberharfe in 1820 and Rosamunde in 1823, as well as of works by Spontini, Auber, Grétry and J.P. Pixis. Concerts took place there as well. Other important sites of opera and musical theatre were the Theater in der Leopoldstadt and the Theater in der Josefstadt, where Die Zauberflöte was among the most popular works in a repertory that included Weber’s Oberon and Cherubini’s Les deux journées. Conradin Kreutzer directed the house between 1833 and 1835.
The events of March 1848 forced the closing of the conservatory (which reopened in 1851) and interrupted concert life; the Gesellschaft resumed concerts in January of 1849. By the early 1850s it was clear that the public would no longer tolerate amateur participation in public performances of instrumental music. The Gesellschaft, after considerable internal debate, restructured itself in order to sponsor regular professional concerts. It also began a tradition of choosing a professional musician as a director of activities. Joseph Hellmesberger (whose father Georg was also a violinist and conducted the Philharmonic in the late 1840s), the leader of the Philharmonic, would spearhead the improvement of standards, including amateur choral preparation which led to the creation, in 1858, of the Singverein. In that same year a second civic choral group, the Singakademie, was founded; in 1863 Brahms would become its director. The enthusiasm for participation in choral music led to the establishment in late 1863 of a second male choral society, the Schubertbund, by the schoolteacher Franz Mair. It was dedicated to propagating the work and spirit of Schubert. Its initial membership of 86 was made up exclusively of schoolteachers. By the end of the century there were dozens of new amateur choruses in Vienna – male, female and mixed choirs – organized frequently by district or occupation and profession.
Hellmesberger (the most distinguished member of a multigenerational local dynasty of musicians, the last of whom were Joseph (ii), a violinist, conductor and operetta composer, and Ferdinand, the ballet conductor and cellist, both active at the end of the century) played a decisive role during these years in establishing a higher standard of public performance, as leader of the city’s finest quartet (with which Brahms made his début in 1862), director of the conservatory, leading violin teacher, and as a conductor. His quartet was founded in 1849 and he favoured, apart from Mozart and Haydn, the late Beethoven and Schubert quartets. He directed the Gesellschaft from 1851 to 1859. The hostility to amateur instrumental playing led to a public debate that itself highlighted the significance of Viennese music journalism after 1848. L.A. Zellner, later professor of harmony and acoustics at the conservatory, led the fight against dilettantism. Eventually a separate orchestral association of amateurs, the Orchesterverein, was created within the Gesellschaft. At the same time, Zellner was concerned with guiding the tastes of the untutored public and in 1859 began a series of ‘historical concerts’. This effort coincided with a growing interest in the history of music as an antidote to the temptations of modern fashion, understood as deriving from popular dance and theatre music on the one hand, and Liszt and Wagner on the other. Among the most influential figures in the musical life of the 1850s and 60s was the charismatic and handsome composer and conductor Johann Ritter von Herbeck. He ‘discovered’ Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ symphony and gave it its first performance in 1865. An early supporter of Bruckner’s music, Herbeck was responsible for Bruckner’s appointment as successor to Simon Sechter as teacher of counterpoint at the conservatory in 1868. Herbeck led the Männergesangverein from 1856 to 1866 and became the first conductor of the Singverein in 1858. He took over the Gesellschaft concerts in 1859 from Hellmesberger and led them until 1870. He was responsible for bringing new music, including works by Liszt, Rubinstein, Brahms, Glinka, Robert Volkmann and Berlioz, to the public in programmes that also included Bach, Handel, Schumann and Mendelssohn. Other Gesellschaft concert directors later in the century included Anton Rubinstein, Brahms, Eduard Kremser (an important figure in the city’s choral life and long-time chorus master at the Männergesangverein), Wilhelm Gericke (the conductor who would later be lured to Boston) and, briefly, Hans Richter.
The raising of performance standards reflected the pressure of an ever-growing enthusiastic public for music. Operatic practice mirrored the same concern for quality. In 1854 the conductor Karl Eckert became the first musician to be placed in charge of the Hofoper. He was followed by the Italian Matteo Salvi. Eckert introduced Lohengrin in 1858 and Tannhäuser in 1859, and his colleague, the conductor Heinrich Esser, produced the first performances of Der fliegende Holländer in 1860. Between 1849 and 1870 several of Verdi’s operas were performed (La Traviata, Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera), as were works by Meyerbeer and Marschner, Gounod’s Faust and Thomas’s Mignon. In the 1850s the Theater in der Josefstadt also produced Meyerbeer and the first Vienna Tannhäuser in 1857 at its summer venue, the Thaliatheater. It was in the 1860s that Vienna’s musical politics were formed for the remainder of the century. Wagner arrived in Vienna in 1861, Brahms one year later. Wagner had high hopes; the three operas produced in Vienna had met with great audience success. He had many friends, including the prominent amateur and physician Josef Standhartner, who was also a member of the Gesellschaft board. Wagner hoped that Tristan would be given its première in Vienna, but the critical opposition of Zellner, Hanslick and Selmar Bagge took its toll. Bagge, a brilliant teacher (who had begun teaching at the conservatory in 1852), critic and organist, was concerned, like Zellner, about declining standards of musical education and taste in the city and particularly at the conservatory. Wagner’s music was viewed as a corrupting force. Hanslick, who had come to Vienna in 1854 and began teaching music at the university in 1861, became the city’s most influential critic. He also served as an informal advisor to the Hofoper. The encounter between Hanslick and Wagner resulted in each being the other’s arch-enemy. Wagner left the city in disgust in the 1860s, only to return in 1875 in triumph, four years after the Vienna première of Die Meistersinger, a work in which Hanslick was parodied as Beckmesser. The comparative critical support for Brahms in the 1860s resulted in part from Brahms’s status as heir to a Classical and early Romantic formalist legacy of consummate craftsmanship and exacting standards in the writing of chamber music. Brahms had little respect for Herbeck (whose 1862 performance of Handel’s Messiah he found wanting in terms of historical performance practices and overall quality) and other local Wagner enthusiasts, despite his own deep admiration for Wagner’s genius and achievement.
The clash over musical aesthetics of the 1860s was a response to the striking explosion in the local marketplace for music-making, as reflected in the demand for sheet music and instruments. By mid-century, although the technological lead once held by early 19th-century Viennese piano makers had been ceded to French, English and American rivals, the city boasted many important manufacturers, including Konrad Graff (until 1841), Ludwig Bösendorfer, Friedrich Ehrbar (who took over the Seuffert firm), Carl Dörr and Schweighofer, as well as many builders of cheaper instruments. String instruments were made by Michael Stadlmann, Martin Stoss, Georg Stauffer and Franz Geissenhof. Despite the pre-eminence of Leipzig in music publishing, Vienna continued to possess local publishers, including the houses of C.A. Spina and Tobias Haslinger.
In the arena of popular music, the post-1815 traditions of dance and comic and farcical theatre flourished after 1848. In dance, Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss, both father and son, dominated. They not only wrote for dance halls and balls, concentrating on the waltz, polka and traditional ländler, but also branched out into longer, elaborate waltz-based compositional forms (fig.17). In 1867 Johann Strauss (ii) composed the legendary An der schönen, blauen Donau waltz for male chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the Männergesangverein. The Strauss family also held open-air concerts. Strauss was the first to play Wagner’s music and became, at the same time, a close friend of Brahms who deeply respected Strauss’s achievement. The unique Viennese theatre of fantasy and farce, perfected by Nestroy (who had made his début as Sarastro in 1822) had traditionally included music. Franz von Suppé had been writing music for the Theater in der Josefstadt from 1845 onwards. His efforts at opera and incidental music for spoken drama led him to emulate and adapt the model of Offenbach using Viennese farce as alternative subject matter. The result, Viennese operetta, made its local appearance in 1860 in the Carltheater (in the Leopoldstadt) with Das Pensionat by Suppé which was an explicit mix of Offenbach and Viennese farce. Offenbach himself worked in Vienna in the 1860s; five of his operettas were produced in Vienna between 1859 and 1860. Suppé moved permanently to the Carltheater in 1865 and from that point on he, Johann Strauss (ii) and Carl Millöcker created a staggering output in this unique Viennese form of musical theatre. The pattern of camouflaging social and political satire beneath a surface of implausible farce and childlike fairy tales, characteristic of the 1815–48 era of censorship, flourished in a new era of radical economic and social change in Vienna. Parody, irony and bittersweet sentimentality laced with pessimism would characterize the music and texts of the great golden era of Viennese operetta which began in the mid-1860s and ended in 1900.
The background to the developments in musical culture of the post-1848 period was framed by the sweeping changes in the topography and demography of the city. In the 1860s, by an imperial decree of 1857, the old walls were torn down and the Ringstrasse created. With it came a massive development of public buildings and dwellings that linked the inner city to the outlying districts. In 1869 the first new public structure was finished, initially known as the Kaiserlich-königliches Hofoperntheater im neuen Hause (fig.19), designed by August von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, with nearly twice as many seats as the Kärntnertortheater. It was inaugurated with a German-language production of Don Giovanni (fig.20). In 1870, with the assistance of private funds and a lottery, the Gesellschaft dedicated its new neo-classical home near the Ringstrasse, the Musikverein, designed by Theophilus Hansen, with over 1600 seats (fig.21), and a second smaller hall with nearly 700. The building also housed the conservatory and the archive and offices of the Gesellschaft and the Männergesangverein. In 1874 Bösendorfer opened a chamber music hall seating over 500 in the old Liechtenstein riding stables. It was to serve as a main venue for concerts until 1913 when it was torn down. Not to be outdone, Ehrbar opened his own concert hall in the fourth district in 1877; it was there that Brahms chose to introduce his new works to a close circle of friends.
The failure of the Habsburg monarchy to keep its Italian provinces after Solferino (1859) and its eventual defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1866 led to a constitutional crisis. This resulted in the creation of the dual monarchy and the liberalization of laws, including those governing migration and residence in 1867. At the same time, the Gründerzeit era, the economic boom of the 1860s (that ended abruptly in the crash of 1873), sparked a sustained influx of people from all over the empire to Vienna between 1867 and 1914. The city grew rapidly, with the introduction of ethnic minorities from Czech, Polish and southern Slav regions. The Jewish population in Vienna grew to over 12%. The diversification and growth of the city created a widely shared mythology of and nostalgia for a pre-modern ‘old Vienna’, for pre-1848 mores and culture, during the late 19th century. Music, in the home and concert hall, both popular and classical, assumed increased significance as a mark of civic identity and acculturation, particularly for new immigrants. After 1870 music came to define a distinct Viennese sensibility (tied to local history, from Gluck to the Strauss family) that was at once reflective and critical of modernity. Love of music and its local traditions became an accessible emblem of authentic membership in a civic environment in which only a small minority was native by birth and few had access to power through voting rights and political participation.
The increased demand for music was mirrored by the fortunes of the Vienna Philharmonic. After more than a decade of only occasional concerts, from 1854 its appearances became annual; from 1860 onwards it gave as many as nine concerts a season. Eckert conducted the orchestra until 1860; from 1860 to 1875 Otto Dessoff led the orchestra. By the 1870s, when the concerts moved from the Kärntnertortheater to the new Musikverein, its concerts, like those of the Gesellschaft, were fully subscribed and seats were passed down in families from one generation to the next. The repertory under Dessoff included a good deal of Beethoven, some Haydn and Mozart and a considerable amount of new music, ranging from Brahms and Wagner to Karl Goldmark, Rubinstein, Joseph Rheinberger, Franz Lachner, Robert Volkmann, O.J. Grimm, Woldemar Bargiel, Herbeck and Friedrich Gernsheim. Mendelssohn and Schumann were also generously represented. It should be noted that throughout the 19th century the Hofkapelle continued, providing sacred music for the Sunday morning mass. The Vienna Boys’ Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben, an institution that would survive the fall of the monarchy in 1918) was used and the direction was given over to the leading conductors including Hellmesberger and Herbeck. Sechter and his successor Bruckner also served as Hofkapelle organists. The repertory extended to include Schubert’s sacred music. Gottfried von Preyer (1807–1901), a pupil of Sechter’s and director of conservatory from 1844–9, authored more than 200 sacred works and, from 1853 to the end of the century, served as director of music at the Stephansdom. Salomon Sulzer (1804–90) was the dominant figure in the reform of the musical aspect of Jewish liturgy; his role as singer, composer and teacher extended beyond the confines of the Jewish community and mirrored the growing importance of that community in Viennese musical culture.
