LARTS 427 Cultural Capital: Vienna, 1848-1919
Cultural Capital, Vienna, 1848 – 1919 studies the musical, cultural, social and political life of 19th Century Europe’s most diverse capital city. In contrast to the steady continuity of the London regime, or the abrupt changes of 19th century Paris, Vienna presents us with a world of dichotomies: conservative monarchy and revolutionary thinkers; staid bourgeois life and the most radical psychological thoeries; monumental art and the challenge of Klimt’s non-representation designs; the leisure music of the waltz and the radical explorations of Mahler and Schoenberg. In Cultural Capitals: Vienna, we will examine those polarities as they shaped the ideas, and the daily lives, of the great Middle European capital, discussing the musicians, artists, writers, and philosophers who created much of our modern culture; in doing so, we will also examine the place – and the ambition – of the court aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and workers who sustained a great empire, while exploring the changing social ideas about the women’s roles, nation and ethnicity, and the city itself in a world marked by a growing sense of darkness and pessimism.