66th Gstaad Menuhin Festival & ACADEMY | 15 July – 3 September 2022

Beethoven was born in Zutphen, Holland, in 1772. We celebrate his 250^th birthday in 2022. Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy is the only event worldwide celebrating the correct year of his birth. Excuse me? Fake news? 

In fact, there is evidence that Beethoven’s parents were staying with a music society in Zutphen, Holland, in 1772 and that a Ludwig was born in the town’s French guesthouse at that time. This was reported by the director of the municipal museum, Jurn Buisman, who also presents the story on the homepage of his institution (https://geelvinck.nl/), to the newspaper De Volkskrant. Speculation about the year of Beethoven’s birth is as old as the hills. According to the Bonner General-Anzeiger from 2017, a certain Mr. van Marwijk expressed doubts about the year of birth 1770 and the place of birth Bonn as early as around 1835, claiming that Beethoven was born in 1772 in the guesthouse “De Fransche tuin” in Zutphen – a thesis that is strongly doubted by renowned Beethoven researchers. The institution Beethoven-Haus Bonn is widely recognized by experts as an authoritative source. Its research department also doubts the birth year 1772, since the baptismal entry of 17 December 1770 in Bonn seems unmistakable. The advocates of the 1772 version, however, counter this argument with the fact that Beethoven had an older brother who died early and whose baptismal entry is being confused with Ludwig’s. Last but not least, Beethoven himself seemed to assume that he was born in 1772, since his father had him appear as an “eleven-year-old prodigy” at the age of thirteen. Or was he mistaken by a few years in his age statement in the “Heiligenstadt Testament” of 1802? 

Se non è vero, è ben trovato. If it is not true, it is very well invented. After all, our 2020 edition on “Vienna” with focus on Beethoven has fallen victim to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, it is a comforting hand for us to be offered here for a content-related legitimisation of a belated Beethoven anniversary. However, and this was emphasised by Sir András Schiff on the occasion of his celebrated Beethoven recital at the Pop-up Festival 2020 by Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Beethoven does not need an anniversary year to be celebrated. Beethoven is the substance, the culmination and completion of Viennese classical music. His works form the backbone of any classical music festival. 

There is nothing new about fake news in the world of music: child prodigies are made out to be younger than they are, blooming theories are spun around the age of numerous singers, copyrights are trampled on, composers help themselves to competitors, just to mention a few examples. We smile at the Zutphen theory and rejoice in what ultimately counts. What matters to us is the substance of the music and our core business: the performance of it through weighty and high-calibre interpretations and performances. 

When the whole world celebrated the 250^th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven in 2020, the city inseparably bound up to the composer was also in focus: Vienna. In the Danube metropolis, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with the most eminent musicians of the age and was generously supported by patrons until he died in 1827 at the age of 56.

Vienna’s connection to high musical culture, which has existed since the Baroque period, was initially focused on the courtly, aristocratic society and only from the Biedermeier period onwards also became part of the consumption of music by the bourgeoisie. Today, the city owes its reputation to a globally unique range of music in all genres. Cultural tourism flourishes in Vienna like nowhere else. The city is regarded by metropolises worldwide as a model of how music history and the present can profitably be combined and marketed. 

It is due to the music and cultural cultivation of the Habsburgs during the 17^th and 18^th centuries that Vienna has risen to become a world capital of music, which today is not only praised in glossy magazines published by the tourism industry, but also becomes evident every day by its uniquely rich, diverse and high-calibre musical offerings. The Habsburgs ruled over large parts of Europe and declared themselves as the cultural centre of the world. Music served them as a demonstration of power and as a means of expressing the splendour of the imperial court in Vienna. While other European courts tended to rely on architecture as an expression of power (Versailles!), the Habsburgs invested in the representative power of music early on. They brought many composers to Vienna and financed their living as well as their ensembles and orchestras. Some members of the royal family even worked as musicians themselves: Empress Maria Theresa, for example, as a singer at the court, or Emperor Joseph II, who was a dedicated cellist and chamber musician. Composers employed or at least frequently commissioned by the imperial court during the years between 1750 and 1770, such as Johann Joseph Fux, Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Johann Baptist Vanhal or Matthias Georg Monn, then established the style of the “First Viennese School”. At the Vienna Court Opera, the opera house of the imperial house and the predecessor of today’s Vienna State Opera, composers such as Gluck and Salieri, but also Mozart, worked from the 1760s onwards. At that time, the opera buffa was particularly successful – its wit and esprit also exerted a remarkable influence on instrumental music, especially that of Haydn and Mozart, who composed for the court opera from 1782. 

