Thread: Austrian music - any sign of life?

1938 - Berg is dead, Schmidt is about to join him, Schoenberg and Wellesz are in exile and Webern is about to seriously incur the Nazi regime's displeasure to the degree that he would compose very little for the rest of his life (an already meagre output notwithstanding).

So my questions are: did the May Constitution of 1934 followed by the Anschluss largely erode Austrian musical creativity or was it naturally reaching the end of its epic era of pre-eminence? New German (Stockhausen/Henze/Egk), Hungarian (Ligeti/Kurtag/Eotvos) and Italian music (Berio/Nono/Maderna) emerged after WWII but where was the Austrian?

Good question. I only know two contemporary Austrian composers: HK Gruber and Olga Neuwirth. There must surely be more, but clearly an epic era ended there for Austria, and not only in music.

Good point. The only current Austrian musician I can think of is Christian Fennesz. There must be some I'm unaware that they are Austrian. Yet, I can think of loads of German musicians I like since WWII. Actually, I think apart from America and Britain, Germany has contributed the most musicians I like since the war.

It's only a small country (8 million people now) so it was punching above it's weight before WWII and Vienna was in decline as a cultural hotspot since bourgeois decadence became unfashionable. I don't think the Anschluss was directly responsible for any kind of national creativity sapping. Pure speculation of course.

there's Michael Mantler (Carla Bley's ex husband), though he's a very different kind of musician. His music is a fusion of classical, jazz and even rock but in a interesting way

I apologise for bumping up my own thread here (and it's the only one I've ever started sniff sniff...). I don't know if I mis-categorised it but I was kind of hoping for more than three replies to a question which I thought would have been of interest to anyone with a respect for the contribution that Vienna and beyond made to music from the 18th century onwards. Pretty please???

I don't listen to music according to where people were born.

But I did a little looking around, just for you, and came up with this. These are people on a wiki list whose music I know. I'm sure there are many other composers who were born in Austria and who are post-WWll, but I don't listen to music according to where people were born. (Did I mention that I don't listen to music according to where people were born? Oh, I did? Sorry.):

Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
Georg Friedrich Haas
Beat Furrer
Dieter Kaufmann
Gerd Kühr
Bernhard Lang
Thomas Larcher
Lukas Ligeti*
Radu Malfatti
Emil von Reznicek
Robert Starer
Nancy Van de Vate

I did not know before I went to wiki that any of these people had been born in Austria.

*according to the wiki list from which i pulled these, György was also born in Austria. That's one problem with listening to music by nation, the boundaries shift. Another is movement. People move around from country to country. Starer was born in Austria but is considered an American composer. Another is internationalism. People who move around are hanging out with people from other countries. Otomo Yoshihide (Japan) often collaborates with eRikm (France) and with Martin Tetreault (Canada) and with Keith Rowe (England), for instance.

I'm not geographically influenced by what I listen to either - it just seems strange that a country that contributed so much to music for about 200 years just seemed to suddenly fall off the map and I'm morbidly curious as to why it happened. I appreciate your efforts, S G - thank you kindly.

Nothing lasts forever, I suppose. When Austria was in its musical heyday, Finland was producing virtually nothing, at least as far as the international music community was concerned. Now Finland is CERTAINLY one of today's musical powerhouse (composers, condctors, singers, etc.) while Austria cannot in any way compare. Things simply change! Nowhere is there a written guarantee that Austria is to remain always and forever the world's number one musical powerhouse.

^^

Exaaactly

Friedrich Cerha is one of the better known composers/musicians to come out of Austria in the post-1945 decades. He formed a group, the Ensemble de reihe Wien, to perform new music & as is widely known, he completed Berg's unfinished opera Lulu, also being a scholar specialising in that kind of music. I've got him on disc conducting his ensemble in some of Ligeti's music, and it is excellent. I've also heard his Cello Concerto which came across as quite Bergian, kind of lush, romantic but atonal. I admire him in terms of not favouring more experimental versus traditional contemporary music, his aim over the decades was to just promote fine new music, regardless of the various ideological debates and cliques...

How did I manage to leave Cerha off my list? He's one of my favorites.