With the completion of the new Burgtheater on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, the old Burgtheater is demolished. Its pipe organ is auctioned off and purchased by Conrad Berg, who installs it in the family's apartment. Bruckner visits from time to time and plays on it -- this is the young Alban Berg's first contact with a professional musician. [Monson 1979, p. 5]

24-year-old Richard Strauss completes his second symphonic-poem Macbeth (only released later after revision as the 4th). On Bülow's recommendation, Strauss leaves Munich and becomes assistant to Hermann Levi for the summer festival in Bayreuth. He begins writing his own libretto to his first opera, Guntram. Mahler visits Munich before going to conduct the Prague première of Die Drei Pintos in August, and probably spends time with his new friend Richard Strauss, who gets to know Mahler's Symphonic Poem [now his 1st Symphony], which Mahler hopes to get performed in Munich. In the fall Strauss becomes third conductor in Weimar, where he composes the symphonic-poems Don Juan, op.20 (officially the 2nd) -- which will be very successful at its première in 1889 -- and Tod und Verklärung ['death and transfiguration'], op.24 (officially the 3rd), which will be even more popular when introduced in 1890. Don Juan establishes Strauss's reputation as the leading progressive composer in Germany.

Richard Strauss 1889

The "Edison Home Phonograph" of 1888

In America, as lawsuits between Edison and American/Volta threaten to eliminate either the phonograph, graphophone, or both, investor Jesse H. Lippincott buys out both firms. Lippincott establishes North American Phonograph Co. to set up a sales network of local companies to lease phonographs & gramophones as dictation machines. Lippincott invests $200 000 in the American Graphophone Company and agrees to purchase 5000 machines per year, in return for sales rights to the graphophone (except in Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia). Lippincott also buys control of Edison patents for $500 000, and exclusive sales rights of the phonograph in the United States from Ezrah T. Gilliand (who had previously been granted the contract by Edison) for $250 000, leaving Edison with the manufacturing rights. Meanwhile, Edison Phonograph Works is established to manufacture and develop the phonograph while patents and sales rights are held by North American Phonograph Co. Edison is disappointed to find that the drug stores who are the main customers use them as crude jukeboxes. The D.C. area franchise, the Columbia Phonograph Company, begins recording and selling wax cylinders containing music and recitations.

The wax cylinder phonograph is introduced to Europe via licensed subsidiaries, but high prices kept the machine out of homes for some time.

On August 22 in Paris, 65-year-old Belgian composer César Franck completes his Symphony in D-minor.

Mahler's 15-year-old brother Otto follows in his footsteps and enters the Vienna Conservatory; he has talent, but is hardly as serious about his music studies as Gustav was.

13-year-old Franz Schmidt is forced by family circumstances to start earning money, so he takes a job as a private tutor in Perchtoldsdorf, a suburb of Vienna.

Nearby, at around the same time, Hugo Wolf is composing his Mörike-Lieder.

At age 28, Mahler's career takes an abrupt turn to the big-time as he is appointed Director of the Royal Budapest Opera on October 1. He strives with great success to create a Hungarian national opera out of the multi-lingual mess that he inherits -- the lead roles are generally sung by guest artists, who have been singing in their own main language, thus a single opera would often contain Italian, French, and German. Struggling to learn the Hungarian language, he has all of Wagner's works and the other main operas of his repertoire translated into Hungarian. His new responsibilities as Director also keep him too occupied during the season to do anything else.

During the month of December, the entire cycle of available Wagner operas (from Rienzi to Götterdämmerung, i.e., all except Parsifal) is performed in Vienna.

1889

As if prophesied by his death-obsessed music (and not the last time this will happen to him!), Mahler's father dies in February, Mahler himself undergoes a painful hemorrhoid operation over the summer and thus does no composing, then his sister Poldi and his mother both die in the fall. Strangely, considering how much he loved his mother, he misses her funeral and stays with his duties at the Opera (-- I suspect that this is largely because of the work involved in preparing the upcoming première of his Symphonic Poem, as the copyist's manuscript prepared from the original autograph contains many revisions in Mahler's hand). As the eldest surviving son, the 29-year-old feels the burden of responsibility, and becomes head-of-household for the family of two brothers (Alois and Otto) and two sisters (Justi and Emma); both of the brothers turn out to be a tremendous burden indeed.

In February, 12-year-old Bruno Schlesinger has his debut as a pianist with the Berlin Philharmonic. Seeing Bülow conduct at another concert, however, convinces him that he must be a conductor. The conservatism in his training depressing him because of his love for Wagner's operas, Schlesinger finally resolves the problem when he discovers the Wagner scores at the library, and begins tutoring himself.

Also in February, 28-year-old Hugo Wolf finishes the 51 songs of the Goethe songbook.

On March 4, Bruckner completes a revision ("Third Version") of his 3rd Symphony, eliminating the new coda of the Scherzo, and making cuts in the first and last movements. For the next year will be occupied with a revision of his 8th, working in the order: adagio, finale, scherzo, 1st movement.

On March 31 in Paris, the Tour Eiffel ['Eiffel Tower'] is inaugurated as the entryway for the Exposition Universelle, a world's fair marking the centennial of the French Revolution. Destined to be the tallest structure in the world until 1930, the Eiffel Tower is still to this day the tallest building in Paris.

39-year-old Heuberger produces his 2nd opera Manuel Venegas in Leipzig.

In America, a group of men licensed by the American Graphophone Company to sell graphophones in Washington, D.C. establish the Columbia Phonograph Company. They also get a license from the North American Phonograph Company to sell phonographs in the same area.

In Waltershausen, Germany, toy-maker Kammerer & Reinhardt licenses Berliner's gramophone design, and create a tiny toy record player with 5" celluloid or hard rubber disks. Most of the selections are in German, with a small number in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. The Lord's Prayer and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star become the big sellers in England. Kammerer & Reinhardt manufacture gramophones for two or three years, then drop them in favor of more lucrative products.

In New York City, Italian-born Gianni Bettini seeks to uplift the audience for records with better music and better quality recordings, and creates the micro-phonograph, an improved wax cylinder machine. The crystal diaphragm that vibrates the needle is replaced with mica, and the needle itself is mounted on a "spider" (patented this year) which transmits the force of the vibration more efficiently. The results are critically acclaimed, and over the next decade famous instrumentalists and Metropolitan Opera stars who had shunned contact with the phonograph industry gratefully perform for Bettini's machine. His cylinders sell for between $2.00 and $6.00, compared to $.50 for a typical Columbia release (in 2007 US dollars, approximately $44 to $135 and $11 respectively).

Shifting his summer vacation back to Bad Ischl, the main compositional activity of 56-year-old Brahms is not a new piece, but a revision of his youthful 1st Piano Trio from 1854. At some point during the spring or fall in Vienna, Brahms makes a recording on a wax cylinder, of himself performing his Hungarian Dance No. 1 on the piano.

During the summer, in Paris, the Exposition Universelle presents folk music from all over Europe and the 'Orient': Scandinavia, Spain, the gypsies, Arabia, Africa, and perhaps most influential of all, Javanese gamelan. Many Parisian composers witness various performances and explore facets of their impressions in their subsequent pieces. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov conducts two concerts of Russian nationalist music, and this begins the 'Franco-Russian alliance' in music.

23-year-old Sibelius goes to Berlin to study music during the academic year.

On October 1, 25-year-old Richard Strauss is promoted to Musical Director of the Grand Duchy of Saxony, becoming Liszt's successor at Weimar. The première of his Don Juan causes a sensation.

Also in October, the Klemperers move to Hamburg, which 4-year-old Otto will consider his hometown.

On November 20 in Budapest, Mahler's first important première as a composer -- that of his 'Symphonic Poem', in 2 parts (now known as his 1st Symphony) -- is a failure. Part 1 (the 1st movement, 'Blumine' serenade from Der Trompeter, and scherzo) receives some applause, but Part 2 (the 'Bruder Martin' ['Frère Jacques'] funeral march and finale) meets with a total lack of comprehension from the conservative audience. Mahler later says:

When, in my earlier years, I didn't know any better and worked less carefully and skillfully -- as in my 1st Symphony -- I paid for it dearly. What came out was not what I wanted; what one heard was not nearly as transparent and perfect as it could and should have been, so that I had to rescore it later. [Bauer-Lechner, *German* p 62, *English* p 68]

Thus begins Mahler's normal procedure following the composition of each of his symphonies: comprehensive revision of the score after every early performance.

The manuscript used for this performance, based on the original autograph (which is now lost) but in a copyist's hand, has extensive revisions by Mahler, including augmentation of the trumpets and woodwinds to 3 each, and many changes of orchestration. Based on Mahler's remarks that he "worked less carefully and skillfully" and "paid for it dearly", his use of the word "rescore" seems to refer more to the painstaking clarification of phrasing (slurs, staccato dots, and many rests between notes to emphasize the staccato even further) than to actual changes of instrumentation, altho certainly his revisions included the latter too.

In addition there is a major substantive change: the finale still includes the exact recapitulation of the opening of the movement (a section which will be considerably altered by Mahler in 1893), but while the base text also still has the recapitulation of the two parts of the 2nd theme in reverse order (in a passage very reminiscent of Bruckner), Mahler inserts a new version of this section which restores the original order of the two parts of the 2nd theme (and removes the Bruckner sound).

I believe that the facts that the 1st movement and scherzo are bound together in one volume of this "Budapest" manuscript, and that the "3." written at the top of the first page of the scherzo is written over a "2.", indicate that Mahler originally planned a 4-movement work which did not include the 'Blumine' serenade, and that he only decided to include 'Blumine' some time before drawing up the program for the première, and that he simply lifted the score of the serenade whole from Der Trompeter von Sakkingen for this première. (This "Budapest" manuscript is now in the Rosé Collection at the University of Western Ontario.)

During his work on his 9th Symphony this year, Bruckner composes the first of 3 entirely different versions of the Trio to the Scherzo, in F-major; it will later be discarded.

Shohé Tanaka, a pupil of Helmholtz and still in Germany on his Japanese government scholarship, has JI harmoniums built in Berlin and Stuttgart. Bülow is so impressed with what he calls the Tanaka Enharmonium that he orders one for himself, and other renowned musicians interested in Tanaka's work include Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Joseph Joachim, Mortiz Moszkowsi, Carl Reinecke, and Anton Bruckner.

1890

Schönberg's father dies in Vienna on New Year's Eve in the flu epidemic, and the 15-year-old is forced to leave school and begin working as a clerk in a bank. His boss soon complains to Schönberg's mother that the young employee is covering all of his papers with musical notations.

At some point during his tenure in Budapest, Mahler invites his old acquaintance Natalie Bauer-Lechner to visit him, and she does. This begins an 11-year period during which, according to Natalie, they have a love affair. During this time she is already involved in an open relationship with Mahler's old friend Sigfried Lipiner, who is already married. Natalie is one of Mahler's few contemporaries at this early stage of his career who really believes that he is a genius. Her new relationship to Mahler is important to posterity because she carefully annotates almost everything Mahler says and does while they are together, to the point that she sometimes becomes annoying to him. She also claims that her belief in his work and her encouragement help to lift him out of the creative lapse he has sunk into after the depression of losing Marion von Weber.

In March, after a year of work, 65-year-old Bruckner completes the revision of his 8th Symphony. In addition to several cuts, the revision augments the woodwinds from double to triple. Unfortunately, Levi has retired from direction of the concerts in Munich, so there is no prospect of a performance under him.

In April, 30-year-old Hugo Wolf completes the 44 songs of Spanisches Liederbuch ['Spanish song-book'].

Bad reviews at the end of the season indicate that Mahler's initial success at reforming the Budapest Opera has already deteriorated. He finally takes a real vacation, at Hinterbrühl in the Wiener Wald [Vienna Woods] during most of June and July, and composes the two books of songs from the poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn ['The Youth's Magic Horn'], to which he had been introduced in Leipzig by the Webers.

18-year-old Zemlinsky is recognized as the 'best pianist in the Conservatory' in his class, winning a Bösendorfer grand piano and a gold medal in a competition on June 26, and giving his diploma concert on July 12, thus completing his piano studies.

26-year-old Richard Strauss finishes a revison of Macbeth, op.23 (which had been the second symphonic-poem he composed, completed before Don Juan in 1888), published as his 4th symphonic-poem.

24-year-old Busoni marries in Moscow, then pursues his career as a piano virtuoso in Boston and New York.

Ida Klemperer decides that her 5-year-old son Otto should be trained as a professional musician, and he begins his studies.

In America, J.H. Lippincott is struck with paralysis and his nearly-dead business empire (in record players) is taken over by Edison. For some reason, Edison still refuses to realize that the phonograph's best utilization is for music.

In Paris, bistro owners Charles and Emile Pathé put an Edison phonograph in their bar, to the delight of their patrons.

Sándor Alexander Jemnitz is born in Budapest on August 9.

Mahler spends most of August in Vienna with his younger brother Otto.

Sibelius as a student

24-year-old Sibelius goes to Vienna to continue his musical studies, living in an apartment above a shop at the corner of Wiedner Haupstrasse and Waaggasse. He hopes to study with Brahms or Bruckner, but ends up with Robert Fuchs and Karl Goldmark as his teachers. While in Vienna, Sibelius composes the Piano Quartet in C minor, two overtures, the Ballet Scene (depicting his visit to a Vienna brothel), several songs, and the first drafts of his choral symphony Kullervo.

15-year-old Franz Schmidt enrolls in Bruckner's counterpoint class at the Vienna Conservatory. Needing a major on an instrument, he decides on the cello, studying first with Karl Udel then with Ferdinand von Hellmesberger.

Bruckner becomes ill in September and Robert Fuchs, an ardent Brahmsian, takes over his class. This solution doesn't work too well for those who, like Schmidt, had chosen to study with Bruckner.

Zemlinsky returns to the Conservatory to focus his studies on composition. His new teacher is J. N. Fuchs, brother of his former teacher.

57-year-old Brahms, satisfied with a long and successful career, and feeling his work to be increasingly irrelevant to the changing artistic Zeitgeist, composes his 2nd String Quintet in G, op.111 and intends for it to be his last composition.

In October, some of the members of the Budapest Opera chorus feel that Mahler has insulted their nationality and challenge him to a duel. Mahler publishes a detailed response in the Pester Lloyd newspaper declining the challenge, which only makes his opponents more angry, making his existence in Budapest understandably uncomfortable after that, and hastening his departure.

The première of Brahms's 2nd Quintet in Vienna in November is a sensation.

Brahms adores Don Giovanni so much that he claims to prefer silently reading the score instead of seeing the opera -- in his opinion -- always performed inadequately. In Budapest in December, he is tricked by a few friends into attending a performance of it conducted by Mahler. Brahms is so pleased with Mahler's rendition that, while he continues to hold a low opinion of Mahler's compositions, he proclaims Mahler a genius and becomes a very important ally.

On December 21 the Vienna Musikverein gives the première of the final revised version of Bruckner's 3rd Symphony. The score is published by Rattig, however this is different from Bruckner's "Third Version" of 1889 and today it is still uncertain how much this score reflects Bruckner's wishes and how much of it is due to the influence of Franz and Joseph Schalk. The audience is obviously split into two factions, as Bruckner receives both boos and cheers. 25-year-old Sibelius is there and is very impressed with the work. Outside the theatre, Sibelius gets into a fight with some Brahms supporters and injures his foot.

Also on December 21, Niels Wilhelm Gade (1817-1890) dies in Copenhagen [Denmark].

1891

The new intendant of the Budapest Opera, Count Bela Zichy, is an ardent Hungarian nationalist with a real interest in music, and he usurps much of the director's powers from Mahler, who won't stick around much longer, resigning on March 14. At his last appearances, however, the audience enthusastically shouts 'Viva Mahler!' and does not wish to see him go.

On March 26, 30-year-old Mahler is appointed conductor at the Hamburg Opera. It doesn't take long for 61-year-old Bülow, who had ignored Mahler's request to become his disciple, to notice the young man's talent for conducting.

For the summer, Mahler rents a flat for his brothers and sisters at Perchtoldsdorf, near Vienna, possibly composing a few Wunderhorn Lieder for voice and piano while there at the end of June.

map of the area around Vienna showing Perchtoldsdorf

map of Mahler's trip thru Scandinavia (counter-clockwise from Hamburg) August 1891

Mahler is in Hamburg for his 31st birthday, attends the Bayreuth Festival at the end of July, then goes on an extensive sailing trip thru Scandinavia for his vacation during most of August, visiting Kiel [Germany], Copenhagen, Helsingor [Denmark], Helsingborg, Halmstadt, Gothenburg [Sweden], Moss, Oslo, Drammen, Larvik, Kristiansand [Norway], Fredrickshavn [Denmark], Sylt, Helgoland Island [Germany], then back to Hamburg by the end of August to begin the new opera season.

During his summer vacation at Bad Ischl, 58-year-old Brahms, inspired by both the success of his 2nd Quintet and his new love for the clarinet playing of Richard Mühlfeld, breaks his retirement vow and composes his great Clarinet Quintet in B minor and Clarinet Trio in A minor.

50-year-old Dvořák is appointed Professor of Composition at the Prague Conservatory.

Hugo Wolf finishes the 22 songs of his 1st Italienisches Liederbuch ['Italian song-book']. Another collection follows in 1896, after a long period of depression.

On September 27, 30-year-old Julius Korngold marries Josephine Witrofsky. Hanslick begins considering Korngold for the position of his successor when he retires from the Neue Freie Presse [New Free Press], which is at this time the leading newspaper in Vienna, and he commissions Korngold to review provincial concerts and, later, events outside Austria, for the Neue Freie Presse.

Around October, Mahler and Strauss request scores from each other. The failures Mahler has experienced with his first three major works awakens an interest in Strauss's very successful symphonic-poems and encourages Mahler to apply literary programs to his own work. On October 14 Mahler offers two symphonic-poems to Schott for publication: the multi-movement (possibly 5, but i think 4) Symphonic Poem, in 2 Parts (which we now know as his 1st Symphony), and the single movement which was originally intended to begin his Symphony in C-minor (which we know now as his 2nd Symphony), now presented as a self-contained piece entitled Totenfeier ['funeral feast']. In November Mahler mentions a title for his Symphonic Poem (the future 1st Symphony) for the first time, calling it Aus dem Leben eines Einsamen ['from the life of a lonely-one'], and he says that he expects it to be published shortly by Schott, but the publisher rejects both symphonic-poems. His compositions finding sympathy with neither Bülow nor Schott, Mahler tells Strauss that his scores are "consigned to my desk drawers".

The second surviving manuscript of Mahler's 1st Symphony is the one in Mahler's hand containing extensive revisions done in Hamburg in 1893. This "bottom" layer of this manuscript is based on the latest version of the earliest surviving manuscript (the "Budapest" manuscript described above under 1889: a copyist's manuscript of the original autograph, to which Mahler had made extensive revisions for the première), and it indicates the increased number of winds from double to triple, and includes "comments for the typesetter" -- in other words, it is intended as a Stichvorlage ['engraver's model'], so I think the score in this form is the one which Mahler submits to Schott in hope of publication, and which, after its rejection, he will revise again in Hamburg in 1893, in preparation for the 2nd performance. Several sections of the 1893 Hamburg manuscript are clearly later insertions, written on manuscript paper imprinted with the logo of the Hamburg publisher Böhme -- those pages which are on paper which does not have a publisher's imprint, represent the ones belonging to this 1891 Schott Stichvorlage.

In the 1893 Hamburg manuscript, the 'Blumine' movement still appears mostly in its original form (i.e., on the small paper used in the Trompeter von Sakkingen score), and the revised pages in 'Blumine' are all from 1893 on paper imprinted with the Böhme logo -- thus, since 'Blumine' was apparently not revised in 1891, I believe that the 1891 submission to Schott may not have included 'Blumine'. Mahler seems to have vacillated several times on whether or not to have 'Blumine' in the piece, and in fact it does not seem to have been a part of his original conception of the symphony. (This manuscript is now in the Osborn collection at Yale University.)

On November 1, Mahler moves into the Hotal Royal at Grosse Bleichen 12, Hamburg, where he will live until the following March.

Hotel Royal, Grosse Bleichen 12, Hamburg (green pin with orange circle; click image to enlarge)

In the fall, Mahler encounters the writings of Nietzsche, which have a temporary but strong influence on his thought. His disappointments are also alleviated somewhat at the end of November when the usually aloof Brahms visits his old hometown (Hamburg) and shows real friendship towards Mahler. It is entirely possible that Mahler shows the scores of one or both of his two symphonic-poems to Brahms. Having Brahms on his side will open a lot of doors for Mahler, and I believe that it also provides the stimulus which will reawaken his symphonic creativity, and encourage Mahler to move farther away from the Straussian type of symphonic-poem and to direct his ideas into symphonies which have a more classical form.

von Bülow holding a cigar

On November 27 in Lübeck, Mahler finally gets the opportunity to play one of his compositions on the piano for Bülow. Mahler chooses his symphonic-poem Totenfeier. Bülow has come to have tremendous admiration for Mahler's abilities as a conductor, but while playing, Mahler looks up and sees Bülow holding his hands over his ears. Bülow's negative reaction to Mahler's creative work includes the comment: If what I have just heard is music, then I no longer understand anything about music! Compared to your piece, Tristan seems like a Haydn symphony. This is obviously a huge blow for Mahler, whose own admiration for Bülow's conducting had filled him with hopes of having another important champion not just of his conducting but also of his compositions.

At the same time, Mahler's own growing success as a conductor gives him the confidence to know that his compositions will not live only on paper, but rather will also come alive in performance under his own baton. This is an important aspect of Mahler's compositional routine, for he will continue to revise and refine the orchestration and phrasing of every new symphony after its première, and indeed also after subsequent performances under his direction.

In Vienna, Tanaka introduces Bruckner to his JI Enharmonium by playing Wagner's Lohengrin prelude on it. In a lecture, Bruckner relates how he used to pass along the dictum he learned from his teachers that 'our ear cannot tolerate pure intonation, and that for this reason tempered tuning was invented', but that he could never again say this after having heard Tanaka's instrument. I suspect that Bruckner's familiarity with this instrument has something to do with the harmonic experiments in his 9th Symphony, which he is now composing.

In December, 17-year-old Schönberg saves up enough money to buy an old second-hand cello, to replace the makeshift instrument he has been playing.

In Montmartre (Paris), 29-year-old Claude Debussy meets Satie at the Auberge du Clou cabaret where Satie plays piano. Satie talks to Debussy about the need to write really French music 'without Sauerkraut', (i.e., Wagner) and to transpose the methods of painters like Cezanne, Monet, and Toulouse-Lautrec to music.

1892

Mahler 1892, age 31

31-year-old Mahler's friendships with Brahms and Bülow, and his growing confidence as a conductor, inspire him back into creative activity after a 31/2-year hiatus, and with the lightest schedule of his period in Hamburg giving him some extra time, he composes 5 of the lieder from Des Knaben Wunderhorn ['the boy's magic horn'] for voice and orchestra, which he collectively titles Humoresken, during the winter: Der Schildwache Nachtlied ['the night watchman's song'], Verlor'ne Müh ['wasted effort'], Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht? ['who made up this little song?'], Das himmlische Leben ['the heavenly life'] (later used as finale to the 4th Symphony), Trost im Unglück ['comfort in unhappiness'].

In my opinion, the attention from Brahms probably has a lot to do with Mahler's renewed interest in composing. At the same time, he engages in a deep study of Bach's cantatas, and three small volumes of his early songs are Mahler's first compositions to be published.

On 16 March, Mahler moves into an apartment at Bundestrasse 10/III in Hamburg. He will live here until his summer vacation, and then again from the fall to the summer of the next year, for the entirety of the next opera season.

Mahler's residence at Bundestrasse 10/III, Hamburg (The pin with the orange circle; click image to enlarge)

During the spring semester at the Vienna Conservatory, 20-year-old Zemlinsky composes the first 3 movements of his Symphony in D-minor [2nd Symphony].

In April, 18-year-old Otto Mahler leaves the Conservatory without graduating, and perhaps even without Mahler knowing.

69 Torrington Square and 22 Alfred Place, London (Torrington is the green pin near Euston Sq., Alfred is the green pin with orange circle; click image to enlarge)

Summer brings an engagement for Mahler in London, where he stays for 2 months, from 26 May to to 23 July. His first 2 days are at the Hotel DeKeyser's, then for the rest of the trip he lives in the Bloomsbury section of Camden Town [London], first at 69 Torrington Square (29 May to 11 July; no longer exists as a result of expansion of nearby University College), then at 22 Alfred Place (12 July to 22 July). He directs Wagner's Ring at Covent Garden.

Altho publicly successful, Mahler is displeased with the artistic results of his London performances and resists future offers -- this is in part also because he now decides to keep his summers free for composing. He then takes a long holiday from 23 July to mid-September at Villa Hechler in Berchtesgaden, Southern Bavaria [Germany] (~20 km south of Salzburg [Austria]), with his sister Justine and Natalie Bauer-Lechner. At the end of August he makes a trip to Berlin, then returns to Berchtesgaden. His only composition during this time is another Wunderhorn song, Urlicht ['primal light'], which he will decide next year to incorporate into a new symphony.

Berchtestgaden area, southern Bavaria, Germany, showing proximity to Salzburg [Austria] (click on image to enlarge)

Edward Steuermann is born on June 18 in Sambor, Poland.

In Paris over the summer Debussy buys a copy of Maeterlinck's drama Pelléas et Mélisande, and immediately begins sketching parts of it to music. The resulting opera will occupy him for the next 10 years.

On July 25, Julius Korngold's oldest son Hanns Robert is born in Brünn.

During the Hamburg cholera epidemic, on a trip to Sylt in the North Sea, Schindler has intestinal pains, but is misdiagnosed by the doctors and continues travelling. He dies on August 9, at age 50. 12-year-old Alma is crushed by the loss. After the family relocates to Vienna, she begins taking counterpoint lessons with Joseph Labor, a blind organist, and also becomes a fervent admirer of Wagner's music-dramas.

28-year-old Richard Strauss becomes seriously ill with pneumonia in May, and goes on a long holiday in Greece and Egypt to recuperate, where he composes most of his 1st opera, Guntram, op.25.

Zemlinsky completes his studies at the Vienna Conservatory, and conducts the Conservatory orchestra in the première of the 1st movement of his Symphony in D-minor [2nd Symphony] as his graduation work at the July 11 concert.

Dvořák in his 40s

In Prague, 51-year-old Dvořák becomes fascinated with a translation of Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, and begins sketching an opera based on it. The opera will never materialize, but the sketches will eventually find their way into the middle movements of his next symphony. Dvořák is lured to New York in September when he is offered a huge salary for the job as Director of the National Conservatory of Music. He arrives in America on September 27 with his wife and two of their children (four others remaining in Bohemia), and his personal secretary Jan Joseph Kovarik, a native of Spillville, Iowa. They live at first in the Clarendon Hotel on East 18th Street and then in a brownstone apartment at 327 E. 17th Street, directly across the street from the Conservatory. Dvořák immerses himself in African-American music, and begins writing a symphony "in the spirit" of this music, saying: I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.

Back in Hamburg in the fall, Bülow tells Mahler that he cannot make sense out of Mahler's strange songs, and that Mahler must conduct the performance in November. Mahler finally gives up hope of having Bülow as an advocate of his compositions.

On December 1, 68-year-old Bruckner experiences the greatest triumph of his career at the première of his 8th Symphony in Vienna.

1893

In January, at Hamburg, 32-year-old Mahler revises the 1st movement, scherzo, and finale of his Symphonic Poem (the future 1st Symphony). The 'Blumine' movement, which had been lifted from Der Trompeter von Sakkingen, will only be revised later this summer -- I believe that adding this serenade to the Symphonic Poem had been an afterthought in the first place, and now perhaps Mahler was already considering deleting it. The base layer of this autograph "Hamburg" manuscript corresponds to the latest version of the 1889 "Budapest" manuscript (which is in a copyist's hand with extensive revisions by Mahler), and I believe that it dates from Mahler's submitting the work to Schott [see 1891]. Several sections of the 3rd (scherzo) and 5th (finale) movements are now removed and replaced with entirely new ones, and the whole 1st movement is rewritten. Aside from further changes in orchestration, the one major substantive revision in this manuscript is a whole new beginning for the recapitulation of the 1st theme of the finale (the 'viola eruption', replacing what was originally a mostly literal recap of the cymbal crash and its associated furious opening music); otherwise the form remains the same. At some later time during the year, Mahler adds a title to each movement. (This manuscript is now in the Osborn collection at Yale University.)

Mahler also decides around this time that he will leave Hamburg when his contract expires at the beginning of 1894.

Brahms visits old friends in Hamburg at this time, and I think it is likely that he meets with Mahler, and that this further contact with the great master of concert music may be the inspiration for Mahler to 'renovate' his first symphonic work and to carry on by expanding smaller old projects into vast new ones.

On February 4, Mahler writes a letter to a young woman named Gisela Tolney-Witt, in which he clearly states the autobiographical nature of his compositions:

"My whole life is contained in my [first] two symphonies. In them I have set down my experience and suffering, truth and poetry in words. To anyone who knows how to listen, my whole life will become clear, for my creative works and my existence are so closely interwoven that if my life flowed as peacefully as a stream through a meadow I believe I would no longer be able to compose anything."

On February 10, the orchestra of the Vienna Conservatory gives the first complete performance of 21-year-old Zemlinsky's Symphony in D-minor [2nd Symphony] conducted by his composition teacher Robert Fuchs.

On 4 May (some sources cite 14 May), Ivan Wyschnegradsky is born in St Petersburg, Russia. (His last name is transliterated into the Roman alphabet with various spellings; this is the most common, and is the spelling he adopted himself after emigrating to France in 1920.) He will later become an important pioneer composer and theorist of microtonal music.

In America, for 6 months from May to October, the World's Fair known as the Columbian Exposition is held in Chicago, attracting 27 million visitors. 25-year-old Scott Joplin is there. The African-American style of music known as "ragtime", previously confined mostly to the area around St. Louis, Missouri, is introduced to the larger public for the first time. Over the course of the next decade the ragtime craze will mark the first widespread acceptance among Western culture of an African-American art-form.

In New York in May, Dvořák completes his Symphony 'Z Noveho Sveta' ['from the New World'], with themes reminiscent of African-American ['Negro'] spirituals and Native-American dances. Dvořák recycles the "funeral" and "celebratory feast" scenes of his abandoned Hiawatha opera into the symphony's middle movements -- the english-horn tune in the Largo inspired by the death of Minnehaha, and the scherzo by a Native American dance -- while a prominent theme in the 1st movement bears a strong resemblance to Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Dvořák's symphony is intended to illustrate how American composers might develop a national style of art-music based on their indigenous folk music ... with respect to ragtime, this is precisely what Scott Joplin will accomplish within the decade.