The founding of the Tonkünstler-Sozietät in 1771 roughly coincides with the first signs of Viennese Classicism. It was the first time that “public” concerts were held in Vienna, but they were primarily attended by Vienna’s aristocratic and upper middle-class society.  

An idea about the stimulating atmosphere in Vienna during these years of awakening is provided by a diary entry written by the singer Michael Kelly, who attended a house concert at the home of the English Anna Celina Storace and her brother Stephen Storace in 1784: 

Storace gave a quartet evening for his friends. The players were acceptable; not one of them excelled, but there was some science among them, which, I dare say, will be evident when I mention their names: 

The first violin: Haydn
the second violin: Baron Dittersdorf
the violoncello: Vanhal
the viola: Mozart
I was there, and a greater pleasure, or a more remarkable one, cannot be imagined.

Although Kelly does not report what the four musicians played, one can assume that they performed excerpts from their own works. This evening of intellectual exchange and collective music-making might have been a key moment for the initialisation of the era of Viennese Classicism! Just imagine the effect that the encounter must have had on Haydn, who had already said to his father Leopold Mozart three years earlier: "I tell you before God, as an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know, both in person and in name: he has taste, and above all, the greatest compositional science" (Haydn 1781 to Leopold Mozart). 

Mozart, finally freed of the Salzburg fetters, had already been living as a freelance composer in Vienna since 1781, but had struggles to find commissions. Nevertheless, the Viennese years were probably the most productive and happiest years of the genius. In 1782, he married Constanze Weber. In the same year, the Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail, commissioned by Joseph II, premiered at the Vienna Court Opera and became a huge triumph. During the following years in Vienna, Mozart created the great piano concertos, the masses, the late symphonies, numerous string quartets, the famous serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik and above all, the Da Ponte trilogy of operas, including Nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni, as well as finally in 1791, the Requiem and the Zauberflöte. 

While Haydn is considered the “inventor” of the symphony in the classical four-movement form, at least he standardized this structure, and the one who almost single-handedly elevated the string quartet to its prominence, he is also considered a pioneer of Romanticism. The fact that Haydn was not only a brilliant, endlessly creative and sensual composer, but also a mediator, promoter and door-opener, today we would call him a networker, is shown by his cultivation of contacts with the houses of Mozart and the young Beethoven. Haydn, who was born in the late Baroque period in 1732 and died in the early Romantic period in 1809, covered an impressive time span between three epochs. His influence on the geniuses of the Classical and Romantic periods, and in general on the entire Viennese musical life of the 18^th century, seems immeasurable. Some 40 kilometres outside the musical capital of Vienna, at the Esterházy court in Eisenstadt, Haydn lived and worked in the service of Prince Paul Anton Esterházy from 1761 until the 90s, redefining 18^th-century music in seclusion. Above all, Haydn managed to gain the respect, reputation and recognition of all musicians of the coming generations and to become probably the most famous composer of the time. 

In 1792, a young 22-year-old pianist from Bonn crossed the path of the master’s life: In July of that year, musicians from Bonn invited Haydn (who passed through Bonn on his way to London) to a breakfast in the Redoute in Godesberg and brought him together with Beethoven. Haydn immediately recognised the genius of the young Beethoven and thereupon invited him to Vienna to study with him. The Elector of Cologne, Maximilian Franz, who was also present during the meeting, agreed to continue paying Beethoven the subsidies, even if he works in Vienna from then on. 

Haydn introduced the young Beethoven to Viennese musical life between 1792 and 1795, brought him into contact with new patrons and sponsors such as Baron Gottfried van Swieten or Prince Karl Lichnowksy, and organised concerts at which Beethoven appeared as a pianist besides presenting his own works (during so-called “academies”). He even felt concerned that the young genius had enough money to live on – life in Vienna was simply more expensive than it had been estimated while he was still living in Bonn. Haydn himself probably added a few thalers as a loan, as the following letter to the Elector Max Franz (Beethoven’s patron in Bonn) expresses: 

Vienna, 23 November 1793
Your Electoral Serene Highness ... connoisseurs and non-connoisseurs alike must admit that Beethoven ... will be one of the greatest musical artists and I will be proud to be able to call myself his master; I only wish that he may remain with me for some time yet ...
... Your Electoral Serene Highness will allow me to say a few words about his economic affairs. For the past year he was given 100 thaler.
That this sum was not sufficient, even to live on, is something of which Your Excellency is well convinced; however, HDS [Hochdieselben = Your Serene Highness] may have had good reasons for sending him into the world with such a small sum ...
I have advanced him so much that he owes me 500 florins, of which not one kreuzer has been used without necessity ...
Joseph Haydn 

In his early period, Beethoven combined influences from Haydn and Mozart, as his patron Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein put it, “with the help of unceasing diligence you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn.” 

