A Century of New Music in Vienna

from Beethoven to Webern

and featuring Mahler and Schoenberg

© 1999-2000 by Joseph L. Monzo

Around 1900, Vienna was paradoxically both the strongest bastion of musical conservatism and simultaneously (along with Paris) the birthplace of the most radical new ideas in Western music.


Vienna in 1999

At that time, with only a few exceptions, Europe, and places colonized by European countries, were the only cultural areas whose music was characterized by the use of harmony. A clearly-defined system had been established whereby one particular note was felt to be the central, primary note over all the others, and a piece would be said to be "in the key of" that note. This type of music is referred to as "tonal".

After several centuries (c. 1500-1900) of this, a few bold composers began writing music which did not give a single note primacy. The two earliest significant examples were Charles Ives, in America (notably, his Unanswered Question, composed originally in 1906), and Arnold Schoenberg, in Vienna -- I find it interesting that Schoenberg and Ives were born within about a month of each other.

The first truly atonal pieces were Schoenberg's 2nd Quartet 4th movement, 3 Piano Pieces, and song-cycle Book of the Hanging Gardens, all written in 1908. Ives's work could really be characterized more as 'polytonal', while Schoenberg preferred the term 'pantonal' for the pieces he composed which disregarded traditional ideas about tonality.

It was Schoenberg's belated but extreme admiration for Mahler's work and ideals, not to mention Mahler's selfless support, that encouraged Schoenberg to be true to himself, stick to his radical inspirations, and not be swayed by criticism; he also learned from Mahler the importance of a polyphonic mode of composition, something that stayed with Schoenberg the rest of his life.

Apparently Schoenberg's student Webern was the one who really stimulated Schoenberg into giving full rein to his most progressive tendencies and into finally abandoning traditional concepts of tonality. From what I've been able to deduce, the pivotal period, when all this really began to emerge, was the summer of 1905 (which is when Mahler wrote the piece that opened with this page).


Here is a detailed chronology, centered mainly around Mahler's life, with several decades of background sketched in, and the years after World War I as an epilog. The "century" in the title refers roughly to the period 1803-1908 (Beethoven's Eroica to Schoenberg's first atonal pieces). Most of the events take place during the reigns of Napoleon and the Habsburg Emperors. This work is not strictly limited to descriptions of musical life in Vienna -- because of the important role it played in the arts during the Romantic period, I inevitably had to include many of the events that occurred in Paris. In particular, Liszt had little association with Vienna but was too important to leave out. I've used the present tense in an attempt to convey the sense of excitement surrounding these events.

This webpage also documents, more completely than any other source I know of, something which really surprised me as I learned more and more about it... the interest in Viennese musical circles in my other favorite musical subject (besides Mahler and Schoenberg): microtonality.

While the facts presented here have been taken from a very wide variety of sources (many of them still remaining to be cited), there is much original speculative material of mine sprinkled throughout the documentable chronology. Some examples:

* The likelihood that Mahler intended meantone tuning to be used for his symphonies, at least partly, based on the possibility of his familiarity with the teachings of Josef Petzval on 31edo during Mahler's stay at the University of Vienna, and on his later remarks to Schoenberg lamenting that "European music, in giving up Meantone tuning, had suffered a great loss".

* Mahler's possible re-use of material from his abandoned opera project Rübezahl in his Symphonic Poem [1st Symphony], and the likelihood that his original conception of the piece was as a 4-movement work without the 'Blumine' movement, and that adding 'Blumine' was an afterthought over which he changed his mind back and forth several times.

* The influence the success of Strauss's early Symphony in F minor had on Mahler just before the latter completed his Symphonic Poem [1st Symphony].

* The possibility that what later became the base layer of Mahler's 1893 "Hamburg" manuscript of Titan [1st Symphony], was originally written out in 1891 as a Stichvorlage ['engraver's model'] of what he was still calling a Symphonic Poem, now with the title From the Life of a Lonely One, in hopes of getting it published by Schott, and that in this form it was again a 4-movement work that did not include the 'Blumine' movement.

* The influence Brahms had on Mahler at several various times as their personal friendship deepened. This relates to some of Mahler's important early compositional decisions (concerning Mahler's 1st and 2nd Symphonies) as well as his habit of secluding himself in the country during the summer to compose.

* The influence Tanaka's just-intonation "Enharmonium" may have had on Bruckner's harmonic experiments in his 9th Symphony.

* The possibility that Hanslick's death in August 1904 may have been the catalyst for Mahler to end his 6th Symphonic as a tragedy - the only one of his symphonies which does so.

* The "program" of Mahler's 7th, influenced by Mahler's fascination with the program of Strauss's Sinfonia Domestica.

* The influence Schoenberg had on Mahler before the latter composed the 3rd, 5th, and 1st movements (in that order) of his 7th Symphony during the summer of 1905, and the influence this Mahler piece in turn had on Schoenberg when he wrote his Kammersymphonie the following spring and summer.

* The influence Webern had on Schoenberg in the fall of 1905 when the latter was composing his 1st Quartet and Webern brought his single-movement String Quartet to Schoenberg for his composition lessons.

* The possibility that Mahler's comment about "being too old to have the ears for Schoenberg's music" and the argument that the two of them had about klangfarbenmelodie, were connected to Mahler's possible loss of high-frequency hearing from his listening to large orchestras every day.

* The possibility that the opening of Das Lied von der Erde was Mahler's rendering in music of the horrible wheezing he heard as his 5-year-old daughter Maria lay dying after her tracheotomy (as documented in Alma's book).

* The possible influence Scott Joplin may have had on Mahler while they both lived in New York 1907-1911 (reflected in a motive and harmonic progression very typical of a Joplin ragtime near the end of Mahler's 10th Symphony, and possibly also in the irregular meters of the 2nd movement of the same symphony).

* The experimentation with microtones by Schoenberg and Webern in 1909 leading to the development of sprechstimme ['speech-voice'] the following year.

* The influence of Möllendorf on Hába and Vychnegradsky to adopt the use of quarter-tones.

1787

Due primarily to constant warfare, the French government has been spending more than its annual revenue, principally by borrowing. The royal government proposes a series of major reforms to raise taxes and reduce expenses, which meet with great resistance from many French people across a variety of social classes. There is a demand for greater representation in government.

16-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven, from Bonn [Germany], goes to Vienna [Austria] to study with Mozart, but has to cut his trip short to return home because of his mother's death. He remains again in Bonn for 5 more years, during which time the French Revolution occurs, inspiring Beethoven to uphold the ideals of "liberty, fraternity, equality" for the rest of his life.

1789

In Paris [France] in May, the Estates-General meets for the first time since 1614 to decide how to manage the French government's fiscal responsibility. The differences between deputies of the nobles and commoners grow deeper, and leading deputies from the Third Estate decide that they have to seize power. On 17 June 1789, they declare that they alone represent the "nation", thus beginning the French Revolution. On July 14, a mob of citizens takes over the Bastille (a fortress serving as a prison holding those who displease king Louis XVI), turning the Revolution into a popular uprising.

1790

In Paris, the National Assembly passes the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which reorganizes the Catholic Church in France. This measure makes the clergy elective and makes them salaried employees of the revolutionary government, thus cancelling royal and papal powers to appoint clergy. The roughly 15 percent of French land formerly owned by the church becomes "national property," which the assembly starts selling off to pay its debts.

1791

In Paris in June, the French National Assembly finally drafts a new constitution, greatly limiting king Louis XVI's power. Louis has tried to go along with the revolution and has remained popular, but now he and his supporters turn against revolutionary factions. Louis attempts to flee France, is arrested and returned to Paris, and accepts the new consitution. In September new elections are held for a Legislative Assembly.

Mozart dies in Vienna on December 5 at the age of 35.

1792

In France, revolutionary reforms prove to be largely unpopular, and a counter-revolution begins almost immediately. King Louis XVI is deposed on August 10, the new consitution is invalidated, and the Legislative Assembly dissolved. A National Convention is convened in September to draft a new consitution ruling France as a republic, to form a new ruling assembly, and to decide the fate of the king, who is stripped of his title and sentenced to death.

After his father's death, 21-year-old Beethoven now leaves Bonn forever and returns to Vienna, hoping again to study with Mozart. But since Mozart had died while Beethoven was in Bonn, Beethoven accepts Haydn as his second choice for teacher.

1793

In Paris in January, "Citizen Capet" (formerly king Louis XVI) is beheaded at the guillotine. Supporters of the Revolution view it as liberation, while detractors see it as stupid and cruel. From April until the middle of 1794, the Revolutionary ideals are twisted into the paranoid "Reign of Terror" (led primarily by Robespierre), as anyone suspected of being counterrevolutionary is sent to the guillotine.

22-year-old Beethoven is inspired to set Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' to music ... but the project is not to be realized until 30 years later!

1794

Haydn leaves for London, and so 23-year-old Beethoven begins studying with Albrechtsberger (altho this relationship may have begun earlier), who proves to be a better teacher for Beethoven.

1795

24-year-old Beethoven composes his first published set of piano sonatas, the 3 Piano Sonatas, op. 2 (the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd), and his 4th Sonata, op. 7.

In France there is a royalist uprising which is put down by the army under Napoleon's direction. A new constitution is adopted on October 5 which creates the Directory.

1796

25-year-old Beethoven first realizes that he is losing his formerly very acute sense of hearing.

1797

Franz Schubert is born in Vienna on January 31.

1798

27-year-old Beethoven composes his 3 Piano Sonatas, op. 10 (the 5th, 6th, and 7th).

Napoleon and France occupy Egypt until 1803, which has the lasting result of an extensive European interest in Africa.

1799

28-year-old Beethoven composes his 8th Piano Sonata ("Pathetique"), op. 13, which marks many innovations in both structure and style, and also 2 Sonatas, op. 14 (the 9th and 10th).

Returning from his campaign in Egypt, Napoleon leads the army in an overthrow of the Directory on November 9, and establishes the Consulate, installing himself as ruler of France.

1800

29-year-old Beethoven composes his 1st Symphony, op. 21, and his 11th Piano Sonata, op. 22. While his piano sonatas have by now become quite adventurous, his first symphony still shows the strong influence of Haydn and Mozart.

In London, James Wood patents a means of boring woodwind-instrument holes with a brass ring lining them. Putting a light coat of oil on the inside of the bare brass keys ensures a tight seal, but the metal-to-metal contact makes a loud noise.

1801

30-year-old Beethoven composes four piano sonatas: the 12th Sonata, op. 26, the 2 Sonatas "quasi una fantasia", op. 27 (the 13th and 14th -- the "Moonlight", which again display bold innovations), and the 15th Sonata, op. 28 (the "Pastoral").