At the end of May Dvořák's other children arrive in America and on June 3, Dvořák and his family leave New York by train to vacation among a colony of Czech immigrants in Spillville, Iowa. They spend June 4 at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, then continue the long journey by train and carriage to Spillville. Dvořák spends 3 weeks observing and conversing with the professional Negro and Native American entertainers of the Kickapoo Medicine Show, attending every performance and sitting in the front row. He completes his String Quartet in F, opus 96 (the "American Quartet") and begins a string quintet whose 2nd movement shows the influence of Native American music. Dvořák visits the Columbian Exposition in Chicago again in mid-August to participate in "Czech Day", and then again during his return to New York in mid-September.

Also in America, Berliner introduces his first "serious" gramophone and establishes the United States Gramophone Co. to attract investors for the gramophone; investors in Philidelphia contribute $25,000. The hand-turned turntable and heavy rubber discs do not sound anywhere as good as the phonograph/graphophone's wax cylinders, but gramophones are cheap and the discs can be mass produced, the metal engraving produced by photoengraving being used to stamp out records.

Meanwhile, control of the American Graphophone Company is acquired by the president of Columbia Phonograph Co. Both Edison's phonograph and the Graphophone are selling briskly. Hand-cranked models sell for as little as $10. Dozens of small record companies emerged to fill the need for cylinders, which all have to be recorded from live music; hired bands must play the same selection over and over in front of a bank of recording machines. Columbia's catalog lists hundreds of titles, mostly recordings of folk music ("coon shouters" to use Edison's term) and popular ballads.

Oscar Wilde's play Salome, based on the biblical story and written in French, is published in Paris.

Alois Hába is born on June 21 in the small village of Vizovice in Moravia .

At Bad Ischl for the summer, 60-year-old Brahms completes several sets of miniature piano pieces begun the year before, his Rhapsodies, Fantasies, Impromptus, etc., of opp. 116-119.

In this year Mahler begins a pattern of quiet summer vacations devoted to composing which he will continue for the rest of his life (with only two years interrupted due to illness and one due to his daughter's death). This is almost certainly a routine that he picks up from Brahms. The chosen location for the next 4 years is Steinbach, where he has the first of his 3 famous Hauschen ['composing huts'] built, on a small peninsula away from the main house, right next to the lake.

Having revamped most of his Symphonic Poem (excluding the "Blumine" movement - what we now know as his 1st Symphony), Mahler decides to return to his original conception of a "symphony in C-minor", with Totenfeier as the 1st movement, and over the summer he embarks upon what will become his 2nd Symphony in earnest, finishing the 2nd movement (a Schubertian Andante, which he had begun sketching in 1888 in Leipzig) on July 30, and again (as with the 1st Symphony) expanding old material from his songs into symphonic status by:

• composing a 3rd movement Scherzo (dated 16 July) based on his contemporary Wunderhorn song Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt ['St. Anthony of Padua's sermon to the fishes'] (voice and piano version of the song dated 8 July), and
• incorporating intact as the 4th movement an orchestrated version of a Wunderhorn song written the previous summer: Urlicht ['primal light'] (orchestral score dated 19 July).

Mahler wants to write a big choral finale for the Symphony in C-minor, after the model of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and searches thru 'all human literature', including even the Bible, but finds nothing suitable for a text ... so the symphony remains in this unfinished state for the time being.

If Mahler had considered deleting the 'Blumine' movement from the Symphonic Poem while revising that work in January, he now reinstates it; during August, having now set aside the Symphony in C-minor, he revises the 'Blumine' and includes it in the "Hamburg" manuscript of what will later become his 1st Symphony.

Despite his current frenetic rush of important new compositional activity, Mahler apparently feels some apprehension over his realization that from now on he will live the routine of only a 'summer composer', because he thinks back nostalgically to early 1888, when he was giving the celebrated première of Weber's Die drei Pintos which he had completed, and was given enough time off from conducting the regular operas during the season that he was able to compose his Symphonic Poem (1st Symphony) and the earliest of the Wunderhorn lieder, and sketch both Totenfeier and the andante from the 2nd Symphony, and he calls that 'the most fruitful period of my life'.

21-year-old Zemlinsky joins the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein ['Viennese Tone-Artists Association'], and thus secures performances of several of his chamber works.

Back in Germany and fully recovered from his illness, 29-year-old Richard Strauss completes his first opera Guntram, op.25 in September.

17-year-old Schlesinger obtains a 1-year post at the Cologne Opera.

Returning to Hamburg for the fall season, Mahler is stricken with cholera in September. His sister Justi prefers to nurse him at a private clinic rather than risk fear of further contagion at a hospital, and as his condition worsens, she decides to die with him and eats with his spoon. But Mahler recovers and Justi miraculously remains healthy.

In October Mahler moves into a new apartment at Fröbelstrasse 14, very close to his previous residence on Bundestrasse. He will stay there until March 1895.

Mahler's residence at Fröbelstrasse 14 in Hamburg (the green pin with orange circle; click on image to enlarge)

On October 27 in Hamburg, Mahler gives the 2nd performance of his future 1st Symphony in its heavily revised form. Always attracted to literary themes and seeking (and probably very envious of) the dazzling success achieved by Strauss with his symphonic-poems, Mahler now presents the piece under the name 'Titan', ein Tondichtung in symphonieform ['Titan', a tone-poem in symphony-form], a title certainly inspired by the novel by Jean Paul (one of Mahler's favorite authors, altho Mahler denied that the symphony was in any way 'about' the book), with descriptive titles and information for each of the parts and movements. It is received by this audience much better than at the première, but critics still pan it.

Around this time, 19-year-old Schönberg and other young music students found the modest little amateur 'Polyhymnia' Orchestra. The only cellist in the group (and playing with incorrect technique, using violin fingering), Schönberg becomes friends with its conductor, 22-year-old Zemlinsky, who has a reputation as one of the most diligent and talented young musicians in Vienna. Schönberg's earliest dated manuscripts, two songs, survive from this summer; one of them, Schilflied ['reed song'], is awarded a composition prize from Polyhymnia, in a competition organized by Zemlinsky.

In November, Zemlinsky premières his Piano Quartet in D-major in Vienna.

In St. Petersburg [Russia] during the summer and fall, 53-year-old Tchaikovsky composes his 6th Symphony ['Pathétique'], his last major work. On 6 November Tchaikovsky dies.

In New York, Dvořák's New World Symphony is premièred in December with Seidl conducting the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall; it is the big event of the season and creates a sensation. The New World Symphony has remained wildly popular ever since its debut.

Towards the end of the year, after Schott's rejection of his score of the 1880 cantata Das Klagende Lied (in its more-or-less original version), Mahler decides to revise it, in hopes of getting it performed. He first makes revisions to all 3 movements, reducing the number of harps and vocal soloists in the 1st movement, removing the boys choir, and removing the offstage band in the 2nd and 3rd movements. Then he decides to eliminate the entire Waldmärchen ['forest fairy-tale'] (the original Part 1).

In Paris just before Christmas, Debussy premieres his Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune ['Prelude to the Afternoon of a fawn'], to disinterested reviews in the press and criticism from musicians. The piece is today praised as a radically innovative departure from earlier musical styles.

On December 23, Bruckner finally completes the 1st movement of his 9th Symphony. At some point during this year he also composes the second version of a Trio for the Scherzo of this symphony, this time in the key of F#-major, but entirely different from the one we now know.

1894

30-year-old Richard Strauss conducts a concert in Hamburg on January 22, and spends time with Mahler which deepens their friendship. At the same time, Strauss is engaged in negotiations with Mahler's boss Pollini for the Hamburg position, behind Mahler's back. Mahler knows that Pollini desperately wants him to sign a new contract to remain at the Hamburg Opera, and since Mahler wants to leave, he makes outrageous demands, primarily to conduct symphonic concerts. But when Mahler finds out about Strauss's maneuvers, he probably softens some of his demands, and Pollini agrees to all of them, and on February 5 Mahler signs a new 5-year contract. The rivalry between Mahler and Strauss apparently does no harm to their friendship, as they will continue to try to get performances for each other's works.

Strauss also tells Bülow about his convalesence in Egypt, so the ailing Bülow goes to Cairo on February 6. It turns out that Bülow's headaches are being caused by a brain tumor, and he dies in Cairo on February 12, at age 64.

Back in Weimar in February, Strauss begins sketching a fifth symphonic-poem (it will eventually be released as the 6th), Also Sprach Zarathustra ['thus spake Zarathustra'], based on Nietzsche's book, and also begins drafting Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche ['Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'] as his second opera.

On February 15, Bruckner completes the 2nd movement (Scherzo) of his 9th Symphony, with the third and final version of the Trio, in the key of F#-major and very fast.

Because Bülow disliked Mahler's compositions (particularly the Totenfeier) while at the same time admiring his conducting, Bülow's death most likely removed some psychological barrier to composition in Mahler's mind. While attending Bülow's funeral in Hamburg on 29 March, 33-year-old Mahler hears a children's choir sing a hymn set to Klopstock's poem Aufersteh'n ['resurrection'] that finally inspires him to write the finale for the 2nd Symphony which he has been seeking, saying that it "struck me like a bolt of lightning". He begins working furiously on the 5th movement and finishes it over the summer. He also "renovates" the Totenfeier by April 29, restoring its original place as the 1st movement for the symphony. By 13 June Mahler has a rough draft of the 5th movement finished.

Having been snubbed twice earlier in his life, when the position would have been important to him, Brahms ironically receives an offer for the post of music director from the Hamburg Philharmonic (to replace Bülow), and he refuses. Over the summer Brahms, now 61, writes his two Clarinet Sonatas, op.120.

13-year-old Béla Bartók moves with his family to Presporok (the old Slovak name of the city, derived from the German "Pressburg", "Pozsony" in Hungarian -- then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; now Bratislava, Slovakia).

Mahler has been unsuccessfully campaigning to secure the première in Hamburg of Richard Strauss's 1st opera Guntram, which finally has its debut instead on May 10 at the 30th Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein [general German music association] festival in Weimar. The festival also includes the new fairy-tale opera Hänsel und Gretel by Humperdinck, and on June 3, the third performance of Mahler's 'Titan' tone-poem [the future 1st Symphony].

The 'Titan' tone-poem is announced in this program with the same titles and descriptions as at Hamburg the year before. Mahler's first symphonic effort is again (for the third time) a failure, received with a mixture of booing and weak applause; there are fights in the street after the performance over the varied opinions of it. Aside from one good review, the newspapers are again hostile. Mahler blames the poor reception on a bad performance, which ensures that he will rehearse future performances of his works with much greater care. At some later point, Mahler again increases the woodwinds in this piece from triple to quadruple, and adds three more horn parts. (This manuscript is now in the Bruno Walter collection at the New York Public Library.)

For this summer vacation, Mahler specifically tells his sister Justine to not invite Natalie Bauer-Lechner, wanting to avoid her "hanging over me like a wet coat", and needing to have more time alone to compose. In his new composing-hut at Steinbach-am-Attersee, Mahler writes the complete sketch of the finale to his 2nd Symphony by 29 June, then works on the full orchestral score of it during July and August, completing the orchestral draft (now lost) of the 5th movement on 27 July.

At the beginning of July, Mahler visits Brahms at Ischl for the second time. During one conversation, Brahms criticizes contemporary music, and Mahler points to a stream and makes his famous remark: "Look, master, the last wave is rolling by!". At the end of July, Mahler visits Bayreuth as an invited guest of Cosima Wagner. Mahler's younger brother Otto has done well with his first conducting job in Leipzig, and then goes to his new post in Bremen.

44-year-old Heuberger remodels his opera Manuel Venegas into the 3-act grand opera Mirjam, oder Das Maifest, which is successful when produced in Vienna.

On November 30, 70-year-old Bruckner completes the 3rd movement (Adagio) of his 9th Symphony. It is my hunch that Bruckner's admiration of the JI tuning of Tanaka's Enharmonium has something to do with the strange harmonies Bruckner used in many places in the Scherzo and Adagio of this piece. (To be explored in a future webpage...) For the next 2 years he will work on the last movement amidst deteriorating health, and which he will never complete.

Bruckner in his 70s

28-year-old Busoni settles in Berlin, where he will live for the rest of his life.

In Paris, so many people have offered to buy the Edison phonograph in the Pathé brothers's bar that they found the Pathé Frères company to manufacture their own talking machine, which is simply an inexpensive copy of Edison's, and which is first called Le Coq, and then the Pathéphone. Having famous opera stars convenient to their studios make Pathé's recordings an instant success.

In Sedalia, Missouri (America), 26-year-old Scott Joplin is the leader of the Texas Medley Quartette, which is really an 8-member double quartet, singing in a capella "barbershop" style. The Quartette goes on a tour which takes them as far as Syracuse, New York, where Joplin's compositions are published for the first time -- Please Say You Will and A Picture of Her Face, two songs of the sentimental type popular at the time among White audiences.

Schönberg playing the cello in a Tyrolean folk band Fritz Kreisler is one of the violinists

Probably written during this year by 19-year-old Schönberg (or possibly even earlier) is his Presto in C for string quartet, his earliest surviving complete movement for an instrumental ensemble; the style reminds one of Schubert more than anyone else. Seeking the advice of a respected musician, this quartet-movement is performed for Alma's teacher Joseph Labor, who is impressed and insists that Schönberg must become a musician, even despite his lack of training. Schönberg is therefore delighted when his employer goes bankrupt and closes down, and proclaims that he'll never work in a bank again. (A famous quip by Zemlinsky: 'Schönberg preferred his music-notes to his bank-notes'.) At this time, on Labor's recommendation, he begins studying with Zemlinsky; Schönberg later credits Zemlinsky's instruction in counterpoint and composition as the only formal training he ever received from a teacher. He and Zemlinsky both earn money by doing copying and orchestrating of other composers's work.

Hermann von Helmholtz dies on September 8 in Berlin, at age 73.

In September, 30-year-old Richard Strauss marries Pauline de Ahna.

18-year-old Schlesinger is engaged at the Hamburg Opera, where he meets Mahler, who recognizes his talent and becomes a close friend. Mahler exerts a powerful influence over his young colleague.

28-year-old Karpath becomes critic at the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, a job he holds until 1921.

In Hamburg, on his way to school, 9-year-old Otto Klemperer sees Mahler walking around town, and is intrigued with his appearance and unusual way of walking:

"At that time he [Mahler] had a habit of pulling strange faces, which made a tremendous impression on me. I ran along shyly after him for about ten minutes and stared at him as though he were a deep-sea monster." [Heyworth 1984, p.1]

In October, Schönberg completes a set of 3 Piano Pieces (1st piece, 3rd piece), his earliest surviving dated instrumental compositions, and leaves unfinished a Scherzo in F-sharp-minor for piano; they betray an intense admiration of Brahms (especially Brahms's Rhapsodies, Fantasies, Impromptus, etc., of opp. 116-119 from the year before), which is probably at least partly the result of Schönberg's contact with Zemlinsky. Zemlinsky is also already quite familiar with, and fond of, Wagner's musical idiom, and eventually this will also rub off on Schönberg, but from the evidence in Schönberg's surviving compositions, this will not happen until after Mahler's arrival at the Vienna Opera and his radical new productions of Wagner.

During the fall and winter in Hamburg, Mahler copies and corrects his 2nd Symphony with a view towards a performance with Richard Strauss's orchestra in Berlin (the end of the finale is dated December 18). He also spends a lot of time retouching the orchestration of Beethoven's symphonies for his own performances in the subscription concerts.

Quite an important year along the Paris-Hamburg-Berlin-Vienna musical axis.

1895

In January, Mahler conducts Hamburg Opera musicians in a reading rehearsal of the first 3 movements of his 2nd Symphony, but with the order: 1) funeral march, 2) scherzo, 3) andante. He later switches back to the original order (andante before the scherzo), but the score is eventually published with the rehearsal numbers reflecting the order of this reading, the numbers continuing from the funeral march to the scherzo, and with the andante having its own set of numbers.

Thru Mahler's help, his 21-year-old brother Otto has secured a post as conductor in Leipzig. Back in Vienna in February, Otto, whose capriciousness caused Mahler much pain and unneeded expense, and whom Mahler once said was 'a man of great talent, far more gifted than I', commits suicide by shooting himself. (According to Bruno Schlesinger [Walter], Otto leaves behind 2 symphonies and an almost-complete 3rd, and lieder, some with orchestra and some with piano. His music vanishes when Alma's house is damaged during the bombing of Vienna in World War 2.)

It seems entirely possible to me that Mahler's support of Schlesinger at this time is a transference of his desire to see Otto succeed, since they are so close in age; but Mahler doesn't think very highly of Schlesinger's compositions, and so in his opinion Schlesinger's abilities are purely recreative, and I think Mahler will also later find in Schönberg a gifted composer of his brother's generation to whom he can provide assistance.

On March 4, Mahler gives the incomplete première (the first three movements only, announced in the program as 'the First Part') of his 2nd Symphony, in Berlin. It is surprisingly successful with the audience, altho the newspaper critics are more negative.

In Hamburg, Mahler's subscription concerts have been less and less well attended, and he is not hired for the following season.

Also in March, at the première of 24-year-old Zemlinsky's Orchestral Suite in a Society of Music-Friends concert in Vienna, Zemlinsky meets Brahms.

In America, Berliner Gramophone Co. is established in Philadelphia to manufacture all equipment and discs under licence from Washington-based U.S. Gramophone Co. Meanwhile, American Graphophone Co. and Columbia Phonograph Co. consolidate, the Graphophone Co. concerning itself with development and manufacturing and Columbia handling distribution and sales, introducing reasonably priced home graphophones.

54-year-old Dvořák premières his Cello Concerto in America, and after a 3-year stint as Director of the National Conservatory in New York, he returns to Austria and his native Bohemia, and resumes his job as Professor of Composition at the Prague Conservatory.

Mahler spends the last half of April and whole month of May with Dr. Hermann Behn and his wife Luise, who are on vacation, at Oberstrasse 87 in Hamburg. Mahler purchases his first bicycle and learns how to ride it.

Oberstrasse 87 in Hamburg, Mahler's residence April and May 1895 (the green pin with orange cirlce; click image to enlarge)

In Vienna, Karl Lüger and his anti-semitic Christian Socialist party win the May elections, setting the stage for a drastic change in Austrian politics that will lead to Lüger's becoming mayor of Vienna, and eventually to Hitler's victories.

Suppé dies in Vienna on May 21 at age 76.

Over the summer, Zemlinsky finishes his first opera Sarema, which is jointly (with Thuille's opera Theuerdank) awarded the prize from Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria.

Zemlinsky encourages Schönberg into more practical musical roles in trying to help his friend earn a living, and around his 21st birthday, Schönberg becomes conductor of a metal-workers choral society.

31-year-old Richard Strauss had drafted Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche ['Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'] as an opera the year before, but now transforms it into his 5th symphonic-poem. Its success offsets the failure of Guntram a bit.

Hugo Wolf composes his only completed opera, Der Corregidor.

Hanslick at 70 retires from his position at the University of Vienna, and is succeeded by Mahler's 39-year-old friend Guido Adler, who becomes professor of music history.

Around his 35th birthday over the summer in Steinbach, probably the most productive of his life, Mahler composes all the shorter movements of his gigantic 3rd Symphony (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th), as well as several Wunderhorn lieder.

In July, Mahler makes his annual visit to Brahms at Ischl. Brahms has been considering writing a "cantata-symphony", which later transforms into the Vier ernste Gesänge ['4 serious songs'].

From August 1895 to April 1897, Mahler lives at Bismarckstrasse 86 in the Hohe Luft quarter of Hamburg.

Bismarckstrasse 86 in Hamburg (The pin with the orange circle; click on the image to enlarge.)

In the fall, the gifted young soprano Anna von Mildenburg debuts at Hamburg. Mahler senses her talent immediately and rehearses with her every day, leading inevitably to a stormy love affair.

Sometime in the fall, the Vienna Tonkunstlerverein gives the private trial performance of Zemlinsky's String Quintet in D-minor. Brahms invites Zemlinsky afterwards to bring the piece to him; he goes over it with much criticism, bringing out a Mozart Quintet as an example from which to learn, but then, showing appreciation of Zemlinsky's talent and inquiring about his finances, Brahms offers him a monthly allowance so that the young man may be able to devote more time to composition. Zemlinsky scraps the final movement and composes a new one, then, heavily under the influence of Brahms's criticism, begins his Piano Trio with Clarinet, op.3, in the same key.

In November, Alma's widowed mother Anna marries Schindler's former pupil Carl Moll, himself a talented painter.

On December 7, Richard Strauss gets down to serious work on his 6th symphonic-poem Also Sprach Zarathustra.

December 13 brings the full première of Mahler's 2nd Symphony in Berlin, and is his first important success as a creative artist, the real beginning of his career as a composer. Half of the cost is supplied by Hermann Behn, a wealthy Hamburg arts patron and music-lover, who also writes a 2-piano arrangement of the work, and the other half of the cost by Wilhelm Berkan.

Also in December (but with a copyright date of 1896), Mahler's original piano score of Urlicht and Behn's 4-hand 2-piano arrangement of Mahler's 2nd Symphony are published by Friedrich Hofmeister in Leipzig. These pieces are the second group of Mahler's works to be published, and also financed by Behn. (Later taken over by Weinberger in Vienna, still later, by Universal Edition).

France unites its African colonies of Senegal, French Sudan, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire into a large new territory called French West Africa.

1896

In both January and February, Natalie Bauer-Lechner visits Mahler twice in Hamburg, seeming to indicate that their relationship is growing stronger.

On February 1, Puccini's opera La Bohème ['the bohemian'] is premiered at the Teatro Regio in Italy.

In February, at the suggestion of Richard Heuberger, 21-year-old Schönberg composes his Six 4-hand Piano Pieces.

On March 16, a concert in Berlin is devoted to Mahler's music: the Totenfeier, billed as "1st movement of the Symphony in C-minor for large orchestra" (later known as the 2nd Symphony), the première of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and the Symphony in D-major for large orchestra (later known as the 1st Symphony), revamped out of what was the 'Titan' by dropping the sentimental 'Blumine' slow movement and eliminating the program and titles. (A manuscript of this version of the 1st exists, but is inaccesible at present, in a private collection.) Played to a half-empty hall, the songs are applauded, but the symphonic pieces get a disappointing reception. It is interesting that the year before Mahler had premièred the first 3 movements from his "2nd Symphony", but here he drops the numbering, perhaps indicating that at this time he still expected to specialize in composing symphonic-poems and not true symphonies.

On March 5, Zemlinsky's String Quintet in D-minor is performed in Vienna by Hellmesberger Quartet, with quite a good reception.

Assured of an autumn performance of his Blumenstück ['flowers-piece'] (the 2nd movement of his 3rd Symphony), Mahler completes orchestration of it on April 11.

From April to July, Zemlinsky composes the cantata Frühlingsbegräbnis ['springtime funeral'] for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus, and orchestra, on a poem by Paul Heyse. Originally composed for small orchestra, it is probably intended for Polyhymnia, but will be revised later for a larger orchestra.

In May, Clara Schumann has a stroke and is very ill. Under this tragic inspiration, Brahms, just after his 63rd birthday, composes Vier ernste Gesänge ['four serious songs'], op.121, his last completed work. Clara dies later that month in Frankfurt, at age 76. It is a tremendous loss for Brahms, who is himself now ill from liver cancer.

In America, National Gramophone Co. is established by Frank Seaman to undertake distribution and advertising of the gramophone, and is given exclusive sales rights. Edison dissolves the North American Phonograph Company and, salvaging his phonograph patents, establishes the National Phonograph Co. to manufacture and distribute phonographs for home use.

21-year-old Franz Schmidt graduates "with excellence" from the Vienna Conservatory, and secures a position as cellist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, often playing under Mahler's direction.

24-year-old Zemlinsky wins a prize from the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein ['Viennese Tone-Artists Association'], for his Piano Trio with Clarinet, op.3. Brahms had provided the prize money, and he recommends the work to his publisher Simrock, who accepts and publishes it the next year. As with Mahler, the support from Brahms helps bring Zemlinsky greater recognition from the musical public. Over the summer, Zemlinsky composes his String Quartet in A-major, op.4.

36-year-old Hugo Wolf completes the 24 songs of his 2nd Italienisches Liederbuch ['Italian song-book'].

46-year-old Heuberger becomes music critic of the Neue Freie Presse until 1901.

In England, 21-year-old Marconi files a patent for his radio apparatus on June 2, which is the first patent for a radio-wave based communication system.

From 1 June to 10 June, Mahler stays in Vienna at Natalie Bauer-Lechner's house, again indicating how close they have become. He makes a one-day trip to Dresden and Leipzig on 3 June to visit colleagues.

During his summer vacation in Steinbach, with Schlesinger and Natalie Bauer-Lechner as his guests for the summer, 36-year-old Mahler from 5 to 28 July Mahler works intensively to compose the massive 1st movement which completes his 3rd Symphony.

Brahms in his 60s

At Bad Ischl during the first few days of July, Mahler visits Brahms for the last time, and shows the old master the score to his 2nd Symphony. Brahms considers its Scherzo to be a work of genius (an opinion he rarely expresses), and says 'I now consider Mahler the king of the revolutionaries'. As is always the case with Brahms's ambiguous and sarcastic humor, this may be taken as either a compliment or a put-down, but in any case, Brahms's remark indicates clearly that he recognizes Mahler's superiority over Richard Strauss as a composer.

From 1 to 8 August, Mahler and Natalie make a trip by bicycle from Salzburg to Berchtesgaden, to visit Siegfried Lipiner and his wife. From 9 to 14 August Mahler goes with his sister Justine to Bayreuth, at the invitation of Cosima Wagner, to attend the 4th Bayreuth Festival.

On August 24, 32-year-old Richard Strauss finishes his 6th symphonic-poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra ['thus spake Zarathustra'], op.30, based on Nietzsche's book. (The opening to this piece becomes hugely popular when it is used by Stanley Kubrick in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.) The piece becomes notorius for its unresovled ending mixing a B-major triad on the trombones with a pizzicato C on the basses. It is premièred on November 27 in Frankfurt.

On 27 August, Mahler returns to Hamburg for the next opera season.

Mahler 1896 age 36

In September, just before his 22nd birthday, Schönberg begins composing a Serenade in D for small orchestra, for the Polyhymnia Orchestra to which he and Zemlinsky belong. Only the 1st movement is completed; it sounds very much like Brahms.

In Sedalia, Missouri [America] in the Fall, Scott Joplin publishes Combination March [hear my version which uses, for each of the four strains, the notated form for the first time and a syncopated ragtime version improvised by me for the second time] and The Great Crush Collision March [version as notated, improvised syncopated ragtime version], the latter including a programmatic commemoration of an actual staged locomotive crash. It is clear to me that Joplin played these "marches" in the ragtime form but did not yet know how to notate the rhythms properly.

20-year-old Schlesinger bids farewell to Mahler in Vienna and begins his engagement in Breslau [now Wroclaw, Poland].

During October, Mahler begins a series of letters and meetings to prepare for his attempt to became Director of the Vienna Opera.

Bruckner dies in Vienna on October 11 at age 72, leaving his 9th Symphony unfinished.

On November 9 before a packed hall, the Berlin Philharmonic under Nikisch premières Mahler's Blumenstück (2nd movement from his 3rd Symphony), and it receives the best reception (from both audience and critics) so far for Mahler.

In December, the same orchestra under Weingartner performs the piece in Hamburg, and the audience insists on an encore. Also in December, Mahler conducts the first two movements of his 2nd Symphony in their Leipzig première on the 14th, the first movement to mixed applause and boos, and the 2nd movement more successfully.

Zemlinsky has two premières in Vienna in December: his String Quartet in A-major, op.4, and then a few days later his Clarinet Trio in D-minor, op.3 and . They both sound very much like Brahms, and are received very well.

1897

Composed early this year, or possibly even the year before, is the first version of 22-year-old Schönberg's String Quartet in D-major (1st movement); the work will not be put into its definitive form until after Zemlinsky reviews it and offers criticism. Schönberg later confirms summer 1897 (after Brahms's death) as the date of composition of the Quartet, and the only surviving manuscript (the revised version) bears the date of October 1897, but Hanns Eisler (who will study with Schönberg decades later) and Zemlinsky both indicate this work as the quartet which Zemlinsky shows to Brahms, who is intrigued with the piece, so the discarded version of the Quartet had to be composed before Brahms died. When Zemlinsky tells Brahms that Schönberg has been scraping out a living by arranging and copying music, Brahms offers to pay Schönberg's tuition to study at the Conservatory; Schönberg turns it down. Altho the earlier version was apparently quite different from the revised one which we know, the Quartet in D is indeed the most significant early piece composed by Schönberg, and the only one likely to attract such strong attention from Brahms. It is possible that this is the last piece of new music Brahms reviewed.

The complete orchestral score of Mahler's 2nd Symphony is published by Hofmeister: the third publication of Mahler's music, and the first of his symphonies to appear in print in full score.

In January, Schuch conducts the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movments of Mahler's 2nd Symphony in Dresden, and Nikisch conducts the Blumenstück [from the 3rd Symphony] in Leipzig, all with great success.

Knowing that his being a Jew will be the biggest obstacle to his career in Austria, on 23 February Mahler has himself secretly baptised as a Catholic. From 11 to 15 March, Mahler travels to Moscow to give a concert, then spends a week in Munich for 2 concerts, then to Budapest for another concert. 1 to 3 April he visits Vienna.

Preceded by a lecture about Mahler which was published as a booklet, in March, in Berlin, Felix Weingartner conducts 2nd, 3rd, and 6th movements of Mahler's 3rd Symphony, before a full house, to very mixed reviews. Later that month, in the midst of his first international concert tour, Mahler successfully performs the Blumenstück in Budapest.

Hugo Wolf composes Gedichte von Michelangelo, songs on poems by Michelangelo.

Brahms dies in Vienna on April 3 at age 63, of liver cancer.

The same day brings the founding of the Vererinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs ['Association of Austrian Fine Artists'], commonly known as the Secession. Chiefly the idea of Klimt, Engelhart, and Moll, it is the most important event in the fin-de-siècle Vienna art-world. Because of her ties to both Klimt and Moll, Alma Schindler is intimately involved with the Secession. Alma is considered by those in her social circle to be the 'prettiest girl in Vienna', and she is wooed by many older and well-established men, both single and married. Her strongest ambition is to make a mark as a great composer.

Alma Schindler age 18 her signature at the bottom displays her notoriously illegible handwriting

Ever since his college days, Mahler has considered Vienna his hometown. His wish to return is finally fulfilled, in large part thanks to the support Brahms had provided. On 8 April the Vienna newspapers report that Mahler has been appointed conductor at the Vienna Opera. Mahler leaves Hamburg on April 25 at age 36 and becomes conductor and eventually Director (and supreme tyrant) of the Vienna Opera, beginning a decade of artistic achievement that will be remembered long afterward. Mahler makes his Vienna debut with Wagner's Lohengrin on May 11.