By now, Beethoven had definitely arrived in Vienna. He composed 20 of the 32 piano sonatas during his first ten years in Vienna, from 1792 to 1802, much of the chamber music, his first two piano concertos and several symphonies. His growing success as a pianist and composer was overshadowed by a serious impairment: around 1798, Beethoven first noticed difficulties with his hearing that would eventually lead to deafness. 

Beethoven’s hearing disorder did not only pose a threat to his career as a musician, but also affected his social interactions. The illness plunged Beethoven into a serious personal crisis, which at times even made him think of suicide. Some of his thoughts during that time are revealed by the so-called “Heiligenstadt Testament”, a letter he wrote to his brothers Carl and Johann in October 1802 at the end of a cure in Heiligenstadt, right after this had also failed to help him recover. Nevertheless, the most productive years followed from 1802 to 1812, during which he wrote six of his nine symphonies, the first version of Fidelio, the Piano Concertos Nos. 3, 4 and 5, the Triple Concerto, the Choral Fantasy and the middle-period string quartets. Increasing deafness (from 1818 onwards there is evidence of the disease by so-called “conversation notebooks”), unhappy infatuation (which he expressed in a letter to an “immortal lover”) and material worries led to a deep crisis from which he recovered only sluggishly. During these difficult years, he mainly wrote chamber music masterpieces such as the Hammerklavier Sonata or the two late cello sonatas. The Missa solemnis was originally commissioned in 1820 by his pupil and patron Archduke Rudolph. Beethoven did not complete the work until 1822/23, even without considering any of the commissioner’s specifications. At the same time, he worked on the Diabelli Variations: written in a mood of ascetic inspiration, the piece became an extraordinary achievement in the art of variation-writing. Beethoven also completed his last three piano sonatas. A last burst of his creative energy in the years 1824 to 1827 led to the creation of a group of five string quartets, culminating in the String Quartet in F major, op. 135, Beethoven’s last work that he wrote down in its entirety and in which, far from any string quartet conventions, he seems to lift off from this world into transcendence-like states. 

Beethoven’s music became a symbol for changing times in Europe, especially the liberation of the individual and the human spirit. By his key works, he ushered the epoch of Romanticism in Vienna, and the effect quickly spread to other European centres. The “liberation opera” Fidelio and the Missa solemnis, as well as the Symphonies No. 5 (“Fate Symphony”), No. 6 (“Pastorale”) and No. 7 – all central works of the 2022 Festival edition – revolutionarily redefined genres and forms by the time they were created and beyond. 

By writing his only opera, Fidelio, Beethoven took the chance of expressing the principles of political freedom, justice and fraternity, which are directed against all tyranny, through the rescue of an innocent hero from the greatest distress. There is a clear sense in the Missa solemnis that it was no longer written for the church. It is a very personal credo of the composer in mass form, which, detached from any form, still seems to be a utopian work today. Nowhere does the genius turn his personality, his view of life, his suffering outwards as in this work. 

While Bethoven lived a rather isolated life in the 1820s, not least due to his deafness, Franz Schubert had found the so-called “Schubertiades”, which allowed him to perform his own chamber music and songs in private circles, protected from Metternich’s repressive police state and its censorship. In these private concerts at Schobers’, Sonnleithner’, Bruchmanns’ and others’ homes, the songs premiered that were later published as the cycle Winterreise. 

Schubert’s work took place outside the Biedermeier era that was emerging in Vienna (after 1815 and the Congress of Vienna). Although the bourgeoisie cultivated domestic music, Schubert’s compositional art could not be forced into this bourgeois corset. Like Beethoven during the last years of his life, Schubert created his own musical dimension, which was only outwardly conventional, but artistically seemed removed from the time. 

