MUSIC AUSTRIA
The first msgor musician of Viennese classicism was Josef Haydn, whose oratorio The Creation (1798) is a choral standard, but the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart represents the pinnacle of the time period. A child prodigy and brilliant composer, he produced such well-known pieces as A Little Night Music (1787) and the unfinished Requiem. His work has been proclaimed to be the culmina tion of all beauty in music. Although German-born, Ludwig van Beethoven lived in Vienna for much of his life and composed some of his most famous works there. In the 19th century, Johannes Brahms straddled musical traditions and Anton Bruckner created complicated orchestrations that earned him recognition as one of the world’s greatest symphonic masters. Between Johann Strauss the Elder and his son, Johann Strauss the Younger, the Strauss family kept Vienna on its toes for much of the century by composing exhilarating waltzes that broke free from older, more
FACTS AND FIGURES
Official Name: Republic of Austria. Land Area: 83,858 sq. km.
Capital: Vienna. Time Zone: GMT +1.
Major Cities: Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg. Language: German.
Population: 8,030,000. Religions: Roman Catholic (74%), Prot estant (5%), Muslim (4%), other (17%) formal dances. In the modem era, Arnold Schonberg rejected tonal keys, producing a highly abstracted sound. Anton von Webern and Alban Berg were both students of Schonberg and suffered under Nazi occupation for their degenerate art.