Despite the severity of the economic crash of 1873, which followed the 1873 Vienna World Exposition, the 1870s witnessed a dramatic growth in the range and character of musical life. As a centre of learning, the conservatory attracted a cadre of students who would become legendary. They included Mahler and Hugo Wolf. The enrolment rose to nearly 700. During the late 19th century, over 25% of the students were Jews, and over 50% of all students took the piano as their primary field of study; violin was the next largest subject of study. Music education was not limited to the conservatory; other schools flourished. By the mid-1890s, Ludwig Bösendorfer would complain of a veritable ‘plague’ in the demand for piano instruction. Teachers and simplified instruction systems became ubiquitous. The most prominent private teacher was Theodor Leschetizky (to whom Mark Twain brought his daughter for lessons). Prominent pianists and piano teachers in the 19th century included Julius Epstein, Anton Dorr, Emil Sauer, Alfred Grünfeld and Ignaz Brüll.
The architecture of the Ringstrasse, Vienna’s grand new thoroughfare, was decidedly historicist, evoking the Classical, Baroque and Renaissance past. Likewise in the 1870s, the cult of classicism and historicist taste flourished in music, focusing particularly on the Viennese masters from Gluck to Schubert. The Musikverein opened with an extensive Beethoven centenary that would be a precursor of the evolution of Viennese taste. In the Gesellschaft concerts in the 1870s and 80s, works by Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn accounted for over 30% of the repertory. All in all, by 1878 less than a quarter of all works performed in Gesellschaft concerts were by living composers. In the early 1870s Brahms directed the Gesellschaft concerts and introduced music written before Bach and Handel, including works by Henricus Isaac, Johann Rudolf Ahle and Johannes Eccard. This signalled an increasing interest in the history of music and a greater frequency of so-called ‘historical’ concerts.
During the 1870s and 80s the repertory of the Vienna Philharmonic was somewhat less conservative, reflecting the absence of amateur governance, although more than a quarter of its offerings were devoted to Mozart and Beethoven. This more progressive stance was the result of the long tenure of Wagner’s close associate Hans Richter who conducted the orchestra 214 times between 1875 and 1898. In his tenure not only were all the Brahms symphonies performed, but also the second, third, fourth and eighth symphonies of Bruckner alongside the works of less well-known Viennese composers such as Robert Fuchs, Ignaz Brüll and Goldmark. The Gesellschaft, in continual financial difficulties, was supported less by the high aristocracy and more by the so-called ‘second society’, the newer élite of the city.
The leading patrons of music included a highly educated intellectual élite ranging from the industrialist family of Karl Wittgenstein (father of Ludwig and Paul), the Fellingers, Wertheimsteins and the Gomperz family of academics, to the great surgeon Theodor Billroth, himself an amateur instrumentalist. The enthusiasm for music involved a combination of a glorification of a canonic past with a partisan enthusiasm for either Brahms and his circle or Bruckner, who became, in the 1870s, the standard bearer for a new direction in music influenced by Wagner. The membership lists of the Männergesangverein in this period were over 50% men of commerce (including bankers and industrialists), 30% civil servants and professionals. In 1872 this organization triumphantly dedicated to the city a monument honouring Schubert, designed by Hansen and located in the Volksgarten. In the later 19th century, Schubert symbolized the uniquely Viennese synthesis of international classical greatness and distinctly Viennese traditions. In the contemporary local debate concerning Brahms and Bruckner, both sides claimed the spirit of Schubert for their cause.
The 1870s and 80s were also the highpoint of the golden era of operetta. The greatest works of Johann Strauss (ii) received their premières. C.M. Ziehrer and Carl Zeller were two important rivals in this field. Strauss composed 15 operettas, most of which were first performed at either the Theater an der Wien or the Carltheater. The local taste for Offenbach was undiminished in the 1870s. The number of local operetta composers increased and included the choral conductor of the Männergesangverein, Herbeck’s successor Eduard Kremser (who also edited the most popular compendium of folk music), as well as Josef Hellmesberger (ii). The works of Arthur Sullivan were also immensely popular. The authors of texts and librettos of operetta included famous critics (notably Max Kalbeck) and specialists such as Viktor Léon and Hugo Wittmann (who wrote for Strauss and Millöcker). Theodor Herzl also wrote operetta texts. In a single decade, between 1870 and 1880, 100 operettas received their premières in Vienna, and another 180 new operettas were presented in the city before the end of the century.
The popularity of musical theatre in Vienna led to the construction of the Komische Oper am Schottentor in 1874 (later renamed the Ringtheater) as a centre for comic opera, in imitation of the Paris Opéra Comique. The fire that broke out in December 1881 during a performance of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, with disastrous consequences, contributed (after a dramatic trial) to the permanent revision of standards for theatre construction. Although the Ringtheater was not rebuilt, in 1883 the increased demand for comic musical theatre was met by the opening of the Raimundtheater, designed in late historicist style. It opened with a performance of Raimund’s Die gefesselte Phantasie with music by Wenzel Müller. With the death of Johann Strauss in 1899, the golden era ended and the so-called silver age of Viennese operetta began. Well over 250 new operetta productions were given their premières in the city between 1900 and 1913. Prominent composers in this period include Emmerich Kálmán, Edmund Eysler, Ralph Benatzky, Oscar Straus, Oskar Nedbal, Leo Fall and Richard Heuberger.
In the early 20th century the new operettas came under fire as cheap, trivial and reflective of the commercial corruption of musical taste. Despite the admiration of young modernists such as Schoenberg and Zemlinsky for Johann Strauss (ii), the output of the silver age of operetta composers was largely found wanting. After all, a striking contrast between the public taste for operetta and domestic salon music (a mixture of operatic tunes and sentimental piano music) and the rejection of new concert music was clearly visible. Following the lead of the writer and journalist Karl Kraus and his close friend, the architect Adolf Loos, the manipulative sensationalism and superficiality in modern musical theatre, celebrated by a corrupt world of newspaper criticism, was condemned. The works of Nestroy, Offenbach and Johann Strauss were held up as examples of ethical and aesthetic greatness in popular art forms. A new dimension of popular music found its expression in the success of the Schrammel ensemble, a quartet of local players who specialized in dance and song music. The Schrammels, all trained musicians, began to perform their unique amalgam of Viennese music in 1878; by the 1890s their distinct style and sound began to rival the Strauss tradition as emblematic of Viennese culture (fig.23).
In order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Franz Joseph’s reign in 1898, a second major state theatre, the Stadttheater, was opened (later renamed the Volksoper). It was designed initially to offer the growing Viennese public increased access to spoken theatre, but early in the 20th century it was turned into an opera house devoted to popular works, in contrast to the opera house on the Ringstrasse. However, operatic life, so central to the Viennese obsession with theatre and music, remained centred on the politics and policies of the Imperial opera. Herbeck led this from 1870 to 1875, during which time he mounted the première of Die Meistersinger. He was succeeded by the former manager of the Carltheater, Franz Jauner, who produced the first Carmen and brought Verdi to conduct the première of Aida. Verdi’s Requiem was performed at the opera house in 1876. Jauner hired Hans Richter as chief conductor. Richter put on the first complete Ring cycle in 1879.
Jauner was succeeded by Wilhelm Jahn who led the house from 1881 to 1897. Jahn worked well with Richter. By the mid-1880s the disastrous economic crisis of the late 1870s had receded somewhat, permitting the opera house to flourish. In response to the demographic changes in the city and the monarchical tolerance of ethnic self-expression by non-German Habsburg populations, two of Smetana’s operas were presented, The Bartered Bride and Dalibor. Goldmark’s Die Königin von Saba and Das Heimchen am Herd, Ignaz Brüll’s Das goldene Kreuz, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Massenet’s Manon and Werther were also produced. Jahn placed Die Fledermaus on the imperial stage and gave the première of Strauss’s failed effort at serious opera, Ritter Pázmán. Jahn also sought to revive some of Schubert’s operas and maintained a commitment to the Romantic opera tradition of Weber, Marschner and Lortzing. Nonetheless, the centrepieces of the opera repertory in the 1890s were the operas of Wagner and Mozart. Also important were the works of Verdi and Meyerbeer. In any one season, however, Viennese operagoers could hear operas by Adolphe Adam, Auber, Cherubini, Gluck, Halévy, Wilhelm Kienzl, Viktor E. Nessler, Nicolai and Rossini. As a result of the extent and quality of local music journalism, leading opera singers became public personalities.
The self-confidence of the Viennese regarding the quality of local musical culture at the end of the century was best expressed by the international exhibition of music and theatre in 1892. Tchaikovsky was present (but was outraged by the juxtaposition of outdoor concerts and beer drinking). There were extensive presentations of opera and concert music. In the 1870s and 80s music journalism flourished not only in the daily press but through specialized journals. In addition to Hanslick, leading music critics of the last quarter of the century included Max Kalbeck (later Brahms’s biographer), Ludwig Karpath, Theodor Otto Helm (a Bruckner supporter who wrote one of the first guides to the Beethoven string quartets), Richard Heuberger (a choral conductor and the composer of Der Opernball), Robert Hirschfeld (a student of Hanslick), Gustav Schönaich, Richard Wallaschek, Richard von Kralik (who also directed the Singakademie) and the composer Wilhelm Kienzl. The Viennese link between music and theatre permitted many of these to function as theatre critics as well. It is not surprising, therefore, that Ludwig Speidel also wrote on music. Perhaps the most notorious episode in the history of Viennese criticism was Hugo Wolf’s tenure in the mid-1880s at the Salonblatt where he regularly pilloried the work of Brahms and called into question the standards of musical culture displayed by the Viennese audience. The most significant late 19th-century Viennese musical periodical was the Neue musikalische Presse, published from 1892 to 1909.
By the 1890s, however, new sources of discontent were visible in Vienna’s musical life. Hans von Bülow’s Meiningen orchestra made an appearance in the 1880s. The excellence of its performance standards put Richter’s Vienna Philharmonic to shame. The growth in demand for concerts in the 1890s had far outdistanced supply. In the 1890s the Budapest Concert Orchestra made regular trips to Vienna. A leading impresario, Albert Gutmann, tripled the number of concerts he presented between 1890 and 1900. As the success of Gutmann’s work suggests, the 1890s witnessed increased popularity not only of chamber music concerts, given by visiting artists and distinguished local musicians such as the Rosé Quartet (headed by Arnold Rosé, the long-serving leader of the Vienna Philharmonic and brother-in-law of Mahler), but also of orchestral concerts. In a quartet comprising Philharmonic colleagues, Rosé continued the tradition of the Hellmesberger Quartet. He introduced the work of Schoenberg in 1907 and 1908.
The 1892 exhibition sparked a sustained local debate about the need for a second orchestra and another major concert hall. Furthermore, in the 1890s, a younger generation of critics and scholars, trained at the university and conservatory, sought to challenge and expand the tastes of the Viennese public. Guido Adler, Mahler’s boyhood friend, founded the Musikhistorisches Institut in 1898 at the university when he succeeded Hanslick. Adler established Vienna as a centre of modern scholarship and initiated a series of new critical editions of early music and the classical masters (e.g. founding the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich series), following in the tradition of the great 19th-century Bach, Handel, Mozart and Schubert editions. For Adler’s generation, however, contemporary musical composition and music history were inextricably linked, as he expressed in 1885 in the first issue of the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft.
Adler’s polemical writings mirrored the growing concern for standards in music education and taste. He, along with Hirschfeld, encouraged the use of the city-wide celebrations of Mozart’s death (1891) and Schubert’s birth (1897) as occasions to deepen and broaden access to and civic identification with classical musical culture throughout the population in the rapidly growing metropolis. The enthusiasm for opera and operetta only heightened the lingering suspicion among some musicians (including Josef Labor, the first teacher of Alma Mahler and a friend of the Wittgenstein family) about debased tastes within the public first articulated in the 1860s. With Brahms’s explicit support, Mahler was brought to Vienna in 1897 as a conductor at the imperial opera in an effort to raise standards; he quickly took over the institution and later replaced Richter (who went to England) at the Vienna Philharmonic. The generational conflict was evident in the debate between Hirschfeld and Hanslick over the value of Renaissance music and its appropriateness as an object of public musical performance; Hirschfeld had initiated a series of Renaissance evenings beginning in 1884 that Hanslick derided. The changes of the 1890s were also signalled by the deaths of Bruckner in 1896 and of Brahms in 1897 (who, as the Board of Directors of the Gesellschaft, had exercised considerable influence in the city’s musical life). The shift in the aesthetic debate of the late 19th century – from a conflict between a Brahms axis and a Wagner and Bruckner circle – was evident in Adler’s 1904 university lectures on Wagner that cast Wagner as historical: a classic master in a tradition going back to Palestrina. The new battle was between a novel post-Wagnerian Viennese modernism and an allegiance to a neo-Wagnerian late Romantic idiom.
