Society and culture of Mahler’s Vienna round 1900

Franz Joseph I, emperor of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire
between 1848 and 1916
Johann Strauss jr.
(1825-1899)
‘Hofmusikmeister’
 Wiener Waltz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENETOpNpIiI
Vienna, plan round 1800. These fortification walls were later destroyed during
the Napoleonic wars

Vienna, late 19th century, with the newly

built and prosperous ‘Ringstrasse’
as replacement for the walls
East European immigrants, inhabitants of the new Viennese suburbs
outside the Ringstrasse
Leopoldstadt, one of the municipal districts of Vienna,
and its Jewish community

Klezmer violinist, ca. 1910.

listen here to early recordings with
Jewish instrumental music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayg23P-Yj-M
Gustav Mahler
(Kaliste/Bohemia,1860 - Vienna,1911)
composer of 9 symphonies (10th unfinished) and orchestral lieder,
artistic director and conductor at the Vienna Court Opera
from 1897 to 1907.
Excerpt: Mahler, Symphony 1 ‘Titan’ (1887-1888).
Movement no. 3, ‘Feierlich’, paraphrases a Jewish Kapelye
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcrGJIIPaZ8
The Ringstrasse with the Royal Opera House
Mahlers ‘composing huts’ for the summer months
Example: Mahler symphony 4 (1899-1900), movement 2
inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s Self portrait with violin playing death
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r86BBMrlUfc
one of the countless Viennese coffee houses
One of the antisemitic cartoons in reaction on Mahler conducting Wagner:
‘Will our Freya and Wotan soon look like this?’
Karl Lueger:
Vienna’s antisemitic mayor between 1897 and 1910
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939),
founder of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud,
The interpretation of Dreams (1899)
(introducing the term ‘unconsciousness’)

Freud’s theory on the human psyche

(further reading: )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego#Id
Application of Freuds theory on the Viennese female body wearing a corset,
suppressing the ‘id’
Alma Schindler, composer
(later Alma Mahler)

Alma Mahler:
Die Stille Stadt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwtbZwbafnQ
Mahler, Symphony 5 (1904)
4th movement, Adagietto
Concertgebouw Orchestra
Willem Mengelberg conducting
https://open.spotify.com/track/1h6tLrmvV2OwAo7dvRqUMf?si=A3S9SveaQi-RSAZUo0BHwQ
Mahler & Freud, meeting each other on August 26th in Leiden (Netherlands)
autograph of Mahler’s unfinished
Tenth Symphony (1910), with the dedication:
To live for you! To die for you! Almschi!
 harmonic procedure in Mahler’s Tenth Symphony,
reaching the boundaries of tonality

Listen here to Mahler’s 10th Symphony with the autograph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bWykCZXGDs