Vienna

Vienna has loved all music (well, almost all), of Beethoven or Rossini, Schubert or Paganini, Johann Strauss or Offenbach. Although the same can be said of London, Paris, or Berlin, the difference lies in Vienna's profound influence on music. Early renaissance opera found its first non-Italian home within Vienna's walls, where it blended with the native tradition to become the vital and distinct style of music known today as "Vienna Baroque."

The symphonic efforts of Germany culminated in the Vienna of Haydn, while the primitive Singspiel reached its operatic pinnacle when merged with Italian style by the genius of Mozart, German romanticism enjoyed its first musical bloom in Vienna with Beethoven and Schubert.

Romans, Turks, Hungarians, Germans, Habsburgs, war and peace, plague, politics, social reform, literature, fashion, wine, beer, coffee—all had a profound influence on Vienna and its music, and sometimes the reverse was true. After 1815 when Prince Metternich's spies made political discussion all but impossible, the Viennese threw themselves into music and dancing with unmatched fervor and abandon, forgetting their oppression in the joy and exertion of the waltz, polka, and quadrille. Thus it was sixty years before the winds of the French Revolution blew through Vienna's streets.

And at the turn of the twentieth century, when the breakdown of a worn-out social order, the hysterical excesses of an exhausted tonality, demanded a new musical language, it was the Viennese masters who gave the world polytonality and the tone row. While official Vienna still attempted to retain the gaiety, the surface glitter of a bygone era, a new generation of composers, led by Schönberg, intuitively foresaw the inevitable collapse and holocaust and heralded it in their music.

In this broad, up-to-date account of Vienna's famous musicians set against the background of the city's history to the end of World War II, the author presents us with unforgettable pictures of the musicians as individuals and in their relationship with one another. Written for the vast audience of music lovers and students, these brilliant vignettes tell us more—and with more pleasure—than many intensive biographies.