Map of central Vienna the red star indicates Mahler's apartment at Universitätstrasse 6, and the Court Opera is shaded grey just west of the encircled black star labeled "Wien"

While looking for a permanent residence, Mahler rents a flat at Universitätstrasse 6, near his alma mater, the University of Vienna. Contracting a bad sore throat soon after arriving in Vienna, Mahler spends the summer convalescing and moving from one temporary residence to another, and does no composing.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold is born on May 29 in Brünn, the younger of the two sons of the eminent newspaper music-critic Julius.

33-year-old Richard Strauss composes Don Quixote, fantasy variations for cello and orchestra, op.35, which can be considered his 7th symphonic-poem.

21-year-old Schlesinger secures a contract for the Stadttheater in Riga, to begin in 1898, but wants to leave Breslau immediately, so he obtains a post for the coming season as principal conductor in Pressburg [also known in Hungarian as Poszony; now Bratislava, Slovakia]. Over the summer, he visits Mahler in Vienna, gets to know many of Mahler's friends, and feels that he belongs in Vienna, which he visits occasionally from Pressburg (only a short train ride away).

Schönberg himself gives the summer of 1897 as the date of composition of his String Quartet in D-major (1st movement) -- altho apparently it must have originally been composed earlier and shown to Brahms (see above). The 2nd movement is originally a Scherzo, composed 27 July - 7 August, which will later be replaced, in accordance with Zemlinsky's suggestion.

Also during this summer Schönberg makes the piano-vocal score of Zemlinsky's Sarema. Sometime during these years Schönberg also becomes very well acquainted with Wagner's work, claiming later that by the time he was 25 (1899) he had seen each of Wagner's operas 20 to 30 times, evidently mostly in performances that were conducted by Mahler.

Zemlinsky spends the summer composing his Symphony in Bb-major. In October, his first opera, Sarema, is premièred in Munich. He also begins his second opera, Es war einmal ['once upon a time'].

Map of central Vienna
the red star indicates Mahler's apartment in Bartensteingasse.

Mahler returns to Vienna on 27 July, the opera season beginning on 1 August. On August 11, Mahler rents an apartment in Bartensteingasse, a bit closer to the Opera house than his previous flat.

In America, Thaddeus Cahill patents what is to become the "Telharmonium" or "Dynamophone", which can be considered the first significant electronic musical instrument. The tonewheel mechanism of the later Hammond Organ, introduced in 1935, the year after Cahill's death, is essentially the same as that used in the Telharmonium.

In the fall Schönberg shows his String Quartet in D-major (1st movement) to Zemlinsky. Subject to heavy revision after Zemlinsky's critique, Schönberg composes the revisions of the 1st and 4th movements, and two entirely new movements (the 2nd [Intermezzo] and 3rd) in the fall. Sounding very much like Brahms (and, betraying Schönberg's repertoire as a performer, even more like Dvořák), but with some boldly abrupt modulations, the work will be successfully received at both its private and public premières the following year. It is Schönberg's last 'apprentice'-work.

After finishing the Quartet, Schönberg is inspired by the poetry of Richard Dehmel into writing songs which provoke his own more personal compositional tendencies (Mädchenfrühling), with which he is now able to better integrate the techniques learned from Brahms.

62-year-old Wilhelm Jahn, Director of the Vienna Court Opera, has failing eyesight, and is ousted when the new season begins in the fall. Mahler is officially given his job on October 8.

Hugo Wolf in his later years

Needing to find new works to supplement the standard repertoire of the Opera, Mahler renews his friendship with Hugo Wolf in May after a 15-year hiatus, to discuss with him the possibility of producing his opera Der Corregidor. Over the summer, Wolf apparently exaggerates in his mind the definiteness of this première. On Saturday, September 18, anxious about the fact that a decision has not yet been made, Wolf goes to Mahler determined to get a date for the première of Der Corregidor, but the discussion becomes heated and Mahler criticizes Wolf's opera harshly then leaves his office on a pretense. Wolf suddenly believes that Mahler has been fired from his position at the Opera and that he, Wolf, is Mahler's replacement. Wolf rings the bell at Mahler's apartment and demands to be admitted as the master of the house. He then goes to his friends and tells them the news of his appointment as Director. By Monday he turns violent, and is put in a carriage and told that he will be taken to see Prince Liechtenstein to confirm his appointment as director. Instead, the carriage takes him to a mental asylum.

On 8 October, Mahler is formally appointed Director of the Vienna Opera, his dream come true. His contract gives him great powers over the whole Opera, and provides a good salary and benefits: salary 12,000 guilders, expenses 1,000 guilders, and pension 3,000 guilders.

Mahler contacts Zemlinsky's publisher requesting a copy of Sarema. Zemlinsky instead proposes Es war einmal ['once upon a time'], the opera on which he is currently working, based on Holger Drachmann's folk-tale comedy Der var engang. Zemlinsky composes the opera between August 1897 and June 1898.

Late in the year, Mahler's friend Guido Adler, the musicologist, succeeds in getting a grant from a Bohemian art society, to subsidize the publication of Mahler's 1st and 3rd Symphonies, which will be printed by Eberle and published by Weinberger during the next few years. In December, Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen are published by Weinberger.

Weinberger is one of the founding members of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger, or AKM ['Society of authors, composers and music-publishers']. Mahler becomes one of the original members.

With the following all happening within the time-frame of a few months:

the deaths of Bruckner and Brahms,

Mahler's appointment to the Vienna Opera,

the public emergence of Schönberg, and

the founding of the Secession by their visual-artist compatriots,

the musical climate among many composers in Vienna quickly begins to shift toward a much more modern outlook, while the public's taste remains very largely conservative.

1898

After a few months of treatment at the mental asylum, the doctors decide that Hugo Wolf is well enough to be released early in the year.

Auenbruggergasse 2, Vienna Mahler's home 1898 to 1909 (the green pin with orange circle; click image to enlarge)

On 19 February, Mahler moves into the 4th-floor apartment at Auenbruggergasse 2, with his sisters Justine and Emma. This will remain his home in Vienna until 1909.

March is an important month for 37-year-old Mahler: in Prague, he gives the fifth performance, and the first successful one, of his 1st Symphony, and Sylvain Dupuis conducts Mahler's 2nd Symphony in Liège: the first performance of a complete Mahler symphony without the composer's presence. It is so successful that a repeat is scheduled. During this spring, Mahler completes what is intended to be the definitive revision of his youthful cantata Das Klagende Lied, with an eye toward its publication. Mahler is also offered, and seriously considers, a job as concert conductor and Director of the National Conservatory in New York City (the job Dvořák had held from 1892 to 1895).

Mahler 1898

26-year-old Zemlinsky gets on the board of the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein ['Viennese Tone-Artists Association'], and brings Schönberg in as a member. During March, Schönberg's String Quartet in D-major is premièred at a private Tonkünstlerverein concert in Vienna. At this time, Schönberg also converts to Protestantism, being baptised as a Lutheran.

The Gramophone Company (England) is established in London by William Barry Owen and E. Trevor Williams, to manufacture gramophones and records (discs) in Europe.

In Hanover, Germany, the mass-production of phonograph disk records made of brittle shellac begins, and this will be the main material used for records until 1950.

In Berlin during the spring, 32-year-old Sibelius begins composing a multi-movement "musical dialogue" on a programmatic concept depicting winter scenes. He eventually abandons this idea and the work morphs into a symphony (which we know as his 1st Symphony). Work on this will continue for about a year.

Mahler undergoes another operation to stop his more and more frequent hemorrhages, and spends the summer in pain at Vahrn, composing only the 3 Wunderhorn Lieder: Lied des Verfolgten im Turm ['song of the prisoner in the tower'], Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen ['where the proud trumpets blow'], and another unidentified one.

Zemlinsky finishes his 2nd opera, Es war einmal ['once upon a time'].

34-year-old Richard Strauss composes his 8th and last symphonic-poem, Ein Heldenleben ['a hero's life'].

17-year-old Béla Bartók is accepted into the Vienna Conservatory, but he will only attend for one year.

Over the summer, Schönberg begins exploring ideas learned from the 'New German School', and works on a symphonic-poem called Frühlings Tod ['the death of spring'], which he eventually abandons, and composes his 2 Songs, op.1. These pieces are more expansive than his previous ones, but Schönberg's style will change again with the works written in the next year, after powerful new poetic and personal stimuli (Richard Dehmal and Mathilde Zemlinsky, respectively).

Schlesinger spends the summer in Berlin, visits Mahler in Vienna in August, bringing along his piano-duet transcriptions of Mahler's 1st and 2nd Symphonies, then, at 22, becomes chief conductor at the theater in Riga (Latvia).

Richter conducts Beethoven's Eroica Symphony at the last Vienna Philharmonic concert of the season, which will prove to be his last concert with that orchestra. Over the summer, Mahler engages in secret negotiations with the committee which result in Richter's resignation and in Mahler being offered the position in August. On November 6 Mahler opens the new season also with the Eroica, in the version with his own instrumental retouchings, obviously showing the orchestra and the public that there will be a new way of doing things.

48-year-old Heuberger hires Zemlinsky and Schoenberg to score his operetta Der Opernball, which is a big hit after its première in Munich.

On August 25, Mahler's sister Emma marries Eduard Rosé and they emigrate to America, where Eduard becomes cellist with the Boston Symphony.

In October, with the desire for the première of Der Corregidor still bothering his troubled mind, Hugo Wolf attempts to drown himself but lives, then commits himself to the mental institution again, where he will live out his remaining 6 years.

In December, 24-year-old Schönberg's String Quartet in D-major is given its public première in Vienna, and is well received. In his review of the concert, Hanslick remarks: 'there is a new Mozart growing up in Vienna'.

1899

Mahler goes to Liège himself in January for another performance of his 2nd Symphony. Altho the performers are not adequate, the audience is deeply impressed.

In Russia on February 15, the "February Manisfesto" is issued by Emperor Nicholas II, seeking to restrict the autonomy of the Grand Duchy of Finland (then part of the Russian Empire) and broaden the "Russification" of the Duchy, inspring widespread protest among Finnish people. Sibelius, his sense of Finnish nationalism aroused, composes several protest pieces.

In Vienna in February, Weinberger publishes the score of Mahler's 1st Symphony. In March, Mahler conducts his 1st in Frankfurt-am-Main. The work is met with polite (rather than enthusiastic) applause, but the musicians like it, which pleases Mahler.

Also in March, 27-year-old Zemlinsky's Symphony in Bb-major is premièred in Vienna. At the end of the month Zemlinsky withdraws from the Isrealitische Kultusgemeinde and at some later time becomes baptised. Later in the year he also becomes a Freemason. Some time during the year the Zemlinsky family moves into an apartment at Obere Weissgerberstrasse 12 in the 3rd District.

In April, Schönberg attends the Vienna première of Mahler's 2nd Symphony and, suprisingly, leaves unimpressed, as it is Mahler's first great success as a composer with the Viennese public, something he has dreamed about for nearly 20 years. The critics, however, agree with Schönberg, and roundly denounce the work and its creator.

During this time Schönberg falls in love with Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde, and he becomes deeply engrossed in Richard Dehmel's book Weib und Welt ['woman and world'], setting many of its erotic poems as songs, three of which appear in his 4 Songs, op.2 (Erwartung is #2) and one in his 6 Songs, op.3. Schönberg's style changes dramatically, as he begins to incorporate compositional techniques learned from his study of Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Hugo Wolf.

In the spring, 33-year-old Sibelius completes his Symphony in E minor (now known as his 1st Symphony), which is well-received at its April 26 première in Helsinki. He makes revisions to the work before the next performance and later destroys the score to the original version.

In May, after the Philharmonic season, Mahler completes the final revisions of the 3rd Symphony and Das Klagende Lied, reinstating the off-stage band into the score of the latter. Returning home after a trip to Venice, Alma sees Mahler in the street and thinks it noteworthy enough to mention in her diary.

Johann Strauss, Jr. dies on June 3 in Vienna at age 73.

In Paris, the Pathé company's 1899 catalog features 1,500 wax cylinder selections. Cylinders are popular in France until 1908, whereas licensee's of Berliner's gramophone make discs more popular in Britain and Germany.

Zemlinsky's opera Sarema is published by Berté in Leipzig.

24-year-old Franz Schmidt composes his 1st Symphony.

During his summer vacation at Aussee in the Salzkammergut, Mahler composes Revelge, which he considers may be the most important of his lieder, and comes up with a plan for his 4th Symphony, deciding to use as the finale a song he wrote in 1892 (and which he had intended to use in the 3rd Symphony), and he composes the 1st and 2nd movements. It is a much lighter work than his previous symphonies, and seems to mark a change in his style... (but the real change will come with the next work, his 5th).

Several of Alma Schindler's friends go out one night while she is ill and in bed; when they return, they claim that they spent the night in Mahler's company, and that they sent her a postcard which he signed, but which she never receives. After two weeks, she finds out that the whole story is a lie. Mahler finds out about it too, and, enabling Alma to have the last laugh, actually does send her a card. A few days later 19-year-old Alma and her friends happen to run into Mahler on a bicycle ride; he hopes to be introduced, but she dashes off ahead, wanting not to spoil her admiration for him as an artist by becoming acquainted with him as a man (and presumably learning of his flaws). At this point it is clear that Mahler is already very attracted to Alma.

Mahler finally has enough capital to have his own summer house built, and Mildenburg recommends an architect who convinces him to do so; construction is begun on the 'villa Mahler' at Maiernigg on the Attersee, in the Austrian Alps, and also, of course, on a little Hauschen [composing-hut] in the woods some distance away from the house, up the hill from the lake.

Maiernigg, Klagenfurt, and the Wörthersee area (in 2005). The red star indicates the Maiernigg post office; Mahler's property was on the shore of the Wörthersee, north of the star. The town of Sekirn, just west of Mahler's villa, was Zemlinsky's summer retreat during 1905.

Mahler's villa (left) and composing-hut (right) in Maiernigg

14-year-old Webern writes his first compositions, mostly songs. The earliest one which survives is Vorfrühling ['earliest spring']. This and many of Webern's other early songs are on texts by Ferdinand Avenarius, whose style is an important influence on the composer.

Béla Bartók age 18 September 1899.

18-year-old Béla Bartók begins his studies at the Budapest Academy.

In November, 25-year-old Schönberg composes his tone-poem Verklarte Nacht ['transfigured night'], for string sextet, based on a poem from Dehmel's Weib und Welt ['woman and world']. The piece is very evocative of the moods of the poem upon which it is based. It is obvious that Schönberg has by now already assimilated Wagner and, musically, has reached a great level of maturity, and this becomes his first piece to attract the attention of publishers, and is destined to remain his most popular composition. It is also the first time Schönberg uses a large single-movement form, an idea which will preoccupy him for the next few years in his instrumental works.

Schönberg before 1900

A foreshadowing of things to come: because of one chord -- a 'dominant 9th' in '4th inversion' position (i.e., with the '9th'in the bass), which is forbidden by the harmony textbooks -- the Viennese ensemble scheduled to première it refuses. A critic's comment: It sounds like someone smeared the the score of Tristan while the ink was still wet. So with the Wagner-Brahms controversy raging all around him (even tho they're both dead by now), Schönberg, just as he was so often later to seem to be the virtual embodiment of paradox, while in his mid-20s effortlessly combines his admiration for both composers, and it is reflected in his own compositions.

Also in November, Seigmund Freud publishes his book Die Traumdeuting ['the interpretation of dreams'].

Austro-Hungarian Empire, c.1900

1900

On January 14, Puccini's opera Tosca is premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Italy.

On January 22, Mahler conducts the première of 28-year-old Zemlinsky's 2nd opera Es war einmal ['once upon a time'], after suggesting, and helping Zemlinsky with, heavy revisions of the text and music. It is very well received and has many performances.

In February, the prestigious Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde ['society for the friends of music'] presents the première of Zemlinsky's cantata Frühlingsbegräbnis ['springtime funeral'] with Zemlinsky conducting the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra and the chorus of the Singverein.

These two performances mark the height of Zemlinsky's career in Vienna ... unfortunately, a position he will never later reach again. Just at this point, Alma Schindler meets Zemlinsky. They develop a strong interest in each other, based at first on their mutual admiration for Wagner and Mahler.

On February 12, 25-year-old Schönberg begins composing a Symphony in G-minor which will remain unfinished.

On February 18, Vienna for the first time hears Mahler's version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Newspaper critic Hirschfield hates it and becomes hostile towards Mahler, while Alma loves it.

Franz Ritter von Jauner, director of the Carltheater, has had difficulty balancing the books. On February 23, upon opening the theater's safe and finding it empty, he shoots himself. The job for the upcoming season in September is offered to Zemlinsky.

In March, for a Wiener Tonkünstlerverein ['Viennese Tone-Artists Association'] competition in which Zemlinsky is a judge, Schönberg begins his Gurrelieder as a cycle of 9 songs with piano. Either because he misses the deadline or because he feels he won't win, the songs are never submitted. But by April, disregarding Zemlinsky's doubts, Schönberg changes the piece into a monumental cantata-like work for soloists, choirs, and orchestra. Over the next year he continues composing it, while doing hack-work orchestrating thousands of pages of operettas for a living.

In March, Weinberger publishes both the orchestral and piano versions of Mahler's complete set of songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn in 2 volumes each.

Zemlinsky's opera Es War Einmal... ['once upon a time'] receives its 10th performance at Vienna on March 28; Alma is there to hear Zemlinsky's music for the first time, and is impressed.

15-year-old Berg's father dies on March 30. During this summer, Berg writes his first songs and a few piano pieces, including Mein erster Walzer ['My first waltz'].

In April, Alma happens to run into Mahler while out walking with a friend. Mahler greets the friend, but stares at Alma.

Under Zemlinsky's influence, Alma starts attending Wiener Tonkünstlerverein ['Viennese Tone-Artists Association'] concerts, and sees Schönberg at an after-concert dinner. Zemlinsky shows an interest in Alma's songs; by May she decides that Labor's emphasis on technique is not enough, and she will supplement his training with additional lessons from Zemlinsky, to learn how to 'capture the atmosphere of a poem' in her songs.

On May 30, the Vienna Philharmonic re-elects Mahler as director by a vote of 86 to 3.

In June, Mahler takes the Vienna Philharmonic to Paris and, indicating his interest in 20-year-old Alma Schindler already, sends her a postcard from there. On June 25, Alma notes in her diary that Mahler is "my idol".

Richard Strauss begins trying to convince Mahler to leave the AKM, saying that the music-publishers are setting the tone rather than the composers.

On June 29, Zemlinsky's father dies, leaving Zemlinsky to take over the leadership of the family; thus, his position at the Carltheater comes at an opportune moment.

During the spring and summer, 34-year-old Sibelius works on the revisions to his 1st Symphony for the European tour of his friend Robert Kajanus and his orchestra. The première of the revised version is on July 1 in Helsinki, and on the tour the symphony is acclaimed by critics in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Berlin, making Sibelius internationally famous. His patriotic tone-poem Finlandia is premièred on July 2 in Helsinki, and makes him a national hero.

Settling into his new composing-hut in Maiernigg, Mahler completes his 4th Symphony with the 3rd movement Adagio, then celebrates his 40th birthday a month late, after finishing his work. Mahler regards the first 4 symphonies as "a self-contained tetralogy" of which the 4th Symphony is the conclusion, and there are indeed strong thematic links between the 3rd and 4th -- not surprising, since Das Himmlische Leben (the finale of the 4th) was originally intended as the finale to the 3rd. He also remarks that upon resuming work on the symphony this summer, he began at a point that was far in advance of the sketches he had made last year, invoking a "second self" who was busy composing "in the background" during the opera season while his "first self" was occupied with his regular conducting and administrative duties.

Mahler's hauschen [composing-hut] in Maiernigg

Mahler has also taken along the score of Rott's symphony, in hopes of performing it; it never happens, but there are bits and pieces of Rott's piece echoed in Mahler's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th symphonies. (I wonder exactly how long Mahler had this score in his possession...)

Up until now, the companies making wax cylinder records have taken little notice of Berliner's gramophone, but now they begin to get desperate and challenge Berliner's patents. In America, The American Graphophone Company sues Frank Seaman (Berliner's chief salesman), and Seaman ends up making and selling gramophones for American Graphophone. Eldridge Johnson, who makes Berliner's motors, creates the wax-disc mastering process and founds the Victor Talking Machine Co. Eventually Victor and the Berliner companies pool their patents and dominate the record business for nearly twenty years. Cylinder sales drop off sharply after 1901, and the disc "record" is triumphant.

(Recorded-audio-disk technology will improve in the mid-1920s with electrical recording, in 1948 with the invention of the 33 & ¹/₃ r.p.m. long-playing "LP" -- followed in 1949 by the 45 r.p.m "45" in a more convenient size for the 3-minute "single", in 1950 with the substitution of vinyl for the brittle shellac, and in 1957 with the invention of stereo. But in terms of reprduction technique, it remains essentially unchanged until the invention of the digital "compact disc" or "CD" in 1983).

18-year-old Lilienfeld begins his college studies at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität.

24-year-old Schlesinger becomes conductor at the Berlin Opera. A new agent in Berlin feels that he is a rising star, and also secures his first symphony concert, with the Berlin Philharmonic. He occasionally takes the long train journey to make visits to Mahler in Vienna and to see his fiancé in Basle, and quickly becomes unhappy with his job in Berlin.

Franz Schalk is engaged by Mahler as conductor at the Vienna Hofoper ['court opera'] on September 1.

Just before his 29th birthday, Zemlinsky begins his post at Vienna's Carltheater in September.

On October 20, Mahler conducts the Munich première of his 2nd Symphony, and it is a big success with both the audience and the press.

Mahler decides around this time that writing programs to explain his symphonies does more harm than good, confusing the public rather than enlightening them as to the intellectual basis of his work. After the Munich performance, he makes the famous statement 'down with the program books!', and presents all subsequent symphonic works (except the 8th Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, which have overt texts) as pure music, allowing no explanatory text in the programs at the premières, other than the list of movements with their initial tempo markings (which especially in Mahler doesn't signify much, because his movements change tempo constantly).

On October 3, 21-year-old Alma takes her first counterpoint lesson with Josef Labor. After having been apart for the whole summer, Zemlinsky visits Alma on October 18. Dissatisfied with her progress under Labor, and probably already very attracted to Zemlinsky's musical talent and intelligence, she begins taking lessons with Zemlinsky on November 13. She also becomes friends with Schönberg, since he and Zemlinsky are constant companions. Over the course of the next few months, Alma falls in love with Zemlinsky.

On November 18, Alma attends the Vienna première of Mahler's 1st Symphony. Amid booing and hissing from a few detractors, and loud applause from Mahler's cult following, the audience gives a generally enthusiastic response. But for the newspaper critics it is a unanimous failure. Alma fails to recognize the value of Mahler's compositions, and Schönberg is also apparently there because he too later makes disparaging remarks about the work.

In December, Alma attends a lieder concert including songs by Zemlinsky and the première of Schönberg's 2 Songs, op.1. She finds Zemlinsky's work to be the best on the program, and her opinion of Schönberg's pieces is that they are 'flabbergasting, mind-boggling...by no means uninteresting - but beautiful...?'. Zemlinsky, who is familiar with the monumental Gurrelieder nearing completion by Schönberg, says to her: 'you wait - before long the world will be talking about him'.

1901

At the beginning of the year, Mahler is writing out the fair copy of his 4th Symphony.

Strauss conducts his Ein Heldenleben and other works with the Kaim orchestra in Vienna in January, and begins a long period of close contact with Mahler.

On February 17, Mahler's early cantata Das Klagende Lied is finally premièred in Vienna. It is a rousing success with the audience, but is unanimously attacked by the newspaper critics. 16-year-old Berg attends -- it is his first exposure to Mahler's music and he feels it is "a magnificent work!". A few days later, Webern notes in his diary his admiration for Mahler's 2nd and 4th Symphonies.

That same month, 26-year-old Schönberg completes the unorchestrated score of his stupendous Gurrelieder, the epitome of what a composer steeped in the work of Wagner and Richard Strauss could accomplish. Because of his need to earn money, Schönberg must put off its orchestration, which will not be completed until 1910, and its performance will only occur in 1913, by which time Schönberg will have made his most radical advances, his style by then sounding vastly different from that of the Gurrelieder.

On February 24, on a Sunday afternoon, Mahler conducts a heavily cut version of Bruckner's 5th Symphony in his last Vienna Philharmonic concert; Zemlinsky and Alma are there together. That evening Mahler conducts The Magic Flute at the Opera, then upon returning home, collapses with a severe internal hemmorhage. He is taken to the hospital and given a life-saving operation, then spends the rest of the spring convalescing. This close brush with death marks a dramatic change in his subsequent music.

At the beginning of March, Zemlinsky contacts Hoffmannsthal in hopes of collaborating on a project, and Hoffmannsthal offers Der Triumph der Zeit ['the triumph of time'] as a ballet. Zemlinsky composes the score from April to October.

On March 8, Alma comes uninvited to the Tonkünslerverein concert premièring Zemlinsky's Irmelin Rose songs, which Zemlinsky dedicated to her, and upon seeing Zemlinsky with Melanie Guttmann, causes a scene. On March 23, the affluent young architect Felix Muhr proposes to Alma, and her family puts much pressure on her to accept the proposal and forget about Zemlinsky, but she is not at all interested in Muhr. On April 10, the relationship between Zemlinsky and Alma, while never consummated, becomes physical.

Ernst von Wolzogen, a writer, founds the Überbrettl ['over-boards', a German pun with the less literal meaning of 'super-theater'], an artistic cabaret theater modelled somewhat after those in Montmartre (Paris) during the 1880s-90s. Poetry by Wolzogen and others associated with the Überbrettl is published in a volume called Deutsche Chansons ['German songs', using the French word for 'songs']; Schönberg sets several of these Brettl Lieder to music. When Wolzogen and the Überbrettl are on tour in Vienna, their conductor Fried hires Schönberg to substitute for him at the Carl-theater, where Schönberg and Wolzogen meet. Wolzogen hears his 'chansons', and hires Schönberg to direct his theater in Berlin during the following season.

Around Easter in early April, Mathilde Zemlinsky becomes pregnant by Schönberg.

At Klagenfurt in April, 17-year-old Webern composes the song Tief von fern ['from far away'], the first of 8 settings by Webern of poems by Richard Dehmel.

Scott Joplin

In America, sometime during the Spring, 33-year-old Scott Joplin moves from Sedialia, Missouri, to St. Louis, where the ragtime style of piano-playing is thriving. America has imported many German musicians to lead its musical institutions, and most of them disdain ragtime and other American popular-music forms, but Alfred Ernst, conductor of the St Louis Choral Symphony Society (the major musical institution there), is greatly impressed by Joplin's acute ear, talent as a composer, education, and soft-spoken style. Joplin rapidly gains notice in the city's leading newspapers. His colleagues (other ragtime composers and performers) have little respect for his apparently substandard abilities as a pianist, but he is earning a decent living from royalties paid on his very popular ragtime compositions.

In May, on the anniversary of Wagner's birthday and just before his own 36th birthday, Strauss completes his 2nd opera, Feuersnot ['fire famine'], with a libretto satirizing Munich's conservative music-lovers, written in Bavarian dialect by the Überbrettl's Wolzogen (also from Munich). The plot:

Bonfires are burning all across medieval Munich during Midsummer's Eve revelry, but amid the fun the people are troubled by a stranger named Kunrad, a sorcerer. Kunrad wants Diemut, the burgomaster's daughter, and he offends her with his erotic approaches. In revenge, she humiliates him, so he uses music for his magic and causes all the fires in the city to go out. Kunrad tells the citizens that the fires can only be relit from "the body of a virgin in heat". Under pressure from everyone, Diemut gives in to him, and her first orgasm relights the fires in a flash.

Kunrad is the pupil of another magician, similarly trounced in Munich, called Reichart der Wagner. Strauss's 1st opera, Guntram, had flopped in Munich.

From May 8 to 17, Zemlinsky composes Ein Lichtstrahl ['a ray of light'], a mime drama with piano accompaniment, for the Carltheater Überbrettl.

On May 18, Alma and her family go to St Gilgen (on the Wolfgangsee) for their summer vacation. Immediately upon arriving, Alma rents a post-office box from which she will have a voluminous private correspondence with Zemlinsky.

At the end of May, Zemlinsky's prospects for the Breslau post fall thru, and he renews his Carltheater contract for the upcoming season.

Doblinger publishes the operettas Das süsse Mädel by Heinrich Reinhardt and Die Landstreicher by Carl Michael Ziehrer. They are hugely successful, and enable Doblinger's owner Bernhard Herzmansky to risk publishing works by contemporary 'serious' composers, including Dohnany, Zemlinsky, and Mahler.

In June, Mahler's publisher Weinberger and printer Eberle and other major Vienna publishers found Universal Edition, the publishing company which eventually takes on all of Mahler's symphonies and much of the work of the '2nd Viennese school'.

In Heidelberg in June, at the 37th Festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, Richard Strauss is elected president of the association. He puts the focus of the organization on the production of new works.

During the summer in Rapallo, Italy, Sibelius begins sketching his 2nd Symphony, which he will work on for about a year.

After recovering from the hemhorrage and operation, Mahler leaves Vienna early to begin his vacation in Maiernigg on June 5, and begins his 5th Symphony, with the 1st movement Funeral March, the stormy 2nd movement (with its big climax), and the monumental 3rd movement Scherzo, which apparently was an earlier idea. Inspired by his near-death experience, and his study of Bach during his convalescence, this work marks a sharp change in style, and the symphony is filled with counterpoint. He also composes 8 songs, including the Rückert Lieder.

While vacationing in Rapallo, Italy, during the summer, 35-year-old Sibelius begins his 2nd Symphony and completes it at the end of the year in Finland.

During the month of August, Zemlinsky travels widely, visiting Bayreuth to see Parsifal, then Nuremburg and Munich, finally spending the rest of his vacation at Mattsee with his sister Mathilde and Schönberg. Zemlinsky and Alma plan a secret rendezvous in Bad Ischl, but Alma's mother goes there the same day and so they cancel it.

Hedwig Lachmann translates Wilde's Salome into German and it has its first performance in Germany.

In September, 16-year-old Klemperer goes to Frankfurt to study piano at the Hoch Conservatory.

Mahler writes to 25-year-old Schlesinger offering him a job in Vienna, and he accepts, becoming once again Mahler's assistant. Dropping his last name on Mahler's advice so that it will sound less Jewish, Bruno Walter (Schlesinger) will remain in Vienna until 1912.

