Fux's Vienna

"Vienna. To a music lover the very name evokes a myriad of evocations. The city of Haydn, of Mozart, of Beethoven, the great triumvirate on whose shoulders rest the foundation and glory of the classical era, of the Biedermeier world of Schubert, the tortured soul of Mahler, the radical new music of Schönberg, Berg, and Webern. Yet there is another, earlier musical Vienna, an era all but forgotten by historians. It is the story of a world of extravagance centred around three musical Habsburg emperors and Johann Joseph Fux, the man who served them faithfully for more than half a century. It starts in 1685 or thereabouts with the arrival in the imperial capital of the young Fux, then in his mid-twenties. It ends on 13 February 1741, the date on which Fux died at the age of 80, outliving the last of the emperors he served by less than five months..."

Technorati tags: music, early music, baroque