The stirrings of the late 1890s coincided with new movements in literature (Jung Wien) and visual arts (the Vienna Secession, founded in 1897). Even more relevant to new music were rival radical modernists in literature, art and architecture (Kraus, Loos, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka). Mahler participated in the 1902 Secession exhibition, devoted to Max Klinger’s statute of Beethoven, to which Gustav Klimt also contributed. Mahler’s appointment at the Hofoper fuelled the debate about contemporary music that took place in a local context, in which taste had become increasingly tied to the past and the level of musical literacy was insufficient to ensure the capacity to follow new developments. Among the most controversial figures in fin-de-siècle Viennese musical life was Richard Strauss, whose orchestral music was first heard in the city in the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, sparking both outrage and devoted partisanship. During his ten-year directorship of the opera, Mahler explicitly sought to spearhead a radical renaissance. He performed Wagner without cuts; he darkened the house during performance (to encourage concentration on the part of the audience and eliminate distracting socializing during performance); he deepened the orchestra pit; he collaborated with Alfred Roller, a painter and designer and a member of the Vienna Secession. They sought to realize the theories of Adolphe Appia, creating new productions of the works of Wagner and Mozart that used colour symbolism and departed from traditions of stage-set realism. Mahler expanded the repertory by presenting dozens of new works by Puccini, Pfitzner, Strauss, Wolf, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky and Leoncavallo. Mahler attempted to improve performance standards by reining in the egos of star singers, creating an integrated musical ensemble. At the same time, despite constant newspaper criticism of his attitude towards opera stars, he introduced such luminaries as Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, Leo Slezak and Richard Mayr. He became a living legend and was idolized, particularly by a younger generation of musicians, notably the circle around Alexander von Zemlinsky. This included the young Arnold Schoenberg and his students, Alban Berg and Anton von Webern.
The 19th-century tension between a carefree surface attitude and reactionary historicist cultural taste within the Viennese public and a younger generation’s progressive engagement with music as the most noble of the arts (cast in the image of the era of Viennese Classicism) came to a head in the first decade of the 20th century. Mahler came under fire for his own music and the presumed arrogance evident in his reorchestrations of Beethoven and cuts in Bruckner. His effort to mount the première of Strauss’s Salome failed when censors declared the work unfit for the imperial stage. Much to Mahler’s embarrassment, the Vienna première took place in 1905 under the aegis of a travelling company from Breslau.
The opposition to Mahler in the popular press also mirrored the growing significance of the Jewish question. Although he had converted to Catholicism to assume the position at the Hofoper, he and Bruno Walter, his young assistant, remained Jews by the terms of contemporary anti-Semitic discourse. The economic difficulties of Vienna in the 1870s and 80s, the reactionary Viennese adherence to artisan and shopkeeper traditions (and therefore the city’s relative economic, commercial and industrial backwardness by comparison with Berlin and London) and the consequences of rapid migration to the city had, by the late 1880s, spawned radical reactionary political attitudes, skilfully exploited by the Christian socialism of Karl Lueger (who would become the powerful mayor of the city in 1897, despite monarchical reluctance). By 1900 anti-Semitism was a vivid and constant dimension of Viennese culture and politics; the 1891 Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus boasted nearly 5000 members by 1895. In these numbers were many of Brahms’s closest friends (for example, Viktor Miller zu Aichholz). Wagner’s local popularity helped fuel anti-Semitism. An anti-Semitic Bruckner cult, supported by the reactionary right and its allies in the local press, was already in evidence long before the composer’s death. Brahms and his circle, because of the composer’s close friendship with leading Jews, were castigated as philo-Semitic. The influential Akademischer Wagnerverein, founded in 1873, boasted many Jewish founders and members; Bruckner allowed himself to become the honorary president of a rival Wagner society founded in 1890 that explicitly excluded Jews.
Anti-Semitism intersected with a distaste for the style and substance of modernism, even though, ironically, many of the leading figures in the world of operetta were Jews. Mahler came under fire not only for his innovations at the opera but also for his role as symbolic protector of new music. His own compositions experienced limited success in Vienna. But he was the honorary president of Zemlinsky’s 1904 Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler, a new organization devoted to young composers and their work that gave the first performances of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande and Bartók’s First Orchestral Suite. In 1907 and 1908 the premières of Schoenberg’s chamber music resulted in disruptions and open conflict. Mahler defended Schoenberg. Critics and outraged audience members had allies among professional and accomplished amateur musicians. The new seemed to challenge their taste and judgment. Even Brahms’s friend Theodor Billroth, in a posthumous collection of essays entitled Wer ist musikalisch and edited by Hanslick (1896), articulated the mix of social cultural criticism directed at modern musical practices and tastes characteristic of Viennese aesthetic conservatism. Mahler encountered opposition from conservative musicians in the orchestra of the Vienna Philharmonic, including the cellist, pianist and composer Franz Schmidt who resented his style and presumed favouritism. The controversy surrounding Mahler marked the beginning of a sustained 20th-century tension in Viennese music between progressive modernist cosmopolitanism and reactionary nativism. In the 1912 Wiener Musikfestwoche, for example, the Vienna Philharmonic did not play a single work by a living Viennese composer. Among the associations formed on behalf of the new were the 1903 Ansorge Verein and the older Hugo Wolf-Verein (1897–1905), as well as the 1908 student-based Akademischer Verband für Literatur und Musik that sponsored concerts. In 1907 Mahler resigned from the opera and accepted a position in New York. His departure became a public scandal and the widest range of Vienna’s élite expressed its dismay and support.
Mahler’s successor at the opera, Felix Weingartner suffered by comparison, despite his outstanding qualities as a conductor and composer who he brought Strauss’s Elektra and Johann Strauss’s Zigeunerbaron into the repertory. He was succeeded in 1911 by Hans Gregor who led the house until the end of World War I. Gregor was not a musician but a brilliant producer who brought Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne and Salome into the repertory, alongside Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Puccini’s La fanciulla del West. During Gregor’s tenure, Lotte Lehmann and Maria Jeritza made their débuts. A retrospective account of the Hofoper repertory from 1869 to 1900 reveals that the most frequently performed works were Aida, L’Africaine, Carmen, Cavalleria rusticana, Der fliegende Holländer, Les Huguenots, Der Freischütz, Lohengrin, Faust, Le prophète and Tannhäuser. This indicates an important distinction between the Viennese audience for instrumental music (the public at the Gesellschaft concerts, the Philharmonic and for chamber music) and for opera. The latter was far less tied to a notion of classicism. But the audience-pleasing spectacle and dramatic accessibility of early Wagner, French grand opera and verismo during the last decades of the century only deepened the suspicion of conservative critics such as Brahms and Billroth that a decline in musical culture had taken place. Local operatic taste fuelled the ambitions of a younger generation, particularly Mahler, to rescue the music in opera by emphasizing the total ensemble and the works of Mozart (and even Haydn, one of whose operas Mahler attempted to revive) and the later works of Wagner.
The demand for more orchestral concerts, already a matter of public debate in the 1890s, led to the founding of the Wiener Konzertverein in 1900. In 1907 the composer and conductor Oskar Nedbal formed the Wiener Tonkünstlerorchester. Unlike the Vienna Philharmonic, these orchestras were not made up of members of the opera orchestra but were the first free-standing professional orchestras in the city. These two organizations were the first orchestras exclusively created for concert performance. Ferdinand Löwe, the protégé of Bruckner, directed the Konzertverein (he also served as director of the Gesellschaft concerts from 1900 to 1904). Löwe emerged as an important figure. He supported new music and brought all of Bruckner’s symphonies to the concert stage using the Konzertverein orchestra. In 1905, along with the Arbeiter-Zeitung music critic Josef David Bach, Schoenberg’s friend and a leading socialist, Löwe helped start the workers’ symphony orchestra concerts, part of an effort (which lasted until 1934) among less conservative musicians to extend concert music to the largest segment of the city, the working classes. A notable event in those concerts was an appearance in 1913 of Furtwängler with George Szell as soloist. Eventually the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft, a new music society, was founded in 1900. A year later, in 1901, Emil Hertzka, who started his career with the Weinberger publishing firm, founded the Universal Edition that was to become a pioneer in the publication of 20th-century music, including that of Schoenberg, Webern, Schreker, Marx and Mahler. The creation of new orchestras and the Konzerthausgesellschaft led to the construction of Vienna’s second major concert hall, the Konzerthaus, in 1913.
1913 marks the end of an era, not only on account of the creation of a new concert hall, but also because of two spectacular events which symbolized the divided character in Vienna’s musical life. Franz Schreker (using an expanded Tonkünstlerorchester and the Philharmonischer Chor, founded in 1907) conducted two enormously successful performances of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Nonetheless, in March 1913 Schoenberg conducted a performance of music by himself, Berg, Webern, Zemlinsky and Mahler at which a riot took place requiring police intervention.
The most important new factor in musical life in the immediate postwar years was the new Konzerthausgesellschaft. It was directed until the Anschluss by Hugo Botstiber. Nedbal remained active until 1917. Owing to the post-World War I political and financial crises, the two new orchestras created at the beginning of the century merged in 1921 into the Wiener Sinfonie Orchester and ultimately, in 1933, into the Wiener Symphoniker (the Vienna SO). Löwe led the combined orchestra until 1924. This orchestra provided the concerts at the new Konzerthaus; its repertory was less conservative than that of the Gesellschaft or Philharmonic. The new orchestras of Vienna that ultimately merged were responsible for the first performances of works by Dohnányi, Elgar, Franck, Pfitzner, Sibelius, Debussy, Bartók, Busoni, Reger, Szymanowski and Skryabin. The aesthetic agenda was not only progressive, it challenged a distinct local provincial prejudice on behalf of German and Austrian composers. The new society also sought to offer popular concerts at low prices (continuing in a more serious vein a tradition begun in the late 19th century by Eduard Strauss at the Musikverein and later by Löwe before the war with the Konzertverein orchestra), including Tuesday events in the Volksgarten. Eventually, beginning in 1933, the new orchestra also spun off a group to broadcast lighter music on the state radio and consented to have its regular concerts broadcast. In the absence of imperial patronage and with the creation of a republic with a city government controlled by socialists, the economic support for musical life was in disarray after 1918. The pre-war populist agenda of the Konzerthausgesellschaft and the new orchestras and the fact that some concert life continued uninterrupted through the war years gave some glimmer of optimism despite the evident difficulties. Furtwängler became a primary conductor in 1919; the orchestra gave a complete Mahler cycle under Oskar Fried in 1921. Between 1921 and 1933 conductors included Leopold Reichwein, Clemens Krauss, Paul von Klenau, Knappertsbusch and Walter. Oswald Kabasta took over as music director in 1933.
The Gesellschaft’s economic situation had become precarious before 1914. In 1909 the conservatory was turned into a state institution; the viability of private support had run its course. Löwe was the conservatory’s director after the war. However, the leading figures in conservatory education in the 1920s and early 1930s were the composers Joseph Marx and Franz Schmidt. The open conflicts surrounding Mahler and Schoenberg before 1914 had created a division between modernism and neo-romanticism; that division ran parallel with implicit and explicit anti-Semitism. The protagonists of the new, notably Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Wellesz and Eduard Steuermann, were either Jews or allied with Jews; the defenders of tradition, Marx and Schmidt, were Catholic and thoroughly Austrian. The postwar era heightened the old debate. Austrian identity, cultural and political, in a post-monarchical era was now at issue. The new republic was for the first time linguistically homogeneous; the Jews became the leading minority. Arguments for unification with Germany recurred between 1918 and 1938. At the same time, in the construction of a new Austrian cultural ideal, Marx and Schmidt served as foils against a seemingly rootless and lawless ‘foreign’ modernism. Ultimately, by 1926, Schoenberg and Schreker had abandoned Vienna, having taken up posts teaching in Berlin. Berlin replaced Vienna as the centre of modernism, even though Wellesz, Webern and Berg remained tied to Vienna.
However, immediately after the war the eventual victory of the conservative musical and critical community and audience was still uncertain. Modernists rallied to the socialist cause. In 1918 Schoenberg and Berg organized a utopian rival notion of concert life through the Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen. This evoked the exclusive traditions of intimate connoisseurship and enthusiasm for new music characteristic of the era of Haydn and Beethoven. Initially its concerts were closed to all but members. No critics were permitted and no applause allowed. Ultimately the society gave some public concerts. It performed a staggering number of new works, many in reduced arrangements for small ensemble and multiple keyboards. Even music by J.M. Hauer was presented, who later developed his own 12-note system and, like Schoenberg, conceived of music as closely allied to painting (notably that of Johannes Itten). Transcriptions of music by Johann Strauss and Mahler (including a Zemlinsky arrangement of the Sixth Symphony for two pianos) were included. The society was unable to continue beyond 1921.