1802

31-year-old Beethoven's deafness has progressed to the point where, on October 6, he writes the Heiligenstadt Testament to his brothers Carl and Johann, to be opened and read after his death, in which he says "... I was on the point of putting an end to my life -- The only thing that held me back was my art. For indeed it seemed to me impossible to leave this world before I had produced all the works that I felt the urge to compose; and thus I have dragged on this miserable existence ...". Beethoven completes his 2nd Symphony and 3 Piano Sonatas, op. 31 -- the 16th, 17th ("Tempest"), and 18th, but resolves to write "a new kind of music" -- a desire which explodes into his next symphony.

Beethoven at 31

1803

In Vienna, 32-year-old Beethoven premières his oratorio Christus am Oelberge ['Christ on the Mount of Olives'] April 5, and his Violin Sonata ("Kreutzer"), op. 47 on May 17.

Many operas of Etienne-Nicolas Méhul and Luigi Cherubini are performed in Vienna during 1802 and 1803. This post-revolutionary French music exerts a profound influence on Beethoven. He spends the summer in Oberdöbling and begins his 3rd Symphony, in E-flat, which he calls the 'Bonaparte Symphony' (later renamed 'Eroica' ['heroic']). The monumental 1st movement is inspired by his admiration of Napoleon, whose wars seem to Beethoven to be a liberation from old-fashioned tyranny, and the symphony is dedicated to him.

1804

Beethoven completes his Bonaparte Symphony [Eroica] by the spring.

Napoleon as Emperor

34-year-old Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of France on May 18. In accord with his feelings, Beethoven composes a monumental funeral march for the 2nd movement of his Bonaparte Symphony, and submits the work for publication in August. When the symphony is finally published, it is listed as a "Sinfonia Eroica, composta e festeggiare il Sovvenire di un grand Uomo" ['Heroic symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man']." Note Beethoven's conspicuous use of Italian in that dedication instead of French.

When Napoleon actually carries out his coronation as Emperor in December, a disgusted Beethoven angrily yells: "Is he then too nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he too will trample on the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others and become a tyrant!", and he scratches the name "Bonaparte" out of the dedication on the title page of his new symphony so violently that he creates a hole in the paper.

The title-page of the Eroica Symphony

Motivated by the grandeur of his new conceptions, Beethoven also begins the sketches for a symphony in C-minor (which will eventually become his 5th Symphony), and his only opera Leonore [now known as "Fidelio"], and he composes his 21st Piano Sonata ("Waldstein"), op. 53 and the 22nd Sonata, op. 54.

1805

The 'Eroica' is premièred in Vienna on April 7. The symphony's length and highly dramatic style stun the audience, and mark a boldly innovative approach to concert music, being the first large-scale work of 'absolute' music (i.e., no text or programmatic story-line) to incorporate dramatic narrative, using purely musical means.

In November, Napoleon's armies invade and occupy Vienna.

34-year-old Beethoven composes his opera Leonore, which is premièred as Fidelio unsuccessfully on November 20, and the 23rd Piano Sonata ("Appassionata"), op. 57, and the 3 Razumovsky Quartets (the 7th, 8th, and 9th), then he gets back to work on his C-minor symphony (the 5th).

1806

In January a peace agreement is signed with Austria and the French troops leave Vienna.

After just over 1000 years of existence, the Holy Roman Empire officially comes to an end, as Napoleon reorganizes it into the "Confederation of the Rhine".

35-year-old Beethoven revises Fidelio, replacing the "Leonore Overture No. 2" with the "Leonore Overture No. 3", and produces the new version on March 29, but it is again withdrawn quickly. He composes his Violin Concerto, which is premièred on December 23.

Woodwind instrument maker Iwan Müller invents key-pads glued to the insides of the keys, the metal clarinet ligature with screws to tie the reed to the mouthpiece, and the thumb-rest to help hold up the clarinet and oboe.

1807

36-year-old Beethoven again interrupts composition of his Symphony in C-minor [the 5th] to write the smaller-scaled and less dramatic 4th Symphony, in B-flat, and also his 4th Piano Concerto, in G.

1808

Beethoven in his late 30s

37-year-old Beethoven finally completes and premières in Vienna his 5th Symphony, a work which introduces several formal and orchestral innovations subservient to its dramatic narrative. Along with the 5th at the same concert is the debut of Beethoven's 6th Symphony ('Pastoral'), in F, written during and just after the last movements of the 5th, and the first work for the concert-hall of important musical quality which has a programmatic story-line behind it.

Goethe writes Part 1 of Faust.

Fredrick Nolan receives British patent 3183 on November 26 for his invention of the brille, a key-ring for woodwind instruments which simultaneously depresses a key-with-pad which closes a hole at some distance from the fingered key-ring. The brille will later become the basis of the innovative flute redesign by Theobald Boehm (see below, 1830), and will then be used on all other new woodwind key-systems.

1809

On January 7, Beethoven agrees to become Kapellmeister in Kassel. His friends create an alternative contract to try to keep him in Vienna. He begins work on the 5th Piano Concerto, the Emperor. On February 26, Prince Lobkowitz, Prince Kinsky, and 22-year-old Archduke Rudolph agree to pay Beethoven an annuity of 4000 florins per year for life, the only condition being that he stays in Vienna. Beethoven agrees, and abandons his plans to go to Kassel. The Archduke is the youngest brother of Emperor Franz, and it is primarily Beethoven's friendship with Rudolph which enables him to meet many people who belong to the highest echelon of Viennese society.

Realizing that Napoleon will not be content to have the Austrian Empire in the midst of his own European empire, Austria acts on the offensive and declares war on France on April 9. In May, Napoleon's armies bombard Vienna, which surrenders and becomes a French city.

During the seige of Vienna, Beethoven composes his 26th Piano Sonata ("Les Adiuex"), op. 81a as a farewell present for his patron the Archduke Rudolph, who is forced to leave Vienna along with the rest of the royal family as the French army advances. Beethoven promises not to write the final movement, Das Wiedersehen ['the Welcome Home'] until the Archduke returns to Vienna, which he does the following year.

On May 31, Franz Joseph Haydn dies in Vienna at age 77.

1810

In April Beethoven composes what is probably his most famous piano piece, the Bagatelle Für Elise. He composes the Incidental music for Goethe's Egmont, the F-minor Quartet, op. 95 and begins the Archduke Trio.

Fryderyk Chopin is born on either February 22 or March 1, in Poland.

Robert Schumann is born on June 8 in Zwickau, Saxony.

1811

On March 15, Austria's currency is devalued to 20% of its former value. This drastically reduces the income Beethoven receives under his annuity. He completes the Archduke Trio this spring, and begins his 7th Symphony.

Franz Liszt is born October 22 at Doborján [now Raiding], Hungary.

1812

During the French occupation, and most likely a result of Napoleon's cultural policies, the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde ['Society of Friends of Music'], generally known as the Musikverein ['music association'], is created, to provide the city with a concert society, music school (Conservatory), and music library.

41-year-old Beethoven composes his 7th and 8th Symphonies, and also writes the famous letter to his "Immortal Beloved". In November Prince Kinsky, one of Beethoven's 3 patrons, is thrown from his horse and dies. Archduke Rudolph increases his share in Beethoven's annuity to cover the loss.

Iwan Müller invents his "13-key clarinet", which is a major improvement to the woodwind family of instruments and remains the basis of clarinet key-systems in Germany and Austria today (the modern Oehler system is simply an evolution of Müller's).

1813

Richard Wagner is born on May 22 in Leipzig.

Giuseppe Verdi is born.

16-year-old Schubert, whose father is a teacher and who expects his son to follow in his footsteps, has lost all interest in academic studies, and is writing many substantial compositions.

In Venice, 21-year-old Gioacchino Rossini has the first of his many operatic successes with the production of Tancredi. This signals a shift in the public's taste away from the heavier style of Beethoven.

Rossini as a young man

Georg Büchner is born in Goddelau (Hesse, Germany) on October 17. Büchner will go on to write the play that inspires Berg's opera Wozzeck a century later.

After a long and difficult seige, Napoleon enters an evacuated Moscow with his army hungry and freezing. The allied European countries defeat him, and Vienna is again under Austrian rule.

Maelzel, inventor of the metronome, convinces 42-year-old Beethoven to write a symphony commemorating Napoleon's defeat, for a mechanical instrument he invented which could play all the different parts. After re-arranging it for a regular orchestra, with real guns and cannon in the percussion parts, Wellington's Victory (the 'Battle Symphony') is wildly popular, and will be Beethoven's most financially successful piece during his lifetime.

One of Beethoven's two remaining patrons, Prince Lobkowitz, goes bankrupt and flees Vienna, leaving Archduke Rudolph as Beethoven's only remaining benefactor. Rudolph again increases his payment to cover the financial loss of Lobkowitz. In gratitude for Rudolph's generosity, Beethoven dedicates far more compositions to him than to anyone else, including some of his most important works:

• 4th Piano Concerto
• 5th Piano Concerto (Emperor)
• 26th Piano Sonata (Les Adieux), op. 81a
• 29th Piano Sonata (Hammerklavier), op. 106
• 32nd Piano Sonata, op. 111
• Violin Sonata,op. 96
• Archduke Piano Trio (named for Rudolph)
• Missa Solemnis
• Grosse Fuge.

For the next several years, there is a sudden decline in the number of significant works Beethoven produces, prompted most likely by his bitterness over the public's neglect of his more important work while they favored Rossini and his own 'throwaway trash' (Wellington's Victory), and also by the time and energy he will spend as guardian and teacher of his reluctant nephew Karl a few years later (see 1815).

1814

On April 6, Napoleon abdicates the throne. He is allowed to remain "Emperor" of his tiny principality on the island of Elba.

43-year-old Beethoven again rewrites Fidelio, and the production on May 23 is finally a success. He also composes his 27th Piano Sonata, op. 90.

1815

On March 1, Napoleon escapes from on Elba, returns to Paris, and regains control of France for the "Hundred Days". Napoleon's final defeat occurs at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18. This time he is imprisoned on the remote island of St Helena, where he remains until his death in 1821.





Europe in 1815, after Napoleon's final defeat.

--------- The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 marked the breakup of the Spanish empire in the New World. Between 1815 and 1822 Jose de San Martin led Argentina to independence, while Bernardo O'Higgins in Chile and Simon Bolivar in Venezuela guided their countries out of colonialism. The new republics sought -- and expected -- recognition by the United States, and many Americans endorsed that idea. But President James Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, were not willing to risk war for nations they did not know would survive. From their point of view, as long as the other European powers did not intervene, the government of the United States could just let Spain and her rebellious colonies fight it out. Great Britain was torn between monarchical principle and a desire for new markets; South America as a whole constituted, at the time, a much larger market for English goods than the United States. When Russia and France proposed that England join in helping Spain regain her New World colonies, Great Britain vetoed the idea. ---------


On November 15, Beethoven's brother Carl dies of tuberculosis. Beethoven is appointed co-guardian of his nephew Karl, along with the boy's mother Johanna. Beethoven begins a long legal battle to gain full custody of Karl.

1816

24-year-old Rossini composes and produces his most popular opera, The Barber of Seville.

In September and October, 19-year-old Schubert composes his 5th Symphony, in B-flat, D. 485.

