February 2007: Fribourg – Vienna, 1890-1920

Vienna, 1890-1920 by Robert Waissenberger

Most of the works written in Vienna around the year 1890 – the period often called the fin-de-siècle (‘end of the century’) – are composed in what we now call the ‘late Romantic’ style (examples are Brahms’ 4th Symphony of 1886 or Richard Strauss’s Don Juan of 1889). Yet by 1920, only thirty years later, Viennese audiences were presented with works so different, the term ‘The New Music’ was coined to describe them.Not only in the arts (although painting, poetry and drama also saw new styles emerge) but also in terms of politics, society and economics, Vienna of 1920 was hardly recognizable as the same city as the Vienna of 1890.