Bruno Walter (Schlesinger) in his 20s

31-year-old Oskar Straus becomes conductor for the Überbrettl in Berlin and writes several farces for it.

Zemlinsky resumes his post at the Carltheater in September. Alma's mother finds out about the plans he and Alma had for a secret rendezvous in Ischl, and forbids Alma from seeing him again. Alma threatens suicide, and her mother capitulates.

On September 18, Hoffmannsthal meets with Mahler regarding the production of his ballet collaboration with Zemlinsky, Der Triumph der Zeit, but Mahler, notoriously condescending towards ballet, and finding the symbolism of the text incomprehensible, is not interested. Zemlinsky pushes on with the composition of the music anyway.

On the last day of her vacation, Alma longlingly dreams about having sex with Zemlinsky. The following day, September 25, Alma and her family return to Vienna and move into their new villa on the Hohe Warte. On October 5, Zemlinsky visits her for the first time since May, and their music lessons resume on October 11.

By the fall, Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde is 6 months pregnant by 27-year-old Schönberg. They marry on October 7; thus Schönberg's former teacher becomes his brother-in-law.

On October 14, his 30th birthday, Zemlinsky finishes the short score of his 3-act ballet Der Triumph der Zeit ['the triumph of time']. Act 1 is already orchestrated, and he immediately begins orchestration of acts 2 and 3.

By early November, 22-year-old Alma is totally in love with Zemlinsky. He is becoming irritated with her, probably because she is such a flirt, but she reconciles with him and all is forgiven. At a party the very next day, November 7, she formally meets and finally engages in conversation with 41-year-old Mahler. Alma chastises Mahler for holding on to Zemlinsky's score of Der Triumph der Zeit ['the triumph of time'] for so long without giving the composer a response, and with Mahler criticizing the work an argument develops. Nevertheless, Mahler falls head over heels for her and woos her like a love-crazed schoolboy, sending her an anonymous love-poem. Alma's admiration for Mahler quickly turns to love as he displaces Zemlinsky in her heart. Things move fast. By November 19 she realizes that the poem was by Mahler, and writes in her diary: "Alex von Zemlinsky -- who is he?".

Julius Korngold and his family move to Vienna in November, where he works at first as a lawyer.

Strauss's opera Feuersnot is premièred under the direction of Schuch in Dresden on November 21.

In Munich a few days later, Mahler conducts the Kaim Orchestra in the première of his 4th Symphony, the first new work of his to be performed since the 2nd Symphony in 1895. Where the public had by now come to appreciate the 2nd, and expected another large imposing work, they are baffled by the smaller scale and 'antiquated style' of the 4th. The critics are almost universally hostile.

The Kaim Orchestra then goes on tour with Mahler's 4th under its regular conductor, Weingartner. At one performance, Weingartner pleads illness, takes a break, and returns to conduct only the finale from Mahler's 4th. Audiences do not know what to make of the work, the tour is a disaster for Mahler's reputation, Mahler breaks his friendship with the conductor, and Weingartner never conducts a Mahler piece again.

On December 1, Schönberg's Songs, op.2 are premièred in Vienna. Schönberg and Mathilde move to Berlin a few days later, where Schönberg begins his job as music director of the Überbrettl; his contract is until July 1902.

Mahler and Alma are secretly engaged on December 7. On the 12th, she tells Zemlinsky that she is in love with Mahler, and on the 16th Zemlinsky bids her a formal farewell. On the 27th, news of the engagement is leaked to the press. Mahler's engagement to Alma cuts Natalie Bauer-Lechnor completely out of his life from this point on.

Mahler conducts his 4th Symphony in Berlin in December, receiving a storm of boos and nasty reviews. His 2nd Symphony is performed in Dresden under Schuch, to warm applause but negative reviews. In Leipzig, Hermann Seemann publishes the first monograph on Mahler, a small book by Ludwig Schiedermair, in his Moderne Musiker series.

According to Alma, around this time she asks Schönberg (who is unaware of her relationship to Mahler) if he will be attending the performance of Mahler's 4th Symphony, and he answers 'How can Mahler do anything with the 4th when he has already failed to do anything with the 1st?'; it will be three more years before Schönberg appreciates Mahler's music.

On December 12, 27-year-old Marconi reports that his radio receiver in Newfoundland (Canada) receives a signal consisting of three short sounds ("dots") representing the Morse Code for the letter "S", which is generated from his transmitter in Poldhu, England. This is the first successful transatlantic radio transmission.

1902

Schönberg's first child, daughter Gertrud, is born in Berlin on January 8.

Mahler's 4th Symphony is published by Doblinger, just before the Vienna première on January 12. Berg, not yet 17, attends and admires the music so much that he manages to steal Mahler's baton, which he keeps as a trophy for the rest of his life.

Alma still fails to recognize the greatness of Mahler's compositions, but since he is chasing her, she is magnetized by his powerful personality, genius as a conductor, and most of all his profound intellectual prowess. Mahler had scheduled a performance of his 1st Symphony for a week later, but replaces it with another performance of the 4th, followed by the second performance of Das Klagende Lied; the newspaper reviews are all negative.

On January 25 in Vienna, 27-year-old Franz Schmidt conducts the première of his 1st Symphony with the Konzertvereinsorchester. Schmidt has been a cellist in the Opera orchestra under Mahler, who is still struggling for acceptance as a composer in Vienna, and the success of Schmidt's symphony causes the press to play him off against Mahler. Partly because of this and partly because of the power which Mahler has vested in his concertmaster Rosé, who doesn't like Schmidt, Schmidt's position in the orchestra becomes difficult. Mahler openly prefers Schmidt's cello playing to all the other cellists, and always assigns the principal roles to Schmidt when he is conducting, but Rosé prefers Buxbaum. Eventually this leads to a confrontation between Schmidt and Mahler, and after that Schmidt sits at the back desk and stays there for the rest of his years with the Opera.

On January 29, Mahler conducts the Vienna première of Strauss's opera Feuersnot. With its ribald humor, the conservative Viennese musical press typically labels it "obscene" and responds negatively. The bad newspaper reviews keep the public away from subsequent performances, and it is dropped after only three productions. Mahler writes to Alma that his involvement with Feuersnot "awakened my productive powers".

30-year-old Zemlinsky, broken-hearted over his loss of Alma, and inspired by Strauss's Ein Heldenleben to compose a large piece for orchestra, begins his "orchestral fantasy" symphonic-poem Die Seejungfrau ['the mermaid'], after Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tale, at the beginning of February, working on it for a year. Originally sketched as a single large movement, it eventually emerges in a 3-movement form by September.

Alma around the time of her marriage to Mahler

Alma's chief ambition is to be a composer, but Mahler tells her bluntly that there will be only one great composer in their house (and guess who that is?...). Alma tries to hold back her tears and accept her fate stoically, but she is heartbroken, and altho she loves him and submits to his demand, she will remain bitter about this sacrifice for the rest of her years with Mahler. At the beginning of February, Alma becomes pregnant by Mahler with their first child. On March 9, Mahler and Alma marry, sealing the fate of her former relationship with Zemlinsky. He accepts the situation stoically, as he too recognizes Mahler's genius and understands Alma's attraction to it, and also because he feels somewhat obligated to Mahler because Mahler expresses a very active interest in Zemlinsky's own work. Mahler and Alma spend 3 weeks in St Petersburg on their honeymoon, where Mahler also conducts 3 concerts.

After about a year of work, Sibelius completes his 2nd Symphony. On March 8 he conducts the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in the première in Helsingfors [now Helsinki], Finland and is a big success. As with the 1st Symphony, Sibelius will also revise this one after hearing it.

At the beginning of March, 17-year-old Berg gets one of the family's servant girls (Marie Scheuchl) pregnant.

On March 18 is the long-awaited première of Schönberg's Verklarte Nacht in Vienna. Schönberg himself, living in Berlin, is not able to attend, but 18-year-old Webern is there, his family having moved to Vienna. Zemlinsky had shown this score to the critic Max Graf, who claims to have been the first to show it to Mahler, before the break in their friendship in early 1902. Mahler also misses the performance, as he and Alma are on their honeymoon in St. Petersburg, but it is clear that he has indeed seen the score and that it made an impression on him, and he says in a letter that he would have been very interested in hearing the piece.

It is also around this time that Webern first hears Tristan and becomes engulfed in Wagner's musical world; so evidently, Webern began to be influenced by both Wagner and Schönberg at around the same time.

In April, in Berlin, and probably thru Wolzogen, Schönberg meets Richard Strauss, and they become fairly close. Strauss recognizes Schönberg's talent, critiques Verklärte Nacht, and tries to help him earn money.

Debussy's opera Pélleas et Mélisande is premiered in Paris on April 30 -- it rapidly becomes a big success at the box-office.

During the month of May, Zemlinsky and the Carltheater company make a 4-week guest appearance in Dresden. Zemlinsky then visits Mathilde and Schönberg in Berlin.

In June in Krefeld, Mahler finally premières his 3rd Symphony at the 38th General German Music Association festival. This première has been enthusiastically anticipated, the hall is packed, and the symphony is met with a thunderous ovation: this concert is the turning-point in Mahler's career, and really puts him 'on the map' as a significant composer. For a few years after this, rather than having to solicit publications and performances of his works, he will be able to select from the handsome offers of publishers and concert directors.

Over the first of what will be only five happy summers with his new family, Mahler retires to his villa in Maiernigg, and spending the days in his Hauschen [composing-hut], brings his 5th Symphony to completion with the famous 4th movement Adagietto (which, according to Mengelberg, is a love song to Alma), and the 5th movement Rondo-Finale. This work thus finds a unique structural form, and ushers in the triptych of instrumental symphonies of Mahler's 'middle period'.

Schönberg around the turn of the century

Schönberg's contract at the Überbrettl theater runs out in July and is not renewed, probably because Wolzogen himself has left the theater. Schönberg remains in Berlin anyway, and Strauss helps him earn money by finding him jobs orchestrating and copying thousands of pages of operettas. Now finding the time to begin a large project, Schönberg asks Strauss for advice on an opera text, and Strauss proposes a German translation of Maeterlinck's play, Pelleas und Melisande; apparently both of them are unaware of Debussy's just-completed opera on this text. Probably inspired by Zemlinsky's contemporary work on Die Seejungfrau, Schönberg instead composes a large symphonic-poem on Pelleas und Melisande, which is finished by early next year when he is 28. It is again a long single movement, but this time Schönberg appropriates from Liszt (i.e., the B-minor Sonata) the idea of fusing all 4 traditional movements into a 1-movement form, amalgamating aspects of the other movements of symphonic form (scherzo, adagio, finale) with the first-movement 'sonata-form', something Schönberg will do again in his next two large pieces.

Pelleas also marks Schönberg's first really adventurous harmonic advances, using:

• progressions of augmented chords in contrary motion to produce hexads made up of the entire 'whole-tone scale', and

• tetrads built on stacked '4ths' (whereas harmonic theory and practice had dictacted since the time of Zarlino, c. 1558, that chords be built on '3rds') :

(Click on image to hear mp3)

In 1910, Schönberg will cite this example in his Harmonielehre (although the passage is transposed up one whole-tone, example 330), and write about it:

Quite isolated, they appear there just once, as expression of a mood whose singularity caused me against my will to find what was to me a new means of expression. Against my will -- I still remember, even today, that I hesitated to notate this sound. The clarity with which it forced itself upon me, however, made it impossible for me to dismiss it. [Schoenberg 1978, p 403]

Zemlinsky negotiates a good contract with Theater and der Wien for the upcoming season, but is taken to court by his Carltheater employer and ordered to honor their verbal contract. He spends August with Schönberg, Bodanzky, and Weigl at Altmünster on the Traunsee, and completes the orchestration of the 1st movement of Die Seejungfrau ['the mermaid'].

Map of north end of the Traunsee. The red star designates Gmunden, the largest town in the area. On the western shore is Altmünster.

In August, due to Hanslick's influence, Moritz Benedict hires 41-year-old Julius Korngold to succeed Hanslick as chief music critic of the Vienna Neue Freie Presse, dashing the hopes Richard Heuberger (the number-two critic at the paper) had for obtaining the position. While most established critics, including Heuberger, oppose Mahler's changes at the Opera, Korngold writes a lead article supporting Mahler, which put Korngold's name in the public eye from then on. Julius's 5-year-old son Erich has also by now already learned all the chords in all the keys on the piano, and begins taking piano lessons and music-theory lessons with Emil Lamm (a relative), and soon writes his first compositions.

By early September, Zemlinsky completes the short score of his "orchestral fantasy" symphonic-poem Die Seejungfrau ['the mermaid'].

On September 11, Webern composes the song Fromm at his summer home at the Preglhof.

52-year-old Heuberger becomes conductor of the Männergesangverein, and is also appointed professor at the Vienna Conservatory.

Mahler is replaced as conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic concerts by 47-year-old Josef Hellmesberger Jr.

On the recommendation of Strauss, Schönberg obtains a position as teacher of composition at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. (As far as I know, there is no surviving record of his activity.)

In September, 17-year-old Klemperer also moves to Berlin, following his piano teacher to the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory.

Mahler's early cantata Das Klagende Lied is published in September by Weinberger.

During the fall, Mahler's 3rd Symphony is performed in several German cities.

Mahler and Alma's first daughter Maria is born on November 3.

17-year-old Berg's illegitimate daughter Albine is born on December 4.

On December 16, Alma complains of her loneliness and the loss of her composing.

Lachmann's German translation of Wilde's Salome has a long run in Berlin, by which time Strauss has become inspired by it and has already begun composing an opera based on it.

1903

Bruno Walter and Alma have been trying to convince Mahler of the value of Pfitzner's work. Mahler at least likes Pfitzner's String Quartet, which is performed in Vienna by the Rosé Quartet on January 13.

On February 11, the première of Bruckner's unfinished 9th Symphony is given in Vienna, along with his Te Deum.

On February 18 in Vienna, Ferdinand Löwe conducts Zemlinsky's Drei Balletstücke ['3 ballet-pieces'], which is one of the works Zemlinsky has salvaged from the wreckage of his abandoned project Der Triumph der Zeit ['the triumph of time']. Mahler and Alma are both there, and Mahler likes the piece.

Under the influence of Mahler's new circle of friends via his wife - the artists of the Vienna Secession movement - he becomes receptive to the most avant-garde artistic ideas.

On February 21, Mahler's new production of Tristan und Isolde, in collaboration with imaginative new ideas in scenery, costumes, and especially lighting, by his new stage-director Roller, opens a new era in opera production, becoming ever closer to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk ['total-art-work'] concept.

Hugo Wolf dies in the asylum on February 22, just a few weeks before his 43rd birthday.

Early in the year, Strauss and several other composers form the Genossenschaft deutscher Tonsetzer ['Cooperative of German Tone-Setters'], to keep account of concert performances and pay orchestral composers royalties in the same way opera-composers receive them. Strauss tells Mahler that his membership is essential in getting the organization off the ground, and shows sincere concern for Mahler's financial rights as well. Mahler joins when his membership in the AKM expires at the end of the year.

Richard Strauss after the turn of the century

Zemlinsky completes the orchestration of his large "orchestral fantasy" Die Seejungfrau ['the mermaid'] in March. Since August, he has also been sketching a new opera project called Malva, about an old man who leaves his wife for a younger woman, who in turn falls in love with his son. Hoping to interest Mahler in producing it at the Hofoper, Mahler rejects it on April 21, probably seeing the similiarities of its plot to the Mahler/Alma/Zemlinsky situation, and Zemlinsky abandons the project.

On April 10, 19-year-old Webern composes the song Nachtgebet der Braut at his summer home at Preglhof.

In the spring, Schönberg's contract at the Stern Conservatory expires. Knowing he is badly in need of money, Strauss hires Schönberg for himself, to copy the score and parts for his new work Taillefer, for soloists, choir and large orchestra, composed as thanks to Heidelberg University for the festive occasion of conferring on Strauss an honorary doctorate, to be presented in October. Schönberg copies the Strauss piece while he is orchestrating his own Pelleas und Melisande and Gurrelieder.

On May 26, The Vienna Philharmonic elects Hellmesberger over Mahler, 70 to 13.

On May 29, Zemlinsky conducts at the Carltheater for the last time. At the end of the concert season, Zemlinsky also resigns from the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein ['Viennese Tone-Artists Association'], after they refused to play Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht (with Schönberg away in Berlin). Later in the year, Zemlinsky accepts the invitation to become Music Director of a new music-society formed with the intention of sponsoring new music in Vienna, the Ansorge-Verein, named after the composer Conrad Ansorge. The society gives concerts for only one season before folding, and in any case does not fulfill Zemlinsky's hopes.

Around this time, Alma is writing in her diary about nightmares she has, which can clearly be interpreted as an outlet of her feelings of being stifled by Mahler.

On June 23, in a letter to Schönberg, Zemlinsky cites the Mahler-Roller team at the Hofoper ['court opera'] as the only progressive musical force in Vienna, emphasizes the conservatism of all of Vienna's other musical institutions, and discourages Schönberg from returning to Vienna ... but with little prospect of earning income in Berlin, the Schönbergs see no reason to stay, and decide to return to Vienna in the fall. Schönberg spends the summer in Payberbach, orchestrating his Gurrelieder. In August, he begins working on a string quartet in D-minor (different from op.7) which will remain incomplete; its first movement is a big double-fugue.

Map of the region south of Vienna -- the red star designates Payerbach.

In July, just after his 39th birthday, Strauss completes his Sinfonia Domestica while vacationing on the Isle of Wight.

Bartok at age 22

At the Academy of Music in Budapest [Hungary], 22-year-old Bela Bartók hears Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, and later says that it showed that "there was a way of composing which seemed to hold the seeds of a new life". Inspired by Strauss and Hungarian nationalism, Bartók composes his first major work, the symphonic-poem Kossuth, which honors Lajos Kossuth, hero of the Hungarian revolution of 1848.

Over the course of another happy summer in Maiernigg, 43-year-old Mahler composes the first 3 movements of his 6th Symphony from June 16 to July 18. About the lyrical second theme of the first movement, Alma says that he tells her 'I wrote you into my symphony'. It seems probable that Mahler got this idea from knowledge of Strauss's Sinfonia Domestica. I believe that here and in each of his subsequent symphonies Mahler portrays himself and his wife in the principal and subordinate themes, respectively, of his first movements, thus personifying the contrast between dramatic and the lyrical in the two main subjects of each symphony.

18-year-old Berg fails his graduation exams. This, together with his unintended fatherhood, prompts him to attempt suicide, but he lives -- given Berg's flair for theatrical drama, it is possible that this is just a call for attention and is not meant to be successful.

At Preglhof for summer vacation after his first year at the University, 19-year-old Webern composes several songs (including Aufblick ['looking upwards'] on August 12, and Sommerabend ['summer evening'] on September 7). In September, he composes Siegfrieds Schwert ['Siegfried's sword'] for voice and orchestra on a poem by Uhland.

In August, Schönberg and Mathilde leave their summer retreat in Payberbach and return to Vienna (according to some sources, sharing housing with the Zemlinsky family for a time to save money), renting an apartment near the Zemlinskys at Liechtensteinstrasse 68-70 in the 3rd District. Alexander Zemlinsky gets his own apartment on the same floor of the same building shortly after. Eugenie Schwarzwald offers to let Schönberg teach in her school free of charge, and Schönberg begins his long teaching career in earnest, holding harmony and counterpoint classes in Schwarzwald's school. Mainly due to the Strauss's influence, Schönberg is awarded the Liszt Foundation fellowship.

Map of central Vienna and the Liechtensteinstrasse the red star designates the Schönberg and Zemlinsky apartments at number 68.

In mid-September, Alma becomes pregnant by Mahler with their second child. Mahler puts the finishing touches on the score of his 5th Symphony and sets a fee of 10,000 gulden for its publication by Peters.

In late September, Hellmesberger is involved in a widely-publicized scandal with a young girl, resigns from his post with the Vienna Philharmonic, and is dismissed from the Vienna Opera.

In October, 29-year-old Schönberg's work is published for the first time: the 2 Songs, op.1 and 4 Songs, op.2, by Verlag Dreililien in Berlin, a publishing-house started by the Mahler-admirer and critic Max Marschalk.

From October 18 to 23 Mahler stays with Mengelberg in Holland, for the Amsterdam première (and its repeat the next day) of his 3rd Symphony. He rightly feels that Amsterdam is the first place where people really admire his work, and it becomes the earliest center of Mahler enthusiasm.

Hofmannsthal's German version of Sophocles's Electra premières at Max Reinhardt's Kleines Theater in Berlin on October 30. It is possible that Strauss sees it around this time (we know for certain that he attends a performance in 1905.)

On November 10, the first performance of the revised version of Sibelius's 2nd Symphony is given in Stockholm (Sweden).

In Vienna, Webern composes the songs Heimgang in der Frühe on November 21 and Der Tod on the 24th.

Between November and May, Schönberg composes several songs that will appear in later collections:

• 6 Songs, op.3:
  • Die Aufgeregten ['the excited ones'] - November 9
  • Geübtes Herz ['experienced heart'] - November 10
• 8 Songs, op.6:
  • Traumleben ['dream-life'] - December 18
  • Verlassen ['left behind'] - December 19
  • Ghasel - January 23, 1904
• 6 Orchestral Songs, op.8:
  • Das Wappenschild ['the coat of arms'] - November 26 draft, completed 25 May 1904
  • Natur ['nature'] - December 18 draft, completed 7 March 1904

Mahler's 4th Symphony is performed with Julius Buths conducting in Düsseldorf.

On December 28, John Louis Neumann is born in Budapest (Hungary, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). (A decade later his family will be granted nobility status, and after emigrating to America as John von Neumann, he will play a decisive role in the evolution of the first electronic digital computers ENIAC and EDVAC.)

1904

Zemlinsky begins composing the music for his 3rd finished opera, Der Traumgörge, which will not be completed until October 1906.

Early in the year, Bartók hears a beautiful folk melody being sung by a Transylvanian servant girl, and noticing how the notes of this song are different from the familiar "Gypsy" music he has known as "folk music", it sparks his lifelong interest in folk music.

On February 17, the first version of Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly is premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Italy. He will go on to revise it several times, making four subsequent versions.

In early March, Schönberg's Verklarte Nacht is performed for the second time in Vienna, by the chamber group headed by Arnold Rosé, Mahler's concertmaster and brother-in-law. According to Max Graf, Mahler had seen and admired the score in 1902; Rosé, recognizing the quality of Schönberg's music, invites Mahler to the rehearsals, and Mahler is very impressed.

Mahler will support Schönberg's work from now until practically his last breath, even including the first atonal pieces which are beyond his understanding. I speculate that Mahler's feelings for Schönberg run so strong partly because Schönberg is only a year younger than Mahler's brother Otto, who according to Mahler was a talented composer, and who had killed himself 9 years before; it seems possible that Mahler transferred his ambitions for Otto to Schönberg upon meeting the latter and learning his work; together with Walter, who is slightly younger, the pair of musicians provide the outstanding composer/conductor Mahler was himself, and had hoped to see reproduced in his younger brother.

Strauss goes on his first concert tour of North America, conducting the world première of his Sinfonia Domestica in New York at the end of March.

Later in March, Schönberg begins his Sketchbook I with a String Quartet in D-minor (different from op.7), the Orchestra Lied op.8 "Der Wappenschild", and the piece which he will eventually officially call his 1st Quartet, op.7. He eventually abandons the un-numbered D-minor Quartet, but will work on the 1st Quartet on and off for the next year and a half. Underlying the work is a "secret program" which describes not a story-line but rather a succession of moods. In April, his 6 Songs, op.3 are published by Dreililien. He is awarded the Liszt foundation fellowship for the second time.

Also in April, Zemlinsky composes a song for the Ansorge-Verein (Über eine Wiege), his only piece for that society, and leaves it soon after. After the demise of the Ansorge-Verein, Zemlinsky's main goal is to obtain performances of two large orchestral works: his Die Seejungfrau and Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisand. Schönberg, Zemlinsky, Walter, Karl Weigl, and other leading members of the Viennese avant-garde seek out wealthy patrons, and form the Vereinigung Schaffender Tonkünstler ['Union of Creative Tone-Artists'], modelled after the Secession, and name Mahler as honorary President; despite initial promise, it will last only the one concert season 1904-05.

For the next three years, until Mahler's departure from Vienna in 1907, Schönberg and Alma's ex-boyfriend Zemlinsky visit together regularly at Mahler's house. The evenings begin cordially, but in musical discussions afterwards tempers flare, and the argumentative and headstrong Schönberg, who has not yet come around to appreciating Mahler's own compositions, repeatedly causes both of them to be banished from the house because of his disrespect for the master's opinions. Still, Mahler must be intrigued by the force of Schönberg's logic, because inevitably after a few days pass, he asks Alma "What ever happened to those two?", and she promptly invites them back.

During one of these conversations with Schönberg, Mahler laments the loss of meantone as an intonational paradigm in European music:

"The loss of ... distinctive key coloration, which transforms the fixed pitch music of this [earlier] period with subtle coloristic distinctions impossible to imagine until one has heard them, is the great loss we have suffered in changing from meantone to the equal intervals and indistinguishable keys of equal temperament."

This provides the only clue outside of the actual notation used in his scores (much of which has now been "simplified" by editors) as to Mahler's intentions regarding the tuning of his music. It must be remembered that he wrote almost exclusively for the orchestra, which has flexible intonation, and the frequent occurence of "double-sharps" in his sketches may imply that he was often thinking in meantone rather than in 12-edo. (see Yates 1964 and Yates 1990)

54-year-old Heuberger becomes music critic of the Neue Musikalische Presse.

23-year old Bartók has the premières of his symphonic-poem Kossuth in Budapest and Manchester, and begins a a career as a pianist. He composes Piano Quintet and two showpieces in the style of Liszt, Rhapsody, op.1 and Scherzo (Burlesque), op.2. He also makes his first transcription of Magyar folksongs, realizing that this is the true folk-music of Hungary, and not the gypsy-like music that Liszt had incorporated into his popular compositions.

20-year-old Webern has been composing a lot of songs, and on the advice of Guido Adler, his University teacher, he and Jalowetz go to Berlin to meet 35-year-old Pfitzner for the possibility of taken lessons. When Pfitzner disparages Mahler's music, Webern leaves in a rage, and Adler's second recommendation is Schönberg.

Over the summer Webern drafts two large movements for orchestra, which remain incomplete, and composes an orchestral tone-poem, Im Sommerwind ['in the summer-wind'], his last and most significant composition before studying with Schönberg.

In June, Mahler and Alma's second and last child is born, their daughter Anna.

Alma is complaining in her diary of her boredom as "Frau Direktor"; otherwise, they have another blissful summer vacation, and Mahler composes a lot:

several lieder for the song-cycle Kindertotenlieder ['songs on the death of children'], which alarms Alma, considering their own two young children;

the 6th Symphony is completed with the Scherzo, where Alma says he portrays in the trio his two daughters playing in their sandbox, and its huge tragic 4th movement, with its bold harmonic experiments; and

the two Nachtmusiken ['night musics'] which will become the 2nd and 4th movements of his 7th Symphony.

Alma is troubled by the gloomy despair she hears in Mahler's 6th Symphony, with its 'three blows of fate, the last of which fells the hero', as Mahler described the last movement, composed during a time of such outward happiness. Indeed, this symphony will be nicknamed the Tragic, and again, will seem to be prophetic of the events in Mahler's life in 1907.

Regarding a government move to reorganize the Vienna Conservatory, which has suffered from bad management, Mahler's friend Guido Adler, the great musicologist who is also sympathetic to modern developments in music, endeavors to reform the institution, bringing Schönberg and Zemlinsky in as teachers, and to have Mahler appointed General Director of a board overseeing all Viennese pedagogical establishments. Aware of the growing anti-Semitism in Vienna and Mahler's increasing dissatisfaction with his job, Adler works on these plans for the next three years, in hopes of keeping Mahler in Vienna in the event that his position at the Opera comes to an end; as a result of political changes, the plan will eventually come to nothing.

In July, Schönberg sets aside his work on the first section of the 1st Quartet, to finish the 6 Orchestral Songs, op.8.

In August, the influential critic and teacher Eduard Hanslick dies in Vienna at age 78. While Hanslick had been an anti-Wagnerian and not fond of Mahler's compositions, he admired Mahler's abilities as conductor and director, and his influence was so important to getting Mahler the job in Vienna that I suspect that perhaps his death during the composition of the 4th movement of Mahler's 6th Symphony may have caused Mahler to emphasize the tragic aspects of this music and conclude the piece in that mood, as a sort of tragic memorial to Hanslick.

Reger joins the Vereinigung Schaffender Tonkünstler ['Union of Creative Tone-Artists'], and the plans to include his String Quartet in D-minor, op.74 on a Union concert may have an influence on Schönberg when, later in the year, he returns to the composition of his own 1st Quartet, op.7 (in the same key) in his Sketchbook I, sketching the scherzo theme, then continuing work on the first section. [Frisch 1993, p 202 and 211-216]

7-year-old Erich Korngold begins school in the fall, and also writes down his first compositions.

In the fall of 1904, Schönberg, now 30, begins teaching private lessons, taking on as his first students Webern, Jalowitz, Berg, and Stein. Webern and Berg will prove to be the most talented of all of Schönberg's pupils, and the three of them will ackowledge that together they took part in the break away from tonality.

In September, a pocket study score of Mahler's 5th Symphony is published by Peters. Later that month, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Mahler has two reading rehearsals of the work, which Schönberg and Zemlinsky attend. Realizing that his 'new style demanded a new technique', Mahler heavily revises the orchestration; these changes are included in the full score and parts published in November, but the early printing of the pocket score leads to some confusion in subsequent editions.

Mahler travels to Köln [Cologne] in mid-October for the world première of his 5th Symphony on October 18. Alma is supposed to meet him later but gets sick and stays home. Unfortunately, the 5th is such a failure at the festival that Peters, who published it, refuses to publish anything else by him. Immediately after this, Mahler continues on to Holland, to conduct the Amsterdam première of his 4th Symphony -- which is so successful that it is played twice -- and also two performances of his 2nd Symphony.

On October 15, Schönberg begins teaching a 4-hour harmony/counterpoint course from 5:00-9:00 in the evenings at the Girl's Gymnasium in central Vienna (Wallnerstrasse 2, I District.), basing his course on Bellermann's 1862 counterpoint treatise Der Contrapunkt (most likely the 4th edition published in 1901). [Monson 1979, p. 27] The material in Bellermann's Chapter 2 apparently leads Schönberg to accept the overtone series as a reasonable explanation for the basis of musical harmony, and to formulate his important ideas about consonance and dissonance being "different in degree, not in kind". During the time that he teaches this class, Schönberg resumes work on the first half of his 1st String Quartet.

Map of Girl's Gymnasium at Wallnerstrasse 2 site of Schönberg's music-theory classes.