45-year-old Beethoven composes his 28th Piano Sonata, op. 101, and the song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte. Beethoven's patron Prince Lobkowitz dies on December 15, leaving only Archduke Rudolph to support Beethoven's annuity.

1817

46-year-old Beethoven begins sketching his 9th Symphony.

1818

47-year-old Beethoven receives a gift of a Broadwood piano from London; its increased dynamic range and extended keyboard inspire Beethoven to compose his monumental 29th Piano Sonata ('Hammerklavier'), op. 106. He begins working on the equally large-scale Missa Solemnis.

2 portraits of Beethoven at age 48

1819

Beethoven finishes the Hammerklavier Sonata in March, and continues work on Missa Solemnis and the 9th Symphony.

Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppe-Demelli born April 18 in Spalato, Dalmatia [now Split, Croatia], of Belgian ancestry. He later goes by the name of Franz von Suppé.

1820

Beethoven composes his 30th Piano Sonata, op. 109.

23-year-old Schubert, who has very little money and is able to survive only thanks to the support of his friends, begins treating them rudely and inconsiderately. In December he composes his 12th Quartet, in C-minor, D. 703, nicknamed "Quartettsatz" because it contains only a single movement.

1821

Beethoven finishes his 31st Piano Sonata, op. 110 on Christmas Day.

1822

During most of this year, Beethoven composes his 32nd Piano Sonata, op. 111, his last, containing the notorious "boogie-woogie variation", and then Die Weihe des Hauses ['consecration of the house'] Overture in September.

During February and March, Carl Maria von Weber visits Vienna for a production of his opera Der Freischütz, and Schubert meets him.

Antonio Salieri, Mozart's old rival, hears 11-year-old Liszt play at a private house and is astonished. Salieri offers Liszt free lessons in composition. Prince Nicholas Esterházy, the employer of Liszt's father, gives the family leave to stay in Vienna. Liszt at this time also studies piano under Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny, but Liszt's father takes him away from Czerny after only eighteen months. For four years Liszt tours and gives concerts to amazed audiences, including princes and kings.

This year marks a turning point (for the worse) for 25-year-old Schubert: his career had been starting to develop nicely, but now he begins to live hedonistically and has serious financial trouble. He is diagnosed with syphilis late in the year, and as a result the remaining 6 years of his life will be filled with illnesses. However, it is also from around this time that his music becomes imbued with a strong emotional intensity. In October, he composes his "Unfinished" Symphony in B-minor, D. 759, usually listed as the 8th, and considered by many to be his masterpiece.

In November, Prince Galitzin commissions Beethoven to compose some string quartets, which will be his last set of great compositions.

1823

After 5 years of work on it, 52-year-old Beethoven finishes his grandiose Missa Solemnis ['solemn mass'], op.123 in February.

Later this year he also finishes his monumental 9th Symphony, on which he has also been working actively for several years, and passively for decades. The final movement sets the words of Schiller's 'Ode to Joy':

"Joy, beautiful radiance of the gods, daughter of Elysium,
we set foot in your heavenly shrine dazzled by your brilliance.
Your charms re-unite what common use has harshly divided:
all men become brothers under your tender wing."

Beethoven's 9th is considered by legions of music-lovers ever since then to be the supreme achievement by a composer.

This is a significant year politically as it marks the real emergence of America as a world power. In James Monroe's message to Congress on December 2, 1823, (today called the Monroe Doctrine, but really the work of John Quincy Adams), the United States informed the European powers that the American continents were no longer open to European colonization, and that any effort to extend European political influence into the New World would be considered by the United States "as dangerous to our peace and safety", effectively separating American and Europe from interfering in each other's politics.

1824

27-year-old Schubert composes his 14th Quartet, in D-minor, D. 810, "Der Tod und das Mädchen" ['death and the maiden'] in March.

53-year-old Beethoven premières his 9th Symphony in Vienna on May 7. Schubert is there. The symphony is received enthusiastically by that audience, but the repeat performance on May 23 is poorly attended. Then Beethoven begins his great final series of string quartets with the 12th Quartet, in E-flat-major, op 127.

32-year-old Rossini moves to Paris and composes his final opera, Guillaume Tell ['William Tell'], whose overture remains famous more than a century later as the theme song for "The Lone Ranger". At the height of his career, the young Rossini then inexplicably stops composing, never to write another opera, and only composing again much later in his long life.

13-year-old Liszt composes his only opera, Don Sanche, produced the following year.

Anton Bruckner is born in Ansfelden, near Linz, in Upper Austria, in September.

Johann Christian Woyzeck sentenced to be beheaded in Leipzig for the slaying of his mistress. Before his execution, Woyzeck is assessed by Hofrat Dr. Clarus to determine whether he could be considered responsible for his actions. Clarus determines that Woyzeck is "of sound mind and that any abberations were due to his phsical constitution and moral degeneration". This becomes the basis for Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck 12 years later.

38-year-old Carl Almenraeder, assisted by physicist G. Weber, makes major changes in the positioning of the holes on the bassoon. His designed is later updated by Heckel to become the modern standard.

1825

Johann Strauss, Jr. (the 'Waltz King') is born in Vienna in October.

Probably inspired by the epic size of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, from June to September 28-year-old Schubert composes his "Great" Symphony in C-major, which today is variously numbered 7, 8, or 9, depending on how one considers the status of his "Unfinished Symphony" and a hypothetical "lost" one to which his cataloger Deutsch gave a number; the "Great" is generally known as Schubert's 9th. Deutsch believed this "Great" Symphony to be composed in 1828, so he gave the number D. 944 to it, and numbered the hypothetical "lost" one of 1825-26 (which he called the Gmunden-Gastein Symphony) as D. 849 -- in fact, the "lost" one probably never existed, and both Deutsch numbers actually refer to the "Great" C-major Symphony. The symphony is dedicated to the Vienna Philharmonic in hopes of a performance; they pay Schubert a 100 florin honorarium and read thru it in a rehearsal, but then it is not performed publicly and is not rediscovered until 11 years after his death.

Schubert in 1825

Beethoven, 54, composes his 15th Quartet, in A-minor, op. 132, which is interrupted by a serious illness, and his 13th Quartet, in B-flat-major, op. 130, including the Grosse Fuge as its finale. (The numbering reflects dates of publication, and not of composition.)

1826

Beethoven in his 50s

In the early part of the year 55-year-old Beethoven composes his 14th Quartet, in C-sharp-minor, op. 131, which he himself considers to be his greatest piece; in October, he finishes the much smaller and lighter 16th Quartet, in F-major, op. 135, his last completed work; and at the end of the year, at the request of his publisher, writes his very last piece, a new and much shorter and simpler finale for the 13th Quartet, and publishes its original huge final movment as an independent composition, the Grosse Fuge, op. 133.

Liszt's father dies, leaving the 15-year-old to take care of the family. He settles in Paris and teaches piano lessons.

In December, Beethoven and his nephew Karl visits Beethoven's brother Johann. Beethoven contracts a chill on the ride back to Vienna which will lead to his final illness.

1827

Beethoven's condition continues to worsen during the early months of 1827, and he is confined to bed with pneumonia and dropsy (which is now called edema, localized primarily in Beethoven's abdomen and chest). On March 26, Beethoven dies in Vienna at age 56.





Vienna in 1827. By the time of Beethoven's death, Vienna still had not yet expanded beyond its medieval walls.


16-year-old Liszt falls in love with one of his female students, but her father stops the relationship. Liszt suffers such a severe nervous breakdown that there are rumors of his death, and he doesn't touch the piano for a year.

1828

In March 31-year-old Schubert makes extensive revisions to his "Great" C-major Symphony (D. 849/944) in hopes of getting it performed. He writes this date on the manuscript, thus leading to the confusion over its date of composition, as detailed above (see 1825).

In September Schubert completes a series of masterworks: his String Quintet in C-major, and his last 3 Piano Sonatas (the 19th in C-minor, D. 958, 20th in A, D. 959, and 21st in B-flat, D. 960). After that the syphilis causes his health to decline rapidly. Needing medical attention, he moves in with his brother Ferdinand in Neue Wieden (a new suburb being built outside Vienna), and he dies there on November 19.

1829

16-year-old Richard Wagner writes his first compositions.

1830

Hans Guido Freiherr von Bülow is born in Dresden on January 8.

In Paris, 27-year-old Hector Berlioz completes his Symphonie Fantastique en cinq parties: Episode de la vie d'un Artiste ['fantastic symphony in 5 parts: episode in the life of an artist'] early in the year, making use of material from earlier pieces he had composed, and premières it on December 5 at the Paris Conservatoire. It is widely hailed by progressives as an important new musical work, and widely condemned by conservatives as being an assemblage of cacophonous sounds unworthy of being referred to as 'music'. Upon examining the score, Rossini is alleged to have quipped: "What a good thing that young man has never taken up music! He would certainly be very bad at it." 19-year-old Liszt meets Berlioz the day before the première of the Fantastique and loves it when he hears it.

Berlioz around the time of the Fantastique

Carl Goldmark born on May 18 in Keszthely, Hungary.

The street fighting during the July Revolution in Paris suddenly rouses Liszt as if from a coma, and he goes back to playing the piano. He begins making a transcription of the Fantastique for solo piano.

In November, 20-year-old Chopin leaves Poland and goes to Vienna, intending to travel on to Italy. He stays in Vienna until the following summer, and because of hostilities never goes to Italy. During his stay in Vienna, the Russo-Polish war breaks out and ultimately Russia occupies Poland. While in Vienna he becomes quite well known as composer and performer, and his music suddenly becomes much more dramatic and passionate.

Advances made in the hand-forging of metals in Paris and Brussels over the last decade will now make these two cities the centers of the woodwind manufacturing industry.

36-year-old instrument maker Theobald Boehm invents posts for woodwind instrument keys, and uses them with Nolan's brille key-ring idea (see above, 1808).

1831

On March 9, Liszt hears the brilliant violinist Paganini at the Paris Opera House and vows to be the Paganini of the piano. He practices up to 14 hours a day.

In August, Chopin leaves Vienna and goes to Paris, which will be his home-base for the rest of his life. He chooses to live there as an exile, and thus is never able to return to Poland. He becomes friends with Liszt, Berlioz, and Mendelssohn.

18-year-old Wagner attends Leipzig University.

1832

19-year-old Wagner composes and performs his Symphony in C-major.

21-year-old Liszt meets Paganini and Chopin, whose talents inspire him further. The three become close friends.

38-year-old woodwind instrument maker Theobald Boehm invents the long-axle key, and applies it to both regular keys and Nolan's brille key-ring idea (see above, 1808) in his new flute, enabling him to place the holes at their acoustically-most-preferable position regardless of where the fingers lie. The long-axle and brille are concepts which are used by all subsequent woodwind manufacturers in their new key-system designs.

Boehm's 1832 flute, the first woodwind with brille rings

1833

Johannes Brahms is born on May 7 in a Hamburg slum, of German background. His father is an aspiring professional musician.

