Vienna 1900: Liederabend

The allure of fin-de-siècle (turn of the century) Vienna is notable for its uniqueness in all facets of creativity – music, architecture, literature, decorative arts and fine art. Names such as Richard Strauss, Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Gustav Mahler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal – all evoke a richness of visual and aural images. Politically and culturally, the “Modernists” and the Secessionist movement, founded by Klimt in rebellion against the academia of the time, had a great general influence over Central Europe. The terms “Art Noveau,” “Wiener Werkstatte” and “Bauhaus,” though a slightly later design movement, bring to mind a unique era of decorative art that is still much in evidence today.

In the musical world, the harmonic language that was developing at this time, influenced in part by Richard Wagner (1813-1883), was embodied in the revolutionary works of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. These two names have virtually defined Romanticism in standard symphonic programming throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. However, other composers were making their mark in Austria and Central Europe at this time, particularly in the smaller form of the Lied with its potential for powerfully expressing large emotions and images in more or less miniature form. Less familiar, yet equally adept in this expressive style, were Joef Marx, Hans Pfitzner, Franz Schreker, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alma Mahler and Alexander von Zemlinsky, among others.

I became aware of these "other" composers around 1998 when I purchased a CD of Korngold's Symphony in F# and the orchestrated version of his Lieder des Abschieds. These four songs had an immediate and profound affect on me. I obtained the score of the original version with piano accompaniment and began to learn them, but also began researching other composers of this period and discovered an amazing new, to me, body of repertoire. Of all the composers I have studied from this period, Korngold speaks to me the most personally, for his harmonic language and expressive details (such as precise indications of glissandi and tempo markings) are rich yet haunting.

My program entitled Vienna 1900: Liederabend has been performed at Plymouth State University (spring of 2003) and portions of it have been recorded. I am currently marketing this unique program to German language societies and other groups interested in promoting the music of this era. For more information, please contact me at vienna1900@janiceedwards.com.

Below is a partial repertoire list: