Symphonic Legacies: Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler in Vienna 1911-1945

Abstract

Operating at the intersection between cultural history and historical musicology this thesis investigates the Viennese critical reception of the symphonies of Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, and Gustav Mahler between 1911 and 1945. It places Vienna at the centre of the geographical lens and by doing so seeks to understand and emphasise Austria’s history and autonomy through this period. While the singularities of reception for each composer are drawn out in their respective chapters, this thesis as a whole uses those case studies to make broader observations about the ways in which music was adopted, manipulated, and re-fashioned for various political and cultural ambitions in Vienna during this time. The reception of Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler also serve to demonstrate developments in Viennese culture more broadly, such as tourism, modernisation, and the radio.

This thesis is underpinned by a large corpus study of symphonic performances, which are listed in Appendix 1 and form the material discussed in Chapter 1. Chapters 2–4 draw their sources from the Viennese newspapers and investigate how the following topics developed in the reception of each composer: modernity and modernisation initiatives in Brahms reception; popularity and antisemitism in Mahler reception; and conceptions of musical form in Bruckner reception. While this thesis is simultaneously a story about Austrian autonomy and a cultural foray into three of Vienna’s musical legacies, it is also a critique of historiography that emphasises the importance of collaboration between models of how we write history.