The brief enthusiasm for modernism in the immediate postwar years dissipated throughout the 1920s; as early as 1921 Paul Stefan observed, ‘new music in Vienna has beaten a long retreat’. It gradually gave way to the triumph of reactionary aesthetics and politics. This can be observed despite the quality and reach of key pro-modernist periodicals, Der Merker (1909–22; founded by Ludwig Hevesi, the advocate of the Secession whose music editor was Richard Specht, the author of monographs on Mahler and Strauss), the Musikblätter des Anbruchs (1919–37), and Pult und Taktstock (1924–30; edited by Erwin Stein, a Schoenberg pupil). In 1932 Willi Reich, who studied with Berg, founded 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift, designed to combat the smug conservative journalistic critical discourse on music of the day. The modernist movement was given impetus by two chamber music ensembles, the Kolisch Quartet, led by Rudolf Kolisch, and the younger Galimir Quartet. The Kolisch Quartet gave premières of works by Berg, Webern, Bartók and Schoenberg (playing from memory), as did the Galimir ensemble (led by Felix Galimir with his sisters) which also championed the music of younger composers.
In the area of music history, Adler continued to dominate the scene, producing several generations of scholars and scholar composers, including Hans Gál. The fine archival and editorial standard set by Eusebius Mandyczewski, the long-time archivist of the Gesellschaft and friend of Brahms, remained intact even after Mandyczewski’s death in 1929. It was in the postwar era that Heinrich Schenker produced and published his seminal work in music theory. He had been a teacher, editor, critic and composer before the war. But his major contributions to analysis date from a postwar environment in which the defence of tonality and its formal consequences was at the centre of the debate over 20th-century music. Schoenberg and Schenker had both written harmony treatises before the war. They both celebrated the significance of Brahms and both were critical of contemporary habits of listening. But they diverged fundamentally with regard to the possibilities for the future. Schenker edited the periodical Der Tonwille between 1921 and 1924.
The role of the Gesellschaft as guardian of tradition in the postwar era was mirrored in its programmes which included a German Bach festival in 1914, a Schubert festival in 1923, a Johann Strauss centenary in 1925, the Beethoven centenary in 1927, a second Schubert festival in 1929 and a Brahms celebration in 1933. With respect to contemporary music, its tastes in the 1920s were limited to Reger and Richard Strauss. The pivotal figure in the first postwar years was Franz Schalk, who led the Gesellschaft concerts until 1921; he was succeeded by Furtwängler, who stayed until 1934. Other conductors included Robert Heger and Reichwein. Criticism in Vienna after 1918 sustained the more conservative direction of the pre-war era. Julius Korngold, Hanslick’s successor at the Neue Freie Presse, had little use for Schoenberg and focused on the fortunes of his son, the prodigy Erich Wolfgang, whose brilliant operatic music made him a rival to Richard Strauss in a new generation. Other notable critics of the era included Max Graf, Paul Stefan, Heinrich von Kralik and Elsa Bienefeld.
During the postwar era the Vienna PO worked under Weingartner until 1927; his long tenure was followed briefly by Furtwängler and then by Krauss. Richard Strauss toured with the orchestra and was a frequent guest. The orchestra, organized as a self-governing body, provided the appropriate patriotic service during the war and continued to give concerts. Despite its historicist leanings, in the 1920s works by Stravinsky and Ravel were programmed. Not surprisingly, however, most of the new music presented was of conservative or local character: works by Marx, Julius Bittner, Richard Strauss, Reger, Respighi, Gustav Holst, Korngold, Bloch and Pfitzner. During the postwar period the Vienna PO began to exploit an international aura as an authentic link to the Viennese classical past, through tours and its service at the Salzburg Festival from 1925 on. It cultivated a well-rehearsed conceit about its sound, instruments and interpretative traditions. This self-appointed role as guardian of an authentic Viennese sound world and legacy, which led to the rewriting of its actual historical relationship to Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler, would dovetail all too neatly in the 1930s with Austrian fascism and Nazism.
Of all Vienna’s musical institutions, the opera was the most directly affected by the fall of the monarchy in 1918. The Hofoper became a state institution, the Staatsoper. It now had a rival, the Volksoper, which Zemlinsky directed until 1911. In 1919 Weingartner, once director of the Hofoper, took charge at the Volksoper and Franz Schalk (who, together with his brother Josef and Ferdinand Löwe, had been a loyal advocate and disciple of Bruckner) assumed control with Richard Strauss (who signed a five-year contract) at the Staatsoper on the Ring. Schalk and Strauss brought new works to the stage. During the war, in 1917, Jenůfa had been produced. But from 1919 to 1924 the public encountered works that were either new or had never been performed in Vienna, by Pfitzner, Schreker, Weingartner, Puccini, Korngold, Bittner, Zemlinsky, Richard Strauss (including his ballet Schlagobers and his reworking of Beethoven’s Die Ruinen von Athen), Kienzl and Walter Braunfels. The arrangement with Strauss was inherently unstable and Schalk assumed sole control until 1929. Schalk continued his innovative policies, bringing several Strauss operas and works by Krenek, Hindemith, Ravel and Korngold to the stage. He also produced the first Viennese Boris Godunov, Andrea Chénier (in a translation by Kalbeck) and La forza del destino in a German version written by Franz Werfel. Alfred Roller continued to design productions and the standard of singing and sets remained extraordinarily high. Some productions took place in the Redoutensaal in the Hofburg. Clemens Krauss succeeded Schalk and remained until 1934. Krauss brought in more light opera, including works by Lehár, Suppé, Jaromír Weinberger and Heuberger. Wozzeck was first heard in 1930, and Mozart’s Idomeneo in 1931. Noted for his collaboration with Lothar Wallenstein, Krauss understood the forces of aesthetic and political reaction on the rise in German-speaking Europe after the financial crises of the later 1920s and readily catered to them. In 1927, when Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf was produced, a public protest was staged, organized by the Nazi movement, accusing the opera house, ‘the pride of all Viennese’ and ‘the pre-eminent cultural institution of the world’, of ‘succumbing’ to a ‘vulgar Jewish-Negro defilement’. With Schalk, the last great era of using the leading Viennese opera house to present new works passed.
The Vienna of the late 1920s and early 30s continued its romance with operetta and new forms of dance music. In response to this widespread local craze for the traditions of Viennese operetta, Korngold created, with Julius Bittner, a pastiche of music by Johann Strauss and turned it into the Singspiel Walzer aus Wien, which opened in 1930. Korngold added a tango and other contemporary touches in harmonizations evocative of the commercial popular music of the day. Korngold and Bittner offered an explicit sympathetic expression of the unique Viennese lightheartedness and, in its natural affinity with song and dance, musicality. Over 150 new operetta productions opened in Vienna between 1919 and 1934. During the war years alone nearly 100 new operetta productions opened. Yet beneath this alluring surface of carefree spirit and love of music and nature was a bitterness and resentment within Vienna concerning the direction of musical culture and the identity of its protagonists that would bring disastrous consequences between 1934 and 1945.
Since 1922 tension had existed between the Christian socialists and the Socialist party. A general strike took place in 1927, and in 1931, as a result of the failure of a customs union project with Germany, the leading bank of Austria collapsed. Christian socialism triumphed throughout the country, bolstered by nationalism and by a domestic fascist movement. Yet throughout the interwar period Vienna was the centre of Austrian socialism, despite the strength of local Christian socialism and pan-German sentiment. Dollfuss formed a new government in 1932, based on an anti-socialist coalition. In 1933 he dissolved parliament and curtailed civil liberties. The Austrian attempt to compete with the growing popularity of the Nazis failed as Hitler and the domestic Nazi party became openly defiant of what had clearly emerged as Austro-fascism. By the end of 1934, both the Nazi party and the socialist party were banned. The self-governing autonomy of Vienna (a legacy of its unique status as an imperial city during the monarchy), which had sustained cultural life during the interwar period, was taken away. A Nazi coup failed after Dollfuss’s assassination in July 1934. In its wake, from 1934 to 1938, a semi-fascist, single-party state existed, with both Nazis and socialists relegated to underground status. However, the Vienna PO, whose membership had become more rabidly nationalistic, quickly became heavily nazified, as did many other Austrian cultural institutions. Anti-Semitism, long a festering problem, exploded. As the late 19th century had made clear, despite the relative success of the socialist movement in Vienna, the lure of a non-internationalist mix of nativism and socialism was far more powerful. Between 1934 and 1938 the Gesellschaft concerts gave an inkling of what would dominate during the Nazi period: a thoroughly anti-modern repertory. During this period the leading composer of international stature in Vienna was undoubtedly Berg. Webern was the other major figure who represented the new traditions of Viennese modernism. Neither were Jews. Berg died in 1935. However, in the one performance of his Violin Concerto in Vienna, the entire Philharmonic staged a protest, not only against the Jewish soloist Krasner and conductor Klemperer, but against Berg’s music as representative of the sort of insidious Jewish cultural bolshevism derided by the Nazis. The only other work by Berg to be performed after 1934 were excerpts from Lulu in December 1935. Representative of modern music was Franz Schmidt, whose Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln was enthusiastically received at its première in June 1938, shortly after the Anschluss. No modernist music was heard at the opera. The conservative tradition was represented by the music of Richard Strauss, Wolf-Ferrari, Kienzl, Franz Salmhofer, Respighi and Weinberger. Certainly, Austria became a refuge for many musicians fleeing Nazi Germany after 1933, including Walter, who briefly worked at the opera between 1936 and 1938, and Klemperer. Walter also conducted during this period at the Vienna PO. But the longer term outlook was grim. The one modernist figure without connection to the Schoenberg circle, Hauer, worked in the 1930s in obscurity. Webern, was eventually cut off from all work, despite considerable acclaim as a conductor, and his music was left unperformed.
The Anschluss of March 1938, therefore, reflects not a radical change, but a logical conclusion to interwar politics. Jews were removed from musical life and fled if they could. Nothing symbolized the ironies inherent in the myth of Vienna’s musical culture and its relationship to modern politics better than the embarrassing necessity faced by the Nazis with respect to the music of Johann Strauss. The baptismal records in the Stephansdom had to be falsified in order to prevent the operettas and waltzes of Strauss, the epitome of local greatness, from being banned.
Among the émigrés were the aged orchestra leader Arnold Rosé; the operetta composer Benatzky; the pianists Serkin, Steuermann, and Paul Wittgenstein; the composers Marcel Rubin (to Mexico), Ernst Toch, Karl Weigl, Paul A. Pisk, Wellesz, Korngold, Zemlinsky and Emmerich Kálmán; the scholars and critics D.J. Bach, Hugo Botstiber, O.E. Deutsch, Karl Geiringer, Hans Gál, Paul Stefan, Eric Werner and Hans F. Redlich; and a staggering number of performers and writers, ranging from Mosco Carner to Rudolf Kolisch, the librettist Alfred Grünwald, Lotte Lehmann, Bernhard Paumgartner, Marcel Prawy, Josef Reitler, Robert Starer and Elisabeth Schumann.
The journalist Hugo Bettauer, who was assassinated in 1925, had published a satirical book in 1922 entitled Eine Stadt ohne Juden: ein Roman für übermorgen (‘A city without Jews: a novel for the day after tomorrow’). That ‘day after tomorrow’ became an immediate reality after 1938. The Gesellschaft was nazified and even the aged Guido Adler was informed that he had been stripped of his honorary membership. The Austrian association of composers was disbanded and replaced by a new organization of ‘German composers from Austria’. The opera house was also purged and nazified as was the Konzerthausgesellschaft. Furtwängler took over the Philharmonic and Kabasta the Gesellschaft concerts along with the Vienna SO concerts at the Konzerthaus. The breach was filled by an embarrassingly large number of distinguished non-Jews, including Karl Böhm, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Sena Jurinac, Rudolf Moralt, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Wilhelm Backhaus, Clemens Krauss, Eugen Jochum, Franz Konwitschny, Josef Kleiberth, Leopold Reichwein, Joseph Marx and Hans Knappertsbusch. Krauss served during the Nazi era as the Hofmusikkapelldirektor. Böhm directed the opera from 1943 to 1945.
During the war years the opera produced music by composers sympathetic to the regime, including Carl Orff, Werner Egk and Franz Lehár. The wartime Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, fancied himself a patron of the arts. Strauss moved to Vienna and participated in the massive 1941 Mozart festival which was designed as a propaganda event. He also celebrated his 80th birthday in the city. Despite his commitment to aesthetic modernism, Webern became an enthusiastic proponent of the Nazis. Webern was not the first or only modernist to attempt an accommodation. Krenek had been an enthusiastic supporter of Dollfuss and his successor Schuschnigg, openly declaring his allegiance to Austro-fascism. However, by 1936 Krenek, a non-Jew, was, unlike Webern, clearheaded enough to choose emigration.
The late 19th-century nostalgia for a pre-industrial Vienna, local ambivalence to modernity and virulent anti-Semitism all found expression in the Viennese enthusiasm for the Anschluss and the arrival of Nazism. The repertory favoured during the war years focused on Bruckner and Schubert; a special emphasis was placed on the music of Reger, Schmidt and Wolf. In the arena of musical scholarship, matters were no better. Nazification extended to musicology and criticism; key representatives were Max Morold, Erich Schenk (who took over the music section at the university), Alfred Orel, Robert Lach (who had joined the Nazi party illegally in 1933) and, above all, Robert Haas, the Nazi who was responsible for the now suspect critical edition of Bruckner. Vienna suffered severley in the final years of the war, during which the opera house was destroyed.
