Chamber Music in Vienna, 1890-1908

Fin de siecle Vienna witnessed the emergence of chamber music from the private, domestic sphere into the public and professional arena where it became involved in both musical and national politics. With Wagner’s death in 1883 there arose a rivalry between the music of Brahms and Bruckner, and the city’s musical life quickly became entangled in the polemic, rhetoric and volatility of contemporary Viennese politics. Chamber music came to be regarded as the musical embodiment of liberal values owing to its emphasis on the ‘logical’, rigorous and restrained working out of musical ideas. This book examines how the attitudes of leading Viennese newspapers and magazines towards these issues shaped the way they were discussed and the way that they evolved. Elizabeth Way Sullivan shows that a significant amount of new music issued from established quartets which became central to discouse both on musical life and on major political issues of the time.