A Sound Tradition. Christoph Wagner-Trenkwitz

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      Old and New Home

       Founding and Establishing the Orchestra (1842-1870)

      After our tour of present-day Vienna, we will now journey into the history of our orchestra to discover more than one anticipation of the present. Today, it is almost impossible to imagine that in the first third of the 19^th century, no professional orchestra existed in Vienna. Even Ludwig van Beethoven had to resort to amateur organizations for the performance of his symphonies.

      The First “Ninth” and the “Künstler-Verein”

      In many respects, the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in May 1824 was the first signal flare of the Philharmonic idea. It took place in the Kärntnertor-Theater and was played by the house musicians, augmented by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde orchestra. We are reminded of the famous saying by Alexander Wunderer, the oboist and Board Chair of the Philharmonic: “We are the heirs of those who were taught by Beethoven.” The event required two musical leaders, along with Beethoven himself, who by that time was completely deaf. It suffered from the fact that, as demanding a work as it was, it was allowed only two rehearsals with full orchestra and chorus.

      The first attempt to found a professional concert orchestra in Vienna dates back to Franz Lachner. Like Otto Nicolai, who successfully founded a lasting institution nine years later, Lachner was a composer and leader of the opera orchestra. The “Künstler-Verein,” or Society of Artists, which Lachner called into being from members of the opera orchestra, gave four subscription concerts in January 1833—however, due to faulty preparation, the undertaking was an economic failure.

      “Kreuzdonnerwetter—Schwerenoth! Aufgewacht!”

      Nicolai was the first to breathe life into the idea of a professional concert orchestra, with an energy and visionary pertinacity that could take on quite dictatorial traits. We have no record of the first orchestra meeting, but, miraculously, we do have the “Founders’ Decree” from Nicolai’s pen. It begins like a written, but very revved up, carnival manifesto: “Trin tin tin! Hark! Hark! The time has come, no more for musicians just to sleep, or play their violins in bed! Ye sons of Apollo, all together, unite, put your hands to work, on something great! Kreuzdonnerwetter—Schwerenoth! Aufgewacht!” (approximation: Hell and Damnation! Emergency! Wake Up!)

      Then Nicolai gets to the point: “All Orchestra personnel of the Imperial and Royal Court Opera Theater and the Kärntnerthor-Theater, led by its good director Mr. Georg Hellmesberger, have united to give a concert under Kapellmeister N[icolai]’s direction, which will be unmatched in the annals of Viennese concerts.” After a short program sketch comes this self-confident concluding paragraph: “Bravo Nicolai! And may the public encourage you in this endeavor, so that from this seed perhaps a beautiful tree will bloom!”

      A Prussian from Königsberg, Nicolai had become Kapellmeister at the k. k. Hofoperntheater for a second time (after a brief intermezzo in 1837/38) in 1841. He celebrated his “comeback” in May of 1841 with a highly acclaimed production of his opera Il Templario. (This operatic rarity was recalled and earned enthusiastic reviews in the Salzburg Summer Festival in 2016.) His contract called for him to produce a new opera in Vienna, but it did not happen. The self-confident, all-giving, but all-demanding artist left the city in 1847 following a disagreement with management and the orchestra. Nicolai conducted the premiere of his Merry Wives of Windsor in Berlin on March 9, 1849, and died there two months later. For this native Prussian, Vienna could not be replaced by anything, as he confided to his diary: “Berlin probably has more order, which I missed so dearly in Vienna—but the Viennese has more music in his blood […] The south just has more talent!”

      The “Founding Decree” in Otto Nicolai’s hand

      The Triad of Founders…

      …of the Philharmonic, besides Nicolai, consisted of the Viennese writer and journalist August Schmidt (1808-1891) and the Manchester-born German Alfred Julius Becher (1803-1848). Schmidt was, among other things, a co-founder of the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung (1841), of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein (Vienna Men’s Choral Association, 1843), and the Vienna Singing Academy. It is to him we are indebted for writing down the motto which inspires the Philharmonic to this day, namely: “To give Philharmonic concerts in Vienna, whose purpose is to perform the best music with the best forces and in the best possible way.” Dr. Becher’s life and tragic end demonstrate that the founding of the Philharmonic also had a political dimension as a prerevolutionary democratic experiment: the composer and conductor became involved in the whirl of revolutionary events of 1848, became a public figure as the founder of the newspaper Der Radikale and was “executed by martial law” in Vienna on November 23.

      Note that the Philharmonic idea was not imposed onto the opera orchestra from above but grew out of the collective body, which formed a committee to represent itself. Two dynamics were in play in the founding of the group: artistic necessity (to foster concert literature at the highest level, especially the Viennese Classicists Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) and economic distress. Despite the great demand for it in the theater, it was in no way financially solid and barely secured in the social sense—there was not even a pension fund. According to Clemens Hellsberg, the income of an orchestra musician lagged behind that of a middle school teacher, an office trainee, or a well-paid factory worker.

      The way and the means of founding the orchestra can be expressed in one word: autonomy. The freedom of personal responsibility and the concomitant flexibility in artistic and economic questions are ideals to which the Philharmonic has remained true to the present day. The same is true for the double-track duties in both the opera and concert enterprises, which often enough conflict with one another. An employee in the opera house, while an entrepreneur in the concert world: it is from this very tension that the members of the orchestra drew and continue to draw strength for great artistic achievement.

      The First Concerts

      The opera orchestra of 1842 did not even have СКАЧАТЬ