The Staatsoper entered a period of great achievement after the war despite the fact that its building had been destroyed. Productions were staged in the Theater an der Wien and the Volksoper, with Egon Hilbert overseeing the combined administration and guiding the artistic development of both houses. The Viennese Mozart style became famous throughout the world, represented by the conductors Josef Krips and Karl Böhm, the director Oscar Fritz Schuh, and singers such as Sena Jurinac, Hilde Konetzni, Wilma Lipp, Emmy Loose, Irmgard Seefried, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Ljuba Welitsch, Anton Dermota, Hans Hotter, Erich Kunz, Julius Patzak, Paul Schöffler and Ludwig Weber. Mozart’s Italian operas, as well as most foreign works, were sung in German.
The rebuilding of the house on the Ring was undertaken by the architect Erich Boltenstern, the renovated auditorium having a balcony, gallery and three tiers of boxes, with seating for 1642 and standing room for 567. Böhm conducted Fidelio at the reopening on 5 November 1955 and became the new director. The following year Ernst Ansermet conducted one of the Staatsoper’s rare premières, of Frank Martin’s Der Sturm. He resigned the same year after being reproached for excessive absences, and Herbert von Karajan was appointed to replace him. In the six years of Karajan’s single-handed direction, an exceptional number of 20th-century operas (Egk’s Der Revisor, Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, Orff’s Trionfi and Oedipus der Tyrann, Pizzetti’s Assassinio nella cattedrale, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex) and ballets were performed. A feature of Karajan’s years as director was the exchange of productions with La Scala, whereby Italian casts performed some of the Verdi and Puccini operas in Vienna, and Viennese casts took Mozart and Wagner works, and Pelléas et Mélisande, to Milan. From 1962 Karajan was assisted by an associate director, which left him more time for purely artistic concerns: he directed more operas himself (Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser, Die Frau ohne Schatten), introduced the singing of works in their original language and conducted some remarkable performances, including the Ring, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and operas by Verdi and Puccini. In 1963 Hilbert was appointed his associate, but personal tensions led to Karajan’s resignation the following year. Until his retirement in 1967 Hilbert attempted to fill the gap by engaging leading directors: in the last years of his life Wieland Wagner staged memorable performances of Lohengrin, Salome and Elektra. Singers of worldwide reputation contributed to the Staatsoper’s success in the era of Karajan and Hilbert, among them Mimi Coertse, Leontyne Price, Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Gundula Janowitz, Lucia Popp, James King, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry, Eberhard Wächter, Peter Schreier, Nicolai Ghiaurov and some of the most famous Italian singers of the time, including Mirella Freni, Giulietta Simionato, Renata Tebaldi and Giuseppe di Stefano.
In the years that followed, the Staatsoper was placed in the charge of administrative directors, Heinrich Reif-Gintl and Rudolf Gamsjäger, who were unable to prevent a gradual deterioration in artistic standards. This was reflected in the steadily falling number of premières, increasingly rare performances of modern operas (not forgetting, however, the revival of Berg’s Lulu and the successful première of Gottfried von Einem’s Der Besuch der alten Dame as well as the first inclusion of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron in the repertory of the Staatsoper) and a growing number of productions of limited artistic value. After 1966 the occasional appearance of Leonard Bernstein conducting Falstaff, Rosenkavalier and Fidelio was an attraction. In autumn 1976 the directorship of the Staatsoper was taken over by Egon Seefehlner and in 1979 Lorin Maazel’s appointment as conductor was announced with effect from 1982.
Maazel resigned after only two years and Seefehlner continued the directorship temporarily until 1986. From then until 1991 the director was Claus Helmut Drese, who brought with him from Zürich Claudio Abbado as music director. During these years Abbado secured excellent performances of the Italian repertory, including Simon Boccanegra with Giorgio Strehler as stage director, followed by works such as Wozzeck, Pelléas et Mélisande and Khovanshchina. The repertory was extended with more unusual operas by Dvořák, Massenet, Bartók, Schreker (Der ferne Klang) and others. Some elaborate performances have been rehearsed in collaboration with the Salzburg Festival and presented in Vienna immediately after their summer premières in Salzburg. There thus appeared in the 1981 programme Cerha’s Baal, in 1984 Berio’s Un re in ascolto and in 1986 Penderecki’s Die schwarze Maske. After the success of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Monteverdi cycle in Zürich with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting, Drese engaged Harnoncourt for a Mozart cycle, but this was far less successful.
Beginning in the 1991–2 season a new team assumed the management of the Staatsoper: Eberhard Wächter, who also continued as director of the Volksoper, and Joan Holender. The new team declined for the time being to mount new productions, dropped repeated stagings of several recent productions and employed a number of young, less well-known singers. In October 1991 Claudio Abbado laid down his musical directorship of the Staatsoper, apparently in connection with this development; and Wächter died in 1992.
Joan Holender then became director of the Staatsoper and Volksoper, and after the appointment of Klaus Bachler as director of the Volksoper in 1996, he was appointed director of the Staatsoper until the turn of the century. Holender, previously a successful manager of opera singers, brought many well-qualified but hitherto unknown singers to the Staatsoper, in a change to the system of using mainly star casts. He was not so successful with his constant practice of engaging relatively inexperienced conductors. Performances with Riccardo Muti or Christoph von Dohnányi as guest conductors became rare, and even experienced house conductors such as Horst Stein, Peter Schneider and Leopold Hager appeared infrequently. Highlights of this period included the world première of Alfred Schnittke’s Gesualdo and the first performance in Vienna of Britten’s Peter Grimes.
The Volksoper, Vienna’s second resident opera company, like the Staatsoper is open ten months of the year. Although for the first ten years after the war the theatre was used by the Staatsoper for half its productions, from 1955, expensively redecorated, it housed a largely successful attempt to revive the Viennese operetta and, to a lesser extent, to re-create the American musical in spectacular style. When the great popularity of these subsided, the Volksoper concentrated on offering competition to the Staatsoper with standard repertory works in German and presenting musical comedy and operetta. The reforms of the mid-1970s entailed, for both the Volksoper and the Staatsoper, far-reaching autonomy and independence from the state, which, as the assign of the former court government, controlled the allotment of the budget.
The Theater an der Wien, used from 1945 to 1955 for Staatsoper productions, was closed as unsafe in 1955, but was rescued and reopened in 1962 by Hilbert, then director of the Vienna Festival. Since then it has been financed by the city and used for stage productions during the festival (May and June; begun in 1951) and for musicals and operetta during the rest of the year. The Raimundtheater remains true to its traditional fare of Viennese operetta. The Schönbrunn Schlosstheater is used as a rehearsal stage for chamber operas performed by students of the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. The Etablissement Ronacher, opened in 1881 and restored in the 1990s, is a variety theatre which sometimes puts on musical events. Since its foundation in 1952 the Wiener Kammeroper, under the artistic direction of Hans Gabor, followed by Rudolf Berger (from 1995) and Josef Hussek (1997), has played an important part in reviving older works, especially Viennese operas and Singspiele of the 18th and 19th centuries, performing in its own attractive house in the Fleischmarkt, and also in the Schlosstheater at Schönbrunn. Since the 1990s the Kammeroper has performed a number of contemporary works. Contemporary works are also performed in the Jugendstiltheater by the Wiener Operntheater and in the Odeon by Neue Oper Wien and other smaller companies, while the Wiener Taschenoper mounts operas on a small scale in various venues.
The enormous budget of the Staatsoper, unequalled by any comparable institution in the world and borne by means of taxes levied on the whole Austrian nation, is justified by its reputation and international influence. The high standard of performances owes much to the employment of Vienna PO players for the orchestra. The repertory comprises some 45 to 50 standard operas, and except for July and August the company plays daily for the entire year. The number of new productions each season has varied between five and eight, of which one or two are first performances of ballets. Die lustige Witwe (Lehár) was the first operetta to be performed there, in August 1999.
The Vienna PO has remained a private institution into which only members of the orchestra of the Staatsoper are admitted; in the early 1970s it was enlarged to 140 members and in 1997 the orchestra finally voted to admit women. It produces its own concerts and hires the orchestra out for recordings, television and film performances. The orchestra, which has retained its reputation as one of the finest in the world, gives an annual series of concerts in the Grosser Musikvereinssaal normally comprising nine subscription concerts and the annual ‘Nicolai concert’, a benefit performance for the orchestra’s pension fund, in memory of the Philharmonic’s co-founder. Because of the players’ commitments at the Staatsoper in the evenings, the concerts are given on Saturday afternoons (the ‘general rehearsal’, since 1921 open to the public) and on Sunday Mornings. The popularity of the mainly conservative programmes and the excellent performances under prominent conductors have meant that a subscription must virtually be inherited and that other tickets are almost unobtainable. During the period 1945–80 the subscription concerts were directed by various guest conductors, including Walter, Furtwängler, Mitropoulos, Schuricht, Cluytens, Knappertsbusch, Böhm, Karajan, Bernstein and Abbado. The Vienna PO’s tradition of international tours has continued. Also traditional are the orchestra’s concert and opera performances at the Salzburg Festival, and the New Year’s Day concert of waltzes and other dances of the Strauss family, conducted from 1955 by Willi Boskovsky (for many years the orchestra’s leader) and later by such conductors as Karajan, Carlos Kleiber, Muti and Maazel. The concert is broadcast by radio and television throughout most of the world. Since the 1970s contemporary music has been given a higher profile in Vienna PO programmes. Conductors who worked frequently with the orchestra in the 1980s and 1990s included Karajan, Bernstein, Maazel, Muti, Ozawa, Kleiber, Boulez and Solti.
The Vienna SO (126 members), second only to the Philharmonic in reputation, devotes itself exclusively to concerts and is the city’s real concert orchestra. It is engaged by various promoters such as the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF) and particularly the Konzerthausgesellschaft, who are also responsible for choosing the conductor, though they must bear in mind the chief conductor, a position which since 1960 has been held by Sawallisch, Krips, Giulini, Rozhdestvensky, Prêtre, Frühbeck de Burgos and Vladimir Fedosejev. The orchestra, now largely subsidized by the city, has earned distinction for its performances of a wide-ranging repertory, including many modern works.
The Niederösterreichisches Tonkünstlerorchester (94 members), founded in 1947, is committed to the cultural interests of the province of Lower Austria, but it appears in Vienna, giving 12 Sunday afternoon concerts in the Grosser Musikvereinssaal, and makes occasional foreign tours. The orchestra includes works primarily from the Classical and Romantic repertory in its programmes, which aim to reach as wide an audience as possible; the second performances of most of its Vienna concerts are subscribed by the Austrian Trade Union Congress. Fabio Luisi was appointed chief conductor in 1995, followed by Carlos Kalmar in 2000.
The ORF SO (the Austrian RSO, 100 members) was founded in 1969 and primarily serves the radio network. In recent years, however, it has gradually assumed the role of Vienna’s third concert orchestra, also performing in the Austrian provinces and abroad. It is the only Viennese orchestra to specialize intensively in contemporary music and was the first to admit women. Among its principal conductors have been Milan Horvat, Leif Segerstam, Pinchas Steinberg, Luthar Zagrosek and, from 1996, Dennis Russell Davies. The excellent ORF Chorus was dissolved for financial reasons in 1995. The Arnold Schönberg Choir (conductor Erwin Ortner) became a leading ensemble in the 1980s, particularly in Classical and contemporary repertory.
The choir of the Vienna Staatsoper chorus, also professional, has 100 members. The Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor, made up of members of the opera chorus, formerly arranged several concerts of its own each season, but in the 1970s this activity diminished. It appears at the Salzburg Festival as well as in Vienna with the Vienna PO.
The Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, active in the headquarters of that organization and used in the performance of oratorios, is an autonomous body of 250 amateur members. Karajan undertook extensive concert tours with the choir (and with the Vienna SO) in the years immediately after World War II. Recently its role in the city’s concert life, like that of other choral societies, has decreased, but it still performs with the Vienna PO at the Salzburg Festival and occasionally makes recordings and appears in concerts abroad.
The Wiener Singakademie, which comprises 160 amateur singers and until 1974 was affiliated with the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft, has since World War II been especially active in the performance of 20th-century music. The choir has several times sung at the Perugia festival. The Arnold Schönberg Choir and the Chor der Musikalischen Jugend have become prominent in recent years, while other smaller choirs active after the war, such as the Akademie-Kammerchor and the Wiener Kammerchor, have mostly disappeared.
