Vienna and the Culture of Music: 1700, 1800, 1900

Professor David Wyn Jones' Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust enabled him to research an overdue, alternative approach to the history of music in Vienna.

The image of Vienna as a musical city is a familiar one and it has long been associated with many of the most significant developments in Western music. Enduring institutions such as the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Boys’ Choir ensure that this image of a musical city is undimmed today.

In spite of this, no authoritative history of music in Vienna existed until now. Understanding of Vienna as a musical city was, instead, largely derived from biographies of major composers who worked there, often patchy or misleading in detail. With funding of more than £80,000, Professor Jones was able to work on an alternative approach to the history of music in the Austrian capital.

The work focused on three different epochs in Viennese music history. Broadly described as Imperial and Royal, Aristocratic, and Bourgeois, they point to the very different relationship between music and society that existed in the times.

Periods of history

c.1700

The earliest period, c.1700, is a largely forgotten one in the history of music, mainly because better-known composers such as Bach, Handel and Vivaldi worked elsewhere in Europe. Yet, musical activities were central to promoting Habsburg political and religious power.

Three successive emperors, Leopold I, Joseph I, and Karl VI, were themselves gifted musicians, and the court's musical retinue was the largest in Europe, with seventy-six singers, instrumentalists and officers in 1700.

c.1800

For the second period, c.1800, traditional coverage had been almost entirely linked with the careers of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, with limited explanation and investigation of the society that governed these careers. Active patronage in this period had moved to the aristocracy, though the nature of that patronage was changing.

The older tradition of a single aristocrat maintaining a court orchestra and a court composer was moving to a more flexible approach of fewer permanent musicians and the sponsoring of particular musical events, including public events.

c.1900

Tradition is a key watchword for c.1900 - something to be celebrated, indulged and manufactured on the one hand, and developed and challenged on the other. By now, the Habsburg Court and the aristocracy had little or no interest in music, replaced in their affections by horseracing. In the city, however, it was a consuming interest and heavily institutionalised.

The scholarly literature on the period is a large one and readily deals with contextual issues, but it is almost entirely concerned with the modernist agenda. Presenting a picture of musical Vienna c.1900 that looks at the role of concert-giving organisations such as the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the popularity of operettas by Strauss and Lehár, as well as the progressive agenda represented by Mahler and Schoenberg, is a challenging opportunity.

Output

Vienna and the Culture of Music: 1700, 1800, 1900, populated by emperors, princes, performers, conductors, writers and scholars, as well as composers, was first published in 2016, appealing to a wide cultural-historical readership.

Associated staff