Wagner becomes chorus master at the Würzburg theatre and writes the libretto and music of his 1st opera, Die Feen, which he does not produce. Wagner also composes his 2nd opera, Das Liebesverbot.

22-year-old Liszt finishes his piano transcription of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and uses it for the rest of his career in his dazzling piano recitals. Liszt also meets 28-year-old married Comtesse Marie d'Agoult at Chopin's house and falls in love.

1834

24-year-old Schumann founds the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ['new magazine for music']; it will become the leading European journal for progressive composers.

21-year-old Büchner founds the secret Society of Human Rights, and writes a political pamphlet, The Hessian Courier, despising the aristocrats and attempting to incite the peasantry into rebellion.

1835

The esteemed French music-theorist and musicologist F. J. Fétis publishes a scathing review of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Schumann, intrigued by the varying opinions he's read of the work, obtains Liszt's piano transcription of it and studies it, publishes a German translation of Fétis's review, then his own detailed analysis, mostly praising the piece.

A warrant is issued for the arrest of 22-year-old Büchner because of his political activities. He flees to France, then Switzerland, returns to the study of science, and begins writing plays to support himself; some time within the next two years he writes Woyzeck, which is left somewhat unfinished.

24-year-old Liszt and Comtesse Marie d'Agoult elope and travel to Switzerland, settling in Geneva and causing a scandal in Paris. They eventually have 3 children, and Marie's money enables Liszt to devote time to composition. He composes several several pieces which are intended to portray his impressions of Switzerland, which end up in Années de Pèlerinage - Première Année: Suisse.

16-year-old von Suppé's father dies in January, and in September he moves with his mother to Vienna. His father had opposed his desire to be a musician, so now he is free to follow his vocation.

Wilhelm Jahn is born in Hof, Moravia (then part of the Austrian Empire, now in the Czech Republic).

In Brussels, 21-year-old woodwind instrument maker Antoine Joseph Sax (known as Adolphe Sax) perfects the bass clarinet.

1836

23-year-old Wagner becomes an opera conductor with a small company which produces his 2nd opera, Das Liebesverbot, then goes bankrupt. He marries the singer Minna Planer and moves to Königsberg, where he becomes musical director at the theatre. But he soon leaves and takes a similar post in Riga, where he begins his 3rd opera, Rienzi, and conducts a lot of Beethoven.

22-year-old Büchner begins writing his play Woyzeck.

1837

George Büchner

Büchner contracts typhus and dies on February 19 at the young age of 23, leaving Woyzeck as an unfinished manuscript.

4-year-old Brahms is taught cello, violin, and valveless horn by his father. He progresses well on the cello, but unaccountably (as there is none in the house) demands to learn piano.

26-year-old Liszt continues to compose his Années de Pèlerinage while in Italy. He is also making the first versions of his piano transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies.

Liszt and his mistress Marie have a daughter named Cosima, born on December 24.

In Paris, woodwind instrument manufacturer Louis Auguste Buffet invents the needle spring, which is mounted parallel to the rods used in Boehm's flute key-system, and which will be used by all subsequent woodwind manufacturers in their own key designs.

1838

27-year-old Liszt feels compelled to return to the concert stage to raise money for Hungarian victims of the 1838 Danube flood. Marie argues that he should stay home and concentrate on composing, but he goes.

1839

Schubert's brother Ferdinand shows the score of the "Great" C-major Symphony to Schumann while Schumann is staying in Vienna. Schumann immediately recognizes the greatness of the work and sends the score to Mendelssohn, who conducts the successful première in Leipzig.

Wagner and his wife, slipping away from creditors, sail from Riga to London -- a trip which inspires his next opera, Die fliegende Holländer ['the flying Dutchman'] -- and go on to Paris. There, 26-year-old Wagner does hack-work for publishers and theaters while composing Holländer, and becomes friends with Meyerbeer.

Liszt decides to give another concert to raise money for the Beethoven memorial statue. During Christmas, he returns to Hungary for the first time in 18 years, visiting Budapest and then his birthplace, Raiding, where he happens to hear the music of the local Roma people [gypsies] and begins to write the Hungarian Rhapsodies. Liszt hears of Thalberg's success in Paris and returns there for a famous piano duel, to ensure his title as King of the piano. Over the next 5 years, giving a series of spectacular recital tours all over Europe where he performs for hours from memory, he plays to hysterical audiences of thousands and creates full-blown "Lisztomania".

Liszt at 30

In Paris, Conservatoire clarinet professor Hyacinthe Klosé and woodwind instrument maker Louis Auguste Buffet apply Boehm's flute key-system (making extensive use of his brille concept -- see above, 1830) to the clarinet d'après le système de M. Boehm (also called the clarinette a anneaux mobiles ['clarinet with moveable rings']), and present it at the Exhibition. It eventually becomes the standard clarinet system everywhere except Germany and countries in its sphere of musical influence.

the Buffet/Klosé "Boehm" clarinet

1840

7-year-old Brahms begins piano lessons with Otto Cossel in Hamburg, seeing him nearly every day. Brahms quickly becomes the favored child in the family.

Wagner and Liszt meet and become close friends.

In Paris, Guillaume Triébert produces his Systeme 3 oboe, his first patented model and a mechanization of the old "simple system" oboe which utilizes Boehm's brille idea (see above, 1830), placing a set of rings over the finger-holes on the lower joint. Its manufacture continues into the early 1900s. After this model, Triébert's instrument manufacturing company will evolve the key-system of the modern oboe over the course of the next 35 years.

In Brussels, Eugène Albert develops the "Albert clarinet" by applying Boehm's brille idea to the standard Müller clarinet design, placing a set of rings over the finger-holes on the lower joint (as in Triébert's System 3 oboe). It is a system which will remain popular into the early 1900s and will be the favored type of clarinet with New Orleans early jazz players.

a rather early Albert-system clarinet, including the "patent C#" key on the lower joint, but without the brille on the upper joint

Also in Brussels, 26-year-old Antoine Joseph (Adolphe) Sax develops his own clarinet design based on Müller's system, but which still requires cross-fingering. Sax also tries to produce a clarinet which will overblow at the "octave" as in the flute and oboe (and instead of the "12th" as on a regular cylindrical clarinet), by replacing the regular trumpet-like mouthpiece on a type of keyed bugle called an ophicleide with a clarinet mouthpiece, and in the process invents the saxophone.

1841

31-year-old Schumann marries Clara Wieck, who as a pianist was a child prodigy. In the full flush of inspiration from his new love, he writes his 1st ('Spring') and 4th Symphonies (the latter will not appear until after the next two).

Antonin Dvorák is born in Nelahozeves (a small village approximately 45 miles north of Prague, then in the Austrian Empire, now in the Czech Republic) on September 8.

Adolphe Sax demonstrates a C bass saxophone to Berlioz, who is amazed at its dynamic range and expressive possibilities.

the original saxophone and its first variation

1842

29-year-old Wagner premières Rienzi in Dresden and is very successful.

Johann Nepomuk Fuchs is born in Styria on May 5.

Emil Jakob Schindler is born in Vienna.

Adolphe Sax moves to Paris, and within a few years creates two entire families of saxophones (in Bb and Eb for band, and in C and F for orchestra) which are all notated and fingered exactly the same, regardless of register. (The four shown here in bold are those still in common use today): BAND ORCHESTRA key: Bb Eb C F highest F sopranino E flat sopranino C soprano B flat soprano F alto E flat alto C tenor B flat tenor E flat baritone C bass B flat bass F contrabass lowest E flat contrabass

alto, tenor, baritone, and soprano saxophones made by Adolphe Sax

1843

Hans Richter is born on April 4 in Györ, Hungary (then part of the Austrian Empire).

30-year-old Wagner produces Die fliegende Holländer ['the flying Dutchman'] in Dresden, but it is not as successful as Rienzi had been the year before, despite its higher quality. In Holländer, Wagner is beginning to move away from the concept of opera as a series of separate "numbers". He is also appointed joint Kapellmeister at the Dresden court.

Brahms's piano teacher Cossel takes him to Eduard Marxsen, the best teacher in Hamburg, to discourage Brahms's parents from succumbing to an offer to take the 10-year-old boy to America as a prodigy. Marxsen tries to focus on the piano, but Brahms insists on learning composition and progresses rapidly.

Liszt ends his stormy relationship with Marie d'Agoult.

In Paris, Guillaume Triébert produces his Systeme 4 oboe (which continues to be made into the 1920s). Also in Paris, Conservatoire clarinet professor Hyacinthe Klosé publishes his Celebrated Method for the Clarinet, illustrating the superiority of fingering of the "Boehm clarinet" which he had developed with instrument-maker Buffet.

system 4 oboes by Robert (top) and Loreé

1844

24-year-old von Suppé premières his incidental music to the play Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien ['Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna'] on February 26.

In Paris, Buffet and Klosé patent their "Boehm system" clarinet. Buffet also invents, this time with actual advice from Boehm himself, the "Boehm oboe", a louder and more powerful instrument which, in contrast to his clarinet, will never become very popular.

Boehm oboe

1845

Wagner, 32, completes and produces his opera Tannhäuser, and begins composing Lohengrin. He also jots down the first ideas for Die Meistersinger, to which he will not return for 15 years.

Schumann, 35, completes his Piano Concerto in A Minor.

26-year-old von Suppé becomes Kappellmeister at the Theater an der Wien for the next 17 years.

In Paris, Adolphe Sax and his band, populated with the whole family of saxophones, win a competition against the French Army Band, and the latter from then on include saxophones in their instrumentation.

1846

Schumann, 36, composes his 2nd Symphony.

12-year-old Brahms begins earning money by playing popular tunes all night on the piano in Hamburg whorehouses. He keeps a book on the music-stand and reads poetry while he plays, and his delicate girlish features subject him to torment from the prostitutes and the sailors who are their customers. The experience will leave profound scars on Brahms's psyche and sexuality. To endure it he often becomes drunk, and the alcohol and lack of sleep undermine his health.

On March 20 in Paris, Adolphe Sax is granted a patent for the family of saxophones.

In Vienna, 27-year-old von Suppé composes music for Dichter und Bauer ['poet and peasant'], whose overture is the most famous one he ever wrote.

Ignaz Brüll is born on November 7 in Proßnitz, Moravia.

1847

Robert Fuchs is born on February 15 in Styria (Austria).

Brahms's father removes the sickly 14-year-old to a friend's farm at Winsen-an-der-Luhe, where he becomes strong and healthy and fills his mind with the literary works of German Romanticism. He styles himself 'Johannes Kreisler, Jr.', after Hoffmann's hero. Returning to Hamburg, with renewed health that he will retain until his final illness, he begins teaching piano and playing in more respectable establishments to earn money. His training and temperament cause him to value the past musical achievements of Bach, Mozart, and especially Beethoven, more highly than those composers holding to the 'New German School' ideology (chiefly, Liszt and Wagner).

