Bach and Vienna.

In order to become King of Poland again, the Saxon Elector Frederick Augustus I acted with considerable diplomatic skill on the European stage. For Frederick IV, the Danish king, whom he invited to Dresden to win him over to his plans, he had a dramma per musica performed in his court theater in 1709. However, he did not feature his own musicians, but rather hired specialists from Vienna. The close contacts he made at that time would prove useful to him a good ten years later, this time for the second phase of his plan to bind his Wettin dynasty more closely to the House of Habsburg through the marriage of his son.

A wealth of documents, letters, newspaper reports, and musical scores, serves to shed light on the events surrounding the Viennese wedding of the Habsburg Archduchess Maria Josepha to the Saxon Crown Prince Friedrich August in 1719. This state occasion was prepared by two Saxon envoys, Count Christoph August von Wackerbarth and Marshal Count Jacob Heinrich von Flemming. They each traveled to Vienna with their own musical ensembles, held court there, and had their musicians perform at private and semi-public occasions. The article thus provides insight into the methods of music diplomacy in the early 18thcentury. Among those who benefitted from these connections between Dresden and Vienna was none other than Johann Sebastian Bach: they brought a great deal of music from the imperial court to Saxony.

As defined by Thomas Keller and Lutz Musner, cultural transfer describes a process in which artworks leave their original context and are reinterpreted, adapted, and transformed within a new one. This shift in place and context involves not just transmission but active appropriation in the receiving culture. The reception of the “Divertimento per il Cembalo,” a short-lived musical genre invented around 1750 in Vienna by Georg Christoph Wagenseil, provides an illuminating example. Wagenseil created a clearly defined body of works—consistent in instrumentation, form, and function—that can be understood as the intersection of the instrumental divertimento and the courtly keyboard music of his time. At the Dresden court, which maintained close dynastic ties with Vienna, Wagenseil’s keyboard works were not merely performed; they also inspired new compositions, likewise labeled “Divertimenti”, that were obviously created under their influence. A central figure in this process was Peter August (1726–1787), who served as court organist and keyboard teacher to the electoral family of Saxony.

Enthusiasts for the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel were not very common in Vienna in the period between 1770 and 1790, as Friedrich Nicolai already noted at the time. High-ranking civil servants in Vienna who belonged to the two Protestant congregations in Vienna played a remarkable role in the reception of C. P. E. Bach’s music in general; this article focuses on those who appear in the subscription lists for most of the prints of music by the “Hamburg Bach”.

Four letters, which the Protestant imperial court councillor Carl Adolf von Braun sent in 1777 and 1778 together with compositions by C. P. E. Bach to Samuel von Brukenthal in Sibiu in Transylvania (today Sibiu, Romania), are particularly revealing. One of them mentions Fanny von Arnstein (née Itzig), who is said to have brought 60 concertos from C. P. E. Bach from Berlin to Vienna in 1776; however, only a few items from the Arnstein music collection can be traced today. Further letters from Bach to Artaria and Breitkopf document Bach’s relationship with Braun, who also studied in Leipzig from 1734 to 1736, and with Braun’s son, a composer.

The article thereby adds biographical context to several of the sources identified during the research on the catalog “Die Bach-Quellen in Wien und Alt-Österreich” (The Bach Sources in Vienna and Old Austria).

No Bach research has focused on Bukovina so far; the easternmost crown land of the Habsburg Empire seemed too peripheral. A newspaper report on the first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion at Czernowitz’s Musikverein in 1900, however, prompted further research. Although no performance materials from this St John Passion in Czernowitz survive, this examination—drawing from previous research into the music history of Czernowitz—explores the reception of Bach’s music as a socio-political issue. The city was, like hardly any other in the Habsburg Empire, multi-denominational. Against the backdrop of later debates about antisemitism in the libretto of this very Passion, the composition of the ensemble of the performance shortly after (!) Easter 1900 is particularly noteworthy. The author names the musicians, examines careers that began here, and also focuses on amateur musicians who significantly shaped the city’s musical life. He also lists other Bach works that were performed in Habsburg Czernowitz around 1900—in lessons, concerts, and salons. The essay concludes with a catalogue of the Bach scores kept at the music society’s library.

This article presents new evidence concerning the biography and source holdings of the famous composer, diplomat, and early music connoisseur Gottfried van Swieten (1733–1803). The author also focuses on his most important collaborator: the composer, music theorist, and court librarian Carl Leopold Röllig (ca. 1760–1804), who also collected scores and writings on music theory. In addition, he compiled the (now lost) catalog of van Swieten’s music collection in 1803/1804. Based on Röllig’s entries on Bach sources which are today scattered around the world (including the Austrian Imperial Collection and the Lobkowitz Music Collection), many Bach and Handel sources can now be traced back to the former holdings of the court library prefect van Swieten for the first time.

It is clear that van Swieten’s collection was enormously broad in scope. And yet much of it is still considered lost, such as the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to which he subscribed between 1772 and 1787.

This article paints a multifaceted portrait of the Viennese music collector Sigmund Austerlitz (c. 1830–1898), a fascinating yet tragic figure in music history. The former banker, who came from Hungary, assembled a large collection of music manuscripts in the late 19thcentury and cataloged around 1,750 “autographs” by 1890. He became notorious for his obsession with attributing almost all manuscripts to Ludwig van Beethoven, which was reflected in colorful marginal notes and numerous self-published brochures and was probably linked to a mental disorder. Despite these eccentric attributions, he did indeed possess valuable sources, including compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons in copies by Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. Some of these manuscripts can be identified today and provide important clues to Albrechtsberger’s intensive study of Bach’s counterpoint and, above all, his art of fugue.