On October 18, 19-year-old Berg becomes an apprentice accountant in the service of the Austrian government, and just after, begins taking lessons with Schönberg.

On November 6, Walter Damrosch conducts the American première of Mahler's 4th Symphony in New York.

In England, shortly before his 55th birthday in November, and working for the Marconi Company to improve transatlantic radio reception, physicist John Ambrose Fleming files a patent for the "oscillation valve" now known as the Fleming Valve, a two-electrode diode which is the first thermionic vacuum tube, which ushers in the age of electronics. His vacuum-tube diode will be used for decades, until being superceded by transistors in the 1960s.

On November 23, at the first Vereinigung Schaffender Tonkünstler ['Union of Creative Tone-Artists'] orchestral concert, Strauss's Sinfonia Domestica has its Vienna première. Strauss was supposed to conduct it, but Mahler, as honorary President of the Union, does it instead. I believe that Mahler's reception of the Domestica has a powerful influence on his subsequent compositions, especially the very next one (his 7th Symphony, particularly the 1st movement).

On December 12, Schönberg, Zemlinsky, and pupils from Schönberg's class attend the final rehearsal of Mahler's 3rd Symphony, and are all swept away and finally recognize Mahler's genius. Schönberg becomes so enthusiastic about Mahler's work that he says later that in his admiration he felt 'like a schoolgirl'. For the rest of his own long life, Schönberg will hold Mahler in the greatest esteem.

1905

On January 27, at the second Vereinigung Schaffender Tonkünstler ['Union of Creative Tone-Artists'] orchestral concert in Vienna, Zemlinsky conducts the première of his symphonic-poem Die Seejungfrau ['the mermaid'], a fantasy for orchestra after Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tale, and on the same concert, the inexperienced Schönberg conducts the première of his symphonic-poem Pelleas und Melisande. Mahler is president of the society, and at his insistence, the pieces are presented without their written programs, leaving the audience to judge them purely as absolute music; thus neither the audience nor the public suspect the personal tragedy which underlies Zemlinsky's score, but his is far preferred over Schönberg's.

Busy with his duties at the Opera, Mahler misses the première but attends the final rehearsal on the 25th and follows Pelleas with the score; he also tells Alma to invite Schoenberg to his house and has him bring the score of Pelleas. Mahler already admits to having some difficulty comprehending the complex and not always harmonious counterpoint, but nonetheless continues to champion Schönberg's cause.

A few days later, the Union has a lieder concert scheduled for the 29th which premières Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. The concert is sold out, and so tickets are also sold for the public to attend the final rehearsal on the 28th. It is a huge success for Mahler. The concert is repeated a few days later on February 3, and Mahler is so pleased that he gives a banquet afterwards for the Union musicians, consisting mostly of Schoenberg's pupils; 21-year-old Webern meets Mahler there.

Pelleas requires a huge orchestra, and both Schönberg's and Zemlinsky's symphonic-poems demanded extra rehearsal, so as with the earlier Polyhymnia society, one big project is enough to bankrupt the association. After a few more concerts of chamber-music during the spring, notably featuring pieces by Bruno Walter (which, Mahler confided to Alma, were weak), the third planned orchestral concert of the Vereinigung has to be cancelled, and the Union folds after this single season, from lack of further financial support.

In February Nikisch conducts Mahler's 5th Symphony in Berlin, in a performance not liked by Mahler.

On February 18, 22-year-old Lilienfeld, who will later publish the first concept of the Field-Effect Transistor, obtains his PhD degree.

In St. Petersburg (Russia), in the midst of the 1905 Revolution, students at the Conservatory begin protests. Rimsky-Korsakov sides with the students and is dismissed after 35 years teaching there, but continues teaching at his home. 22-year-old Stravinsky begins studying with him until Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908, and considers Rimsky-Korsakov his "second father".

In March Mahler seeks a visit from Oskar Fried, in Vienna to see Franz Schalk conduct a performance of Fried's choral work Das trunkene Lied ['the drunken song' - settings from Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra]. Mahler finds Fried's artistic ideas very compatible with his own, and wishes Fried to conduct future performances of his symphonies. Also this month, Mahler conducts his 5th Symphony in Hamburg, and the work receives its American première with the Cincinnati Symphony conducted by Frank van der Stucken.

By late April, Schönberg has completed the draft of the first half of his single-movement 1st Quartet, up to the Trio of the Scherzo (having finished Sketchbook I on April 20 and continuing his draft at the beginning of Sketchbook II). [Frisch 1993, p 202] This piece makes extensive use of the "whole-tone scale" (= 6-edo), and its tonal contrasts are not those of different keys as much as those between tonal and atonal passages.

Mahler, Moll, Pfitzner and others, talking shop, 1905

In April, around Pfitzner's 36th birthday, Mahler conducts the Vienna première of Pfitzner's opera Der Rose vom Liebesgarten ['the rose in the love-garden']. Initially unreceptive to Pfitzner's opera, Mahler is eventually convinced of its merits by Alma and Bruno Walter, who both admire Pfitzner's work. Mahler also takes a liking to Pfitzner's String Quartet, which is dedicated to Alma. Pfitzner is only one in a long line of men who are enchanted by Alma's beauty and intelligence, even while she is married to Mahler.

At the end of April, during his Easter vacation in Abazzia [now Opatija, Croatia], Mahler writes out the fair-copy manuscript of his 6th Symphony.

In May, Mahler's 5th Symphony and Strauss's Sinfonia Domestica are teamed up at a Strassbourg music festival. Exposed to the Domestica for the second time, I believe Mahler's interest in the Strauss piece is a big influence on the rest of his 7th Symphony, most of which he composes in the following months. Mahler also hears Strauss play and sing his new opera Salome in a piano store, and he is deeply impressed, and begins campaigning to have the première given in Vienna; he will be unsuccessful in this because of the conservatism of Austrian royalty.

Also in May, after many delays, Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht, op.4 is finally published, by Dreililien. (Pelleas und Melisande is tagged as op.5, but Marschalk does not accept it for Dreililien, and it will not be published until 1912 by Peters.) When the music-theory class he has been teaching concludes on May 15, Schönberg works on completing his 1st String Quartet over the summer.

The Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein [general German music association] Festival is held June 1-4 in Graz and June 5-7 in Vienna. At the opening concert, 13 of Mahler's songs are performed and are very successful, leading to a generous offer from Kahnt to publish the 6th Symphony for 30,000 kronen (nearly his annual Opera salary), which Mahler readily accepts, signing the contract on July 15. [La Grange 1999, p 219]

In June, in a letter to Alma Mahler, 33-year-old Zemlinsky first announces his engagement to marry 24-year-old Ida Guttmann, younger sister of his former girlfriend Melanie, whom he had been seeing just before his involvement with Alma in 1900-1901.

Physicist Albert Einstein, working as a clerk in a Swiss Patent Office, publishes several papers expounding his Special Theory of Relativity, a momentous discovery which will change science. Einstein, an amateur violinist, had this to say about his theory: "It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception."

Albert Einstein 1905

After Schönberg finishes his 1st Quartet that summer, he begins a choral piece Georg von Frundsberg, and a String Quintet, both of which are left unfinished.

During Pentecost holiday in June, 21-year-old Webern and his cousin Wilhelmine fall in love with each other (which will eventually lead to their marriage). Under this inspiration, Webern composes a Langsamer Satz [slow movement] for string quartet. Then after leaving Vienna for summer vacation in Preglhof, and melancholy over his separation from Wilhelmine and inspired by a painting of Segantini, he writes a much larger String Quartet in one movement in July. This quartet has a climactic section, which occurs twice, that is really impossible to analyze in terms of keys: still a lot of late-romantic rhetoric in the style, but the ultra-chromatic counterpoint produces chords with clashing notes that cannot be analyzed in terms of traditional harmony. Recalling the criticisms about Mahler's 2nd and Schönberg's Verklarte Nacht, one might say that this Webern quartet sounds like Tristan on acid... good stuff. In some places this Webern piece is far more advanced harmonically than Schönberg's quartet of the same period.

Also during this summer, Mahler composes the 1st, 3rd, and 5th movements of his 7th Symphony, completing the draft score on 15 August. These movements are full of brazenly dissonant polyphony and chords, and melodic passages using successive '4ths'. It is clear that his familiarity with Schönberg's experiments has emboldened Mahler to stretch his naturally progressive tendencies even further. This symphony has had a difficult reception from audiences since the beginning; Mahler experienced considerable difficulty finding a publisher for it, and to this day, the 7th is still the least popular of all his works (and, I think, unjustly so).

Mahler 7th Symphony, 1st movement, m.531-535: motto in rising 4ths near the end

The themes of the 1st movement of Mahler 7th Symphony seem to me unmistakably to be inspired by the idea of making sonic portraits of himself, his daughter Maria, and wife Alma -- a concept which undoubtedly Mahler got from his familiarity with Strauss's Sinfonia Domestica.

Mahler and daughter Maria (left and center), and with both daughters Maria and Anna (right)

Mahler also makes a revision of the 4th Symphony. His 2nd Symphony is performed in Düsseldorf under Julius Buths at the Lower Rhine Music Festival.

In Berlin, the firm of Gose & Tesslaff publishes a monograph on Mahler by Richard Specht in its Modern Essays series.

20-year-old Klemperer switches to the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and studies composition with 36-year-old Pfitzner.

Schönberg takes on Wellesz as a pupil. During September and October, he composes several of the 8 Songs, op.6:

• Alles
• Der Wanderer
• Am Wegrand
• Lockung
• Madchenlied

During late October and early November, Schönberg also drafts a programmatic piano quintet called Ein Stelldichein ['a rendezvous'], based on a Dehmel poem, which will remain incomplete.

In Berlin sometime in the fall, Strauss sees Max Reinhardt's production of Hofmannsthal's Elektra, immediately recognizes the similarities with Salome, and the dramatic possibilities, and decides to write an opera on it. (It is possible that Strauss had already seen it in late 1903, when it opened.)

November 8 brings a performance of Mahler's 2nd Symphony in Berlin, with Fried conducting and Klemperer directing the offstage instruments. Mahler goes to Berlin, sees the dress rehearsal, tells Fried that his tempi were all wrong, complains to Klemperer of the incorrect dynamics, and goes over the work in detail. Fried will eventually go on to make the first complete recording of a Mahler symphony, with this work (the 2nd), in 1924.

When Klemperer seeks advice from Fried on how to get Mahler's attention, Fried tells him to focus on Mahler's own creative work -- so Klemperer writes a 2-hand piano arrangement of Mahler's 2nd Symphony (never published and now lost).

Also in Berlin, Nikisch conducts the Philharmonic with Friedrich Weidemann singing in Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, again not to Mahler's taste.

On November 9, Mahler makes player-piano recordings of three of his songs, including the finale of the 4th Symphony, and the 1st movement funeral-march of the 5th Symphony, at the Welte-Mignon comany in Vienna. They are the only reproducable recordings that Mahler ever made of his work as an interpreter.

Mahler had hoped to give the world première of Strauss's Salome in Vienna, but on December 9, Schuch conducts the première in Dresden. The critics are negative, but the opera is wildly successful with the public and performers. Mahler's heroic efforts to have the work performed in Vienna are crushed by the censor, and Salome will not appear in Vienna until 1918, long after Mahler's death.

Also in December, Mahler conducts the Vienna première of his own 5th Symphony. The audience is quite receptive, but the newspaper critics give it extremely negative reviews.

Around Christmas-time, Mathilde Schönberg becomes pregnant with their second child. Inspired by his happy feelings, 31-year-old Schönberg begins his Kammersymphonie [Chamber Symphony]. (In the first edition of his Harmonielehre, written in 1910, Schönberg will characterize the main opening horn theme as "stürmisch und aufwärtsstrebend" ['stormily and upward-striving'], in the revised edition of 1922 as "stürmischer Jubel" ['stormy rejoicing'].)

Schönberg's Kammersymphonie [Chamber Symphony] is saturated (perhaps more than any other piece in musical history) with the "4th-chords" which he had first tentatively used in Pelleas und Melisande (see above, 1902). In 1910, he will write in his Harmonielehre, after describing the instance in Pelleas:

... Then, not until long afterwards [4 years], in my Kammersymphonie did I take up fourth chords again, without recalling the previous case [i.e., Pelleas], and without having got to know in the meantime the music of Debussy or Dukas. Springing from an entirely different expressive urge.

[music example 331]



Invented as a stormily upward-striving horn theme, they spread themselves out architectonically over the whole piece, and place their stamp on everything that happens. Thus it turns out that they do not appear here merely as melody or as a purely impresssionistic chord effect; their character permeates the total harmonic structure, and they are chords like all others. [Monzo translation of Schönberg 1911, p 450-451; adapted from Schoenberg 1978, p 403-404]

The earliest sketch of Kammersymphonie opens with a cadence on E, whereas the final version of this beginning cadences on F; Frisch maintains that eventually Schönberg pitted the juxtaposition of F against E as the main tonal basis of the piece; this seems to me too similar to the characteristic cadences in the 1st movement of Mahler's 7th Symphony to be a coincidence. For this and other reasons (chiefly having to do with similarities in intricate details of formal structure, and the prevalence of the "4th-chords"), I suggest that Schönberg was rather more familiar with Mahler's work of the previous summer on that 1st movement than he later admitted (see below, 1909).

All in all, a real banner year for modern music in Vienna.

1906

Early in the year, Strauss approaches Hofmannsthal about using his version of Elektra for an opera.

Universal Edition issues a series of reprints of all of the Mahler symphonies now in its catalog, republishing the 3rd and 4th in January, the 2nd in April, and the 1st in May. Mahler's 6th is also published in March by Kahnt.

In February, Wilhelm Gericke conducts the Boston Symphony in performances of Mahler's 5th Symphony in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. The newspapers report good performances but very mixed receptions from the audience.

In America, in the early morning hours of 18 April, a strong earthquake occurs in Northern California, and the earthquake and resultant fire practically destroy the city of San Francisco. Because New York banks send a lot of financial aid to San Francisco, it also becomes one of the factors which precipitate the financial crises of the next year (see below, 1907).

24-year-old Richard H. Stein uses quarter-tones in the cello part of his Zwei Konzertstücke, op.26 for cello and piano, the first quarter-tone piece published in the European tradition.

In April Schönberg, having used up all the pages in his Sketchbook II, continues work on his Kammersymphonie [1st chamber symphony] at the beginning of Sketchbook III with the strangely beautiful lyrical theme. Schönberg has apparently either heard about, or seen the score of, Stein's Konzertstücke, because on the very first page of the sketchbook, there is a "Bezeichnung für die Vierteltöne" ['notation for the quarter-tones'] accompanied by a sketch of notes descending by quarter-tones from C to B-flat and then back up again, in which Schönberg uses the "greater-than" and "less than" mathematical symbols to represent 1/4-tone deviations from 12-tone equal-temperament by having the open end of the symbol point towards the higher pitch which comes either before or after the quarter-tone. This is not really a systematically logical way to use these symbols as accidentals, and may perhaps be the reason why he abandoned the idea. [see more on this below under "1909"]

Schönberg's Sketchbook III,
first page, showing the "notation for the quarter-tones" encircled

close-up view of Schönberg's notation of a portion of a quarter-tone scale,
descending c : (C-1/4) : h[=B] : (B-1/4) : b[=Bb], ascending b[=Bb]: (B-1/4) : h[=B] : (C-1/4) : c.
(click on the graphic to play an mp3 audio file)

Alexander Zemlinsky portrait by Schönberg

While on his Easter vacation, Julius Korngold receives in the mail a cantata called Gold (now lost), written by his 8-year-old son Erich. This finally convinces Julius of his son's talent, and he is sent to study with Robert Fuchs. In June, just after his 9th birthday, the young Korngold plays Gold for Mahler, who follows the score while Korngold plays, and Mahler keeps proclaiming that the boy is 'a genius!'. Mahler urgently presses Korngold's father to send him to Zemlinsky for the proper development of his talent, but Julius keeps Erich studying with Fuchs for two more years to give him a solid grounding in traditional musical technique. Young Erich idolizes Mahler: every time someone asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, he replies: 'Director Mahler!'.

Also in June, Webern graduates from the University with his Doctorate in Musicology, having studied mainly under Guido Adler. His dissertation is on the Choralis Constantinus of Dutch Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac.

During his last joyful summer vacation in the Alps, and at the peak of his life as composer, conductor, opera director, husband, and father, Mahler composes his stupendous 8th Symphony (beginning of Part 1, beginning of Part 2) in a tremendous 6-week burst of inspiration. Mahler writes in a famous letter to Mengelberg:

... Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound. These are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving.

And to Richard Specht, he said about the 8th:

All my earlier symphonies are only preludes to this one. In the other works, everything is subjectively tragic -- this one is a great bestower of joy.

Also on vacation in the mountains during the summer, 31-year-old Schönberg finishes his Chamber Symphony, which explores the outer reaches of tonality, and about which Webern wrote:

[Webern]

It made a colossal impression. I'd been his pupil for three years [sic: it had really been two], and immediately felt, 'you must write something like that too!'. Under the influence of the work I wrote a sonata movement the very next day. In that movement I reached the farthest limits of tonality. ... Both of us sensed that in this sonata movement I'd broken thru to a material for which the situation wasn't yet ripe.

Webern is obviously very inspired and begins several different pieces, for both piano and string quartet, and finishes a number of them; it is difficult to determine which one he was describing in the above statement. One possible candidate is a piece entitled Sonatensatz [sonata movement].

In August, hard on the heels of his 1st Chamber Symphony, Schönberg begins and composes much of a 2nd Chamber Symphony, which he will work on intermittently while also beginning the composition of the 2nd Quartet, whose first theme's rhythm has a curious resemblance to the Webern Sonatensatz referred to above. Schönberg will eventually lay aside 2nd Chamber Symphony in favor of finishing the Quartet, and not complete it until 1939 in America.

Also in August, and despite Alma's story about Mahler's revulsion from Nietzsche, a newspaper interview given by Mahler (published after his death) clearly illustrates his continuing reverence for at least some aspects of the philosopher's work.

In America, on August 27, the day after his 33rd birthday, Lee de Forest files a patent for the 2-electrode version of his "Audion", which adds a control grid to the Fleming Valve.

Schönberg's second child, son Georg, is born on September 22.

In the same month, Webern's mother dies. This event has a profound effect on Webern, and will haunt him for the rest of his life -- Webern claims that all his subsequent music is written in memory of her.

In October, Fried conducts Mahler's 6th Symphony in Berlin.

In Vienna in October, Zemlinsky finishes (after nearly 3 years) his 3rd opera, Der Traumgörge.

Also in October, Berg is able to quit his job and devote his life to music, because some real estate inherited by his mother provides the family with an income. He attends six performances of Strauss's Salome.

Schönberg meets a young artist named Gerstl and he and his wife both take painting lessons. (Note that while Gerstl is 9 years younger than Schönberg, their birthdays are only one day apart.)

In December, a series of strokes incapacitates Cosima Wagner, leaving her unable to run the Bayreuth Festival.

While in America, Busoni learns of Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium, a forerunner of the synthesizer. This is an electric instrument which is capable of dividing the pitch-continuum in any desired way. It is a big inspiration to Busoni, who, after returning to Berlin, writes his little book Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, in which he speculates on the most progressive musical ideas. In it, he examines possibilities for over a hundred new scales which are different from the traditional major and minor, and also proposes 36-tET as a new tuning giving a mixture of two scales of '1/3-tones' a semitone apart. The book is published in January 1907 by Trieste publisher Schmidl, printed in Berlin, and distributed by Busoni himself.

1907

Mahler conducts the Vienna première of his 6th Symphony on January 4, the last time he conducts that work. Having visited Breslau, Munich, Brünn, and Graz (twice) at the end of 1906 to conduct his own symphonies, Mahler asks for 2 1/2 weeks leave from January 6 to 23 to give further performances, and conducts his: 1st Symphony in Reichenberg, 3rd Symphony in Berlin, January 14 4th Symphony in Frankfurt, 1st again, in Linz. These extended absences are the catalyst for a heated campaign against Mahler in the Viennese press while he is gone, which will contribute to his decision to resign from the Vienna Opera later in the year.

Mahler conducting caricature by Böhler c.1906

In America on January 29, 33-year-old Lee de Forest files a patent for the 3-electrode version of his Audion, which eventually develops into the triode and is instrumental in long-distance telephone and radio communication, radar, and early digital computers of the 1930s and 1940s. In February he is making experimental radio transmissions, including music produced by Thaddeus Cahill's telharmonium (see 1897), throughout the New York City.

1906 Audion triode vacuum tube (click the image to download a PDF of the patent)

Otto Klemperer as a young man

While Mahler is in Berlin, 21-year-old Klemperer gets a chance to spend some time with him by showing him the way to Strauss's home. In the spring, while visiting Vienna on tour, Klemperer gets a recommendation from Mahler which 'will open all doors for me', and he keeps it in his wallet for the rest of his long life. On Mahler's recommendation Klemperer is appointed chorus-master and subsequently conductor at the Deutsches Landestheater in Prague, making his debut with Weber's Der Freischütz.

Schönberg begins painting seriously at the beginning of the year. In January, his 8 Songs, op.6 are published by Dreililien. The Rosé Quartet premières his 1st Quartet in Vienna on February 5, and his Chamber Symphony on February 8. A few weeks later, the 1st Quartet is published by Dreililien as his op.7. The concerts provoke two of the most notorious scandals in Viennese concert history; at both of them Mahler loudly applauds amid the booing and hissing, and nearly gets into a fistfight.

Self-portrait from behind, probably Schönberg's most famous painting

Mahler confesses to Alma after the Chamber Symphony performance that he himself can no longer follow Schönberg's development. He blames it on his 'old age': 46 years. Mahler had gotten into an argument with Schönberg at one point over whether or not it was possible to create a Klangfarbenmelodie ['melody of tone colors (timbres)'] by constantly shifting the orchestration of a single note; Schönberg was to carry out this idea in 1909 in the third of his Funf Orchesterstücke. With this dispute in mind, Mahler's remark about being too old to have an ear for Schönberg's music was perhaps referring directly to his loss of the ability to hear high frequencies, due to aging and daily exposure to the volume of 100-piece orchestras. In any case, the logic in Schönberg's thought and music are convincing, and Mahler continues to support him all the same.

Mahler's outspoken support of Schönberg, at a time when Mahler feels the pressure of attacks from both other musicians and the press critics, only makes his situation at the Vienna Opera more difficult. In March, Mahler secretly assigns a prominent role in an upcoming ballet to an unknown talented actress, Grete Wiesenthal, in defiance of the choice made by the ballet-master Hassreiter. This causes a rift between Mahler and Prince Montenuovo, the Court official who is in charge of the Opera, and who up till now has always supported Mahler. They secretly discuss the possibility of Mahler's resignation, and from this point on Mahler steers his plans for the future in the direction of leaving Vienna.

During the spring, 23-year-old Webern composes a Quintet for string quartet and piano. It is the earliest of his works for which he retains a fondness later in life, and for 20 years after his death it is the only piece of Webern juvenilia that will be known, until the discovery of a large cache of manuscripts in 1965.

Schönberg interrupts work on the 2nd Chamber Symphony in March, to compose the choral work Friede auf Erden ['Peace on earth'], op.13 (Schönberg frequently visited Mahler during these years -- could he have been inspired to compose a piece for choir from knowledge of Mahler's most recent 8th Symphony?). On March 9, Schönberg completes Friede auf Erden, and also begins his 2nd Quartet, then writes the 2 Ballades, op.12 (Der verlorene Haufen ['the lost heap'] and Jane Grey), which he composes in hopes of winning a competition. Other than these few vocal pieces, since 1905 Schönberg has not written many settings of poetry, searching thru a variety of poets without finding one with a large body of work to which he is sympathetic, as he had been earlier by Dehmel.

During the early spring, 22-year-old Berg meets Helene Nahowski, who is the same age, and quickly falls in love with her. On March 29 (Good Friday), he talks Helene's brother into orchestrating an official meeting. Helene's father does not approve of Berg, but after a difficult courtship they will finally marry four years later. Under this heavy inspiration, Berg composes several songs, including Die Nachtigall.

On April 26, composer/conductor Josef Hellmesberger Jr dies in Vienna at age 52.

On June 21, 35-year-old Zemlinsky marries Ida Gutmann.

Gerstl laughing a self-portrait (1907)

Gerstl spends summer vacation with the Schönbergs in Gmunden, and his friendship with Mathilde turns into a love affair. Schönberg apparently suspects something but brushes it off. Schönberg resumes composition of both the 1st movement of his 2nd Quartet, op.10 and the 2nd Chamber Symphony in July. He drafts most of the 1st and 2nd movements of the 2nd Chamber Symphony, and drafts the 1st and 2nd movements of the 2nd Quartet; at this point, he stops work on the symphony (until the late 1930s) and continues with the quartet. The 1st movement of the Quartet, completed by September 1, retains only the most tenuous links to tonality.

37-year-old Oskar Straus composes his operetta Waltz Dream, which is a huge success. It is published by Doblinger.

10-year-old Erich Korngold composes several waltzes and other piano pieces and songs. One of these is a cantata entitled Der Tod [Death], which he will utilize two years later as the opening piece ["Don Quixote's Dreams of Heroic Deeds"] in the suite Don Quixote: Six Characteristic Pieces, which his father Julius encourages Erich to write after he begins reading Don Quixote.

1907 is a terrible year for Mahler: After a 10-year reign as the emperor of the artistic world in Europe, he finally tires of the anti-Semitic attacks and the hard work entailed by his position of responsibility and decides he's had enough of the Vienna intrigues to dethrone him. With a financially attractive offer from New York, he decides to leave his beloved Vienna and work in America, where he expects to make a large amount of money in a few short years, and then retire to the Viennese countryside, so that he can devote the rest of his life to composing full-time. He faces this decision with an understandable mixture of happiness and regret. Mahler and his family go to Maiernigg on June 29. Right at the beginning of their vacation, Mahler's eldest daughter Maria gets sick, and dies after a little more than a week, on July 12, before reaching her 5th birthday. Maria meant much to Mahler, and his whole world crumbles. Bruno Walter later comments on this, saying that outwardly one cannot tell, but one who knows Mahler well can sense that inwardly he is "ganz fertig" ['completely finished']. As if that weren't enough, his doctor discovers that Mahler himself has a serious heart problem, and the doctor advises drastic changes in Mahler's active lifestyle.

Mahler 1907 the most famous photo of him, in his Vienna Opera office

The Mahlers abandon their villa in Maiernigg forever, spending the rest of the summer in Schluderbach. Again, Mahler's music, this time the 6th Symphony, seems to have foretold tragic events in his life; awareness of having had this premonition certainly does nothing to alleviate his suffering.

Alma says that Mahler finds some consolation in reading Die chinesische Flöte ['the Chinese flute'], Hans Bethge's German translation of T'ang Dynasty Chinese poetry. Some of these poems become the basis of his next (and in many ways most beautiful) piece, Das Lied von der Erde ['the song of the earth'], which Alma says he begins sketching in Schluderbach as summer ends. However, The Chinese Flute only appears in print on October 5, after Mahler's return to Vienna (only two weeks before his trip to Russia and Finland), and the manuscript evidence seems to confirm Roller's statment that "That summer [1907] yielded no artistic fruit ... in the summer of 1908 ... his creative drive returned." The Mahlers will stay in Europe until early December, so it is possible that Mahler reads the book and begins conceiving Das Lied von der Erde in his mind sometime during the autumn of 1907 in Vienna, particularly since the manuscript seems to show that the first piece to be composed the following summer (July 1908) is the one entitled "Der Einsame im Herbst" ['the lonely man in autumn'].

In July in Ustilug (Ukraine), 25-year-old Stravinsky begins composing a "fantastic scherzo", a symphonic piece which he originally plans to call Bees.

Over in America, 39-year-old Scott Joplin leaves St. Louis in June, spends some time in Texarkana with his family, and in Chicago, then makes a big move to New York in July.

26-year-old Béla Bartók becomes Professor of Piano at the Budapest Royal Academy, which allows him to stay in Hungary and continue his studies of local folk-songs, particular those from Transylvania.

Ignaz Brüll dies on September 17 in Vienna, at age 60.

On September 25, Sibelius's 3rd Symphony is premièred in Helsinki.

In the fall in Vienna, plans for Mahler to become Director of the Conservatory collapse, since he decides to take the lucrative offer from New York. Mahler's friend Guido Adler, who had been the primary force behind the proposed Conservatory reorganization, seeks to blame Alma's desire for a sumptuous lifestyle as the cause for Mahler's decision, but Mahler reassures him that he needs to make this move for his own reasons. Mahler's primary intention is to make as much money as possible in a few short seasons, so that he can build a house in the country close to Vienna, retire from conducting, and devote all of his time to composing.

In October, the New York Times reports that Mahler plans to conduct his 7th Symphony with the New York Symphony Society in the coming season, but this performance never takes place.

In America, the financial system has been volatile all summer, and during the last half of October the out-of-control speculation results in a run on the banks and a financial crisis. New York City narrowly avoids bankruptcy only because of an infusion of money personally from J. P. Morgan.

On October 15, Mahler conducts Beethoven's Fidelio, which will be the last opera performance he directs in Vienna. On October 19 Mahler travels to Russia, conducting Beethoven's 7th Symphony in St. Petersburg on the 26th. Then he goes to Helsinki for a 6-day trip in Finland from October 29 to November 3, meeting Sibelius and having a famous conversation about their opposing views of what a symphony represents. Mahler conducts Beethoven's 5th Symphony in Helsinki on November 1, then returns to St. Petersburg, conducts his own 5th Symphony on November 9 (Stravinsky was in the audience), then goes back to Vienna on November 12.

On November 7 a concert featuring premières of music by 8 of Schönberg's students is given in Vienna; Webern's Piano Quintet and Berg's Double Fugue for String Quartet with Piano Accompaniment (after the manner of a continuo) are singled out, and get them their first critical notice.

Mahler in profile (1907)

On November 24, Mahler conducts his 2nd Symphony in Vienna and vows that he will never conduct there again. The 2nd is a colossal success, and the audience suddenly seems to realize that it is the end of a long era of musical excellence in that city. After the performance, Mahler is called back to the stage 30 times during the prolonged ovation. Mahler and Alma leave their daughter Anna in Vienna with Alma's family, and depart Vienna triumphantly on December 9, to spend their first season in America. An impromptu gathering of admirers, mainly made up of Schönberg's students, sees them off at the train station. They travel to Paris where they spend a few days, then sail during the middle weeks of the month and arrive in New York on December 21. Mahler conducts at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and they live at the Hotel Majestic in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Felix Weingartner succeeds Mahler as Director of the Vienna Court Opera.