The Wiener Sängerknaben (Vienna Boys’ Choir), although it has always been part of the Hofmusikkapelle, is run as a private institution. The choirboys are trained at a boarding-school, since 1948 in the 16th-century Augarten-Palais, formerly the Palais Leeb. Four choirs are formed from around 100 pupils aged between ten and 14; each choir goes on concert tours for about three months of the year, mostly in Germany and the USA, giving about 300 concerts in total each year. The boys pay for their upkeep out of the fees obtained from their work on tours, with the Staatsoper, from recordings, and from television and radio appearances. Their widely varied repertory is supplemented by comic operas (performed in costume) and folksongs. Norbert Balatsch was appointed musical director of the Vienna Boys’ Choir in 1999.
The Hofmusikkapelle remains the chief institution for sacred music in the city. It consists of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, the men of the Staatsoper chorus and the Vienna PO. The ensemble, which appears under this name only in the Hofburgkapelle (the chapel in the Hofburg) and on its rare tours abroad, is considered to be the legitimate successor of the historic Hofmusikkapelle and is thus the city’s oldest existing musical institution. It performs at High Mass each Sunday; the works of the Viennese Classics (Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven) and Romantics (Schubert and Bruckner) predominate. It falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ministry for Education and Art. Church music is regularly performed in several churches, particularly the Stephansdom and the Augustinerkirche.
Shortly after World War II a number of pianists who now enjoy international reputations began to appear from the Vienna Akademie für Musik; the earliest was Friedrich Gulda, who was followed by Alfred Brendel, Jörg Demus, Alexander Jenner, Paul Badura-Skoda, Rudolf Buchbinder, Stefan Vladar, Till Fellner and others. The long tradition of Viennese string quartets has been carried on since the war by the Schneiderhan, Vienna Konzerthaus, Barylli, Vienna Philharmonic and Weller quartets, most of whose players also belonged to the Vienna PO. Only the Alban Berg Quartet, founded in 1970 and supported by the Alban Berg Foundation, has been able to devote itself entirely to quartet playing. The members of the Küchl Quartet and the Wiener Streichquartett also belong to the Vienna PO. Outstanding among younger Viennese string quartets is the Artis Quartet, formed in 1988. The Wiener Streichtrio and the Wiener Streichsextett are also internationally renowned.
In the early 1950s Vienna became the centre of a movement for the authentic performance of early music on the proper instruments of its period and in a historically faithful style. The movement began at the Akademie für Musik, where Professor Josef Mertin worked as a specialist in the practical and theoretical aspects of performing early music. Some of his pupils have achieved international recognition: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who in 1953 founded the Concentus Musicus, best known for their recordings of Bach and Monteverdi; Eduard Melkus, a distinguished violinist who in 1965 founded the Capella Academica, which he led in Classical and pre-Classical instrumental music; René Clemencic, a virtuoso recorder player, who performed early instrumental and vocal music with his Clemencic Consort, founded in 1968; and Bernhard Klebel, who was similarly active with Ensemble Musica Antiqua, founded (by Clemencic) in 1959 as Musica Antiqua. In 1985 Martin Haselböck founded a period-instrument chamber orchestra, the Wiener Akademie. Important soloists involved in early music have included the harpsichordists Isolde Ahlgrimm and Vera Schwarz and the organists Anton Heiller and Hans Haselböck.
Until the early 1960s there was also an enormous interest in contemporary music, which was met principally with concerts organized by the Konzerthausgesellschaft directed by Egon Seefehlner. Since then financial difficulties and diminishing demand have considerably reduced the opportunities for hearing the works of young Austrian and foreign composers. Still important, however, is the group die reihe, founded by the composer Friedrich Cerha in 1958, which has performed mainly abroad. This group, like Kontrapunkte founded by Peter Keuschnig in 1967, concentrates largely on 20th-century music. Klangforum Wien, founded in 1985, specializes in the performance of new works. The ensemble Wiener Collage, whose members are mostly members of the PO, performs contemporary music. The chief vehicle for contemporary music is the ORF, which sponsors contemporary music concerts, many of them public, without having to rely on a paying audience. Smaller associations, such as the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik and the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Zeitgenössische Musik also give valuable support to 20th-century music, as does the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Musik, with its lectures and congresses. MICA, a state subsidised documentation centre primarily for new music in Austria, who founded in 1995. Other music societies include the Gesellschaft der Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger (AKM), which looks after the payment of royalties, the Österreichischer Musikrat, a governmental advisory body, and societies that promote performances of works by specific composers (Mozart-Gemeinde, Beethoven-Gesellschaft, Bruckner-Gesellschaft etc.)
The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (also known simply as the Musikverein, as is the building which houses its halls and offices) continues to organize several series of concerts each season; normally two of these series are performed twice, one of choral-orchestral works and one of symphonic works, and employ the Vienna SO or, less frequently, the Vienna PO, the ORF SO or visiting orchestras. In addition to a further cycle of orchestral works, the society organizes a series of concerts using the organ of the Grosser Saal, and several cycles of chamber music (including lieder recitals) in the Brahmssaal.
Like the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the Konzerthausgesellschaft organizes concerts and gives some six or eight cycles each year; at least one of these is of orchestral works, most often involving the Vienna SO, and others include piano and lieder recitals, chamber music and organ recitals. Since 1945 the Konzerthausgesellschaft has effectively served the Viennese public’s desire to ‘catch up’ by its presentation of international contemporary music, by bringing about a Mahler renaissance and by its intensive support for the music of the Second Viennese School as well as for both the Austrian and the international avant garde. Correspondingly, the number of first performances sponsored by the society is far higher than that of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The Musikalische Jugend Österreichs gives some 400 performances in Vienna every season, including many orchestral concerts.
Since the recent reorganization of its orchestra, the ORF has played an increasing role in the city’s musical life. Its concerts, which are open to the public, take place partly in the studio (250 seats) and partly in the halls of the Musikverein or the Konzerthaus. Because of its financial independence the ORF has the resources to support modern music and to promote the works of Austrian composers, and even its programmes aimed at a wider audience emphasize 20th-century music. The ORF is also valuable for its intensive collaboration with the other concert organizers, some of whose concerts it broadcasts and supports financially. Vienna puts on several hundred musical events each summer in palaces, museums, halls and in the park of Schönbrunn palace.
The Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen), which has taken place annually in May and June since 1951, was previously held between 1927 and 1937, when it was unable to compete with the better-established Salzburg Festival. The Vienna Festival of the postwar years, a registered association subsidized chiefly by the city, attempts at the end of each concert season (the peak time for tourism) to present a concentrated sampling of Vienna’s outstanding cultural activities. This involves, apart from theatre, music in particular and recently has included an increasing amount of ballet. Since 1963 the Theater an der Wien has been used for opera and ballet performances by visiting companies and occasionally for independent local productions of opera. The first postwar Viennese production of Berg’s Lulu was given during the directorship of Hilbert (1962–3). Generally the management largely relies for attractions on the city’s permanent concert organizers, like the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the Konzerthausgesellschaft, who in alternate years make their own music festivals coincide with the larger Vienna Festival. In 1998 a large-scale Arnold Schoenberg centre was set up in Vienna. The centre administers Schoenberg’s estate and contains a library, an archive and performance rooms. Its president is Nuria Schönberg-Nono. An autumn festival of contemporary music, Wien Modern, was established in 1988, with Abbado as music director. Each festival provides a comprehensive survey of the music of four or five composers. In 1995 a Herbert von Karajan centre was set up in the city; it provides an archival record of the conductor’s work and organizes informal conferences and events for young people.
The Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst (until 1998 the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst), now housed in several buildings in the city, was raised to the status of a Hochschule in 1970 and confers university-level degrees. There are approximately 3000 students and 320 instructors; apart from vocal, instrumental and conducting tuition, there are classes for drama (Max-Reinhardt-Seminar), film and television studies, the sociology of music and 12-note technique. The department of composition, music theory and conducting has been affiliated to the Institut für Elektroakustik und experimentelle Musik. The most prestigious Viennese competition is the Beethoven Piano Competition, held in the Hochschule every four years.
The Konservatorium der Stadt Wien, taken over by the city in 1938, offers professional training in all branches of music. It maintains 16 local music schools and a children’s singing school.
The Musikwissenschaftliches Institut of the university, which has a strong philological and historical bias, offers the PhD degree; in 1996 Gernot Gruber succeeded Ottmar Wessely as the institute’s director. A chair of ethnomusicology, founded at the institute in 1908, was re-established in 1963. The institute has a comprehensive library. Other exceptionally endowed music libraries in the city belong to the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (recent librarians have included Leopold Nowak and Franz Grasberger), the Wiener Stadtbibliothek, the Universität für Musik and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The Österreichische Nationalbibliothek houses the Photogramm-Archiv assembled by Antony van Hoboken, of whose extensive private collection the eminent scholar Otto Erich Deutsch was librarian. The music collection of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, among the most important in the world, contains some 50,000 manuscripts, 115,000 items of printed music and 50,000 music books.
A grove of honour was created in Vienna’s central cemetery in the 19th century. It contains the graves of about 60 composers, including those of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wolf and Schoenberg.
A General studies. B Hofkapelle. C Opera and other musical theatre. D Concert life. E Genres and styles. F Music education. G Publishers. H Instrument making. I Vienna and its composers. J Other studies.
