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A Striking Portrait of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna By BENJAMIN SOSLAND
Every day, after a lunch of roast pork and pilsner, Johannes Brahms made his way to Café Heinrichshof on Vienna's newly completed and decadently fashionable Ringsstrasse. At a table by the window, reserved especially for him, he enjoyed a cup of mocha before taking an afternoon nap. For those passing by, the sight of the legendary Brahms snoozing in the window provided a celebrity sighting of the highest order.
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| Johannes Brahms
and Hugo Wolf (pictured below), two prominent denizens of late 19th-century Vienna. (Photo courtesy of Karadar, http://www.karadar.it) |
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Such vivid portrayals of the daily life of a city and its most illustrious citizens spring to life in Frederic Morton's A Nervous Splendor (Little, Brown and Company, 1979). Written as a novel and decorated with photographs and drawings, Morton's book paints a striking picture of life in fin-de-siècle Vienna. He certainly could not have asked for a more colorful cast of characters. The Vienna of 1888-89—the years described in the book—was teeming with thinkers, musicians, and assorted members of various royal families. Political maneuvering and sexual intrigue were a part of life in a city that strained under the burden of a rigid social structure. Proper public decorum was required at all times. Cultural events often took center stage as the city's elite gathered—always in the latest fashion—for the opening of every new opera or play. Newspapers covered the sartorial decisions of Vienna's powerful with an obsessive verve.If Vienna was a city at the height of its cultural and political power before the turn of the last century, it was also suffering (as Morton's title suggests) a crisis of paradox, both publicly and privately. Wealth and power emanated from the capital, yet suicide rates were among the highest in Europe. The upper echelon lived in opulence while the masses struggled for water and warmth. Vehement anti-Semitism bubbled under the surface of a lively and varied national press. The legacy of Wagner and the eminence of Brahms divided the city's musical life into two equally fanatic blocs. Personal dramas (Johann Strauss, the composer of those immortal waltzes, had a tendency to withdraw periodically from society in a cloud of ennui) reveal a world torn between its need for outward propriety and its barely contained inner torment. Morton avoids spouting gossipy trivia, but the reader comes away with a trove of interesting tidbits:
A nervous disorder compelled composer Hugo Wolf to pull out his facial hair, preventing him from ever growing a full beard. Playwright Arthur Schnitzler meticulously counted the number of times he had sex with his girlfriend (400 in 1888 alone). Dr. Sigmund Freud, an almost unknown young psychiatrist, struggled to keep his practice afloat. Brahms's newly composed Zigeunerlieder (Gypsy Songs) were a coveted Christmas present in 1888.Much of the book focuses on the 30-year-old Crown Prince Rudolf and his illicit love affair with the fashionable Baroness Mary Vetsera. Their affair ended in a shocking murder-suicide, changing the course of the Austro-Hungarian Empire forever. Morton's coverage of their fateful deaths and the events that followed are reason enough to read the book.In his preface to A Nervous Splendor, the author explains that he chose to describe the years 1888-89 because "they seemed representative of a watershed when the Western dream started to go wrong dramatically and the very failure was flooded with genius." Flooded with genius. Fin-de-siècle Vienna was a society suffering—and flourishing—in spite of itself. As Morton's book so successfully portrays, rarely has such a nervous time given the world such immutable splendor. It is required reading for any musician.Benjamin Sosland is a D.M.A. candidate in voice.
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