Liszt meets Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein in Kiev, and to the world's dismay he retires from the concert stage.

Theobald Boehm patents his cylindrical flute which now has holes which are so large that the brille rings have been replaced by covered metal plates, known as the plateau system, giving each pitch on the instrument its maximum clarity and volume. This idea will later be applied to the saxophone family and to all of the large bass and contrabass clarinets.

1848

34-year-old Wagner completes Lohengrin on April 28

Marx and Engels publish the Communist Manifesto, and in March an uprising in Paris touches off a wave of revolution in the disunified German and Italian principalities and in the nationalist Hungarian and Czech parts of the Austrian Empire.

In September, 15-year-old Brahms gives his debut as a recital soloist.

37-year-old Liszt settles in Weimar, working as Court Kapellmeister. Carolyne joins him later. Liszt gives up his lucrative concert career to pursue the creation of new musical forms in his symphonic-poems and unusual piano pieces. For the next decade he composes many radically innovative pieces which earn him both strong admirers and violent critics.

35-year-old Wagner starts to formulate a project for a series of operas based on Nibelungen sagas. He completes a libretto called Siegfrieds Tod ['Siegfried's death'] during October and November -- this is the core of what will become his massive Der Ring des Niebelungen.

In December, Franz Joseph becomes Emperor of Austria. He will rule until 1916, after the outbreak of World War I.

1849

36-year-old Wagner, Court Conductor at Dresden, stands on a roof and helps to direct fighters during an unsuccessful rebellion. Fleeing an arrest warrant for his role in this, he goes first to Liszt in Wiemar, then lives in exile outside Germany for 11 years, mainly in Zurich.

Bourgeois prosperity eventually damps down the revolutionary tendencies in Europe. The bloody Hungarian revolution comes to an end as rebels are defeated and the prime minister and 13 generals are executed in October; this event inspires 38-year-old Liszt to compose his Funerailles [a word with the literal meaning 'funeral ceremonies' and the figurative meaning 'death and destruction'], a new type of work for piano which he calls a 'tone-poem'.

During the same month, on October 17 in Paris, Chopin dies of pulmonary tuberculosis at age 39. He was a close friend of Liszt, and this is probably another part of the inspiration for Funerailles.

In Paris, 50-year-old Jacques Halevy becomes one of the earliest "modern" composers to use quarter-tones, in his incidental music to Prométhee Enchainé ['Prometheus bound'].

One of several composers being published under the pseudonym of G. W. Marks, 16-year-old Brahms earns some money by doing hack-work, composing little salon pieces.

Living in exile in Zürich, Wagner writes an essay called Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft ['the artwork of the future'], in which he proclaims that Beethoven was the last symphonist and that the symphony is dead. He also writes the first musical sketches for the Ring, for the drama currently titled Siegfrieds Tod [later Götterdämerung].

In Paris, Guillaume Triébert produces his Systeme 5 (thumb plate system) oboe.

1850

Schumann, 40, moves to Düsseldorf and composes his 3rd Symphony (the 'Rhenish'), his last.

In March, the Schumanns visit Hamburg to perform, and Brahms, 17, sends Schumann a package containing several compositions. Brahms resents Schumann when the package is returned unopened.

In Weimar, 39-year-old Liszt premières the first example of a new type of work he invented, the symphonic-poem, with forms based on literary or visual-art subjects. The first one was composed in 1848, Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne ['What one hears on the mountain'], based on a poem by Victor Hugo. Liszt also composes an overture and choral settings of Herder’s "Der entfesselte Prometheus" (orchestrated by Joachim Raff), premièred on August 24; 5 years later Liszt will expand the overture into a symphonic-poem. 19-year-old violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim accepts a job as concertmaster in Liszt's orchestra.

June 18 - Richard Heuberger born in Graz, Styria [a province of Austria].

Also in Weimar under the direction of Liszt, on August 28, is the première of Wagner's Lohengrin, the last of his composition which he referred to as an "opera".






Vienna and its suburbs in 1850.

Note the small city in the center, still surrounded by fortifications,
which a few years later will be torn down and converted into the Ringstrasse,
and the ring of suburbs lying outside the walls.




1851

On January 10, 37-year-old Wagner publishes his theories on opera in his book Oper und Drama ['opera and drama']. He is also deeply involved in his huge Der Ring des Nibelungen project, writing the prose draft for Wieland der Schmied in March and the sketch and then the poem for Der junge Siegfried ['the young Siegfried'] during May and June.

18-year-old Brahms composes the first work he will publish under his own name, the E-flat-minor Scherzo, op. 4 for piano.

22-year-old violinist Josef Hellmesberger (senior) becomes Director of the Vienna Conservatory, a position he holds until his death in 1893.

1852

In February, Wagner meets Otto Wesendonck, a wealthy merchant who becomes a generous patron, and his wife Mathilde. Wagner completes the poems of Die Walküre on July 1 and Das Rheingold on November 3, and works on the text of the drama now called simply Siegfried.

Probably feeling inspired by the patriotic fervor of the Revolution a few years before, 41-year-old Liszt composes the 1st thru 15th Hungarian Rhapsodies, which are based not on folk music, but on Hungarian urban popular music, whose cultural basis is Roma [gypsy].

In November, 19-year-old Brahms completes his 2nd Piano Sonata, in F-sharp-minor, op. 2, the first written but second to be published.

1853

In January, 19-year-old Brahms composes the song Liebestreu ['true love']; in March, he completes the 1st Piano Sonata, in C major, op. 1 (i.e., the piece he considered worthy of publishing first), and composes the 2nd and 4th movements of the 3rd Piano Sonata, in F minor, op. 5.

By now an accomplished pianist and composer, Brahms goes on a tour playing popular 'Hungarian' (really Gypsy) music with 23-year-old violinist Eduard Reményi, and in May meets Reményi's old classmate Joachim, 22, who will be a lifetime friend. When Reményi gets in trouble with the police, Joachim sends them both to Liszt.

42-year-old Liszt is very pleased while sight-reading Brahms's E-flat-minor Scherzo, then plays his own recently-completed Sonata in B minor, a work whose main importance lies in Liszt's formal innovation: an attempt to fuse all 4 movements of the traditional sonata design into a 1-movement work. When Liszt looks over to see what his young visitor thinks, he finds Brahms asleep: a premonition of the major split that will occur in 19th-century European music. Brahms claims that he was simply listening with his eyes closed...

Thru Joachim, Brahms visits Düsseldorf and befriends Robert and Clara Schumann. Schumann is dazzled by Brahms's three piano sonatas, and declares him to be the prophet of the musical future, in classically restrained opposition to the 'New German School' headed by Liszt and Wagner.

39-year-old Wagner completes the text for his four-night cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, has it printed and read to friends, and he sends a copy to Liszt. During one of these readings, on October 10 in Paris, Wagner meets Liszt's 15-year-old daughter Cosima. Wagner begins composing the music of Das Rheingold, the first of the Ring music-dramas, in November.

1854

Early in the year Brahms, 20, composes his first surviving chamber piece, the 1st Piano Trio in B, op. 8, which he will rewrite 35 years later.

Wagner, in a letter to Liszt, expresses his first ideas about Tristan und Isolde.

In February, Schumann, 43, is finally overtaken by his mental illness (probably bipolar disorder) and jumps into the Rhine in a suicide attempt. He is rescued, and has himself committed to an asylum in Endenich, near Bonn, where he will live out the rest of his life.

21-year-old Brahms is inspired by this tragedy to write what will eventually become his 1st Piano Concerto, in D Minor.

On June 28, 41-year-old Wagner begins composing the music for Die Walküre

In Weimar, 43-year-old Liszt completes 6 of his symphonic-poems (numbers reflect publication order):

• his 2nd: Tasso: Lamento e trionfo ['Rate: I complain and triumph'], S.96/636, based on Byron's poem

• 3rd: Les Preludes ['preludes'], S.97/637, originally an instrumental introduction to a choral work Les quatre elements ['the 4 elements'] based on French poet Joseph Autran, but Liszt insists that he had Lamartine's "Meditiations Poetiques" in mind for Les Preludes, and Lamartine's book does indeed fit both the preface to the score (written by Liszt) and the music. (This is the only one of his 13 symphonic poems which has become a standard part of the repertoire.)

• 4th: Orpheus, S.98/638

• 7th: Festklange, S.101/641

• 8th: Heroide funebre ['a hero's funeral'], S.102/642

• 9th: Hungaria, S.103/643,

and in 2 months composes his Faust Symphony, which has a theme using a 12-tone row made of 4 successive augmented triads.

1855

Josef Hellmesberger Jr. is born in Vienna. His father is the Director of the Vienna Conservatory.

Guido Adler is born in Moravia (now in the Czech Republic) in November.

Wagner travels to London to conduct, and then stays in Paris alone.

In Weimar, 44-year-old Liszt completes two symphonic-poems:

• his 5th: Prometheus, S.99/639, expanded from his overture to choral settings of Herder’s "Der entfesselte Prometheus" and premièred on October 15.

• 6th: Mazeppa, S.100/640, based on Byron's poem.


In Paris, the Triébert firm of instrument makers produces both Charles Louis Triébert's revision of the Boehm oboe, and the Barret's Systeme oboe.

1856

On March 23, Wagner finishes the score of Die Walküre.

On July 29, Schumann, who has stopped eating, dies in the asylum at age 46.

In Hamburg, 23-year-old Brahms begins sketching his 1st Symphony, which will not be completed for another 20 years.

In September, Wagner, now 43, begins composing the music to Siegfried. On December 19 he sets down the first musical sketches for Tristan und Isolde.

In Weimar, 45-year-old Liszt composes his Dante Symphony.

1857

In February, 43-year-old Wagner writes the essay On Liszt's symphonic-poems. In April, Wagner and Minna move into "Der Asyl", a cottage in the garden of the his patron Wesendonck's villa in Zurich, where Wagner drafts the first prose sketch for Parsifal.

Wagner becomes entangled into a love affair with Mathilde von Wesendonck, his patron's wife, which inspires him to begin serious composition on Tristan und Isolde. So on August 9, Wagner, now 44, interrupts work on his Der Ring des Nibelungen after completing Act 2 of Siegfried (the third of the four music-dramas comprising the project), to begin composing Tristan.

19-year-old Cosima Liszt marries 27-year-old Hans von Bülow, and on their honeymoon in September they visit the Wagners.

From October to December, Wagner composes the Prelude to Tristan, making a bold break with the past by giving the piece a restless harmonic structure full of wandering chord progressions where dissonant chords resolve into further dissonant chords for long periods of time.

Robert Hirschfeld is born in September in Moravia.

During the winter, Wagner sets 5 love poems which Mathilde wrote to him, as the Wesendonck Lieder. 2 of these are later incorporated into Tristan.