c: opera and other musical theatre
Wienerstadt: Lebensbilder aus der Gegenwart (Vienna, 1895)
J. Mantuani: Geschichte der Musik in Wien, i: Von den Römerzeiten bis zum Tode des Kaisers Max I. (Vienna, 1904) [no more pubd]
A. Schnerich: Geschichte der Musik in Wien und Niederösterreich (Vienna, 1921)
M. Graf: Legend of a Musical City (New York, 1945)
E. Schenk: Kleine Wiener Musikgeschichte (Vienna, 1946, 2/1947)
G. Gugitz: Bibliographie zur Geschichte und Stadtkunde von Wien (Vienna, 1946–58)
R. Valerian: Wiener Musik: ihr Wesen und Werden (Vienna, 1947)
H. Gál: The Golden Age of Vienna (New York, 1948)
A. Witeschnik: Musik aus Wien: die Geschichte einer Weltbezauberung (Vienna, 1949)
A. Orel: Musikstadt Wien (Vienna and Stuttgart, 1953)
E. Gartenberg: Vienna: its Musical Heritage (State College, PA, 1968)
J.-L. Mayer: Die politischen und sozialen Hintergründe von Musik und Musikpflege in Wien in den Jahren 1840 bis 1880 (diss., U. of Vienna, 1978)
E. Ostleitner: Musiksoziographie in Österreich (Vienna, 1980)
E. Neilsen, ed.: Focus on Vienna 1900: Change and Continuity in Literature, Music, Art and Intellectual History (Munich, 1982)
L. Botstein: Music and its Public: Habits of Listening and the Crisis of Musical Modernism in Vienna, 1870–1914 (diss., Harvard U., 1985)
F. Endler: Musik in Wien, Musik aus Wien: eine kleine Wiener Musikgeschichte (Vienna, 1985)
R. Gerlach: Musik und Jugendstil der Wiener Schule, 1900–1908 (Laaber, 1985)
A.M. Hanson: Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge, 1985; rev. Ger. trans., Vienna, 1987)
R. Waissenberger: Die Wiener Sezession, 1897–1985 (Vienna, 1986)
D. Beales: Joseph II, i: In the Shadow of Maria Theresia, 1740–80 (Cambridge, 1987)
H. Kretschmer: Wiener Musikergedenkstätten (Vienna, 1988, /R1990)
F. Endler: Vienna: a Guide to its Music and Musicians (Portland, OR, 1989)
J.A. Rice: ‘Vienna under Joseph II and Leopold II’, Man & Music: the Classical Era, ed. N. Zaslaw (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1989), 126–65
R. Stephan, ed.: Die Wiener Schule (Darmstadt, 1989)
H.-L. de la Grange: Vienne: histoire musicale, i: 1100–1848 (Arles, 1990); ii: 1848 à nos jours (Arles, 1991)
A. Weikert: Musik-Spaziergang in Wien (Vienna, 1991)
S. Wollenberg: ‘Vienna under Joseph I and Charles VI’, Man & Music: the Late Baroque Era: from the 1680s to 1740, ed. G.J. Buelow (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1993), 324–54
R. Flotzinger and G. Gruber: Musikgeschichte Österreichs, ii: Vom Barock zum Vormärz, iii: Von der Revolution 1848 zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 1995)
D. Heartz: Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 1740–1780 (New York, 1995)
D. Beales: ‘Court, Government and Society in Mozart’s Vienna’,Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. S. Sadie (Oxford, 1996), 3–20
P. Ebner and others: Strukturen des Musiklebens in Wien: zum musikalischen Vereinsleben in der Ersten Republik (Frankfurt and New York, 1996)
Music imperialis: 500 Jahre Hofmusikkapelle in Wien 1498–1998, Die Musiksammlung der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, 11 May–10 Nov 1998 (Tutzing, 1998) [exhibition catalogue]
L. von Köchel: Die kaiserliche Hof-Musikkapelle in Wien von 1543 bis 1867 (Vienna, 1869)
C. Wolfsgruber: Die k.u.k. Hofburgkapelle und die k.u.k. geistliche Hofkapelle (Vienna, 1905)
A. Koczirz: ‘Excerpte aus den Hofmusikakten des Wiener Hofkammerarchivs’, SMw, i (1913), 278–303
A. Smijers: ‘Die kaiserliche Hofmusik-Kapelle von 1543 bis 1619’, SMw, vi (1919), 139–86; vii (1920), 102–42; viii (1921), 166–75; ix (1922), 43–81 [pubd separately (Vienna, 1922)]
P. Nettl: ‘Zur Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Hofmusik-Kapelle von 1636 bis 1680’, SMw, xvi (1929), 70–85; xvii (1930), 95–104; xviii (1931), 23–35; xix (1932), 33–40
A. Koczirz: ‘Die Auflösung der Hofmusikkapelle nach dem Tode Kaiser Maximilians I.’, ZMw, xiii (1930–31), 531–40
O. zur Nedden: ‘Zur Geschichte der Musik am Hofe Kaiser Maximilians I.’, ZMw, xv (1932–3), 24–32
F.J. Grobauer: Die Nachtigallen aus der Wiener Burgkapelle (Horn, 1954)
G. Reichert: ‘Die Preces primariae-Register Maximilians I. und seine Hofkapelle um 1508’, AMw, xi (1954), 103–19
O. Wessely: ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der maximilianischen Hofkapelle’, AÖAW, xcii (1955), 370–88
H. Federhofer: ‘Die Niederländer an den Habsburgerhöfen in Österreich’,AÖAW, xciii (1956), 102–20
O. Wessely: ‘Archivalische Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte des maximilianischen Hofes’, SMw, xxiii (1956), 79–134
H. Knaus: ‘Wiener Hofquartierbücher als biographische Quelle für Musiker des 17. Jahrhunderts’, AÖAW, cii (1965), 178–206
F. Riedel: Die Musiker im Archivbestand des kaiserlichen Obersthofmeisteramtes (1637–1705) (Vienna, 1967–9)
F. Riedel: ‘Die Musiker in den geheimen kaiserlichen Kammerzahlamts-Rechnungsbüchern (1669, 1705–1711)’, AÖAW, cvi (1969), 15–38
F.W. Riedel: Kirchenmusik am Hof Karls VI. (1711–40): Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Zeremoniell und musikalischen Stil im Barockzeitalter (Habilitationsschrift, U. of Mainz, 1971)
W. Pass: Musik und Musiker am Hof Maximilians II. (Habilitationsschrift, U. of Vienna, 1972)
H. Herrmann-Schneider: Status und Funktion des Hofkapellmeisters in Wien, 1848–1918 (Innsbruck, 1981)
R. Steurer: Das Repertoire der Wiener Hofmusikkapelle im 19. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1998)
M. Kalbeck: Wiener Opernabende (Berlin and Vienna, 1884–5)
O. Teuber: Das k.k. Hofburgtheater seit seiner Begründung (Vienna,1896)
A. von Weilen: Geschichte des Wiener Theaterwesens von den ältesten Zeiten bis zu den Anfängen der Hoftheater (Vienna, 1899)
A. von Weilen: Zur Wiener Theatergeschichte (Vienna, 1901)
R. Wallaschek: Das k.k. Hofoperntheater (Vienna, 1909)
R. Smekal: Das alte Burgtheater 1776–1888 (Vienna, 1916)
R. Specht: Das Wiener Operntheater: von Dingelstedt bis Schalk und Strauss (Vienna, 1919)
E. Wellesz: Der Beginn des musikalischen Barock und die Anfänge der Oper in Wien (Vienna and Leipzig, 1922)
R. Haas: Gluck und Durazzo im Burgtheater (Zurich, Leipzig and Vienna, 1925)
R. Haas: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna and Budapest, 1926)
F. Hadamowsky: Das Theater in der Leopoldstadt 1781–1860 (Vienna, 1934)
O. Deleglise: Das Schönbrunner Schlosstheater (Vienna, 1947)
F. Farga: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1947)
F. Hadamowsky and H. Otte: Die Wiener Operette (Vienna, 1947)
W. Beetz: Das Wiener Opernhaus: 1869 bis 1945 (Zurich, 1949, 2/1955 as Das Wiener Opernhaus: 1869 bis 1955)
A. Bauer: 150 Jahre Theater an der Wien (Zürich, Leipzig and Vienna,1952)
E. Pirchan, A. Witeschnik and O. Fritz: 300 Jahre Wiener Operntheater (Vienna, 1953)
A. Bauer: Opern und Operetten in Wien: Verzeichnis ihrer Erstaufführungen von 1629 bis zur Gegenwart (Graz and Cologne, 1955)
M. Graf: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1955)
A. Bauer: Das Theater in der Josefstadt zu Wien (Vienna and Munich, 1957)
T. Jauner: Fünf Jahre Wiener Operntheater: 1875–1880, Franz Jauner und seine Zeit (Vienna, 1962)
H. Kralik: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1963)
F. Hadamowsky: Die Wiener Hoftheater (Staatstheater), i: 1766–1810; ii: Die Wiener Hofoper (Staatsoper), 1811–1974 (Vienna, 1966–75)
O.E. Deutsch: ‘Das Repertoire der höfischen Oper, der Hof- und der Staatsoper’, ÖMz, xxiv (1969), 369, 379–421
M. Prawy: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1969)
O. Michtner: Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne (Vienna, 1970)
G. Zechmeister: Die Wiener Theater nächst der Burg und dem Kärntnerthor von 1747–1776 (Vienna, 1971)
P. Branscombe: ‘Music in the Viennese Popular Theatre of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, PRMA, xcviii (1971–2), 101–12
H.-C. Hoffmann, W. Krause and W. Kitlitschka: Das Wiener Opernhaus (Wiesbaden, 1972)
E. Badura-Skoda: ‘The Influence of the Viennese Popular Comedy on Haydn and Mozart’, PRMA, c (1973–4), 185–99
F. Willnauer: Gustav Mahler und die Wiener Oper (Vienna and Munich, 1979, 2/1993)
K. Blaukopf: ‘Music and Opera’, Vienna 1890–1920, ed. R. Waissenberger (New York, 1984), 215–46
N. Tschulik: Musiktheater in Österreich: die Oper im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1984)
I. Bontinck: Angebot, Repertoire und Publikum des Musiktheaters in Wien und Graz (Vienna, 1985)
H. Seifert: Die Oper am Wiener Kaiserhof im 17. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1985)
A. Seebohm, ed.: Die Wiener Oper: 350 Jahre Glanz und Tradition (Vienna, 1986)
J.A. Rice: Emperor and Impresario: Leopold II and the Transformation of Viennese Musical Theatre (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1987)
F. Hadamowsky: Wien, Theatergeschichte: von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna, 1988)
H. Seifert: Der Sig-prangende Hochzeit-Gott: Hochzeitsfeste am wiener Hof der Habsburger und ihre Allegorik 1622–1699 (Vienna, 1988)
M. Lichtfuss: Operette im Ausverkauf: Studien zum Libretto des musikalischen Unterhaltungstheaters im Österreich der Zwischenkriegszeit (Vienna and Cologne, 1989)
Die Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna, 1990)
R. Farkas, ed.: Das Musiktheater um die Jahrhundertwende: Wien-Budapest um 1900 (Vienna, 1990)
B.A. Brown: Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford, 1991)
C.H. Drese: Im Palast der Gefühle: Erfahrungen aus den Enthüllungen eines Wiener Operndirektors (Munich, 1993)
S. Rode-Breymann: Die Wiener Staatsoper in den Zwischenkriegsjahren: ihr Beitrag zum zeitgenössischen Musiktheater (Tutzing, 1994)
M. Czáky: ‘Der soziale und kulturelle Kontext der Wiener Operette’, Johann Strauss: zwischen Kunstanspruch und Volksvergnügen, ed. L. Finscher and A. Riethmüller (Darmstadt, 1995), 28–65
E. Grossegger: Gluck and d’Afflisio: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Verpachtung des Burgtheaters (1765/7–1770): Festgabe der Kommission für Theatergeschichte zum 75. Geburtstag von Margret Dietrich (Vienna, 1995)
H. Hoyer: Chronik der Wiener Staatsoper 1945–1995 (Vienna and Munich, 1995)
M. Czáky: Ideologie der Operette und Wiener Moderne: ein kulturhistorischer Essay zur österreichischen Identität (Vienna, 1996)
F. Pirani: ‘Operatic Links Between Rome and Vienna, 1776–1790’,Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. S. Sadie (Oxford, 1996), 395–402
W. Sinkovicz: Das Haus am Ring: die Wiener Oper (Vienna, c1996)
L. Fall and others: Zur Geschichte der Wiener Operette: Autographen, Photographien und Dokumente aus den Nachlässen (Vienna, 1997)
K. Bachler: Die Volksoper: das Wiener Musiktheater (Vienna, 1998)
P. Hanák: ‘The Cultural Role of the Vienna-Budapest Operetta’, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton, NJ, 1998), 133–46
H. Helbing, ed.: Die Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna, 1999)
E. Hanslick: Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna, 1869)
C.F. Pohl: Denkschrift aus Anlass des hundertjährigen Bestehens der Tonkünstler-Societät (Vienna, 1871)
C.F. Pohl: Die Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde des österreichischen Kaiserstaates und ihr Conservatorium (Vienna, 1871)
K. Hofmann: Der Wiener Männergesangverein (Vienna, 1893)
A.J.G. Böhm: Geschichte des Singvereines (Vienna, 1908)
R. von Perger and R. Hirschfeld: Geschichte der k.k. Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Vienna, 1912)
A. Weiss: Fünfzig Jahre Schubertbund (Vienna, 1913)
H. Kralik: Die Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna, 1938, enlarged 2/1951 as Das grosse Orchester, enlarged 4/1960 as Die Wiener Philharmoniker und ihre Dirigenten)
W. Jerger: Die Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna, 1942)
H. Kralik: Das Buch der Musikfreunde (Vienna, 1951)
D. Schönfeldt: Die Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna, 1956)
F. Grasberger: Die Wiener Philharmoniker bei Johann Strauss (Vienna, 1963)
A. Planyavsky: ‘Die vor-philharmonische Zeit’, ÖMz, xxii (1967), 74–111
H. Weigel: Das Buch der Wiener Philharmoniker (Salzburg, 1967)
Hundert Jahre goldener Saal (Vienna, 1970) [anniversary pubn on the Grosser Musikvereinssaal]
W. Weber: Music and the Middle Classes: the Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris, and Vienna (New York, 1975)
80 Jahre Wiener Symphoniker, 1900–1980 (Vienna, 1980)
F.C. Heller and P. Revers: Wiener Konzerthaus: Geschichte und Bedeutung, 1913–1983 (Vienna, 1983)
