In Vienna, world center of Western classical music (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Schubert, Brahms), a crisis in musical form and content accelerates at the turn of the 20th century. At the heart of the classical tradition is respect for harmony. Yes there can be storm and stress, but these are contained in a universe of known relationships that eventually resolve.
Utterly out of keeping is all of this with life’s realities as experienced by a generation of Viennese writers, painters, and musicians, many of them Jewish, who are driven to create art that responds creatively and with integrity to a world that is coming apart. Their work swerves away from provision of comfort and escape to an audience, and instead commits to the truth, as they perceive it. Painters like Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka give expression to existential dilemmas against the backdrop of a society in decline.
Thus the avant-garde casts aside what it takes to be culture’s colored glasses that obscure the human condition. In response to this rebellion, those who see themselves as protectors of tradition seek to marginalize and punish those who depart from its conservative principles.
Gustav Mahler is a case in point. As a composer and conductor of music, he was admired by some listeners and reviled by others.
In recognition of the need for renewal of the classical tradition, Mahler was appointed director of the Vienna Imperial Opera House in 1897. But his musical agenda was found far too radical for many critics at the time. Also held against Mahler was his Jewish background, which was (mistakenly) cited to explain his alleged repudiation of the established, Christianity-inspired musical canon.
Schiele, Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant, 1912
Kokoschka, Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, 1909
The Modern Orchestra, Theo Zasche, Vienna, 1907. Mahler sits on a bomb and conducts with a rattle. Above him to the left, Richard Strauss lowers a heavy weight on the public. Arnold Schoenberg works at a sewing machine, while Arnold Rose (Mahler’s brother-in-law) plays a double violin with two bows.
Caricature, Frecskay László, Vienna,1897. Mahler’s leadership received support from some of the administrators of Vienna’s opera house, opposition from others. As represented above, he breathes new life into (or stokes a fire in?) the architectural masterwork of the imperial capital, which opened its doors in 1869.
Musical conservatives as well as advocates of the avant-garde are given a voice in Schnitzler’s novel (and our adaptation). Georg’s approach to music is continuous with the 19th-century Biedermeier German/Austrian culture that takes comfort in the everyday illusions that conceal the world as it actually is. So when he sits down at the piano during an evening party thrown by the Ehrenberg family, his familiar music challenges no one, disturbs no one. Georg himself, in an honest moment of self-reflection, admits that his compositions are unoriginal and merely pleasing.
In contrast, Leo believes that an art form like music has to dispense with the “emotional laziness” of sentimentality and unsparingly tell the truth.