In Weimar, 46-year-old Liszt adds an optional final chorus to his Faust Symphony and premières it on December 5. Liszt also composes his 11th symphonic-poem, Hunnenschlacht ['the battle with the Huns'], S.105/645, based on Wilhelm von Kaulbach's 1847 mural "Battle of the Huns", a depiction of a battle so fierce that ghosts of the dead soldiers were said to be seen fighting in the air afterwards.

1858

Escaping the situation in Zurich, Wagner goes to Paris in January. In April, Minna finds one of his letters to Mathilde.

Hans Rott is born on August 1 in Vienna's 15th district, illegitimate son of the actor Carl Mattias Roth (later Rott) and the singer and actress Maria Rosalia Lutz.

Also in August, because of his flagrant affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner is forced to separate from his wife Minna, and to leave his residence at the Wesendonck's villa; he goes to Venice and writes out the manuscript of the Wesendonck Lieder in October.

In Weimar, 47-year-old Liszt completes his 12th symphonic-poem Die Ideale ['the ideals'], S.106/646., and begins his 10th, based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. With conservatives attacking his works and those of his pupils, Liszt resigns his post as Kapellmeister at Weimar.

1859

On August 6, 46-year-old Wagner completes Tristan und Isolde. He has been running from creditors -- having left Venice for Lucerne and then Zurich -- and his new work expresses his philosophy of finding redemption from the turmoil of life in a quasi-Buddhist nirvana of death and nothingness. These ideas attract the attention of the philosopher Nietzsche. Wagner has a premonition of the difficulties Tristan will encounter, and indeed, the first two attempts at a première are eventually scrapped.

1860

Brahms and Joachim write a manifesto condemning the 'New German school' of composition headed by Liszt and Wagner. Intended to be published in a music journal with dozens of signatures, it leaks out and gets printed early in a daily newspaper with only four signatures, causing more damage than good to Brahms's reputation.

Hugo Wolf is born in Slovenj Gradec [in what is now Slovenia] on March 13. Both his parents are Slovenian, but change their name to "Wolf" and aggressively try to assimilate to the Germanic culture.

On May 4, Carl Mattias Rott's first wife dies, and he marries 1-year-old Han's mother Maria.

Mahler's birthplace and first home, in Kaliste, Bohemia [Czech Republic]

Gustav Mahler is born on July 7 in the village of Kaliste in Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic), the second of 14 children, most of whom will die in infancy. He will grow up in the town of Iglau (Jihlava in Czech), in Moravia (likewise, then Austrian Empire, now Czech Republic). His ethnic background is Polish-Jewish.

Liszt and Carolyne attempt to marry in Rome but she has not submitted her divorce papers and so they cannot -- but they remain soul mates. Liszt settles in Rome.

41-year-old von Suppé composes Das Pensionat, which is considered to be the first successful Viennese operetta, and only the first of many from Suppé.

On December 24, Julius Korngold is born in Brünn, Moravia (then part of the Austrian Empire, now Brno, Czech Republic). He will go on to become an influential newspaper critic, and father of a precocious composer.

1861

Starting in February, Wagner creates the framework for the libretto of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ['the master-singers of Nuremberg'] in Vienna and Paris. He makes heavy revisions to Tannhäuser for performance at the Paris Opèra. He is then allowed to re-enter Germany, except Saxony, and in November he begins to compose the overture for Die Meistersinger, which shows the influence of Tristan but at the same time is very different from it

Building is begun in Vienna for the new Statsoper ['state opera'] theater on the Ringstraße, designed by A. Sicard von Sicardsburg and E. van der Nüll.

In Rome, 49-year-old Liszt completes his 10th symphonic-poem Hamlet, S.104/644 -- the last one he will write until 1881.

1862

29-year-old Brahms visits Vienna for the first time, and after several extended stays, will make it his residence.

Brahms at 30

The physicist Hermann Helmholtz, teaching at Heidelberg University, publishes his groundbreaking study of musical acoustics, On the Sensations of Tone, as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music. Helmholtz also has constructed a 24-tone harmonium tuned in just-intonation.

49-year-old Wagner has a brief affair with actress Friederike Meyer, sister of Frau Meyer-Dustmann of the Vienna Opera. As a result of the affair, Wagner cannot get Tristan und Isolde staged at the Vienna Opera, and his wife Minna also finally leaves him for good. Wagner is also granted amnesty from Saxony. He periodically works on the libretto of Die Meistersinger.

43-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Zehn Mädchen und kein Mann ['10 maidens and no man'] in Vienna.

In Brussels [Belgium], woodwind manufacturer Eugene Albert mechanizes the Müller 13-key system clarinet by the use of Boehm's brille (see above, 1808) on the right-hand joint, creating the "Albert system", also still called by its old name of "simple system", and a clarinet system still in some use today, especially in Eastern Europe.

1863

39-year-old Bruckner composes his his earliest surviving symphony, at first numbered No. 1. Later he decides to leave it unnumbered, and today we know it as Symphony No. 00, "study symphony", or simply Symphony in F minor, the only one he wrote in that key.

44-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Flotte Bursche in Vienna.

Franz Schalk is born in Vienna on May 27.

Carolyne is nearly mad, and so 52-year-old Liszt dissolves their relationship and retires to a Dominican monastery.

1864

Richard Strauss is born in Munich on June 11, of German background. His mother, Josephine Pschorr, is the heiress to a family of brewers, making her independently wealthy, and his father, Franz Joseph Strauss, plays principal horn in the Munich Court Orchestra for nearly 50 years; thus his early childhood is relatively carefree.

45-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Pique Dame in Vienna.

Wagner in his 50s

On June 29, Cosima von Bülow and her daughters Daniela and Blandine visit Wagner in Vienna. 26-year-old Cosima, the daughter of Wagner's old friend Liszt, becomes 51-year-old Wagner's mistress the following week. Wagner flees creditors in Vienna, going to Stuttgart. The eccentric 18-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria loves Wagner's music and "rescues" him, installs him in Munich, pays off all his debts, and offers Wagner total financial support and love, which enables him to continue composing the rest of his Ring project. Wagner completely changes his outlook and becomes a devout Christian, repelling Nietzsche. Cosima leaves Hans von Büow and goes with her two daughters to live in Munich with Wagner. Wagner considers it prudent to put aside the nationalistic Die Meistersinger so as not to offend Ludwig, and concentrates on re-engagement with his unfinished Ring project.

1865

On April 10, Wagner and Cosima's first child Isolde is born.

On June 10, in Munich, the première of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde finally occurs, conducted by 35-year-old Hans von Bülow, and turns the musical world upside-down with its 5 hours of evaded cadences, rampant chromaticism, and orgasmic love-scenes.

At the end of August, Wagner completes his prose draft of the story of Parsifal.

46-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Die schöne Galatea in Vienna. He begins a 17-year stint as Kappellmeister at the Carltheater.

Mahler at age 6, with one of his manuscripts

In Iglau, 5-year-old Mahler has already displayed an extraordinary talent for reproducing tunes and other sounds on his toy accordion, begins taking piano lessons and makes rapid progress, and writes his first compositions.

18-year-old Robert Fuchs begins studies at the Vienna Conservatory, studying composition under Felix Otto Dessoff.

Scandals force King Ludwig to banish Wagner from Munich, and so he and Cosima and the children move to Luzern (Switzerland) on December 10.

54-year-old Liszt enters the Vatican and receives the tonsure and minor orders, made an abbé by Pope Pius IX. He publishes his piano transcriptions of all 9 Beethoven symphonies.

Jean Sibelius is born in Hameenlinna, Finland, on December 8, during a period of Russian rule, and in a Swedish-speaking household.

1866

Ferruccio Dante Michelangilolo Benvenuto Busoni is born on April 1 in Empoli, Italy (near Florence). His father is a virtuoso clarinettist and his mother (whose father is German) is a pianist. He shows talent early and takes lessons from his parents.

Ludwig Karpath is born in April in Budapest.

During June, Austria and Saxony battle Prussia over supremacy of the German states in the Austro-Prussian War, ending in Austria-Saxony's defeat at the Battle of Königgrätz in central Bohemia on July 3. The hegemony of Austria is broken, and from now on Prussia will take the leading role in German politics.

33-year-old Brahms finishes Eine deutsches Requiem ['a German Requiem'].

47-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Leichte Cavallerie ['light cavalry'] in Vienna.

von Suppé in his 40s

Bruckner, 42, composes a symphony in C-minor which at first is labeled as "No. 2", but when he supresses the number of the first one in F-minor (the one we now call "00"), this one becomes known as Symphony No. 1. He also composes his Mass No. 2, in E minor.

Wagner moves to Triebschen, near Geneva [Switzerland]. In December, he rewrites the libretto of Die Meistersinger and works seriously on the composition of its music.

1867

Wagner and Cosima's second daughter Eva is born on February 17.

42-year-old Johann Strauss, Jr. composes The Beautiful Blue Danube, still the most popular waltz ever written.

48-year-old von Suppé composes his operetta Banditenstreiche ['the jolly robbers'].

20-year old Robert Fuchs gives a performance of a symphony for his graduation from the Vienna Conservatory.

On October 24, 54-year-old Wagner completes Die Meistersinger.

1868

Bruckner, around the time he moved to Vienna

44-year-old Bruckner, who has been organist at St. Florian in Upper Austria, moves to Vienna and becomes Court Organist and professor at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde [society for the friends of music]. He composes his Mass No. 3, in F minor ('Grosse Messe').

Max von Schillings is born on April 19 in Düren (Rheinland), Germany.

Still on hiatus from his Ring project, 55-year-old Wagner premières his comic music-drama Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ['the master-singers of Nuremberg'] on June 21 in Munich, conducted by von Büow. Meistersinger will be greatly admired, privately, by Brahms. Immediately after this production, Wagner resumes work on the score of Siegfried.

In America, Scott Joplin is born sometime during the summer in northeastern Texas, to a couple who had been slaves until the Civil War and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

1869

Building of the Vienna Statsoper ['state opera'] theater is complete. The architects are severly criticised, which causes van der Nüll to commit suicide and Sicardsburg to die of a heart attack two months later. The opening performance on May 25 is Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Between January and September, Bruckner, 45, composes a Symphony in D minor, at first called "No. 2", but then he also decides that this one is unworthy to be numbered, and we now know it as "Die Nullte" or No. 0. He also composes his Mass No. 1, in D minor.

Wagner and Cosima's son Siegfried is born on June 6. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is a houseguest at the time.

58-year-old Liszt returns to Weimar.

Hans Pfitzner is born on April 23.

1870

Oskar Straus is born on April 6 in Vienna.

Franz Lehár is born on April 30 in Komorn, Hungary.

6-year-old Richard Strauss begins composing his first pieces. Strauss's father detests Wagner and all of the "New German School" of music, and rigidly ensures that only "the classics" (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) are heard in his household. Young Richard's compositions reflect this classical background.

On June 26 [or July 18], Cosima and Hans von Bülow divorce, and Cosima marries Wagner on August 25.

51-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Die Prinzessin von Dragant in Prague.