J.K. Meibach: Schoenberg’s ‘Society for Musical Private Performances’, Vienna 1918–1922: a Documentary Study (diss., U. of Pittsburgh, 1984)
H.-K. Metzger and R. Riehn: Schönbergs Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Munich, 1984)
H. and K. Blaukopf: Die Wiener Philharmoniker: Wesen, Werden, Wirken eines grossen Orchesters (Vienna, 1986)
N. Petrat: Hausmusik des Biedermeier im Blickpunkt der zeitgenössischen musikalischen Fachpresse, 1815–1848 (Hamburg, 1986)
E. Ramminger: Die Wiener Musiksgesangsvereine (diss., U. of Vienna, 1989)
Klang und Komponist: Vienna 1990
E. Kobau: Die Wiener Symphoniker: eine sozialgeschichtliche Studie (Vienna, 1991)
C. Hellsberg: Demokratie der Könige: die Geschichte der Wiener Philharmoniker (Zürich and Vienna, 1992)
M.S. Morrow: Concert Life in Haydn’s Vienna: Aspects of a Developing Musical and Social Institution (New York, 1992) [see also review by D. Edge in Haydn Yearbook, xvii (1992), 108–66]
G. Lechleitner and H. Kowar: ‘Musikleben im Verborgenen: Hausmusik und Hauskonzert in Wien’, ÖMz, xlvii (1993), 401–12
T. Angyan, O. Biba and M. Wagner, eds.: Goldene Klänge: Künstler im Musikverein (Vienna, 1995)
C. Pete: Geschichte der Wiener Tonkünstler-Societät (diss., U. of Vienna, 1996)
G. Adler: ‘Zur Geschichte der Wiener Messkomposition in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, SMw, iv (1916), 5–45
I. Pollak-Schlaffenberg: ‘Die Wiener Liedmusik von 1778–1789’, SMw, v (1918), 97–151
J. Torbé: Die weltliche Solokantate in Wien um die Wende des 17.–18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1920)
P. Nettl: ‘Die Wiener Tanzkomposition in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, SMw, viii (1921), 45–165
P. Stefan: Neue Musik in Wien (Leipzig, 1921)
E. Alberti-Radanowicz: ‘Das Wiener Lied von 1789 bis 1815’, SMw, x (1923), 37–78
H. Vogl: ‘Zur Geschichte des Oratoriums in Wien von 1725 bis 1740’,SMw, xiv (1927), 241–64
P. Nettl: Das Wiener Lied im Zeitalter des Barock (Vienna and Leipzig,1934)
G. Reichert: Zur Geschichte der Wiener Messenkomposition in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1935)
R. Haas: ‘Der Wiener Bühnentanz von 1740–1767’, JbMP 1938, 77–93
H. Rupprich: ‘Das mittelalterliche Schauspiel in Wien’, Jb der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft, new ser., iii (Vienna, 1943), 27–73
A. Liess: Wiener Barockmusik (Vienna, 1946)
O. Rommel: Wiener Renaissance (Vienna and Zürich, 1947)
L. Schmidt: Das Volkslied im alten Wien (Vienna, 1947)
K. Schoenbaum: Beiträge zur solistischen katholischen Kirchenmusik des Hochbarocks (diss., U. of Vienna, 1951)
G. Gugitz: Lieder der Strasse: die Bänkelsänger im Josephinischen Wien (Vienna, 1954)
W. Kramer: Die Musik im Wiener Jesuitendrama von 1677–1711 (diss., U. of Vienna, 1961)
J.P. Larsen: ‘Some Observations on the Development and Characteristics of Vienna Classical Instrumental Music’, SM, ix (1967), 115–39
O. Biba: ‘Die Wiener Kirchenmusik um 1783’, Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. F. Heller [Jb für österreichische Kulturgeschichte, ii/1] (Eisenstadt, 1971), 7–79
G. Gruber: Das Wiener Sepolcro und Johann Joseph Fux (Graz, 1972)
R. Klein: ‘Musik 1945–1970’, Österreich: die zweite Republik, ed. E. Weinzierl and K. Skalnik (Graz, Vienna and Cologne, 1972), 477–90
V. Hofmann: Die Serenata am Hofe Kaiser Leopolds I. 1658–1705 (diss., U. of Vienna, 1975)
S. Lohr: Drum hab i Wean so gern: Wien und seine Lieder (Vienna and New York, 1980)
B.C. MacIntyre: The Viennese Concerted Mass of the Early Classical Period (Ann Arbor, 1986)
G. Cerha: ‘Neue Musik in Wien’, ÖMz, xlv (1990), 539–60, 611–25
E. West: ‘Masonic Song and the Development of the Kunstlied in Enlightenment Vienna’, The Austrian Enlightenment and its Aftermath, ed. R. Robertson and E. Timms (Edinburgh, 1991), 71–87
G. Bronner: Die goldene Zeit des Wiener Cabarets (St Andrä-Wördern, 1995)
R. Lach: Geschichte der Staatsakademie und Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst (Vienna, Prague and Leipzig, 1927)
E. Tittel: Die Wiener Musikhochschule (Vienna, 1967)
E. Schenk: ‘Musikwissenschaft an der Universität Wien’,SPFFBU, H4 (1969), 7–16
H. Fleischmann: Das Musikschulwesen in der Stadt Wien in der ersten Hälfte des XIX. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1989)
G. Gruber: Franz Schmidt als Rektor der Fachhochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien, 1927–1931 (Vienna, 1990)
L. Heller: Geschichte der Wiener Musikhochschule 1909–1970 (Vienna,1994)
E. Möller: Die Musiklehranstalten der Stadt Wien und ihre Vorläufer in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1994)
I. Witasek: Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Wien (Vienna, 1995)
C. Benedikt: ‘Notizen zum Musikunterricht im Wien der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, … eine Festschrift für Eberhard Würzl, ed. W. Pass (Vienna, 1996), 31–51
E. Ortner: Universität für Musik un darstellende Kunst Wien: Anton von Webernplatz 1 (Dokumentation zur Eröffnung des neuen Hauptgebäudes, Vienna, 1999)
A. Weinmann, ed: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alt-Wiener Musikverlages (Vienna, 1948–87)
A. Weinmann: Wiener Musikverleger und Musikalienhändler von Mozarts Zeit bis gegen 1860 (Vienna, 1956)
P. Riethus: ‘Der Wiener Musikdruck im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’,Das Antiquariat, xiv (Vienna, 1958), 5–9
E. Hilmar, ed.: 75 Jahre Universal Edition (Vienna, 1976)
H. Vogg: Hundert Jahre Musikverlag Doblinger, 1876–1976 (Vienna,1976)
A. Malecek: ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Wiener Lautenmacher im Mittelalter’, Jb des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, v–vi (Vienna, 1946–7), 5–23
H. Haupt: ‘Wiener Instrumentenbauer von 1791 bis 1815’, SMw, xxiv (1960), 120–84
R. Schaal: ‘Biographische Quellen zu Wiener Musikern und Instrumentenmachern’, SMw, xxvi (1964), 194–212
K. Schütz: Der Wiener Orgelbau in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1969)
H. Ottner: Der Wiener Instrumentenbau, 1815–1883 (Vienna, 1977)
R. Tenschert: Richard Strauss und Wien: eine Wahlverwandtschaft (Vienna, 1949)
P.-G. Langevin and others: Le siècle de Bruckner: A. Bruckner, H. Wolf, G. Mahler, A. Schoenberg, Franz Schmidt et ses contemporains: essais pour une nouvelle perspective sur les maîtres viennois du second âge d’or (Paris, 1975)
O. Brusatti: Schubert im Wiener Vormärz: Dokumente 1829–1848 (Graz, 1978)
R. Waissenberger, ed.: Wien zur Zeit Joseph Haydns, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 13 May – 10 Oct 1982 (Vienna, 1982) [exhibition catalogue]
J. Kallir: Arnold Schoenberg’s Vienna (New York, 1984)
N. Vogel: Schönberg und die Folgen: die Irrwege einer neuen Musik (Bonn, 1984–97)
F. Heller: ‘Der Musiker in seiner gesellschaftlichen Stellung in Wien in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts: am Beispiel Brahms und Bruckner’,Johannes Brahms und Anton Bruckner: Linz 1983, 41–7
R. Iovino: Gli Strauss a Vienna: quando il valzer univa l’Europa (Padua, 1985)
I. Osborne: Schubert and his Vienna (New York, 1985)
O.A. Smith: Schoenberg and his Circle: a Viennese Portrait (New York, 1986)
L. Botstein: ‘Time and Memory: Concert Life, Science, and Music in Brahms’s Vienna’, Brahms and his World, ed. W. Frisch (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 3–22
V. Braunbehrens: Mozart in Wien (Munich, 1986; Eng. trans., 1990)
J. Korngold: Die Korngolds in Wien: die Musikkritiker und das Wunderkind, Aufzeichnungen (Zürich, 1991)
L. Botstein: ‘Strauss and the Viennese Critics (1896–1924)’, Richard Strauss and His World, ed. B. Gilliam (Princeton, NJ, 1992), 3–32
F.C. Heller, ed.: Biographische Beiträge zum Musikleben Wiens im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, i: Leopoldine Blahetka, Eduard Hanslick, Robert Hirschfeld (Vienna, 1992)
O. Kolleritsch, ed.: Beethoven und die Zweite Wiener Schule (Vienna, 1992)
M. Notley: ‘Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna’, 19CM, xvii (1993–4), 107–23
A. Barker: ‘Battles of the Mind: Berg and the Cultural Politics of Vienna 1900’, The Cambridge Companion to Berg, ed. A. Pople (Cambridge, 1997), 24–37
L. Botstein: ‘Realism Transformed: Franz Schubert and Vienna’,The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. C. Gibbs (Cambridge and New York, 1997), 15–35
R. Erickson: Schubert’s Vienna (New Haven and London, 1997)
M. Notley: ‘Bruckner and Viennese Wagnerism’, Bruckner Studies, ed. T. Jackson and P. Hawkshaw (Cambridge, 1997), 54–71
E. Krenek: Im Atem der Zeit: Erinnerungen an die Moderne (Hamburg, 1998)
W. Sinkovicz: Mehr als zwölf Töne: Arnold Schönberg (Vienna, 1998)
L. Botstein: ‘Gustav Mahlers Vienna’, The Mahler Companion, ed. D. Mitchell and A. Nicholson (New York and Oxford, 1999), 6–38
L. Botstein: ‘Brahms and his Audience: the Late Viennese Years, 1875–1897’,The Cambridge Companion to Brahms, ed. M. Musgrave (Cambridge, 1999), 51–75
I. Dürhammer: Schuberts literarische Heimat (Vienna, 1999)
M. Steiger: Richard Strauss-Karl Böhm: Briefwechsel (Wiesbaden, 1999)
C. Wagner-Trenkwitz: Durch die Hand der Schönheit: Richard Strauss und Wien (Vienna, 1999)
G. Adler, ed.: Internationale Ausstellung für Musik- und Theaterwesen Wien 1892: Fach-Katalog der Musikhistorischen Abtheilung von Deutschland und Oesterreich-Ungarn (Vienna, 1892)
W. Reich, ed.: 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift (1932–7, /R, 1971)
H. Brunner: Die Kantorei bei St. Stephan in Wien (Vienna, 1948)
E. Komorzynski: ‘Die Sankt-Nikolausbruderschaft in Wien (1288 bis 1782)’,Festschrift Wilhelm Fischer, ed. H. Zingerle (Innsbruck, 1956), 71–4
T. Helm: Fünfzig Jahre Wiener Musikleben (1866–1916): Erinnerungen eines Musikkritikers (Vienna, 1977)
M. Wagner: Geschichte der österreichischen Musikkritik in Beispielen(Tutzing, 1979)
W. Sauer: ‘Musikvereine an Wiener Kirchen im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zu einem Bereich künstlerischer Selbstdarstellung des katholischen Bürgertums’, KJb, lxiii–lxiv (1979–80), 81–114
R. Kannonier: Zwischen Beethoven und Eisler: zur Arbeitermusikbewegung in Österreich (Vienna, 1981)
E. Diettrich: ‘Jenseits von Gefühl und Anschauung: zum Musikbegriff des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts in Wien’, Bruckner, Liszt, Mahler und die Moderne: Linz 1986, 105–8
Musik im mittelalterlichen Wien, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 18 Dec 1986 – 8 March 1987 (Vienna, 1987) [exhibition catalogue]
St Michael, 1288–1988: Stadtpfarrkirche und Künstlerpfarre von Wien, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 26 May – 2 Oct 1988 (Vienna, 1988) [exhibition catalogue]
N.W. Seidl: Musik und Austromarxismus: zur Musikrezeption der österreichischen Arbeiterbewegung im späten Kaiserreich und in der ersten Republik (Vienna, 1989)
S. Weissman: ‘Vienna: Bastion of Conservatism’, Man & Music: the Early Romantic Era: between Revolutions 1789 and 1848, ed. A. Ringer (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1990), 84–108
P. Banks: ‘Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Modernism’, Man & Music: the Late Romantic Era: from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to World War I, ed. J. Samson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1991), 362–88
G.J. Eder: Wiener Musikfeste zwischen 1918 und 1938: ein Beitrag zur Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Vienna, 1991)
O. Rathkolb: Führertreu und Gottbegnadet: Künstlereliten im Dritten Reich (Vienna, 1991)
A. Schmidt: Der ethnische Aspekt der Musik: Nietzsches ‘Geburt der Tragödie’ und die Wiener klassische Musik (Wartburg, 1991)
H. Veigl, ed.: Luftmenschen spielen Theater: jüdisches Kabarett in Wien, 1890–1938(Himberg and Vienna, 1992)
H. Goertz: Musikhandbuch für Österreich: Struktur und Organisation des österreichischen Musikwesens: Name, Adressen, Information (Vienna, 3/1993)
L. Botstein: ‘Egon Schiele and Arnold Schoenberg: The Cultural Politics of Aesthetic Innovation in Vienna’, Egon Schiele: Art, Sexuality and Viennese Modernism, ed. P. Werkner (Palo Alto, 1994), 101–117
K. Painter: ‘The Sensuality of Timbre: Responses to Mahler and Modernity at the Fin de siècle’, 19CM, xviii (1994–5), 236–56
J. Harer: ‘Musical Venues in Vienna: Seventeenth Century to the Present’, Performance Practice Review, viii (1995), 84–92
S. McColl: Music Criticism in Vienna, 1896–1897: Critically Moving Forms (Oxford, 1996)
J. Gmeiner and T. Leibnitz, eds.: Musikjahrhundert Wien: 1797–1897, Austrian National Library, 13 May – 26 Oct (Vienna, 1997) [exhibition catalogue]