In the Biedermeier era, the new middle class increasingly became able to fully appreciate life’s pleasures: people attended concerts, spent time in salons and coffee houses, and began to take an interest in nature in the Prater and the Vienna woods. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music), founded in 1812, began to stage concerts itself, first in a hall on the Tuchlauben, later in the Vienna Musikverein, which opened in 1870. In 1842, the Vienna Philharmonic was founded. The Vienna State Opera opened in 1868 and was the successor institution to the Imperial Court Opera. Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Viennese built the Konzerthaus, which, along with the Musikverein, is still the main venue for classical concerts in Vienna. The Wiener Symphoniker was founded in 1900 under the name Wiener Concertverein. Established around 1498 in the form of six singers at the Viennese Court (Hofcapell-Singknaben), the Vienna Boys’ Choir in its present-day form was founded in 1924. 

The Biedermeier was also the time of the waltz, with Vienna as the international capital for it. The waltz developed out of the Ländler, which was usually danced outdoors. Masses flocked to the dance events, where exuberant merriment was explicitly permitted. They were islands of bliss for the Viennese people imprisoned in Metternich’s repressive police state. Composers who popularised the waltz were sometimes celebrated like stars, above all Johann Strauss Vater and Joseph Lanner. 

In its history, the Viennese waltz was an expression of inhibited moods of political upheaval and was called, for example, the “Marseillaise of the heart” (Eduard Hanslick), said to have “spared Vienna the revolution”, while Johann Strauss himself was called “Napoléon Autrichien” (Heinrich Laube). The son of Johann Strauss, also known as “The Waltz King”, still is the face of the operetta and the waltz, celebrated every year in the New Year’s Concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, broadcast to over 90 countries all over the world and watched by millions. 

Musical disruptions within the concert industry, slowly ebbing away into a pure entertainment business during the 19^th century, were to be expected. Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler already exploded the Romantic idea of the symphony to such an extent that they could hardly reach the public in Vienna. However, representatives of the “New Viennese School” around Arnold Schönberg and his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern then came up with a radical reinterpretation of the art of music at the beginning of the 1920s: by using the twelve-tone technique, their pieces were rather constructed than composed. 

Despite these innovations, which seemed radical especially to the audience, the Viennese School saw itself in a line of tradition from the composers of Viennese Classicism to Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. 

The fact that composers of nineteenth-century Vienna were also inspired by the actual “Viennese song”, the folkloristic songs that were sung on the streets, in pubs, salons, is particularly evident in the operetta works of Franz Lanner, Johann Strauss (son) or Robert Stolz: Draussen in Sievering by Johann Strauss, Ich bin ein Wienerkind by Franz Lehár or Im Prater blüh'n wieder die Bäume by Robert Stolz. The song. A Viennese form of art? Viennese composers who set songs to music in the context of the Vienna Secession around 1900 and seemed to foresee breaks between the epochs continued the genre, among them Alexander von Zemlinsky with his Waltz Songs, Arnold Schönberg with the Cabaret Songs or later between the wars Erich Wolfgang Korngold with his Sonett für Wien or Erich Zeisl with the Brettl-Lieder. Many of them seem ambiguous, winking, tragic or sometimes even humorous. 

After all, there is the Viennese humour and its “Schmäh”, which is difficult to understand for any non-Viennese: While we understand “Schmäh” as a form of insult, in Vienna it is considered a “charm”, almost a form of manners – but the “Schmäh” is also described as enigmatic, indirect and full of hidden innuendo, sometimes analogous to black humour. Why exactly should we find the words Poisoning Pigeons in the Park funny? Georg Kreisler’s same-named song does not answer the question, but it does introduce us to the realm of this ambiguity. 

The cliché of the golden imperial and royal image and its waltz industry, which has degenerated into kitsch, including the idyll of Sissi, does not do justice to Vienna as the world capital of music. It is the golden age of Viennese Classicism with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, the Biedermeier era and its initiatives, not least all foundations of still world-leading institutions by the bourgeoisie of the time, such as the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Philharmonic, as well as the titans of the late 19^th century such as Bruckner, Brahms and Mahler. It is due to these names that Vienna’s importance as a musical metropolis is continuously running to this day.  

From 15 July to 3 September 2022, we invite you to follow the musical paths of Vienna through the centuries in over 65 concerts. 

We warmly welcome you to the 66^th Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy! 

Christoph Müller, Artistic Director