Describe the musical life during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. What effect did the reduction of discrimination against the Jews have on the city's culture?

Résumé du document

The nineteenth century is a radical turn in music history. Not only because of purely musical elements (the Romantic style), but also because of important changes in the musical life. This evolution could be summed up as a change of scale compare to the Classical era. On the one hand the musicians were not considered anymore as a homogeneous social category: composers were becoming individuals, unique personalities with their own musical style, newly respected as real creators. The focus was moving from the group to the individual. On the other hand the geographic musical scale was also changing: the location of official music shifted from court to city. In fact it was linked to a more general social shift through the emaciation of bourgeoisie. In the second half of the century, the cultural patrons were more often rich merchants than aristocrats in contrast to the Classical and early Romantic eras.

Extraits

[...] After other successes such as his two Serenades for Orchestra and his Variations on a them by Handel, Brahms seduced again the Viennese with his symphonic compositions, especially the second symphony which premiere in December 1877 was a great triumph. Brahms also embodied the opposition to the Wagnerians. Nevertheless he was not reactionary in terms of musical style; he recognized a kind of greatness to Wagner: you think me] so dishonourable as to keep it secret that I think a few measures of his [Wagner] work are worth more than all operas written since”[9]. [...]

[...] “Vienna danced while the monarchy was sinking into quicksand” Egon Gartenberg sums up. The formal opposition of Brahms against Wagner also touched the opposite character to the famous and wealthy Strauss, Anton Bruckner. the gay, frivolous Vienna of the 1860's Bruckner was an oddity He was the antithesis of anything Viennese”[10]. Deeply religious, a kind of naïve, shy, bent by an inferiority complex, and completely old-fashioned in the very fashionable aristocrat and bourgeois capital, Bruckner was the other side of musical life in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century. [...]

[...] He was a great admirer of Wagner that he met in 1865 at the premiere of Tristan and Isolde. He arrived in Vienna in 1868, having already composed three masses and one symphony. Complete opposite of the Vienna of Strauss, he was also an adversary of Brahms. They firstly epitomize two different religions: Brahms' German Requiem is a pure creation of Protestant faith, when Bruckner is one of the last composers carrying the spirit of Catholic Church. It is also a difference of position in the social field: Brahms established good relationships with distinguished publishers and was able to live as a real artist without the risks and the uncertainty of this career thanks to his piano recitals and his sense of “friendship”[11]$. [...]

[...] Despite this amount of composers trying to be heard by the capricious Viennese audience, the political situation of this empire under a perpetual threat created a strong feeling of insecurity about all the different kinds of cultural forms[13]. Vienna, sidelined by a German and a Slavonic World, crossroads of many cultures and now center of the European Jewish people, became the major point for modernism in a very critical and revolutionary sense. And this modernism was clearly leaded by Jewish artists; that could confirm that 1867 Constitution foreshadowed the artistic “Jewish moment” at the turn of the century. [...]

[...] Moreover there was a huge development of cities (especially Paris and Vienna) responding to the ascendancy of bourgeois society. “Vienna and Paris were the shop windows of declining empires during the two decades that separated the Revolutions and the Franco-Prussian and music became one of their best articles in those “shop windows”. Vienna more specifically was becoming again music capital of the world”[2] after the great success of Paris. The musical history and the creative climate of Vienna highlightened its tremendous prestige in the three last decades of the nineteenth century. [...]