In October, 10-year-old Mahler gives his first public performance at the piano in his hometown of Iglau. The heaviest early influence on him is that of Schubert.

Mahler around the time of his first concert

1871

57-year-old Wagner completes the score of Siegfried in February, and begins the composition of Götterdämmerung, the final drama in the tetralogy.

Willem Mengelberg is born in Utrecht on March 28, to German parents.

Alexander Zemlinsky is born in Vienna on October 14. His ethnic background is Slavic Jewish (Sephardic), the family originating in Galicia (Poland) on his father's side and Muslim Bosnia on his mother's side. His father uses 'von Zemlinszky' as his last name, but without actual noble lineage, Alex eventually drops the 'von' and also the Hungarianesque extra "z".

Liszt in his 60s

For the last 15 years of his life, Liszt formulates a nice routine: living and working in Budapest from January to March, teaching in Weimar from April to June, and enjoying the peace and quiet of a villa near Rome for the rest of the year. He is able to compose a lot during these years, and his works (for example, Nuages Gris and Unstern) explore some of the most radical techniques, which directly influence the work of Debussy, Ravel, and Bartók, and also foreshadow the experiments of Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

1872

Bruckner, 48, composes 2nd Symphony.

During the summer, 59-year-old Wagner composes the final part of Götterdämmerung, finally finishing his huge Ring project, begun 24 years ago.

On August 14, 14-year-old Hans Rott's mother dies.

25-yeaqr-old Ignaz Brüll becomes piano teacher at the Horák School of Piano Studies in Vienna, until 1878.

Willi Möllendorf is born. He will be a microtonal pioneer.

1873

In April, 47-year-old Johann Strauss II premières his most famous operetta, Die Fledermaus ['the bat']. On April 22, Strauss conducts the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time in the première of his waltz Wiener Blut ['Vienna blood'], op. 354, for the Vienna Opera Ball held at the Musikverein.

In May, the Weltausstellung 1873 Wien ['1873 Vienna International Exhibition'] is held in Vienna's Prater park, featuring exhibits from Japan, China, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Brazil, and South America. (The USA was supposed to be represented but didn't prepare an exhibit in time.) The exhibits are not ready on opening day, and Vienna never holds another world's fair.

On May 9, just a few days after the opening of the Exhibition, the Vienna stock market crashes, causing an economic recession in the Austrian Empire.

Bruckner, 49, composes his 3rd ('Wagner') Symphony.

13-year-old Mahler performs at the piano in several concerts in Iglau.

1874

Hugo von Hofmannsthal is born in Vienna into a wealthy banker's family, Jewish on his mother's side, Austrian and Italian on his father's.

Edmund Eysler is born on March 12 in Vienna. He will go on to compose over 60 operettas.

Bruckner, 50, composes his 4th ('Romantic') Symphony.

27-year-old Robert Fuchs receives his first success with his 1st Serenade, for string orchestra, in D-major, op. 9.

Mahler's 13-year-old brother Ernst, the closest to him in both age and affection, dies after a long illness; Mahler says later that no other death affected him so deeply. While staying at an aunt's house over the summer, he begins composing an opera called Herzog Ernst von Schwaben ['Duke Ernst of Swabia'] which probably reflects on this relationship, but after going back home to Iglau the aunt cleans out the attic and, not realizing its significance, burns the manuscript of the opera.

Dvorák in his 30s

33-year-old Dvorák enters 15 works (including his 3rd Symphony) for the Austrian National Prize. He wins and receives a much-needed cash prize and gains the admiration and support of Brahms, who is one of the judges. On his recommendation, Brahms's publisher issues Dvorák's Slavonic Dances, which are very successful.

For the winter term 1874-75, 16-year-old Hans Rott enrolls at the Vienna Conservatory, becoming Bruckner's favorite pupil.

Arnold Schönberg is born on September 13 and raised in the Leopoldstadt section of Vienna, also of Slavic Jewish background.

Over in America, Charles Ives is born in Connecticut on October 20.

On December 22, Franz Schmidt is born in Pressburg (then part of the Austrian Empire, "Pozsony" in Hungarian, present-day Bratislava, Slovakia).

Heckel revises Almenraeder's bassoon key-system, and his design remains the modern standard, eventually supplanting the Buffet-system bassoon everywhere except France.

1875

Friedrich 'Fritz' Kreisler is born in Vienna on 2 February 1875. His father is the son of Sigmund Freud's family physician, and also an amateur violinist who teaches young Fritz his first lessons.

42-year-old Brahms becomes the most important member of the Austrian Commission for the Conferring of Artists' Scholarships.

64-year-old Liszt is appointed president of the New Hungarian Academy of Music in Budapest.

32-year-old Hans Richter becomes conductor of the Vienna Philahrmonic Orchestra until 1898.

28-year-old Robert Fuchs obtains a job teaching harmony at the Vienna Conservatory, which he will hold until 1912.

15-year-old Mahler goes to Vienna and begins his studies at the conservatory, majoring in piano under Julius Epstein, and studying harmony with Robert Fuchs and composition with Franz Krenn. Altho not actually a pupil of Bruckner, Mahler admires Bruckner's music, attends his lectures, and develops a friendship that will last until Bruckner's death.

Two of Mahler's classmates and closest friends are Hugo Wolf, a talented composer of lieder [songs], and Hans Rott, gifted son of a famous actor, and Bruckner's favorite pupil. All of them fall heavily under the spell of Wagner.

62-year-old Wagner visits Vienna from mid-October to mid-December, and attends Richter's productions of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.

The son of a friend of Adolf von Zemlinszky moves in with the family and brings his piano. 4-year-old Alex is fascinated with the instrument, shows musical talent, and begins taking piano lessons.

In Paris, Frédéric Triébert produces his Systeme 6 oboe, which is essentially the same as the most commonly used oboes of the present time. This completes the evolution of the modern orchestral woodwind section which had begun with the release of Boehm's flute in 1832.

1876

Wagner visits Vienna in March, for the last time, to conduct Lohengrin. Mahler finds himself next to Wagner in the coatroom after a concert but is too shy to speak to him.

Rott's father dies, leaving the 18-year-old orphaned and broke.

Sometime during this year, Mahler, 15 or 16 years old, composes his earliest surviving piece, the 1st movement of a Piano Quartet in A minor. At the end of his first year at the Vienna Conservatory, he wins two first prizes from the Conservatory, one for piano with his playing of a Schubert sonata, and one for composition with a Quintet movement. (There is much confusion about Mahler's early quartets and quintets: only the piano quartet movement has survived intact, and references to quintets may in fact concern this movement.)

57-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Fatinitza in Vienna. It is extremely popular, and also runs in London and Paris in the next few years.

Wagner's artistic center at Bayreuth is completed and has its grand opening with 33-year-old Hans Richter conducting the first complete performance of Wagner's mammoth Der Ring des Nibelungen, spead over four evenings. The whole endeavor is dedicated to the realization of Wagner's ideas of the gesamtkunstwerk ['total-art-work'].

43-year-old Brahms finally completes (after 20 years of work) and premières his 1st Symphony. Upholders of the classical tradition immediately proclaim it as 'the 10th', a not-very-subtle reference to its worthiness as a successor to Beethoven's great 9th Symphony.

Brahms in his 40s

Thanks mainly to the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, who is a good friend of Brahms, the musical game of the day is to declare yourself either a Brahmsian or a Wagnerian, the two factions supposedly being exact opposites in terms of style, technique, and philosophy. Brahms repeatedly claims to be 'the best of the Wagnerites': the composer of the 'New German School' whose work he really criticizes is Liszt.

Despite a life-long admiration of Wagner, Mahler's later friendship with Brahms will balance his artistic views quite a bit, and after his successful efforts at combining his admiration of these two composers in his own work, Zemlinsky, and then Schönberg, who both begin as Brahmsians and later come to admire Wagner, will be the first to fully reconcile this dilemma.

Hanslick writes a long article praising 10-year-old Busoni's talents as a pianist and composer. The Busoni family moves to Graz, Austria.

On September 15, Bruno Schlesinger is born in a Berlin slum, to Jewish parents. (He will later change his name to Bruno Walter).

12-year-old Richard Strauss writes his first orchestral piece, a Festmarch ['festival march']. It will be published five years later with financial help from an uncle as Strauss's opus 1.

1877

In March, 17-year-old Wolf is dismissed from the Conservatory for breaking the rules. He also visits a brothel and contracts syphilis, which will ultimately lead to his insanity decades later.

During summer vacation, Brahms, 44, writes his 2nd Symphony.

Bruckner, 53, completes his 5th Symphony, and revises his 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

In September, 17-year-old Mahler enters the University of Vienna. He drops his piano studies, to concentrate on composition. Near the end of the year, with his friend Krzyzanowski's help, he makes a piano-duet arrangement of Bruckner's 3rd Symphony. It is the first of any of Mahler's work to be published, and also the first work by Bruckner to appear in print.

During Mahler's attendance at the University of Vienna, Josef Petzval is teaching his students about 31edo and meantone, and demonstrating instruments he has had constructed in those tunings. Decades later, Mahler's remarks to Schoenberg indicate that he was familiar enough with meantone to complain about its replacement with 12edo.

In America (New Jersey), the phonograph is invented by Thomas Edison, enabling actual sounds to be recorded. The first model uses a vertically vibrating needle to inscribe a pattern in a sheet of tin foil wrapped around a cardboard cylinder.

In December, Brahms meets 36-year-old Dvorák for the first time and from then on will be a strong supporter of his work.

Richter and the Vienna Philharmonic give the world première of Brahms's 2nd Symphony on December 30.

1878

From January to September, 54-year-old Bruckner revises his 4th Symphony, and during October and November, replaces the original Scherzo with the famous 'Hunting Scherzo'.

During the Spring, 19-year-old Hans Rott begins composing the 1st movement of his Symphony in E-major. On July 2 Rott presents this movement at a composition competetion, and is ridiculed by all except Bruckner.

In April, 17-year-old Mahler completes the poem which will form the text of his cantata Das Klagende Lied ['the sorrowful song']. After his 18th birthday in July, Mahler wins a Conservatory prize for the Scherzo of a Piano Quintet (no longer in existence).

Mahler at 18

In America, five stock holders buy Edison’s tinfoil phonograph patent for $10 000 and a guarantee of 20% of future profits, creating the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co, which leases out demonstration rights for promotional purposes. Edison exhibits the machine and a few hundred are sold for use by traveling exhibitors. Many celebrities of the day record their voices, but the tin foil recordings are not durable enough to offer commercial recordings for sale.

28-year-old Heuberger engaged as conductor of Vienna Singakademie.

1879

Early in the year, 19-year-old Wolf visits Brahms, whom he admires, and who gives Wolf's work a very negative judgment. Wolf hereafter hates Brahms, and proclaims it in many of his published reviews.

36-year-old Emil Schindler, who is still poor but has become one of the most important 19th-century Austrain painters, marries Anna Bergen, who has just completed her musical training and accepted a job in Leipzig, which she now gives up. Their daughter Alma is born in Vienna in August.