Schönberg feels a serious sense of loss with Mahler's departure from Vienna, as it was mainly Mahler who supported the work of him and his pupils; this is a large part of the even bigger crisis experienced by Schönberg over the next year. It seems very possible that Schönberg is aware of Mahler's association of the tune "Ach, du lieber Augustin" ['ah, you dear Augustine'] with tragedy (see above, 1870), as Schönberg quotes a deliberately distorted version of this tune at the point where he writes "all is lost" in the score of the 2nd movement of his 2nd Quartet, on which he is currently working -- could this even be a personal message from Schönberg to Mahler?

At the same time, without Mahler around to criticize his ideas, Schönberg suddenly feels the confidence to realize a new ideal of expression that he's had in mind, and finally finding a poet with whose work he feels a great deal of sympathy, he becomes strongly inspired by the style of Stefan George's poetry. On December 17, while Mahler and Alma are on the ship to America, Schönberg composes the first of his many settings of George poems, and the first piece to really display the hallmarks of "atonality", Ich darf nicht denkend, no. 1 of 2 Songs, op.14.

1908

Mahler makes his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York on January 1, conducting Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. He also does three 1-day engagements at the Philadelphia Opera in January and February, and a 4-day trip to direct the Boston Opera in April.

Austria formally annexes its colony of Bosnia-Herzegovina, making it fully a province of the Austrian Empire.

On February 2, Schönberg composes In diesen Wintertagen, no. 2 of 2 Songs, op.14, in a style reminiscent of his earlier tonal work. The 2nd movment of the 2nd Quartet is mostly drafted by now, and he begins sketching the 3rd and 4th movements, which eventually will each employ a vocal part, setting Stefan George's Litanei ['litany'] and Entrückung ['rapture'] respectively. These two movements are originally planned to be in the reverse order in which they will eventually appear in the quartet.

Also in February, just before his 27th birthday, Bartók embraces pantheism, which causes Stefi Geyer to break off her relationship with him. Bartók contemplates suicide, then pours his emotions into his 1st Quartet, written during the latter part of the year. This is also his first major composition to show the influence of his studies into Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak folk-songs.

Over in America, on February 16, Mahler witnesses the funeral of a fireman from his 11th-floor apartment in New York. A single loud drum stroke, which is muffled by the time it reaches Mahler's ears, leaves such an impression on him that 2 years later he will write it into his 10th Symphony.

Also in New York, on March 5, the New York Age newspaper publishes an article about Joplin and his work on his opera Treemonisha. In a later interview, Mahler discusses "Negro music" and denounces its claim as "American folk music", which seems to me to indicate that he was at least a little familiar with ragtime. Given his old habit of reading newspaper reviews of his concerts, I think it's quite likely that Mahler could have read articles about Joplin in the New York papers. (More about this below under "1910", in regard to Mahler's 10th Symphony.)

At this point, the poetry of Stefan George has become a big inspiration for Schönberg, and in March he begins setting a non-cyclical group of four George poems from the cycle Das Buch der hängenden Gärten [Book of the Hanging Gardens], (which will later be expanded into his op.15):

• Da meine Lippen ['There my lips'] - op.15 #4,
• Saget mir ['Say to me'] - op.15 #5,
• Als Neuling trat ich ['As a beginner I stepped'] - op.15 #3, and
• Wenn ich heut nicht deinen Leib ['If I today not your body'] - op.15 #8.

Later he sketches another manuscript with three more songs:

• Friedensabend ['Peace evening'] (which will remain incomplete)
• Angst und Hoffen ['Fear and hoping'] - op.15 #7, and
• Jedem Werke bin ich fürder tot ['Each works am I for that dead'] - op.15 #6.

Schönberg also makes sketches for settings of many other poets and for Und Pippa tanzt, an unrealized opera project, while continuing to work on the 2nd Quartet.

On March 30 in Ustilug (Ukraine), 25-year-old Stravinsky completes his Scherzo Fantastique, op. 3. After this Stravinsky composes the short Feu d'artifice [Fireworks], op. 4 as a wedding present for his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter Nadezhda. Just a few days after the wedding, on June 21 (June 8 O.S.) Rimsky-Korsakov dies.

24-year-old Webern is most likely finished with the composition of his Passacaglia, op.1 for orchestra, by the spring. (This piece is frequently referred to as Webern's 'graduation' work upon finishing his lessons with Schönberg - it is not. That distinction goes to his next piece.)

Mahler travels to Boston to lead the Opera there from April 8 to 11, then returns to New York for the final performances there. On April 23, Mahler and Alma leave New York to sail back to Europe. They arrive at Cuxhaven (the seaport near Hamburg) on May 2, and spend a few days in Hamburg, where Mahler visits old friends and Alma spends time with her family. Mahler goes on to Wiesbaden, where Alma joins him on the 8th for a concert which he conducts, then they arrive in Vienna on May 10. Mahler almost certainly resumes his contact with Schönberg at this time. Mahler spends only one week in Vienna, traveling to Prague for a 3-week stay, giving a concert on the 23rd, and Mahler also makes arrangements for the upcoming première of his 7th Symphony. Mahler and Alma are again in Vienna during the beginning of June, with Mahler back in Prague again a week later. Vienna is abuzz with preparation for the Emperor's Jubilee celebration on June 12. Wanting to escape the commotion, Mahler and Alma decide to spend their summer at a farmhouse in Toblach [now Dobiacco, Italy], and leave for there on June 10.

Between the summer and the following winter, 23-year-old Berg composes 5 single-movement "Piano Sonatas", and some remaining fragmentary, before tackling his real Piano Sonata, op. 1 later in the year.

In June, Busoni writes a letter to his publisher Schmidl about an expanded version of his book Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, but this version is never issued.

Julius Korngold finally sends his 11-year-old prodigy son Erich to study with Zemlinsky. Erich writes the first two movements of his Piano Sonata in D-minor, which he later plays for Mahler, who is very impressed. Mahler also asks Korngold to play something Zemlinsky had assigned to Korngold -- a passacaglia on a theme by Zemlinsky -- and recommends that Korngold use it as the finale for the sonata, which he does.

Back in the Alps for summer vacation by June 11, the mood now one of resignation rather than joy, Mahler complains to Bruno Walter of how lonely he feels, and how "now at the end of a life I must learn to stand and walk as a beginner", a reference to his doctor's orders to moderate his amount of exercise. This is a particularly difficult blow for Mahler, whose spiritual demons in the past led him to take vigorous hikes in the forests and mountains, during which he received most of his musical inspiration.

Mahler apparently begins work in the middle of July on Das Lied von der Erde ['the song of the earth'], considered by many to be his greatest work. He works on it feverishly during the rest of his vacation, finishing it in early September. Mahler tells Walter: "I believe it is the most personal thing I have yet created". Again, there is a drastic change in his style, as he enters his 'third (and final) period'. Alma in her book recalls how, when their 4-year-old daughter Maria had a tracheotomy in 1907 (see above), Mahler had paced back and forth in the next room, and as he approached the door to Maria's room, he recoiled each time he heard the horrible wheezing sound of her breathing -- I think the flutter-tongueing of the woodwinds at the beginning of the 1st movement of this work ( Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde ['the drinking-song of Earthly sorrow']) may be intended to portray Mahler's recollection of this event. The entire piece is a setting of poems from Hans Bethge's ['the Chinese flute'], which are German adaptations of ancient Chinese poems, with several of Mahler's own additions and adaptations to the text, and forms a sort of synthesis of song-cycle and symphony. Mahler's banker Paul Hammerschlag visits during the summer, and Mahler expresses his interest in Chinese music. Back in Vienna, Hammerschlag buys some phonograph cylinders of Chinese music and gives them to Mahler.

Schönberg portrait by Gerstl

The summer in Gmunden is disruptive for Schönberg: he discovers Mathilde and Gerstl in bed together, and on August 27 she leaves Schönberg and the children and goes back to Vienna with Gerstl. On August 30 Schönberg returns with the children to Vienna, but stays without Mathilde for at least a month. Spurred on by this crisis, Schönberg enters the most productive and most creative period of his career. On September 1 Schönberg finishes his 2nd Quartet, the work which, more than any other, documents the breakaway from traditional concepts of tonality. He dedicates this score to his wife. Schönberg quotes a distorted version of the popular tune "Ach, du liber Augustin" ['ah, you dear Augustine'] in the 2nd movement of his 2nd Quartet, at a point where he writes "all is lost" -- perhaps a personal message to Mahler? (see above, 1870 and 1907). Schönberg revamps the 3rd and 4th movements so that each include a vocal part setting poems by Stefan George, and switches their order, and finally abandons the workings of traditional tonality in the last movement of this piece, writing the first piece of truly atonal music, to George's words "I feel the air of other planets".

Strauss finishes his opera Elektra, which will be his last work in a progressive style.

15-year-old Hába enters the teacher's training college in Kromeríz, begins to develop an interest in Czech nationalism, and hears the works of Smetana and Wagner for the first time.

Mahler travels to Prague on 5 September for rehersals, and on 19 September conducts the première of his 7th Symphony, receiving only a lukewarm reception. Schönberg misses the première, remaining in Vienna alone due to his marital crisis, but several of his students are among the group of young Mahler admirers who attend. During rehearsals and after the performance, Mahler revises the score. The public reception of Mahler's last three symphonies has been cool, and it will take a year of corresponding with publishers to find one (the small firm of Bote and Bock) willing to print the 7th. He returns the Toblach the next day and over the next 3 weeks completes the orchestral score to Das Lied von der Erde.

During the autumn, Webern writes out his own copy of Schönberg's Friede auf Erden, and it is most likely around this time that he composes Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen ['flee in light boats'], op.2, which is likewise for a cappella chorus, on a text by Sefan George. This piece, and not the Passacaglia, is the last one Webern composed under the guidance of Schönberg.

In his first work written after "graduation" from Schönberg's teaching, but still following very closely in Schönberg's footsteps, Webern is also inspired to set 14 of George's poems as songs over the next year. Some of these are eventually published about a decade later as 5 Songs from Der siebente Ring, op.3 and 5 Songs on poems of Stefan George, op.4, the other four being discovered posthumously and published in 1970. As with Schönberg, the George poems open up Webern's style, and are also his first 'atonal' compositions. (Sketches of two of them also indicate Webern's passing interest in microtonality; more on that below.)

Schönberg threatens to commit suicide if Mathilde does not return to him. In October, mainly at the instigation of Webern, Mathilde leaves Gerstl and comes back home to Schönberg. This sours Mathilde's relationship with Webern for the rest of her life.

Now with a much more cynical attitude about love because of his wife's affair, Schönberg decides to expand his settings of Das Buch der hängenden Gärten [Book of the Hanging Gardens] (of which he has already completed op.15 #3-8) into a full cycle of 15 songs, utilizing the whole central section of George's book, which is an interlude about the discovery of love, whose mood progresses from lyrical to menacing. Betraying a further evolution of his style, on September 27, he composes the draft of op.15 #13, Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide, the first piece without any reference to a key, setting a text which describes the lover getting in a boat while his beloved refuses to join him as he drifts away under the weeping willows. It seems to me that Schönberg's interest in microtonal vocals, as inferred from Webern's experiments with the same (see below; no microtonal sketches survive from Schönberg), probably began at this time, with this change in style: the vocal part of this song is declamatory, with no trace of the lyricism in Schönberg's previous songs.

Mahler travels to Munich on October 19 to rehearse his 7th Symphony there, and conducts the second performance of the work for its Munich première on October 27. Then Mahler returns to Vienna for a few days at the beginning of November.

Gerstl waits in vain for an invitation to the upcoming concert of music by Schönberg's students. Having disrupted Schönberg's marriage, of course he never receives one. On November 4, the distraught Gerstl commits suicide at age 25, making a bonfire of his paintings in his apartment, and then hanging himself in front of a mirror (rumor also has it that he stabbed himself first).

Mahler leaves Vienna on 5 November, stops over in Berlin, then visits with old friends upon arriving in Hamburg for an upcoming concert. This time their daughter Anna will stay with her parents in New York, so Alma and Anna (with her governess) arrive a few days later.

On November 8 a concert is given in Vienna featuring works by Schönberg's students, including the premières of Webern's Passacaglia, op.1 and Berg's 12 Variations on an Original Theme, for piano. Being close to Schönberg and his students, Mahler may have attended some rehearsals for this concert before leaving Vienna, and also probably witnesses an early rehearsal of Schönberg's 2nd Quartet, which he finds difficult to follow.

The Gerstl suicide and the events which precipitated it (his wife's affair with Gerstl) appear to have a powerful effect on Schönberg; during the next year he will compose four incredibly original major pieces at an astonishingly fast pace.

Die Glückliche Hand
painting of the set, by Schönberg

Initiating a long-range project, Schönberg begins sketching his music-drama Die Glückliche Hand [literally 'the lucky hand', meaning something like 'The magic touch' in idiomatic English], which is based very closely on the Gerstl affair. He also writes the libretto, as well as very elaborate directions for lighting, with deliberate correllations between color and sound. The characters include 12 "spectral voices" -- right at the time when he began putting into practice his radically new idea of using the 12 tones of the 12-edo chromatic scale as independent elements of the harmonic fabric -- and a "mythical beast", and the work is perhaps the eeriest product of expressionism (a genre already noted for eeriness). He will return to this piece on and off for five years, completing it finally in 1913.

Mahler conducts the concert in Hamburg featuring Beethoven's 7th Symphony on 9 November. The Mahler clan (Gustav, Alma, Anna, and Anna's governess) depart from Cuxhaven on the 12th, for Mahler's second season in America. They arrive in New York on 22 November, this time living at the Hotel Savoy (at 59th Street and 5th Avenue). Mahler has negotiated to begin his season by conducting 3 concerts with the New York Symphony, and in one of these, on 8 December, he leads the American première of his 2nd Symphony.

In New York, the Metropolitan Opera season begins on 16 November, while Mahler is still on the ship, with Toscanini conducting Verdi's Aida. It is a tremdendous success for Toscanini, who from this point on will be at odds with Mahler over the leadership of the Met.

From December 6 to around the 17th, Webern is in Berlin looking for work. At this time he loves Debussy's opera Pelleas et Melisande.

December 21 brings the première, in Vienna, of Schönberg's 2nd Quartet, by the Rosé Quartet. Again, the Schönberg première causes a scandal, with more shouting than music. Rosé answers the outcry by scheduling a repeat in January. Schönberg's published attacks to the critics's behavior mark the beginning of his long literary career.

Around Christmas in Vienna, 11-year-old Erich Korngold begins serious work on his pantomime Der Schneemann ['the snowman'], the plot of which is written by he and his father, and which will occupy him until Easter.

1909

On January 25, Strauss's Elektra, his most progressive score, is premièred in Dresden under Schuch.

On February 1 in New York, Alma Mahler has a miscarriage.

In St. Petersburg (Russia) on February 6, a concert premieres 26-year-old Stravinsky's recently completed Scherzo Fantastique, op. 3 and Feu d'artifice [Fireworks], op. 4. In the audience is Serge Diaghilev, impressario and owner of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev is impressed with Stravinsky's pieces, and his desire to stage a ballet based on the Russian "Firebird" tale leads to his first of several successful commissions for Stravinsky.

In February, 34-year-old Schönberg sketches the song Am Strande [On the beach] (which will remain incomplete), and finishes his song-cycle Das Buch der Hangenden Garten ['book of the hanging gardens'], op.15, which contains the first pieces which do not refer to traditional tonality at all, and about which he says: [Schönberg] I have succeeded for the first time in acheiving an ideal of form and expression that I have had in mind for quite some time, but for which I had previously lacked the courage to execute.

Schönberg in his study, with some of his paintings (between 1908-1911)

A letter written later this year shows that Schönberg had been interested in microtonality. Considering his later comments on lack of instruments to play microtones (in Harmonielehre), and the possible similarities with Webern's work discussed below, his interest in them was probably in connection with the dispassionate declamatory style of the vocal parts written during the second phase of composition of the George Lieder, op.15 (September 1908 - February 1909, particularly in #13 Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide and 14 Sprich nicht), since both works after op.15 will be for instruments alone.

Sketches for two of Webern's George-songs, An Bachesranft ['At the brook's edge'] and Das lockere Saatgefilde ['The relaxed seed-realms'], contain indications for microtonal pitches, which are eventually abandoned. At the end of the Bachesranft sketch Webern wrote the same microtonal accidentals Schönberg used (see Schoenberg's 1909.8.24 letter to Busoni), showing how true Schönberg's statement was that "I have to keep all of my new ideas secret from Webern, because he steals everything as soon as I mention it." But apparently this worked both ways, since Webern actually was bold enough to write down the microtonal notes in these sketches.

Webern's notation for the microtonal pitches uses little crosses in place of note-heads, which are identical to the notation used a few years later by Schönberg for the sprechstimme ['speech-voice'] in the published scores of his Gurrelieder, Pierrot Lunaire, and Die Glückliche Hand, and which therefore seems to indicate that Webern was the one who originated this idea at least a year before Schönberg used it.

Schönberg pays for the first publication of his 2nd Quartet on 13 February. Schönberg is eager to apply his new melodic and harmonic techniques to instrumental forms, and also composes the 1st and 2nd of his 3 Piano Pieces, op.11, on 19 and 22 February, respectively. The first of these is considered to be the first completely atonal composition. Schönberg detests the term 'atonal' with which the critics tag his work, preferring 'pantonal' (see my work-in-progress, Searching for Schönberg's Pantonality), but the negative term sticks like glue, and in later years Schönberg will use it himself in his own writings.

Sometime during the spring, Berg completes his Piano Sonata, op. 1, and also composes the 2nd and 3rd songs of his 4 Songs, op. 2.

Mahler and Alma leave New York on 9 April to sail back to Europe. They arrive in Paris on 19 April, where they will spend the rest of the month. This is their only long stay in Paris during which Mahler has no commitments, and so they are mainly tourists.

Around Easter, a little before his 12th birthday, Erich Korngold completes the piano version of his pantomine Der Schneemann, the piece which will make him famous as a child prodigy. As a result of several music-critics being impressed upon receiving the private printing of Erich's compositions from his father Julius, articles begin appearing in newspapers in cities near Vienna. Moritz Benedikt, editor of the Neue Freie Press, realizes that his paper can no longer ignore Erich's talent, but also that it would be improper to have Erich's father write the article, so Ernst Decsey is hired.

28-year-old Béla Bartók and 26-year-old Zoltán Kodály travel into the Hungarian countryside to collect and research old Magyar folk melodies. Bartók marries his piano student Márta Ziegler.

Carl Moll has commissioned a bust of Mahler from Rodin, and so Mahler meets and sits for Rodin every morning during his stay in Paris. Rodin sculpts a clay bust of Mahler and makes several bronze copies. During this time Mahler also meets 25-year-old Alfredo Casella for the first time. Casella has studied all 6 of Mahler's published symphonies, and Mahler is impressed with Casella's own compositions (his 2nd Symphony is very imitative of Mahler) and authorizes Casella to write the 2-piano 4-hand arrangement of his 7th Symphony. On 1 May Mahler and Alma return to Vienna.

Edgard Varèse as a young man

On 31 May, 25-year-old Edgard Varèse meets Mahler, in hopes of getting his symphonic-poem Bourgogne premièred.

24-year-old Berg writes the last of the songs which he will include in his Sieben Frühe Lieder ['7 early songs'] for voice and piano (orchestrated in 1928), and sometime during the summer, composes the first song of his 4 Songs for medium voice and piano, op.2.

During May, Schönberg composes the first of his Funf Orchesterstücke ['5 Pieces for Orchestra'], op.16. He finishes the draft of the 1st piece on 23 May, and the fair-copy of it on 9 June. During June he works on the 2nd and 3rd pieces, finishing the fair-copy of the 2nd piece on 15 June, and the fair-copy of the 3rd piece on 1 July. This 3rd piece is an experiment in Klangfarbenmelodie ['tone-color-melody']: very little harmonic movement with overlapping entrances of the instruments.

On June 9 the Mahlers travel to Levico, a few hours train ride south of Toblach, where Alma will spend a month relaxing on her doctor's recommendation. Mahler goes on to Toblach alone, with his usual plan to spend the summer composing. Alma finally regroups with Mahler at Toblach on July 12, missing his birthday.

In mid-June, 25-year-old Webern completes 5 Movements for String Quartet, op.5, which are even more radical-sounding than Schönberg's pieces so far. The pieces still exhibit the technique of "developing variation", but some of them are extremely short, and will influence both Schönberg and Berg.

At the end of June Schönberg goes with his family and friends to spend the summer at Steinakirchen-am-Forst, and full of confidence and enthusiasm over his attainment of a long-sought "new mode of musical expression", he spends the month of July working on the last two of the orchestral pieces of op.16.

Hofmannsthal begins working on an original libretto, loosely adapted from Louvet de Couvrai's novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas and Molière's comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, for Strauss's fifth opera, Der Rosenkavalier ['the knight of the rose'], which they want to be in a light-hearted comic style. After seeing Schönberg's latest work, Strauss has turned his back on the musical progressivism that he himself helped to initiate.

Over the summer, 12-year-old Korngold assembles his Don Quixote: 6 Characteristic Pieces for piano, adapting his earlier cantata Der Tod as the opening piece of this work.

Mahler and Anna his only surviving child, summer 1909 (Anna's favorite photo of him, because he was smiling)

On June 26, spending the summer in Toblach in what is now the Italian Alps, Mahler signs his first contract with Universal Edition, for the publication of his 8th Symphony. During July and August, Mahler works feverishly to compose his entire 9th Symphony. Its 1st movement makes a deep impression on all those to whom he plays it, especially Berg.

In mid-July, Schönberg writes to Strauss about his orchestra pieces:

... There is absolutely nothing symphonic about them, quite the opposite -- no architecture, no construction. Purely a diverse, uninterrupted alternation of colors, rhythms, and moods.

On July 17, Schönberg completes the 4th of his Funf Orchesterstücke ['5 Pieces for Orchestra'], op.16, then on August 7, the 3rd and last of his 3 Piano Pieces, op.11, and a few days later, completes the last of the 5 Pieces for Orchestra. On July 28, Schönberg sends the score of the first four of the 5 Pieces to Strauss asking for a performance, but Strauss replies that his audience is far too conservative to accept these "daring experiments", and adding that it is unlikely that Schönberg will find any conductor willing to perform them -- a severe blow to the confidence Schönberg had expressed about his hoped-for reception of these pieces.

Now ready to tackle an opera project, Schönberg asks Marie Pappenheim to furnish him with a libretto.

Late in July, Busoni sends Schönberg a copy of his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, and Schönberg writes a letter to Busoni on 24 August commenting on both the latter's description of 'third-tones', and a notation Schönberg had previously devised for quarter-tones using the mathematical signs < and > as accidentals (see the sketch above, 1906). He tells Busoni that he ultimately rejects the use of microtones. (He will explain why a year later in Harmonielehre.)

Immediately after writing the letter to Busoni follow two incredible weeks (August 27 to September 12) during which Schönberg composes his amazing 'monodrama' Erwartung ['expectation'], op.17, on Pappenheim's libretto, with a morbid story-line and a solo female character who is psychotic. The piece has been called 'athematic' (as well as atonal), since there are no recognizable repetitions of any motifs, and in my opinion it marks the sharpest break with tradition in the history of European music. Schönberg's letter to Busoni speaks about his desire to free his music from all formal bounds, and to express "pure feeling" -- I think to a great extent this is exactly what he achieved in Erwartung. He will later write in 1929:

The aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.

In September, Schönberg also signs a publishing contract with Universal Edition. The success of Universal does a lot towards disseminating the work of both he (and ultimately also Berg and Webern) and Mahler.

Also in September, Webern, brooding over his mother's death 3 years before, composes his 6 Pieces for Orchestra, op.6. The original version uses a huge orchestra, which will be toned down in the revised 1928 version.

In October, 12-year-old Erich Korngold completes his 1st Piano Sonata.

Mahler completes the draft of the orchestral score of his 9th Symphony on 2 September, returns to Vienna on 6 September for 10 days, spends the third week of October visiting Fritz Redlich in Hodonin (Moravia), and goes back to Vienna for 4 days. Mahler and Alma move out of the apartment at Auenbruggergasse 2 after accepting Carl Moll's invitation to stay at his villa in the Hohe Wart during his and Alma's future short stays in Vienna. Mahler travels to Holland on 26 September, to conduct his 7th Symphony in The Hague on 2 October and twice in Amsterdam, on 3 and 7 October, with Oscar Fried present at Mahler's invitation.

On 8 October Mahler travels to Paris to join Alma and daughter Anna, and again sits for Rodin as work on his bust continues. On 12 October the Mahlers sail from Cherbourg to America for Mahler's third season there. They arrive in New York on 19 October, livng again at the Hotel Savoy in Manhattan. Having given up his position at the Metropolitan Opera, Mahler directs a season of concerts leading the reorganized New York Philharmonic.

On 3 November, Schönberg attends the Vienna première of Mahler's 7th Symphony conducted by Ferdinand Löwe, and is greatly impressed by Mahler's music, even despite his reservations about Löwe's abilities as an interpreter of Mahler. Schönberg sends a glowing letter to Mahler telling him what a powerful impression the work left on him, writing to Mahler that "I am now wholly yours". After this confession, and considering the prevalence which Schönberg gave to "4th-chords" in his Kammersymphonie (see above, 1905), composed just after Mahler did the same in his 7th, it is hard to believe Schönberg when he will write the following summer in his Harmonielehre:

It is possible, it is indeed probable, that others besides me have written these chords ["4th-chords"]. Perhaps Mahler, Strauss, or Pfitzner. But I do not know. They have never come to my attention. Maybe I simply have not noticed them. It is by no means my intention to secure here a priority for myself. To do so is of too little importance to me, for I know too well that is not what matters. [Schoenberg 1978, p 404, footnote *]

Mahler's 7th is published in December by Bote & Bock.

Paul Landau edits a new version of the play Wozzeck in Georg Büchner's Collected Works. Landau uses Franzos' reading of the words of the play (the only one available to him), but revises the ordering of the scenes. Berg will later use this version for his opera, altho he apparently believes that it is the version by Franzos.

12-year-old Erich Korngold begins composing his Piano Trio in D-major, op.1. Julius Korngold, because of his position as the leading Viennese music-critic, is apprehensive about revealing his young son Erich's amazing talent as a composer to the public. In December, he decides to issue 3 of Erich's compositions (Piano Sonata No. 1, Don Quixote: Six Characteristic Pieces, and Der Schneemann) in a privately-printed and numbered edition, to musician friends and associates, with a preface stating explicitly that the pieces are not to be brought to the attention of the public. The responses are all extremely enthusiastic, including an often-quoted one by Richard Strauss in which Strauss encourages Julius to get Erich away from composing and to take him skiing and sledding "lest his young brain becomes prematurely tired and worn out before it reaches its full productivity".

On 16 December, Mahler conducts his 1st Symphony in New York; it is met with bewilderment by the audience. Apart from the busy season at Carnegie Hall, Mahler makes occasional trips to conduct in Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

1910

In January, Fried conducts the two Nachtmusiken ['nocturnes': the 2nd and 4th movements] from Mahler's 7th Symphony, in Berlin.

Around January and February, Berg composes the 4th song of his 4 Songs for medium voice and piano, op.2, and begins drafting the 1st movement of his String Quartet.

Mahler responds to Schönberg from New York, and also tells him that he has the score of Schönberg's privately-published 2nd Quartet with him, and that he studies it from time to time, but he confesses that "it is difficult" for him to follow.

On February 8, Schönberg composes two very short pieces for chamber orchestra, and a fragment of a third piece shortly after (published in 1962 as 3 Pieces for Chamber Orchestra), which embody, more than anything else he ever wrote, the ideals propounded in his 1909 letters to Busoni: an expression of pure feeling, without logical musical development or architecture. Schönberg was apparently influenced in part by Webern's 5 Movements for String Quartet, op.5, but Webern's pieces are not as radical as Schönberg's.

Schönberg had gone confidently into bold new areas of musical expression during 1909, with his 3 Piano Pieces, op.11, Funf Orchesterstücke ['5 Pieces for Orchestra'], op.16, and 'monodrama' Erwartung, but the lack of understanding for these pieces from composers who were close friends (Strauss, Reger, Busoni, and Mahler) now causes a period of intense self-doubt. After abandoning the 3 Pieces for Chamber Orchestra, he spends the rest of 1910 working intensively on his Harmonielehre textbook and composes nothing significant for a whole year, all the while being drawn more closely into his small circle of supporters, who were mainly his students. He meanwhile continues to work on the text of his opera project Die glückliche Hand.

From February 23 to 26, Mahler takes the orchestra on a short tour to New Haven [Connecticut], Springfield [Massachusetts], Providence [Rhode Island], and Boston [Massachusetts].

Bartok's 1st Quartet is premièred in Budapest on March 17.

12-year-old Korngold's Der Schneemann is premièred in its 4-hand piano version in Vienna on April 14 at a soireé held by the wife of the prime-minister, and causes a sensation. The success is so great that another performance is prepared for an expensive benefit concert on April 26, which sells out. Prince Montenuovo (the Court Chamberlain) brings the work to the attention of the Emperor, and a production is planned for the Vienna Court Opera later in the year, which requires that it be performed by the orchestra -- thus, Zemlinsky then teaches Korngold orchestration by having Erich observe as Zemlinsky scores Der Schneemann.

During the spring, at his home in Ustilug (now Ukraine), Stravinsky is composing his ballet L'Oiseau de Feu [The Firebird]. As he is finishing Firebird he also has a vision of a "solemn pagan rite" which will form the basis of his later ballet Le Sacre du Printemps [The Rite of Spring].

Charles Ives 1909

While having the score of his 9th Symphony copied by Tams in New York, Mahler sees the score of Ives's 3rd Symphony at Tams's office and asks to have a copy of it. Musicians who played under Mahler will much later tell anecdotes of having heard or performed it in Munich, but none of their stories have ever been substantiated. Nevertheless, Mahler had a genuine interest in discovering new music by American composers for his New York concerts, and it is understandable that he would be interested in Ives, because of the strong links between their compositional techniques.

On April 5, the Mahler family leaves New York and sails back to Europe. The Mahlers arrive in Paris on April 12, visit with their close friends there (the "Dreyfus Quartet"), and Mahler conducts his 2nd Symphony on April 17. Then they travel to Rome, where Mahler is to conduct 3 concerts, but with most of the players already on summer vacation, it is a disaster and Mahler cancels the last concert.

On May 3 Mahler, Alma, and Anna return to Vienna, staying now as guests of Alma's parents at Villa Moll on the Hohe Warte. Mahler already begins rehearsing singers and choruses for the fall première of his 8th Symphony. On May 21 Mahler negotiates a contract with Universal Edition for the publication of Das Lied von der Erde and his 9th Symphony.

