Vienna: Music capital of the world
There is no other city in the world that can boast such a music tradition as Vienna. From the Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian I who founded the Vienna Boys Choir in 1498 through to the 20th century, music has always played a pivotal role in the lives of the Viennese. Thanks to a stream of music-loving Hapsburg rulers and wealthy aristocrats, music was widely promoted, composers were encouraged, music instruments were developed and funds were spent on expanding musical centres.
This was particularly the case in the 18th and 19th centuries when budding composers from Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert to Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler gravitated towards Vienna. Of the great composers of the 19th century, Schubert was the only true Viennese. Gluck, the great German opera reformer, moved to Vienna to work for the Habsburg court. Haydn was a boy from Lower Austria, who started as a chorister, working his way up to become the most famous composer in the world. Mozart, 24 years Haydn’s junior, escaped Salzburg to settle in Vienna, “the city of my metier”. One year after Mozart died at the tender age of 35, Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna and filled the void, dazzling the music-loving public with his piano improvisations. Schubert, the most Viennese of composers and famous for his Lieder, lived in Vienna at the same time as Beethoven but he never met him and he died one year after him. On the recommendation of Clara and Robert Schumann, Brahms moved from Hamburg to Vienna where he was soon regarded as the successor to Beethoven. A contemporary of Brahms, Anton Bruckner lived in Vienna and was an ardent Wagner follower alongside the Lieder composer Hugo Wolf who also settled in Vienna. Gustav Mahler moved to Vienna at the end of the 19th century to take up the position of Court Opera Director, a position he held for ten years. Richard Strauss was one of his successors. Moving into the 20th century we have Arnold Schoenberg, also Viennese, founder of the 12-tone method and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern.
A host of other composers and performers were also associated with Vienna, among them Antonio Vivaldi, Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri. The latter was Court Director of Music for 36 years and teacher of Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt.
Testimony to Vienna as home to all these great musicians is the Central Cemetery on the outskirts of Vienna, the second largest cemetery in Europe where more famous composers are buried than any other cemetery in the world.
Vienna can also boast one of the best concert halls in the world, the Musikverein, owned by the Society of Music Friends. Beethoven is its oldest honorary member dating back to 1812. This is the home of the famous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra founded by Otto Nicolai in 1842 and the wondrous annual New Year’s Concert where music of the Strauss dynasty is performed – waltzes of Johann Strauss senior and his sons, Johann, Joseph and Eduard Strauss, not to forget the “Mozart” of Viennese waltzes, Joseph Lanner. Vienna is also home of the singularly Viennese art-form, operetta and operetta composers such as Franz Lehár, Oscar Straus, Carl Zeller, Karl Millöcker, Robert Stolz and Emmerich Kálmán.
And last but not least, Vienna is the home of the delightful Wiener Lieder, Viennese folk songs with a mixture of melancholy and joy, which enjoy lasting popularity.