60-year-old von Suppé produces his operetta Bocaccio in Vienna.

Bruckner composes his String Quintet, revises his 2nd Symphony, and begins work on his 6th Symphony.

From May to October, around his 21st birthday, Hans Rott composes the final 3 movements of his Symphony in E-major.

During the winter of 1879/80, Robert Fuchs composes his Piano Concerto in B flat minor Op 27.

During the end of this year and most of the next, 19-year-old Mahler is busy composing his cantata Das Klagende Lied ['the lamenting song'].

Wolf around 20

Wolf tells Mahler of his novel intention to write a tragic fairy-tale opera based on the story of Rübezahl. Mahler insists that it could only be treated as a comedy, is inspired by the idea, and a week later shows Wolf his own libretto for it. Wolf feels that Mahler stole his idea and is infuriated, stops work on his project, and ends their friendship. Mahler will continue to work on the Rübezahl project for several years before finally abandoning it and recycling some of its music into later pieces (particularly, I believe, his 1st Symphony).

Karl Emil Franzos uses a chemical preparation to restore the faded manuscripts of Büchner's Woyzeck, deciphers the illigible parts of it, misreads the spelling of the main character's name as Wozzeck, and issues a performing edition. The scenes in Büchner's incomplete manuscripts may be arranged in several different ways, so Franzos is responsible for quite a bit of editing to assemble the fragments into a coherent whole.

1880

Bruckner completes the fourth version of the finale to his 4th Symphony -- together with the first three movements from the second version of 1878, this comprises the surviving autograph manuscript.

In March, Mahler composes 3 songs inspired by his love for Josephine Poisl, daughter of the postmaster in his hometown of Iglau. The third song, Maitanz im Grünen ['May-dance in Grünen'], which was probably lifted from Mahler's Rübezahl opera project, contains musical motifs which will years later be used in both the 1st and scherzo movements of his 1st Symphony; the former motif also becomes the basis for the 2nd song of his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Unfortunately for Mahler, Josephine's father nips this relationship in the bud, and Josephine marries someone else soon after.

22-year-old Rott completes his Symphony in E major, which has only become known in the 1990s, and which will be a huge influence on Mahler, who will even quote some of it literally in his own symphonies after Rott is dead and forgotten.

15-year-old Richard Strauss composes a Symphony in D-minor, and also his String Quartet in A-major, op. 2, his first piece to be published without a subsidy.

During the summer, 47-year-old Brahms composes his Academic Festival Overture for the conferment of his own honorary PhD by Breslau University. This piece is based on a number of student songs that would have been familiar to those in attendance at the time.

19-year-old Mahler tires of his life as an impoverished student, and on May 12 he signs a 5-year contract with the agent Gustav Löwy. Shortly after, Mahler accepts his first job as a conductor, a very minor one at the summer theater in Hall, but it is the beginning of his meteoric rise to fame as the finest opera-director of his day.

Back in Vienna in November, Mahler completes his first significant work, a cantata called Das Klagende Lied ['the lamenting song'].

Hans Rott

In September, 22-year-old Hans Rott, suffering from lack of both family and money, and from an unrequited love, submits his symphony to the Beethoven Prize competition, and goes to play it to Brahms, who enters a cruelly harsh judgment: "the composition contained besides such beauty so much triviality and nonsense that the former could not possibly stem from Rott himself". Brahms advises Rott to give up composition. Rott's symphony boldy combines the styles of several major German/Austrian composers, and in the last movement contains a theme presented 3 times which sounds much like that from the last movement of Brahms's own 1st Symphony -- Brahms may easily have misinterpreted the combination of that with Wagnerian-style material as a put-down. All this stress is too much for Rott and his mind snaps. On October 22 or 23, he goes insane while traveling, urging another passenger not to light his cigar because Rott is under the delusion that Brahms has filled the train with dynamite. Rott spends the rest of his short life in an asylum, where he continues to compose and uses his manuscripts for toilet paper, saying 'that's what human works are worth'.

1881

In February, 57-year-old Bruckner sees the première of his 4th Symphony in Vienna. It is the first adequate performance of one of his symphonies, and his first real success as a composer.

After this triumph, Bruckner makes another revision of his 4th Symphony, and finishes his 6th Symphony.

Two rich patrons buy all of 38-year-old Schindler's paintings, suddenly making him wealthy. He also takes on Carl Moll as a pupil.

34-year-old Ignaz Brüll becomes Artistic Director at the Horák School of Piano Studies in Vienna.

31-year-old Heuberger becomes music critic of the Wiener Tagblatt.

In America, the graphophone, a much improved version of the phonograph which uses wax-covered cardboard cylinders, is developed by Chichester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter. Edison shows no interest in their invention, so they set up their own factory in Washington D.C. Edison then introduces his own improved phonograph, based on the graphophone. Bell and Tainter in turn copy Edison's invention of solid wax cylinders. Both firms compete to try to create interest in office sound recording devices.

In the fall, 21-year-old Mahler is hired for his first important post as an opera conductor, at the provincial theater of Laibach (now Ljubljana, Slovenia), for one season. Mahler submits his score of Das Klagende Lied to the competition for the Beethoven Prize, whose jury includes Brahms and Hanslick. At the decision in December Mahler fails to win, and for the rest of his life he blames this loss for his inability to make a living as a composer and for the resultant necessity to have a conducting career, "condemning me to the hell of the theater".

Mahler at 21 and bearded

46-year-old Wilhelm Jahn becomes Director of the Vienna Opera.

1882

Richard Heinrich Stein is born on February 28 in Halle, Germany.

On March 23, in the asylum, 23-year-old Hans Rott attempts to hang himself, unsuccessfully.

Wagner in his 60s

69-year-old Wagner produces his last major work, the religious music-drama Parsifal.

70-year-old Liszt completes his 13th and last symphonic-poem, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe ['from the cradle to the grave'], S.107/647.

22-year old Mahler returns to Vienna in the fall, working on his fairy-tale opera Rübezahl, which will remain unfinished, and which provides material later incorporated into his Symphonic Poem (the work we know today as his 1st Symphony). At some point Mahler plays Hans Rott's Symphony in E-major on the piano to Rott's friends.

25-year-old Hirschfeld becomes lecturer at Vienna Conservatory.

8-year-old Schönberg begins taking violin lessons.

7-year-old Fritz Kreisler becomes the youngest student ever admitted to the Vienna Conservatory. He studies violin with Hellmesberger Jr. and theory with Bruckner.

6-year-old Bruno Schlesinger starts school and also begins piano lessons.

The concerts of Charles Lamoureux in Paris begin the Wagner craze there.

1883

On January 10, Mahler is summoned urgently to a theater post in Olmütz (then in the Austrian province of Moravia, now in the Czech Republic), and conducts there until March 18.

Wagner dies on February 13 in Venice, at age 69.

Josef Matthias Hauer is born on March 19 in Wiener Neustadt.

Mahler works as chorus-master for a season of Italian opera at the Carl-Theater outside Vienna during the month of April.

22-year-old Mahler is accepted for a post as "Music and Choral Director" in Kassel for the season beginning in the fall. He visits Vienna in June, where Bruckner lends Mahler the score of his 2nd Symphony, then spends the rest of the summer with his parents in Iglau, making a trip to Bayreuth to see Parsifal.

Alfredo Casella is born in Turin, Italy, on July 25.

During his summer vacation, 50-year-old Brahms completes his 3rd Symphony, which is a resounding success at its première in December in Vienna.

In August, Mahler sends his score of Das Klagende Lied to Liszt in hopes of getting it performed by the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein [general German music association]. Liszt returns it a month later, with the short reply: Dear Sir! The composition which you so kindly sent to me, "Waldmärchen", contains much of value. The poem, however, does not seem to be of a kind to guarantee it a success. With highest regards, F. Liszt 'Waldmärchen' ['forest fairy-tale'] is the subtitle only to Part 1 -- Liszt's letter seems to indicate that he read the poem and reviewed only this section of the piece. This rebuff from the foremost "modernist" composer hurts Mahler deeply, and he later removes the entire Waldmärchen section from the work. Mahler then begins his position in Kassel, but complains about not being able to work on his opera Rübezahl.

Mahler at 23, with full beard

Anton von Webern is born in December into an aristocratic German family. He too later drops the 'von', and is known as Anton Webern.

19-year-old Richard Strauss composes his Piano Quartet in C-minor, op. 13, reflecting his new interest in Brahms, and begins his Symphony in F-minor.

17-year-old Busoni lives in Vienna and becomes friends with Goldmark and Brahms.

Bruckner, 59, completes his 7th Symphony "in memory of Richard Wagner"; its slow movement, with the first theme funereal and majestic and second theme beautifully lyrical, is perhaps the best thing he ever wrote. With Wagner gone, and without any desire or active participation on Bruckner's part, he now becomes the embodiment of Wagnerianism in the 'musical war'. Brahms at this point is a big admirer of Wagner, and also completely disinterested in being spokesman for a faction in this affair, altho he openly detests Bruckner's works.

Anton Bruckner

1884

Late in January, in Kassel, 23-year-old Mahler gets the first opportunity to attend concerts conducted by 54-year-old von Bülow and is deeply impressed. He writes a letter to the famous conductor begging to become his pupil; von Bülow brushes him off and sends a copy of Mahler's letter to his superiors, which deteriorates his relations with the Kassel Theater.

After leaving the university, Richard Strauss is encouraged by his father to travel and meet other musicians. In Berlin in January, 19-year-old Strauss completes his Symphony in F-minor, op. 12. Theodor Thomas, an American conductor visiting Europe, sees the score and gives the première with the New York Philharmonic in New York in December.

Rott, living in the asylum, dies of tuberculosis in June at age 25, the most tragic result of the Brahms-Bruckner dispute.

At the same time in June, for a gala performance on the last day of the Kassel season, Mahler composes incidental music for a set of "tableaux vivants" ['living pictures', acted out on stage with scenery] based on the popular poem Der Trompeter von Sakkingen ['the trumpet-player of Sakkingen'], the main piece of which, a serenade, will later be used as the 'Blumine' movment of his Symphonic Poem. (There is also a very popular opera of this name by Nessler, which Mahler will have to conduct frequently.) Around this time Mahler falls in love with Johanna Richter, a singer at the Kassel Theater.

Mahler then spends a few days with his parents in Iglau, visits Bruckner in Vienna and persuades him not to revise his 3rd Symphony, then spends July in Perchtoldsdorf.

27-year-old Hirschfeld receives his PhD with a dissertation on Johannes de Muris, and is appointed teacher of music esthetics at Vienna Conservatory.

Over the summer, Brahms, 51, composes the 1st and 2nd movments of his 4th Symphony.

Bruckner, 60, revises his Te Deum and begins his 8th Symphony.

13-year-old Zemlinsky enters the Vorbildungsschule ['preparatory school'] of the Vienna conservatory and studies piano and theory.