Villa Moll at Wollergasse 10, Hohe Warte, Vienna

Villa Mahler (now Werfelweg 6), Breitenstein am Semmering (green pin with orange circle; click image to enlarge)

Immediately upon arriving in Vienna, Mahler buys land in Semmering for the country home he plans to build soon for his retirement, in hopes of devoting the remainder of his life to composing. After his death Alma will build the house and it will become home for her and Anna, and eventually her later husband writer Franz Werfel.

Around his 13th birthday in May, Korngold also completes his Piano Trio in D-major, op.1, which he rightly sees as his first fully mature work.

In May, 25-year-old Berg completes the 1st movement of his String Quartet, op. 3, and begins overseeing rehearsals of it, which probably also teaches him a lot about string technique. He also embarks on composing the 2nd (and final) movement of the Quartet.

Zemlinsky is working on his opera Kleider machen Leute [Clothes make the man].

In May, Stravinsky discusses his idea of a piece based on an ancient pagan rite (later to develop into Le Sacre du Printemps) with Nicholas Roerich, a Russian artist, mystic and stage designer, and expert on ancient rituals and folk art.

Alma Mahler has not been feeling well, so Mahler decides that she and Anna should spend 6 weeks at the spa in Tobelbad. He takes them there on June 1, then returns alone to Vienna. Shortly after her arrival at the spa, 30-year-old Alma meets the handsome and brilliant 27-year-old architect Walter Gropius, and they fall in love with each other and have a passionate affair during the whole month of June.

In June, Mahler begins traveling to coordinate the rehearsals for the monumental première of his 8th Symphony coming in Munich in September. He goes to Leipzig on June 10 for choir rehearsals, and then on to Munich on the 14th for rehearsals of choirs and the orchestra. By June 21 Mahler is sensing from Alma's letters that something is not quite right, and when he leaves Munich on June 26 bound for Toblach, he instead decides to take a detour to Vienna and then to Tobelbad to see her and Anna.

In Klagenfurt, from June 15 to 23, 26-year-old Webern composes 4 Pieces for Violin and Piano, op.7.

By the end of June, 35-year-old Schönberg completes the text for his opera project Die glückliche Hand. After this, during the summer and continuing into 1911, Schönberg is absorbed in writing his Harmonielehre ['treatise on harmony'] textbook. Mostly a review of traditional Austro-German harmonic theory, it ends with such wild new ideas as chords built on 4ths, unresolved passing-tones, and Klangfarbenmelodie ['tone-color-melody'], and includes speculations on microtonality and unrestricted use of the chromatic scale. He gives as main reasons for rejecting microtones:

• the lack of instruments so tuned, and
• the increased harmonic resources available with his particular use of the regular 12-edo chromatic scale.

Schönberg's influence will go a long way towards entrenching 12-ET ever deeper into Western musical practice for the rest of the century.

In July, Berg completes the 2nd (and final) movement of his String Quartet, op. 3.

After spending the weekend visiting Alma and Anna in Tobelbad, Mahler leaves on July 3, stops in Graz on July 4 to visit friends, then continues to Toblach on the 5th. He receives many greetings for his 50th birthday, which he must answer, and then is engaged in difficult negotations with New York about his fee for the extra concerts he must conduct in the upcoming season; the final agreement is for $23,000 (equivalent to about $500,000 in 2009 dollars). Then he hopes to begin composing his 10th Symphony (unfinished).

There is a section near the very end of Mahler's 10th Symphony which uses typical ragtime chord progressions and voice-leading, which leads me to believe that Mahler may have become familiar with some ragtime (probably Scott Joplin's) while living in New York. As an habitual reader of the reviews in the the newspaper music sections, Mahler in New York would not have failed to see mention in the local papers of Joplin's ambition to produce his ragtime opera Treemonisha. And Mahler once said to William Ritter: "One can learn from everything, even jazz." [La Grange 2008, p.259] The 2nd movement of this symphony features almost constantly changing meters, and is probably the first piece of music to do so to such an extent (a few years before Stravinksy's famous use of this in Le Sacre du Printemps ['the rite of spring'] -- see '1913'). This too may reflect Mahler's familiarity with the syncopated rhythms of Joplin's ragtimes.

Mahler 1910

In Paris on June 25, 28-year-old Stravinsky's ballet L'Oiseau de Feu [The Firebird]I> is premiered as part of ballet impressario Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes productions, the first one to have an all-original score, and is a big success with audiences and critics. It is Stravinsky's first collaboration with Diaghilev, and the piece which begins Stravinsky's rise to fame. Diaghilev immediately requests another ballet from him for the 1912 season, and Stravinsky tells Diaghilev about his idea for Le Sacre du Printemps.

Alma finally leaves Tobelbad and joins Mahler in Toblach around the middle of July, but continues corresponding with Gropius every few days. At the end of July, Gropius writes a love-letter to Alma which he "accidentally" addresses directly to Mahler, and thus Mahler discovers that they have been having an affair, and is shattered. Alma, sensing that the time is right to seize power over their relationship, bitterly blames his lack of interest in her life and work for causing her to flee to Gropius. A week of conflict and argument ensue.

Right at this moment, on August 2, Schönberg, now in a desperate financial situation, writes to Mahler begging for a loan of money for 2 months rent. Mahler immediately sends a bank transfer, and never asks to be repaid.

Alma has been pleading with Gropius to not make any attempt to come and see her, but ignoring her, Gropius shows up in Toblach around August 4. Mahler goes to find him, brings him to their house, and tells Alma: "Whatever you do will be right. Make your decision.", demanding that she choose between them. Having convinced her that abandoning him would quite literally cause his death, Alma sends Gropius away. But secretly she still continues a regular correspondence with Gropius, expressing her love for him, looking forward to having a life and child with him after Mahler is dead, and even signing her letters to Gropius as "your wife".

Mahler's 10th Symphony manuscript: last page of Scherzo II (4th movement), with Mahler's messages to Alma about the drum-stroke ending the movement (see 1908): Du allein weist was es bedeutet. Ach! Ach! Got! Leb'wol mein Saitenspiel! leb'wol leb'wol leb'wol -- Ach wol. Ach Ach. [You alone know what it means. Oh! Oh! God! Farewell my lyre! farewell farewell farewell -- Oh well. Oh oh.]

During August, Mahler suffers a nervous breakdown over the feeling of betrayal. Mahler's manuscript of the unfinished 10th Symphony is littered with anguished messages to Alma which express Mahler's torment over the Gropius affair.

Alma's cruel reproaches also force Mahler to awaken to the realization of how little attention he has been giving to her, and also what a mistake it was to force her to stop composing; he reconciles with her in this respect, delighting in playing and singing her songs - and, even according to Alma, overestimating their value - and now encourages her to compose and publish her work. Mahler is so delighted that Alma chose to stay with him that his love for her reaches an intensity it never had before. At the same time he becomes a cuckold, since he realizes that Alma really loves Gropius, and that he must indulge her intention to continue to see him discreetly.

In a famous meeting on August 26, Mahler travels 1000 km all the way to Leiden [Netherlands] to consult the psychologist Sigmund Freud, who is about to end his holiday on the Dutch coast. The route of Mahler's 1000 km trip from Toblach to Leiden and back.

Freud identifies a mother-fixation in Mahler, and Mahler also reveals his childhood experience of witnessing an argument between his parents, at which he ran out into the street and encountered an organ-grinder playing Ach, du lieber Augustine, forever associating the vulgarity of popular music with tragedy in his compositions. The discussion with Freud does help Mahler to restore his emotional equilibrium, but from this point on he will continue to consider himself a slave to Alma's love, so much so that she even complains about his obsession to it in a letter to Gropius, written on the day of Mahler's meeting with Freud, and fearing for Mahler's sanity.

On the train coming home from Leiden, Mahler writes a poem to Alma which includes the lines: "Together flowed into a single chord / My trembling thoughts and my roaring feelings." After returning to Toblach, with only 6 days available to work on the 10th Symphony before traveling to Munich to begin final rehearsals for the 8th, Mahler adds an outburst based on this idea to the last and first movements of the 10th. The first movement contains a climax culminating in this 9-note dissonant chord: Because of the long-held "A" and the dissonance of the chord, this sonic inspiration for this passage seems to me to be the moments before and during the tuning-up of the orchestra before a rehearsal or performance. This chord is also almost identical to those at the climax of the 1st movement of Mahler's 2nd Symphony (see above, 1888). The emotional inspiration is clearly the trauma Mahler has just experienced over Alma's affair with Gropius, and thus musicially it seems to hark back to his distress over the breakup of his youthful affair with Marion von Weber.

In Klagenfurt, in August, Webern composes 2 Songs on Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, op.8.

After the summer, Zemlinsky leaves Vienna to begin his conducting post in Prague.

With Zemlinsky gone from Vienna, 13-year-old Korngold's apprenticeship is over, and his compositions already sound like the work of a fully mature man. Over the second half of the year, he composes his 2nd Piano Sonata, in E-major, op.2 and 7 Märchenbilder ['fairy-tale pictures'] for piano, op.3. Korngold refers to the orchestration of the Märchenbilder as the end of his instruction under Zemlinsky, but Korngold had only composed a few of these before Zemlinsky moved to Prague. (The orchestrated version was never published.)

During his last remaining week in Toblach, Mahler works feverishly to complete what he can of his 10th Symphony, with the final work on it being done on 2 September. The next day he travels to Munich to prepare for the prèmiere of his 8th Symphony.

On September 9, Schönberg begins to compose the draft score for his opera Die Glückliche Hand, but composes only a few short disconnected sketches while he is preoccupied with the writing of the Harmonielehre textbook.

On September 12, Mahler premières his great 8th Symphony (nicknamed 'Symphony of a thousand') in Munich, a musical event the size and spectacle of which has never been seen before -- even the hall was specially built for the event. Mahler becomes dismayed with the circus-like atmosphere created by the advertising, but with the addition of the awe-inspired music -- flawlessly executed by its massive body of performers (there are actually more than 1000), thanks to a whole summer of rehearsals for which Mahler traveled feverishly all over central Europe -- it is by far the crowning achievement of Mahler's life as both conductor and composer, and an event that will be remembered for decades afterward by all who were present. Among those attending are Schönberg, Webern, Strauss, the Korngolds, Klemperer, Fried, Bruno Walter, Arnold Rosé, Alfredo Casella, Leopold Stokowski, Stefan Zweig, and Thomas Mann. The occasion also provides the first meeting between Korngold and Strauss.

Mahler returns to Vienna on 14 September, with only 1 month left until leaving for America.

Late in September, 46-year-old Strauss finishes his opera Der Rosenkavalier, marking an abrupt regression in style, back to a more romantic-era idiom.

At the end of September, Stravinsky, at his winter home in Clarens, Switzerland, is visited by Diaghilev to discuss the new ballet Le Sacre du Printemps. But Stravinsky is hard at work on an entirely different project: a concert piece about a puppet who comes to life and constantly disrupts the orchestra. Diaghilev immediately senses the theatrical possibilities of this idea and thinks of the Russian tale of Petrushka. It will become their next ballet collaboration, Stravinsky working on it all winter into early 1911.

Schönberg's 3 Pieces for Piano, op.11 are the first of his compositions to be published by Universal Edition (with whom he will have a long association), and also the first of his atonal compositions to appear in print. Schönberg has the first exhibition of his paintings, in Hugo Heller's bookstore, opening on October 8, and Mahler anonymously buys three of Schönberg's paintings to give him much-needed financial support. Mahler hears rehearsals of Schönberg's 2nd Quartet, which is performed at the bookstore on October 12 along with the 1st Quartet. Schönberg is also appointed teacher of composition at the Imperial Academy for Music.

portrait of Mahler by Schönberg (1910)

On Emperor Franz Josef's name-day, October 4, the orchestrated version of 13-year-old Korngold's ballet-pantomime Der Schneemann is performed at the Vienna Court Opera, and causes a sensation. The cafés of Vienna are filled with gossip about the father and son Korngolds, many people suspecting that Julius or Zemlinsky were the real composers of the music.

In the middle of October, on their way to America, Mahler allows Alma to travel alone to Paris, and he knows that she is going there to have a liason with Gropius. Mahler travels alone to Berlin and Hamburg visiting old friends, and sails alone from Cuxhaven on the 18th to meet Alma on the French coast. After her days with Gropius, Alma takes the train from Paris to Cherbourg and meets Mahler there on the ship. They sail for the last time to America, this time bringing along their daughter Anna, and staying again at the Hotel Savoy in Manhattan. During the course of the winter in New York, Alma confesses in her letters to Gropius that Mahler has become a most attentive husband, and she expresses genuine happiness.

During November, Sibelius is working simultaneously on his 4th Symphony, and on music for Edgar Allen Poe's poem The Raven which will remain incomplete.

Besides the regular concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, Mahler takes the Philharmonic on a tour with the following hectic schedule: December 5: Pittburgh, PA December 6: Cleveland, OH December 7: Buffalo, NY December 8: Rochester, NY December 9: Syracuse, NY December 10: Utica, NY Then after a 2-day break concerts at Carnegie Hall resume. Route of the December 1910 NY Philharmonic tour (routes shown are by automobile, not by train as was actually used by the orchestra, but they are similar; click on image to enlarge)

1911

In January, Fried conducts Mahler's 7th Symphony in Berlin.

Again after the January 22 concert at Carnegie Hall, Mahler takes the Philharmonic immediately on another tour, this time a smaller one:

• January 23: Philadelphia, PA
• January 24: Washington, DC

Schuch conducts the première of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier in Dresden on January 26. It is immensely popular, with premières following in the next few weeks in Nuremberg, Munich, Hamburg, Vienna, Berlin, and Milan, and will remain Strauss's most successful opera.

Having completed and begun the procedure of publishing his Harmonielehre textbook, and breaking a year-long hiatus in his musical output, on February 19 Schönberg composes the first five of 6 Little Piano Pieces, op.19. (no. 2.) Instead of continuing to push on into new territory as he had done in 1909 and 1910, he reverts back to the idiom of his earlier atonal pieces.

Weingartner resigns from the Vienna Opera, and Hans Gregor, a theatrical director and not a conductor, replaces him as Director. Walter tries repeatedly during the season to terminate his contract.

Mahler's 8th Symphony is published in February by Universal Edition.

On April 3, Sibelius's 4th Symphony is premièred in Helsinki.

26-year-old Alban Berg marries Helene Nahowski on May 3.

Mahler's death-mask

Against his doctor's advice to relax, Mahler has kept up a feverish pace with his conducting work, becomes seriously ill and against his doctor's orders, conducts the February 21 concert in New York with a high fever, his last concert. His condition continues to worsen, he is diagnosed with bacterial endocarditis (for which at that time there was no cure; penicillin was discovered in 1928). Mahler returns to Europe for treatment in Paris. When this is unsuccessful and it becomes obvious that he is dying, he is taken back to Vienna to be buried in his adopted hometown. Even on his deathbed, he laments: 'what's going to happen to poor Schönberg now that I'm gone?', which illustrates vividly his faith in Schönberg's gift. On May 18, Mahler dies at age 50 -- the end of an era viewed in retrospect by many as a "golden age" in Viennese music. His last word is 'Mozartl' [a diminutive nickname, something like 'my little Mozarty' in English].

Mahler's early death has a profound effect on everyone in the Mahler and Schönberg circles. The following month Schönberg writes the last of 6 Little Piano Pieces, op.19 as a memorial to Mahler. Over the summer, Schönberg's Harmonielehre is published with a dedication to Mahler's memory - the book was intended to be dedicated to Mahler while he was alive in recognition of his superiority not only as an artist but also as an intellect and a human being: Schönberg calls Mahler "a saint". The iconoclastic Harmonielehre will bring Schönberg as much notoriety as did his radical compositions.

Ethnic distribution in Austria-Hungary, 1911

Stravinksy's ballet Petrushka is premiered on June 13 in Paris, famous for its bitonal "Petrushka chord": C-major and F#-major triads played simultaneously.

During June and July, Webern composes the 1st and 4th pieces of 5 Pieces for Orchestra, op.10, and during the summer, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th of the 6 Bagatelles for String Quartet, op.9.

A revised and enlarged version of Busoni's book Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music is published in English translation.

30-year-old Béla Bartók composes his opera A Kékszakállú herceg vára ['Bluebeard's Castle'] for a competition. The first judges who review it reject it for its "lack of theatricality", and it is possible that the musical judges never even see the score.

In July, Stravinsky visits Nicholas Roerich in Talashkino, where the finalize the struce of the ballet which will become Le Sacre du Printemps.

From April to September, 14-year-old Erich Korngold composes his first piece for orchestra, Schauspiel Overtüre ['overture to a play'], op.4, which is premièred in December by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Nikisch.

In Vienna, 39-year-old Willi Möllendorf and Jörg Mager build quarter-tone harmoniums.

In August, 37-year-old Schönberg becomes involved in an altercation with a neighbor in his building; when it turns violent, Schönberg abandons his Vienna apartment and stays with Zemlinsky in Starnbergersee. During the summer, Schönberg composes the end of Scene 2 and the opening of Scene 3 of his opera Die Glückliche Hand, the first significant music he produces for this project. In late September he decides to leave his devoted students behind and to move back to Berlin, with a job giving lectures at the Stern Conservatory.

In September, at Stravinsky's summer home in Ustilug (now in Ukraine), he works on the "Augurs of Spring" and "Spring Rounds" movements of Le Sacre du Printemps. In October he moves to his winter home in Clarens (Switzerland), and composes the rest of the score during winter 1911-1912.

In Berlin, Schönberg finally finishes the orchestration of his huge Gurrelieder, composed 10 years ago in a style from which he has by now moved away completely. He says later that this stage of work on the piece involved only minor bits of composition, primarily in Klaus the fool's melodrama, which involves the earliest use of sprechstimme ['speech-voice'], where the singer follows the rhythms precisely, but only sings the pitches tenuously, gliding away quickly as in speech. This technique is apparently a result of Schönberg's (and his former pupil Webern's) interest in microtonality (see above, under "1909"), and is one that will be used by Schönberg thru-out his long career.

Schönberg had written positively about the possibility of microtonality in music in his Harmonielehre, but dismissed it as being impractical, mainly because of the lack of instruments; note that he left Vienna at precisely the time that some composers there made those instruments available. Even tho he was certainly exposed to Busoni's microtonal ideas while in Berlin, he probably did not get the opportunity to actually hear microtonal music, as Busoni wrote none; given the microtonal activity in Vienna in the next few years by Möllendorf and Mager (and, a bit later, Hába), I believe that Schönberg and his circle might have explored quarter-tones further had Schönberg stayed in Vienna.

Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde is premièred posthumously under Bruno Walter in Munich in November. Berg travels there from Vienna to attend, and Webern from Berlin; Schönberg wishes to go but cannot because he begins a lecture series in Berlin -- upon returning to Berlin, Webern plays it for him on the piano.

Back in Vienna immediately afterward, Berg begins sketching his Altenberg Lieder

In December, Schönberg composes Herzegewächse, op.20 ['foliage of the heart'], has the première in Vienna of Friede auf Erden, and his Harmonielehre is published. He begins touring to other European cities to conduct his works (Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, London), Scherchen going with him.

1912

At the end of February, Schönberg is to conduct his Pelleas und Melisande in Prague. With Webern following him from Berlin, Zemlinsky already in Prague, and Berg and several other Vienna students joining, it is a big reunion of the "Schönberg Circle". Webern presents Schönberg with a copy of the "Tribute Book", written by Schönberg's students about him, in hopes of interesting other students in studying with him.

At the end of March, 37-year-old Schönberg composes the first song for his cycle Pierrot Lunaire, featuring his novel sprechstimme ['speech-voice'] technique.

In late March, 27-year-old Berg begins composing Five Orchestral Songs to Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg, op. 4, completing the first song (probably No. 4) before April 10. Berg then has to interrupt the composition of this set until July, to make a piano-vocal arrangement of the 3rd and 4th movements of Schönberg's 2nd Quartet.

Anton Webern 1912

28-year-old Webern is occupied during most of April and part of May with writing a 2-piano reduction of Schönberg's 5 Pieces for Orchestra. Then he goes on vacation in Klagenfurt and Vienna, with a mountain climb in between, stops in Berlin to see Schönberg, and moves to Stettin on June 21 to begin a new job at the theater.

In June, at a music festival in Vienna, Walter gives the posthumous première of Mahler's 9th Symphony, and conducts the Vienna première of Das Lied von der Erde.

Bruno Walter (in his 40s)

The Mahler 9th concert is framed by two concerts featuring music of Schönberg and his students, notably Schönberg's Buch der hängenden Garten and 2nd Quartet, Berg's Piano Sonata, and Webern's 4 Pieces for Violin and Piano -- and this time, surprisingly, the "new music" is a big success with the audience ... but the newspaper critics still hate it. The brochure accompanying these concerts contains the first critical study of the music of Berg and Webern.

Feeling that he is finally ready to compose a big piece, Erich Korngold begins his Sinfonietta in B-major a few weeks before his 15th birthday in May.

Schönberg composes "Gebet an Pierrot" for Pierrot Lunaire on March 12, takes a trip to Prague later that month, then composes virtually all the rest of Pierrot during April and May, featuring sprechstimme ['speech-voice'] thru-out, and completing it in July. After this, he gets back to serious work on his opera Die Glückliche Hand, which contains his first use of sprechgesang with a full choir of voices. By now, Schönberg has rejected the ideas he expressed in his 1909 letters to Busoni, and his new work relies much more on traditional musical architectural procedures, as is plainly evident in comparing Die Glückliche Hand with his other opera Erwartung.

In June, Stravinsky and Claude Debussy together play Stravinsky's four-hand piano arrangement of the first half of Le Sacre du Printemps. Diaghilev decides to delay the premiere until the 1913 season, so Stravinsky puts it aside and resumes work on it in the autumn.

At the same time, during August, Schönberg conceives a huge "theater piece" based on Blazac's religious novel Seraphita, comprising 9 scenes presented over the course of 3 evenings, with a huge chorus and orchestra ... but musically not much progress is made on this project.

In July, Berg completes the second of his 5 Altenberg Lieder, song No. 3.

Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande is published by Universal Edition in Vienna as op.5, and Funf Orchesterstücke ['5 Pieces for Orchestra'] is published by Peters in Leipzig as op.16; Schönberg receives only 500 gulden as payment for the latter (in contrast to the high fees that had been earned by Mahler and Strauss for their works).

Alma sets up the Mahler Foundation, to award prize money to worthy young composers in Vienna, with Strauss, Busoni, and Walter as jurors. The immediate reason for its existence is to continue Mahler's financial support for Schönberg, and so the first grant is given to him.

After finishing his studies, 19-year-old Hába gets a job as teacher in Bílovice, a small town near the Hungarian border, and continues his musical studies independently.

In August, 15-year-old Korngold completes the unorchestrated score of his Sinfonietta in B-major, op.5, a work that is on a much grander scale than its title implies (really a full-blown late-romantic symphony), and begins his Violin Sonata in G-major, op.6.

At the end of August, Berg announces the completion of the third of his Five Orchestral Songs to Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg (No. 5), and the beginning of the fourth (No. 2). He finishes the whole set with the last song (No. 1) by late September.

Pierrot Lunaire is premièred in Berlin in October, and is quite a success with the audience, while the critics remain hostile. Stravinsky attends a rehearsal and is impressed; his enthusiastic reception of Schönberg's progressive style will provide much inspiration for his experiments in Le Sacre du Printemps ['the rite of spring'].

48-year-old Strauss premières his latest opera Ariadne auf Naxos (again in a more old-fashioned style) in Stuttgart.

In December, Schönberg conducts his Pelleas und Melisande in St. Petersburg, then on December 27, sketches the beginning of the final scene for his Seraphita project, which he says in a letter to Alma Mahler "requires a chorus of at least 2,000 singers", but work on this progresses no further.

1913

In January, Walter becomes 'Royal Bavarian General Music Director' in Munich.

On February 23, the Gurrelieder is finally premièred, in Vienna, and is Schönberg's first big triumph in his native city; the by-now-very-old-fashioned piece is a resounding, even overwhelming, success, the greatest of his long career. Schönberg, bitter over the scandals from the audiences and hostility of the critics at the previous concerts of his more progressive works, refuses to acknowledge the audience's tremendous 15-minute ovation, turning his back to them, bowing only to the performers, and exiting.

Shortly after this, Schönberg makes his first tentative contact with Hauer, who will later also claim priority as inventor of a 12-tone method.

In Clarens (Switzerland), on March 8, Stravinsky finishes the full score of Le Sacre du Printemps.

On March 31 in Vienna, a concert which will become notorius includes the following compositions: the première of Webern's 6 Orchesterstücke, numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 of the orchestral version of Zemlinsky's Maeterlinck Songs, Schönberg's Kammersymphonie, the premières of numbers 2 and 3 from Berg's Altenberg Songs, and Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. The audience responds disruptively to the Webern and Schönberg pieces, then fights break out during the performance of Berg's songs, the concert is stopped, and lawsuits result. The newspapers report on it not in the Arts section but rather in the Urban Crimes section. It goes down in history as the Skandalkonzert, and is still today known as the worst riot in Viennese concert history. The audience's ire is particularly inflamed by Berg's Altenberg Lieder. 28-year-old Berg, who for 12 years has written only songs and chamber music, writes 4 pieces for clarinet and piano in April and May, in the same type of miniaturist aphoristic style then being used by Schönberg and especially Webern. He also tells Schönberg about his plans to compose a symphony after his planned trip to Berlin in June. In May, Berg is reading Vom Tode, a new German translation of Maeterlinck's La Mort ['death'], probably in hopes of finding an inspiration for an opera. Towards the end of May, the Schönbergs move to 17a Berlinerstrasse in Berlin-Südende, the second floor of a house partly owned by Albertine Zehme.

Alban Berg portrait by Schönberg

In Paris on May 29, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, under the direction of Pierre Monteux, Stravinsky premières his ballet Le Sacre du Printemps ['the Rite of Spring']. As with the Schönberg concerts a few months earlier, the sharply divided opinions of the audience lead to a riot, probably the most famous in the history of classical music. The work is now recognized as a milestone in the history of European music, not only for its almost constant dissonance, but particularly for the constantly changing time-signatures of the last section (but for a work which presaged this, see references to the 2nd movement of Mahler's 10th Symphony under '1910').

Berg visits Schönberg at his new house in Berlin in June, and experiences a rehearsal and performance of Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire prepared especially for him, and it makes an indelible impression. But on the last day of the visit, upon showing his tiny clarinet pieces to Schönberg, Berg is harshly criticized -- most likely because Schönberg perceives that Berg is going against his nature by writing such small fare. Schönberg knows that Berg has a flair for drama, and encourages him to write an opera, and also to compose a suite of dances for his big orchestral piece, instead of the symphony which Berg was planning. The harshness of Schönberg's criticism leaves a deep scar on Berg's psyche. The orchestral piece which will result (Drei Orchesterstücke ['3 pieces for orchestra'], eventually to become his op.6) is obviously a reaction to Schönberg's rough words.

Upon going to Trahütten for the summer on June 18, steeped in his admiration of Mahler's 9th Symphony (especially its 1st movement) and taking Schönberg's censure seriously to heart, Berg tries to begin composing the recommended "suite" with a Praeludium for very large orchestra, but finds that his compositional tendency keeps leaning towards designing a Mahlerian symphony with a vocal solo in the last movement from Balzac's novel Seraphita, to satisfy his need to write 'something big'.

By this time Richard Strauss has decided to retreat from the expressionism and modernity which was displayed in his Elektra, and has regressed to a more old-fashioned idiom, first evidenced by his latest opera Der Rosenkavalier. Strauss goes along with the other jurors (Busoni and Bruno Walter) in awarding Schönberg the Mahler Foundation grant for the second year in a row, but he confides to Alma that:

[Strauss]

Schönberg 'would do better to shovel snow [the lowest-paying and most menial job in Berlin] than to scribble on music paper, but give it to him anyway...who knows what posterity will think?'.

Schönberg finds out about these comments and writes a nasty letter about Strauss. Their previously warm friendship is over.

During June and July, Webern finishes the 6 Bagatelles, op.9 with the composition of the 1st and the 6th, and during September and October he finishes the 5 Pieces for Orchestra, op.10 by composing the 3rd, 2nd, and 5th.

38-year-old Franz Schmidt composes his 2nd Symphony.

20-year-old Hába writes his first compositions, displaying an unwillingness to 'follow the rules' that he will maintain all his life.

Korngold as a teenager, around the time of the Sinfonietta

In August, 16-year-old Korngold completes his Sonata in G-major for violin and piano, op.6, and in September, finishes the orchestration of his Sinfonietta in B-major for large orchestra, op.5, a work whose title fails to convey its true size and scope: it is in every respect a large late-romantic symphony, sounding like the work of a man far older than a teenager. The theme of the Scherzo's Trio is very much like the music Korngold will later write for the movies in Hollywood, and which will set the tone of film-scores for decades. The première is given in Vienna on November 30, conducted by Weingartner, and is a huge success -- which is envied by Webern in a letter to Berg. Meanwhile, since the summer Korngold has also been composing his first opera, Der Ring des Polykrates, op.7; he completes the piano score around Christmas.

Having worked on his music-drama Die glückliche Hand on-and-off for 5 years, Schönberg gets down to serious work on it during the summer and fall of this year, while vacationing in Göhren on the island of Rügen. But he again interrupts work on it during September and early October, to compose the complex orchestral song "Seraphita", on Stephan George's German translation of a poem by Ernest Dowson -- the title is the only thing this has in common with his stalled theater-piece project of the same name. (In 1916, Schönberg will join it with 3 other songs, to comprise 4 Songs for Voice and Orchestra, op.22.)

Schönberg finally completes Die glückliche Hand on November 8. This score's careful coordination of text, music, action, and lighting makes it perhaps the closest realization to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk ['total-art-form'] idea to be achieved up to this time.

On Webern's 30th birthday, December 3, the première of Franz Schmidt's 2nd Symphony takes place in Vienna. Rather traditional and late-romantic in style, it is successful, which irks those in the Schönberg circle.

1914

Schönberg is making arrangements to produce a film version of Die glückliche Hand (silent, of course, with live orchestral or organ accompaniment), but the project never reaches fruition.

In the Spring, 16-year-old Korngold completes the orchestration of his first opera, the 1-act Der Ring des Polykrates, op.7, and begins sketching the music for his second, Violanta, op.8, on which he will work for the rest of this year.

In March, 29-year-old Berg begins composing a march and a waltz for his projected symphony/suite. He finishes the march before leaving Vienna for the summer.

In May, Berg attends several performances of the play Wozzeck in Vienna; it is unknown today whether it is the version of Franzos or that of Landau. Berg is immediately inspired to write an opera based on it (using Landau's version).

In June, Webern composes the 3 Little Pieces for Violoncello and Piano, op.11, some of the shortest pieces ever written.