This article shows that, despite its problematic interpretations, Austerlitz’s collection remains scholarly significant, as it provides insights into a private music collection of the 19th century and raises questions about the transmission of sources and the complex mixture of discovery, error, and the cult of autographs.

During the 19thcentury, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music became increasingly popular in Vienna. While at the beginning of the 19th century performances took place mainly in private and semi-public circles of early music lovers, later in the century performances of his music took place in public concerts. Accompanied by an extensive coverage in the daily press and music magazines—by Bach specialists such as Carl Debrois van Bruyck and Selmar Bagge—these performances attracted considerable public attention.

The two outstanding protagonists of this movement were the pianist Josef Fischhof (1804–1857) and the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger senior (1828–1893). Both were strongly committed to Bach’s orchestral and chamber music, edited works by Bach for which they wrote their own cadenzas, and used Bach’s works specifically for teaching. Hellmesberger’s editions of Bach’s violin music established a tradition of Bach interpretation on this instrument that lasted beyond his own lifetime. Fischhof’s extensive Bach collection is now held at the Berlin State Library.

This article traces Johannes Brahms’ (1833–1897) lifelong engagement with Bach. It took place in three areas: his role as a pianist, his practical approach to performing Bach’s vocal works, and his own compositions. The pianist Brahms, who repeatedly distinguished himself with performances of Bach’s organ works, recorded his interpretative approaches together with Clara Schumann in her so-called “Bach Book” (US-BER, Kenney 550).

In the field of vocal works, a hitherto little-known source on Brahms’ arrangement of the cantata movement “Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft” BWV 50 (A-Wgm, A 131h / III 25454) comes into focus, the texture of which Brahms clarified through instrumental additions. The virtuosity of the piano transcriptions of organ works, the restrained arrangements of vocal works—especially in comparison to Robert Franz—and the ambitious counterpoint of his own works show how versatile and nuanced Brahms’ reception of Bach was.

Although the St Matthew Passion was performed in Vienna as early as the 1850s, its first complete performance did not take place until 1907, conducted by the Court Opera conductor Franz Schalk (1863–1931). The author has located in Bucharest the introductory lecture by Eusebius Mandyczewski (1857–1929) to this memorable performance during Holy Week in 1907and presents it here in a complete annotated edition. Like his mentor Brahms, Mandyczewski—himself a composer, conductor, and archivist of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde—was one of the leading Bach specialists in Vienna around 1900. He initiated efforts to reconstruct musical instruments from Bach’s time and organized private Bach concerts with prominent Viennese musicians.

Mandyczewski analyzes the work as a musical drama, elucidates it’s theological background, and illuminates its compositional features (largely avoiding technical terms). He also shares with his audience the moments that particularly excite or deeply move him. Furthermore, Mandyczewski’s lecture provides insight into the significance for his generation of the (re)discovery of Bach’s works in the preceding decades and into the inspiration offered by the first Bach festivals.

Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadé Mozart are considered representatives of contrasting eras, but there is continuity between the two composers. This article follows the most important traces of Mozart’s reception of Bach.

His father, Leopold Mozart, became familiar with Bach’s music at an early age through Bach’s students in Augsburg. The eight-year-old Wolfgang Amadé was profoundly influenced by his meeting with Johann Christian Bach in London in 1764. Recent research has dated Mozart’s fugue compositions (K. 401, 154a, 173) palaeographically to the Salzburg period of 1772/73, ten years earlier than previously assumed. This puts the “Vienna Bach experience” of 1782 into perspective. In Vienna, Mozart deepened his knowledge at Gottfried van Swieten’s Sunday matinees, and his presence in the Arnstein household also gave him access to sources of music by the Bach family. In 1789 in Leipzig, Mozart played the organ at St. Thomas Church, composed the “Little Gigue” K. 574 with the B-A-C-H motif, and performed the Jupiter Symphony. In late works such as The Magic Flute and the Requiem, Mozart transformed Bach’s tradition into innovation, as it were. Without Mozart’s contribution, the reception history of Bach’s music would have taken a different course.

The Graz composer, conductor, and music writer Anselm Hüttenbrenner (1794–1868) was educated in Vienna and had access to an extensive musical network. He turned to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach relatively late in life. While Bach’s music only became more prominent in public musical life in Styria from the 1850s onwards, Hüttenbrenner developed his relationship with this oeuvre primarily in private. Following some personal crises, he increasingly withdrew from public life and became more preoccupied with spiritual questions. During this phase, he began to play Bach’s fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier every day, which he described as a fascinating experience. This intensive engagement had a direct impact on his own work, for example on his 24 fugues, which he composed in all major and minor keys and which, although inspired by Bach, are formally free in design.

In 1853, during his stay in Radkersburg, Hüttenbrenner also produced extensive four-hand piano transcriptions of Bach’s Clavierübung III, presumably for teaching or domestic music-making. Overall, his reception of Bach thus appears to have been a highly personal, artistically productive process, characterized less by public performance than by inner contemplation, spiritual seeking, and compositional self-assurance.

Schoenberg’s lectures and writings made it abundantly clear that he considered Bach as a central compositional model. Schoenberg admired Bach’s contrapuntal thinking as the foundation of motivic-thematic unity. Bach apparently stood for him as the composer who had extended the Netherlandish seven-tone counterpoint to twelve tones, thereby anticipating dodecaphony. Furthermore, Schoenberg ideologically instrumentalized Bach as a representative of a genuinely German musical tradition, into which he inscribed himself. This positioning acquired a bitter irony in light of his persecution as a Jew in 1933. Finally, Bach served Schoenberg as an aesthetic criterion for the evaluation of genres and compositional quality, for instance in his distinction between the “composed fantasia” and the potpourri.