Concert Life in Vienna 1780–1830

Vienna in the decades around 1800 was the setting of some of the most epoch-making events in music history, with a major part of todays classical concert repertory originally intended for and first performed there between 1780 and 1830. This stands in stark contrast to our fragmentary knowledge of performances during this period. In fact, very little information is known on who performed which music at which venue with how many performers. As surprising as this lacuna may seem, it is a result of Viennas peculiar situation: Until 1831, the city had no dedicated public concert space. Composers and performers who wished to put on a concert would therefore have to either book one of the theaters during the few days of the year when they were not in use, or to hire one of the citys multi-function halls (such as cafés and restaurants). These performances were dwarfed in number, however, by the private and semi-private house concerts put on by music-loving aristocrats and wealthy bourgeoisie, whose listeners could number in the hundreds. Only for the large theaters and rooms in the Hofburg are reliable data available. The international project Concert Life in Vienna 17801830 intends to fill this research gap with both a re-evaluation of concert data by previous scholars as well as a comprehensive assessment of new sources, both historical and acoustic. These include extensive private documents from Vienna-based citizens and nobility (e.g. the diaries of Zinzendorf, Rosenbaum, Chotek, Perth, and Colloredo-Waldsee which have so far not been or only in part evaluated as musical sources), as well as the family archives of important patrons such as the Deym or the Schwarzenberg family and administrative material not utilized so far. In parallel, a team of acoustic scientists at the TU Berlin will evaluate the c. 50 most important spaces where music was performed, especially regarding their architecture, the arrangement of musicians and audiences, and their room-acoustical conditions. The team will reconstruct the historical acoustics for each of these rooms both by taking measurements of the spaces which survive and by using 3D models and acoustic simulations for the ones which do not. This newly collected data will open up an array of possibilities for fresh assessments of old research questions, especially the (changing) role of the nobility for music performances in Vienna, the popularity of various repertoires, and the interdependence of room acoustics and compositions or performances. The result of this integrated approach will be an extensive concert database that gives users a sense for Viennas rich sonic topography. Besides providing a reliable resource for any student or curious music-history enthusiast, the database will serve as a central hub for further international research on concert life in Vienna.