Europe in 1914

Austria views Serbia's growing power with suspicion. At the end of June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, is assassinated in Sarajevo (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and the fragile system of European political alliances breaks down. Austria makes demands on Serbia, but Serbia wants to negotiate, so without waiting for clarification, on July 28 Austria declares war on Serbia. Russia responds by sending troops to guard its border with Austria. 4 days later, Austria's ally Germany declares war on Russia. 2 days after that, Germany declares war on France and invades Belgium to begin a push toward the French border. The following day England declares war on Germany. World War I has begun, changing life in Europe for everyone, forever.

Austria-Hungary in 1914

With the start of war, 21-year-old Hába, dissatisfied by small-town life, moves to Prague and becomes a pupil of Novák at the Conservatory. Here he analyzes Debussy, Reger, Scriabin, and Strauss, and studies non-functional harmonization of Moravian folk-melodies.

During June and much of July, while Helene Berg is away at the Karlsbad spa for the summer, Berg is alone in Vienna teaching and composing. Rather than continuing with the symphony, he completes the Praeludium and decides to use it as the first of Drei Orchesterstücke ['3 pieces for orchestra'] (to become his op.6), makes the march the 3rd piece, and transforms the waltz idea into the 2nd piece Reigen ['round-dances']. He continues his work even more intensively after going to Trahütten for the summer on July 21. On August 2 Berg announces that that he has completed the Praeludium, and on August 23 he announces the completion of his Drei Orchesterstücke, but the middle piece Reigen is not yet finished.

Schoenberg spends the summer mostly in Murnau, working on a large Symphony which is to remain unfinished after many years of work -- the project eventually morphs into Die Jakobsleiter.

In Panama (Central America) on August 15, the Panama Canal construction is finished by the United States, and the canal is officially opened. The ship route from New York to San Francisco is cut from 14,000 to 6,000 miles.

After sending the completed scores of the Präludium and Marsch from 3 Orchesterstücke with a dedication to Schönberg for his 40th birthday, Berg spends most of the fall working on a piano reduction of Schönberg's Kammersymphonie.

At the end of the year, Schönberg turns his attention to religious poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, setting two of them as songs accompanied by chamber orchestra: from November 30 to December 4, he composes Alle, welche dich suchen ['all who seek you'], and on New Year's Day, Mach mich zum Wächter deiner Weiten ['make me the watchman of your expanses'].

During World War 1

Schönberg will serve on active duty twice during the war, and his major work during the next decade is on Die Jakobsleiter ['Jacob's Ladder'], which will remain unfinished.

Berg thinks a lot about his first (and only completed) opera Wozzeck, preparing the way to compose it after the war.

The teenage Korngold finishes the orchestration of his second opera, the 1-act Violanta, op.8, which is produced on a double-bill with Der Ring des Polykrates in Munich on 28 March 1916, under Bruno Walter.

Richard Strauss composes his An Alpine Symphony during 1914 and 1915, based on ideas from 1899.

Sibelius begins composing his 5th Symphony in autumn 1914, premières the first version of it in 1915, the second version in 1916, and the third and final version in 1919.

In 1915 Möllendorf has another quarter-tone harmonium built, this time with a special keyboard. In 1917 he gives a presentation on it in Vienna which is so succesful that he repeats it 10 days later.

The 2nd German edition of Busoni's Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, further revised and enlarged, is published in Leipzig in 1916. Picked up by a book club, it achieves much wider distribution this time.

Hába is drafted into the Austrian Army and sent to the Russian front, to the Italian front in 1917, and then to Vienna in early 1918, where he is assigned the collection of Slovakian soldier's songs. Inspired by recitals given by Möllendorf, Hába writes his first quarter-tone piece, Suite in the quarter-tone system, for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart. He studies with Jan Brandts-Buys, then Richard Stöhr, and becoming dissatisfied with these strict counterpoint lessons, in the spring of 1918 becomes a student of Franz Schreker, who brings out his more radical tendencies.

After World War 1

Austria surrenders on 4 August 1918. The former Austrian Empire is now broken up into several different pieces, comprising the new nations of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and other parts of the former Empire now belonging to Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine (as part of the Soviet Union), and Italy.

Immediately after the surrender, Berg goes to Trahütten on leave and composes two large "melodrama" scenes from Wozzeck, which use Schönberg's Sprechstimme vocal technique.

Schönberg returns to live in Vienna for the third time, and founds the Society for Private Performances in order to rehearse and perform difficult contemporary music properly.

Remaining in Vienna, Hába attends Schönberg's Private Society concerts and studies Schönberg's works, becoming particularly influenced by the 'athematic' style used by Schönberg in Erwartung. He works as proof-reader at Universal Edition, which enables him to study many of the most recent scores by Schönberg and his students, and results in the first publication of his compositions (including the 2nd Quartet, his first major quarter-tone work). Hába follows Schreker to Berlin in 1920, finds his first success as a composer there, and begins publishing theoretical treatises. In 1923 he meets Busoni, who had advocated the sixth-tone (36-tET) system (altho he never composed in it himself), and who encourages Hába to continue his work in microtonality. Hába attempts the establishment of a school of microtonal music, only acheiving it in the 1930s in Prague.

In 1920 Witkowski publishes a new version of Woyzeck based on a new reading of the manuscripts. Berg becomes aware of this and notes the spelling of Woyzeck's name, but decides to leave it as "Wozzeck" for his opera because he doesn't want to change the sound of its pronunciation. Berg completes the composition of Wozzeck in late 1921 and the orchestration in April 1922. Thanks to Alma Mahler's intervention, Universal Edition accepts it for publication in March 1923. There is a good deal of positive press, and in the fall of 1923 the conductor Erich Kleiber accepts it for the Berlin Opera; the première finally takes place 14 December 1925 and Wozzeck is by far the biggest success of the entire 'Second Viennese School'.

There's a remarkable resemblance between Berg and actor Christopher Walken ... some film producer should make a movie about Berg so that Walken can play the role! (click on image to view a collage of photos)

The big musical development in Viennese circles after the war is Schönberg's publication of his '12-tone-method'. Schoenberg has also been in contact with Hauer, who discovers the "twelve-tone law" in 1919 at age 36 through the study of his own works, and first applies it intentionally in his Nomos for Piano Op. 19. From the popularity of Wozzeck and the critical debate over the 12-tone method, Schönberg and his circle obtain quite a bit of recognition in the 1920s.

In Paris in 1921, 85-year-old Saint-Saens composes his last works, including solo sonatas (with piano) for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon, then dies at age 86 on December 16.

In 1921, 39-year-old Lilienfeld migrates to America, eventually settling in Malden, Massachusetts. He files many patents related to electronics, including in 1925 the first description of what will later be known as the FET (Field-Effect Transistor).

In 1923 Mathilde Zemlinsky-Schönberg dies. The following year Schönberg marries Getrude Kolisch, and in 1925 they move to Berlin, where upon Busoni's death Schönberg is appointed head of an academic master class. Here he writes much of his opera Moses und Aron, which remains unfinished.

Sibelius produces his 6th Symphony in 1923, and his 7th Symphony (his last completed) in 1924, and after this produces almost no new music despite living until 1957.

Another big operatic hit of the late-1920s is Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf ['Johnny plays up'], written in 1925, and one of the earliest uses of jazz by a German composer.

In 1924, Ivan Wyschnegradsky takes Möllendorf's quarter-tone harmonium (with the special keyboard) with him to Paris. Microtonality enjoys a certain vogue for a few decades largely because of the efforts of Hába and Wyschnegradsky, but the rise to power of the Nazis and then the Communists brands it as a 'decadent' practice, and only in the 1980s and 1990s does it begin to become a major trend in Western music, becoming even more pronounced in the 21st century with the advent of the internet.

Europe in 1925

World War 2 and later

The coming to power of Hitler and the Nazis causes the emigration of many Jewish musicians from Europe, including Schönberg and Korngold, who settle in Los Angeles, and Walter, who goes to New York. Schönberg converts back to Judaism in 1933 and vehemently reaffirms his Jewish ancestry; he also changes the spelling of his name to Schoenberg because of the lack of umlauts on American typewriters.

Korngold's chief occupation in America is composing film scores for such 1930s Warner Brothers classics as The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood -- his style sets the tone for the sound of Hollywood soundtracks into the 1950s, and enjoys a big revival again after 1977 with John Williams's Star Wars, whose main theme is almost a carbon-copy of Korngold's King's Row.

Berg composes 3 more major pieces: his Lyric Suite, for string sextet, slightly unfinished opera Lulu, and Violin Concerto, and dies in 1935. Webern is accidentally killed by an American soldier during the occupation of Austria just after World War 2 ends in 1945. Schoenberg thus outlives both of his most famous students.

Schoenberg has an influential teaching career at UCLA, even counting George Gershwin among his students and friends; still, he has much difficulty obtaining both recognition from his colleagues and much-needed financial stability. He suffers a 'temporary death' in 1946, and composes two of his most powerful works after his revival: the String Trio, which he said was specificially meant to depict his 'death', and A Survivor from Warsaw, based on a story related to him by an actual survivor of the Nazi extermination policy.

Schoenberg dies in 1951 and Korngold and Sibelius both in 1957. Pierre Boulez's notorious obituary Schoenberg est mort ['Schoenberg is dead'] heralds an era from the 1950s to 1980s, centered mainly in Paris and New York but affecting academic musical circles all over the world, during which Webern is the most admired of modern composers. Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maître ['the hammer without a master'] is widely considered to be one culmination of this movement.

During the 1950s, Egyptian engineer Mohamed Atalla at Bell Labs proposes a new method of semiconductor device fabrication using a layer of silicon oxide over a silicon wafer allowing electricity to reach the silicon, develops the metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) process. and with his colleague Dawon Kahng invents the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) in 1959, leading to mass-production of silicon integrated circuits and eventually personal computers and almost all electronic devices after that.

Major trends in music after the 1950s originate mainly in America, particularly rock'n'roll, minimalism, and rap, and by the end of the millenium, with the recycling of 'samples' of previously-recorded music in new pieces, it is hard to find anything 'new' outside of microtonality.

---

References

(in chronological order -- partial list only... to be completed in future)


Schönberg, Arnold. 1911.
Harmonielehre.
Leipzig & Vienna: Verlagseigentum der Universal-Edition. U.-E. Nr. 3370.


Gelatt, Roland. 1955.
The Fabulous Phonograph
J.B. Lippincott, NY.
MacMillan Publishing Company; 2nd edition (April 1977)
ASIN: 0020326807

Hobsbawm, Eric. 1962.
The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848
ISBN 0679772537


Yates, Peter. 1964.
An Amateur at the Keyboard
(p 60 quoted by Douglas Leedy in Interval, vol. 4 #1, winter 1982-83)


Mahler, Alma. 1968.
Gustav Mahler; memories and letters
Enl. ed., rev. and edited and with an introd. by Donald Mitchell. Translated by Basil Creighton.
London, J. Murray.
xxx, 369 p. facsims. (incl. music), illus., ports. 23 cm.
Bib Record ID: 734989
L.o.C. number: ML410.M23 W532 1968


Lang, Paul Henry, ed. 1970.
The Creative World of Beethoven
New York, W. W. Norton & Co.
291 p. facsims. (incl. music), illus.
ISBN: 0393021580, 0393006050
L.o.C. number: 79-159746


La Grange, Henry-Louis de. 1973.
Mahler (volume 1).
Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 0385005245
L.o.C. number: ML410.M23 L3

Hobsbawm, Eric. 1975.
The Age of Capital: 1848-1875


Schoenberg, Arnold. 1978.
Theory of Harmony.
English translation by Roy E. Carter of Schönberg 1911 (Harmonielehre).
University of California Press, Berkeley.
ISBN: 0-520-04944-6 (paper), 0-520-04945-4 (cloth)


Moldenhaur, Hans and Rosaleen. 1978.
Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of his Life and Work.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
0-394-47237-3
L.o.C. number: ML410.W33 M55


Monson, Karen. 1979.
Alban Berg: A biography.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
London: Macdonald General Books
ISBN: 0-354-04464-8


Heyworth, Peter. 1984.
Otto Klemperer, His Life and Times; vol. 1
Cambridge Univ Press
ISBN: 0521242932


Blaukopf, Herta, ed. 1984.
Gustav Mahler - Richard Strauss: Correspondence 1888-1911.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
ISBN: 0-226-05767-4 (cloth), 0-226-05768-2 (paper)
L.o.C. number: ML410.M23 A4713 1984


Jarman, Douglas, 1979; rev. paperback ed. 1985.
The Music of Alban Berg.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
ISBN: 0-520-04954-3
L.o.C. number: 77-76687


Beaumont, Antony. 1985.
Busoni the composer
Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
408 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. Includes index.
"Catalogue of Busoni's transcriptions and cadenzas": p.375-379.
"Chronological catalog of Busoni's works": p.355-373.
Bibliography: p.381-386.
ISBN: 0253312701
L.o.C. number: ML410.B98 B4 1985

Hobsbawm, Eric. 1987.
The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (1987)
ISBN 0521437733


Busoni, Ferruccio. 1987.
Selected letters
translated, edited, and with an introduction by Antony Beaumont.
New York : Columbia University Press.
xix, 446 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN: 0231064608
L.O.C. Number: ML410.B98 A4 1987


Brand, Juliane; Haily, Christopher; Harris, Donald, ed. 1987.
The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters.
W. W. Norton & Company, New York
ISBN: 0-393-01919-5
L.O.C. number: ML410.B47A4 1987
Dewey number: 780'.92'2


Yates, Peter. 1990. (written c. 1960)
"The American Experimental Tradition".
Soundings (last issue), p. 135-143.


Jarman, Douglas. 1990.
The Berg Companion
Northeastern University Press
ASIN: 1555530680


Frisch, Walter. 1993.
The early works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893-1908
Berkeley : University of California Press.
xix, 328 p. : music ; 27 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN: 0520078195
L.o.C. number: ML410.S283 F75 1993


Berlin, Edward A. 1994.
King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era.
New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN: 0-19-508739-9 paperback: 0-19-510108-1
L.o.C. number: ML410.J75 B5 1994


Mitchell, Donald. 1995.
Gustav Mahler, volume 1: The Early Years
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Paperback edition; first published 1958, revised edition 1980.
Includes new appendix.
ISBN: 0-520-20214-7
L.O.C. Number: ML410.M23 M5 1980
Dewey Number: 780.92.4


La Grange, Henry-Louis de. 1995.
Gustav Mahler, v. 2. Vienna : the years of challenge (1897-1904)
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press.
v. : ill. ; 25 cm. Rev., enl., and updated translation of the French ed., by the author.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN: 0193151596
L.O.C. Number: ML410.M23 L3413 1995


Alexander Zemlinsky ; herausgegeben von Horst Weber.
Briefwechsel der Wiener Schule / herausgegeben im Auftrag des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin von Thomas Ertelt, Bd. 1.
Darmstadt : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, c1995-
L.o.C. number: ML90 .B75 1995


McClatchie, Stephen 1996.
"The 1889 Version of mahler's First Symphony: A New Manuscript Source"
19th Century Music, volume 20 number 2 [Fall 1996].


Swafford, Jan. 1997.
Johannes Brahms : a biography.
New York : Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, Inc.
xxii, 699 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [671]-678) and index.
ISBN: 0679422617
L.o.C. number: ML410.B8 S93 1997


Carroll, Brendan G. 1997.
The last prodigy: a biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press (an imprint of Timber Press, Inc.)
ISBN: 1-57467-029-8
L.o.C. number: ML410.K7356 C37 1997


Pople, Anthony, ed. 1997.
The Cambridge Companion to Berg
320 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.65 x 9.69 x 6.80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press; (June 1997)
ISBN: 0521564891


Schweiger, Domenik. 1998.
"Weberns verworfene microtöne"
Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, number 11.
Basel : Paul Sacher Stiftung.
v. : ill. ; 25 cm. Annual
L.o.C. number: ML5 .P3


Mahler, Alma. 1999.
Diaries, 1898-1902
selected and translated by Antony Beaumont
from the German edition transcribed and edited by Antony Beaumont and Susanne Rode-Breymann.
Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press.
xix, 494 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm.
ISBN: 0801436540
L.o.C. number: DB844.M34 A3 1999


La Grange, Henry-Louis de. 1999.
Gustav Mahler, v. 3. Vienna : triumph and disillusion (1904-1907)
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press.
v. : ill. ; 25 cm. Rev., enl., and updated translation of the French ed., by the author.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN: 019315160X


Beaumont, Antony. 2000.
Zemlinsky
Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press.
ISBN: 0-8014-3803-9 (cloth)
L.o.C number: ML410.Z43 B42 2000


Simms, Bryan R. 2000.
The atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg, 1908-1923
New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN: 0-19-512826-5
L.o.C. number: ML410.S283 S45 2000


Brandenburg, Sieghard 2002.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Klavierstück a-Moll WoO 59 Für Elise, commentary
Kritische Ausgabe mit Faksimile der Handschrift BH 116
Verlag Beethoven-Haus Bonn
ISBN: 3-88188-074-7

Jean Sibelius: The music (website) http://www.sibelius.fi/english/musiikki/ork_sinf_01.htm (accessed 2022.0202)


La Grange, Henry-Louis de. 2008.
Gustav Mahler, v. 4. A New Life Cut Short (1907-1911)
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press.
v. : ill. ; 25 cm. Rev., enl., and updated translation of the French ed., by the author.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN: 978-0-19-816387-9


Winter, Robert and Peter Bogdanoff.
From the New World, A Composer's American Sojourn (DVD-ROM)
excerpted at DVD-ROM, From the New World, A Composer's American Sojourn">

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updated:

1999.11.01

2000.01.24

2000.04.30

2000.08.14

2000.11.25

2001.01.14

2001.04.02

2002.04.03

2002.09.24 -- added section about Mahler's intonation (1904)

2003.06.25 -- added section about Wagner and Tristan und Isolde (1857)

2003.06.29 -- rearranged beginning sections, added photo of Freddie Mercury

2003.07.07 -- added info about Chopin (1830, 1831, 1849)

2003.07.24 -- added info about Bartok (1908, 1910), expanded on 1911, 1912

2003.08.02 -- added info about Franz Schmidt (1874, 1888, 1896, 1899, 1913)

2003.08.15 -- expanded sections 1913, 1914, During World War 1, and After World War 1; added Berg references

2003.08.16 -- added much info about Beethoven, Bruckner, and Wagner, and many photos

2003.08.21 -- added info on Schubert

2003.08.24 -- added info on history of the phonograph, graphophone, and gramophone (1877-1900)

2003.09.06 -- updated info on Mahler's early career and 1st Symphony (1878-1888)

2003.09.11 -- added complete info on Liszt's symphonic-poems

2003.09.14 -- added info on Dvořák (1841, 1891-3, 1895)

2003.09.27 -- added speculation that Hamburg MS of Mahler's 1st was originally written in 1891.

2003.10.14 -- added much info on Zemlinsky (1892-1905)

2003.12.01 -- added info on history of woodwind instruments (1830s-1840s)

2003.12.07 -- added photos of woodwind instruments (1830s-1840s)

2004.01.24 -- corrected erroneous date of Schoenberg's father's death (1890), added Kammersymphonie 1/4-tone sketch (1906)

2004.01.30 -- added more details about the French Revolution (1787-93), and links to Joplin's list of works

2004.05.11 -- added info about emergence of American world power (1815 and 1823)

2004.06.22 -- added info about Bartók and Kossuth (1903)

2004.12.09 -- added photos of systeme-6 oboes (1875), and Edison phonographs (1877 and 1888)

2005.04.24 -- cited complete quote from Mahler regarding the loss of meantone tuning (1904)

2005.07.23 -- added birth of Ernst Toch (1887)

2005.09.30 -- added info about Rossini (1792, 1855), Bellermann (1862), and political history of Austria (1790, 1792, 1797, 1805, 1815, 1835, 1846, 1859, 1862, 1866, 1867, After World War 1), Italy (1861, 1870), and Germany (1871).

2005.10.01 -- added more info about Mahler's 8th (1906)

2005.10.07 -- many revisions and additions concerning Schönberg's early atonal period (1909-1914)

2005.10.11 -- some additions to Mahler's last years in Vienna (1904-1907)

2005.10.13 -- added info on Liszt (1811, 1817, 1833, 1837, 1865, 1886) and Beethoven (1826)

2005.10.18 -- added info on death of Schubert (1828), première of Schubert's Unifinished Symphony (1865), and consolidation of French African colonies into French West Africa (1895)

2005.10.29 -- added map of Universitätstrasse (1897), map of Wörthersee (1899), photos of Mahler's villa and composing-hut (1900), and 4ths-motto from Mahler 7th and photos of Mahler and his daughters (1905)

2005.11.04 -- added info on Beethoven (1787, 1789, 1792, 1794, 1801, 1803, 1810, 1811)

2005.11.09 -- added many maps of Vienna and summer retreats concerning Mahler and Schoenberg, and photos (for the period 1894-1908); added info on Bartok (1881, 1888, 1894, 1898, 1899, 1904, 1911) and photo of Bartok (1899).

2005.11.14 -- added info on genesis of Mahler's 1st Symphony (1888, 1889, 1891, 1893)

2005.11.20 -- added info on Mahler's "Poisl" songs (1880), Leander and de Molina songs (1882), and Fahrenden Gesellen (1884); on Rott's compositions studies (1877), and Symphony (1878, 1879, 1880).

2005.11.23 -- added info on Rott (1876, 1877, 1878), Mahler (1878, 1880), Vienna premieres of Wagner operas (1857, 1858, 1860, 1870, 1871, 1875, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1883)

2005.11.24 -- added info on Schubert 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th Symphonies (1814-17, 1821).

2005.11.25 -- added map of central Europe (top of page); info on Mahler's father (1827), Mahler's earliest teachers (1865), Mahler's association of "Ach, du lieber Augustin" with tragedy (1870) and Schoenberg's allusion to it (Introduction, 1907); info on Helmholtz (1821, 1838, 1894) and photo of Helmholtz (1862); photo of Princess Carolyne (1847) photo of Communist Manifesto and map of Weimar (1848); info on Raff (1822, 1834, 1840, 1843-49, 1854-5, 1861, 1863, 1869, 1877), info in Liszt (1830, 1839); info on Bülow (1850-1, 1853, 1855, 1865, 1875, 1878, 1880) and photo of Bülow (1891); info on Mendelssohn (1809, 1812, 1821, 1824-26, 1828-30, 1832-3, 1835-7, 1840, 1842, 1844, 1846-7) and photo of Mendelssohn (1840).

2005.11.26 -- updated info on Liszt symphonic-poems (1848-55); added info and picture of Einstein (1905)

2005.11.27 -- added info on Raff's "Lenore" Symphony and photo of Raff (1872); info on Mahler witnessing fireman's funeral (1908); added text of Mahler's messages on 10th symphony manuscript (1910).

2005.11.30 -- extended and reformatted descriptions of Beethoven's compositions (1795-1826).

2006.01.24 -- added some detail regarding Mahler's Todtenfeier (1888); added reference to Brahms recording 1st Hungarian Dance (1889); added detail on Mahler's summer composing (1892); added small details regarding Mahler and Schoenberg (1908, 1909, 1910).

2006.02.15 -- added info on premiere of The Rite of Spring (1913).

2006.04.07 -- added info on the development of the bicycle (1818-19, 1863, 1865-70, 1878-9, 1885, 1888).

2006.12.19 -- added info on Chopin (1810, 1817, 1823, 1826, 1829-30).

2006.12.23 -- added info on Mendelssohn symphonies (1829, 1830, 1833, 1840, 1842)

2007.01.10 -- added headings for "Introductory notes" and "Here begins the chronology"; added info on Beethoven (1787, 1789, 1792), Mozart (1787-91), Haydn (1787-1801), Rossini (1792), Emperors Joseph II (1790), Leopold II (1790-91), and Francis II (1792).

2007.01.13 -- extended chronology back from 1787 to 1781; added info on Beethoven (1783, 1787, 1792-3, 1795-8, 1805-7), added much new info on Mozart (1781-91) and Haydn (1781-86).

2007.01.19 -- minor reformatting of Beethoven entries (1795, 1798-1802)

2007.02.09 -- expanded introduction to Mozart (1781); expanded entries on Beethoven (1808, 1810); added citation to Für Elise Kritische Ausgabe; some minor typo corrections.

2007.02.10 -- added paragraph on Mozart's teaching of intonation (1786); info on Tchaikovsky (1893)

2007.04.20 -- added paragraph about phonoautograph (1857); reworded sentence about velocipede (1863); reworded sentence about Zemlinsky and Schoenberg (1876) and parenthesized the whole paragraph; added paragraph on Charles Cros (1877-8).

2007.10.29 -- added current dollar values for Bettini's phonograph cylinders (1889); reworded description of Mahler's playing to Bülow to reflect my supposition that he still considered it the first movement of a full symphony (1891).

2007.11.16 -- minor revisions (1907).

2007.12.03 -- added info on Smetana (1824, 1840, 1866, 1870, 1874).

2007.12.05 -- reoriented photos of clarinets and oboes (1839, 1840, 1844, 1875)

2008.01.28 -- added info on and photo of Benz Motorwagen (1886)

2008.11.11 -- added references to Eric Hobsbawm (introduction, references); added info on Cosima Wagner (1864); added info on German unification (1866, 1867, 1871); minor revisions (1815, 1865, 1870, 1871, 1913).

2008.12.04 -- changed format of table describing Ariel bicycle (1870); added detail to description of start of WW1 (1914).

2008.12.08 -- added sections on Jacquard Loom (1801, 1805), Babbage Difference Engine (1822), Babbage Analytical Engine (1837), Ada Lovelace (1843); deleted erroneous redundant "Raff" (1843).

2008.12.09 -- added sections on discovery of Uranus (1781) and Neptune (1846).

2008.12.19 -- steam locomotive (1801, 1804, 1830); Transcontinenal Railroad, Suez Canal (1869); Pfitzner (1869, 1872); Brooklyn Bridge (1883); Eiffel Tower (1889); Panama Canal (1914).

2009.01.02 -- added birth of John von Neumann (1903)

2009.04.21 -- invention and spread of telegraph (1844, 1851), invention of telephone (1861, 1876)

2009.05.20 -- minor edits to wording of genesis of Beethoven's 5th (1805, 1806, 1807)

2009.06.23 -- added info on Puccini's operas La Boheme (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904).

2009.09.14 -- additions to French Revolution and Haitian Revolution (1789, 1791-94, 1804)

2009.09.28 -- added info on the waltz (1797); additions to info on Beethoven (1800, 1806); and Napoleon (1801, 1805, 1806).

2009.09.30 -- added info on Cherubini (1805, 1816).

2009.10.17 -- added more info on Mendelssohn (1826).

2009.10.22 -- added more info on Beethoven (1805, 1808).

2009.10.28 -- added info on Beethoven's sketchbooks (1798).

2009.10.30 -- added info on Beethoven's "Christus am Oelberge" (1803).

2009.11.05 -- added info on Saint-Saens (1886), Franck (1888), Tchaikovsky (1878, 1888), Rimsky-Korsakov (1888).

2009.11.25 -- added precise dates and theater names to premieres of von Suppe operettas.

2009.12.08 -- added more precise dates for Berg compositions (1910, 1912) and Mahler events (1910).

2009.12.12 -- added birth of Gropius (1883); details on Mahler events (1910).

2009.12.15 -- added detail about dates concerning Mahler (1908); added detail about Gropius affair (1910); corrected info about Ives (1910)

2009.12.19 -- added musical example from Mahler 2nd Symphony (1888); added exact dates for several events (1907-1910); added photo of Varese (1909); added dates for Schoenberg's exhibition (1910); added map of Mahler's trip to Leiden (1910); added detail about Mahler's last trip to America (1910); added speculation on 9-note chord in Mahler's 10th and musical example (introduction, 1910).

2009.12.23 -- added info on San Francisco earthquake (1906) and American financial crisis (1907).

2009.12.25 -- minor edits (1910)

2009.12.27 -- added links to Korngold and Mahler lists of works; several minor edits; added birth of Wyschnegradsky (1893).

2010.01.01 -- added birth of Toscanini (1867); edits and corrections concerning Mahler and Schoenberg (1908, 1909).

2010.11.21 -- edited details about Beethoven's last quartets (1822, 1824, 1825, 1826); edits regarding Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (1908), additional material on Beethoven's early works: String Trio (1794), Piano Sonatas op.49, Cello Sonatas (1795), publications of early works (1797), 3 String Trios, 6 String Quartets, sketchbooks (1798).

2013.09.30 -- added Beethoven's 10th quartet (1809).

2020.03.31 -- added Stravinsky Firebird (1909, 1910) and Petrushka (1910, 1911), and more info on Rite of Spring (1910, 1911, 1912, 1913)

2020.04.02 -- added Stravinsky's birth (1882), studies with Rimsky-Korsakov (1905), Scherzo Fantastique (1907, 1908, 1909) and Feu d'artifice (1908, 1909)

2020.04.03 -- added info about American Civil War (1860, 1861, 1862, 1865); corrected spelling of Dvořák's name using proper Czech characters (1841, 1874, 1877, 1891-3, 1895, 1897-8)

2022.01.12 -- several various edits, additions, and corrections, mainly concerning Mahler (1888 to 1905); added info about Natalie Bauer-Lechner (1858, 1866, 1890, 1894, 1901); added info about Shohé Tanaka (1862, 1882, 1884);

2022.01.13 -- added more details about Bruckner: 1st symphony (1866); 2nd Symphony (1871, 1872, 1873); 3rd Symphony (1876, 1877, 1889, 1890); 4th Symphony (1874, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1887, 1888, 1895); 5th Symphony (1875); 9th Symphony (1887, 1893, 1894)

2022.01.15 -- added material about Smetana (1863, 1865, 1866, 1870, 1874)

2022.0202 -- added info on Sibelius (1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1907, 19 10, 1911, During World War 1, After World War 1), Richard Strauss (During World War 1)

2022.0625 -- added info on Lilienfeld (1882, 1900, 1905, After World War 1), Atalla and MOSFET (After World War 2)

2022.0626 -- added info on Edison (1847, 1879, 1884), Fleming (1849, 1904), Hertz (1857, 1886), Marconi (1874, 1896, 1901), de Forest (1873, 1906, 1907)

2022.0628 -- added info on Maxwell (1831)

2022.0629 -- added NY Philharmonic tours (1910, 1911)

2024.1022 -- added more accurate dates for Mahler Symphony 2 and map of Mahler's Scandinavian trip (1888, 1889, 1890, 1891)

2024.1109 -- added Beethoven using "Hendrix Chord" (1799); corrected all the format errors.

2024.1110 -- added and corrected many details of Mahler's last years (1907 to 1911).

2024.1111 -- added many maps and dates concerning Mahler (1892 to 1910).