Mozart's and Schubert's Vienna

The First Viennese School

Wikipedia says the name is mostly used for three Classical composers in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Vienna: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, the last in his early period. It adds that Franz Schubert is sometimes added to the list. The name came from the Austrian musicologist Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, who in 1834 counted only Haydn and Mozart. The same article notes that these composers did not form a school in the deliberate way of later groups.

Haydn, the chorister

Haydn moved to Vienna in 1740 and sang there as a chorister through the 1740s, after being recruited by the music director of St Stephen's Cathedral. He joined the Esterházy court in 1761, stayed for nearly thirty years and returned to Vienna in 1795. He died in his Vienna home on 31 May 1809, aged 77. Wikipedia calls him the father of the string quartet and says his works from the 1750s onwards established the ensemble as a group of four more-or-less equal partners. His Op. 20 of 1772 is described as the first major peak in the history of the quartet.

Mozart settles in Vienna

In 1781 Mozart's dispute with his Salzburg employers reached breaking point and he was dismissed, and he decided to stay, making Vienna his home until his death. His Haydn Quartets date from 1782 to 1785. From 1782 to 1785 he also gave concerts with himself as piano soloist, presenting three or four new concertos each season. He bought a fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins. He died in Vienna on 5 December 1791, aged 35. Wikipedia adds that Haydn and Mozart became friends in Vienna and that Mozart honoured him in the Haydn Quartets.

Beethoven and the teacher

Beethoven studied with Haydn in Vienna until Haydn's second London visit, according to Wikipedia's Haydn article. Wikipedia counts 16 Beethoven string quartets, against 23 by Mozart and 15 by Schubert. A Classical string quartet usually has four movements: a fast sonata-form movement, a slow movement in a related key, a minuet and trio or a scherzo, and a fast finale. Schubert's last musical wish, Wikipedia says, was to hear Beethoven's Op. 131, which he heard on 14 November 1828, five days before his death.

Schubert at home

Schubert was born on 31 January 1797 in Himmelpfortgrund, a Vienna suburb now part of Alsergrund, and died in Vienna on 19 November 1828, aged 31. In the early 1820s his friends among the city's artists and students met at evenings known as Schubertiads, many of them in an apartment in the Gundelhof. His String Quartet No. 14, Death and the Maiden, was written in the winter of 1825 to 1826 and first performed on 25 January 1826.

Why small rooms matter

Schubertiads were private evenings in apartments, which is a different setting from a concert hall. A church of modest size gives a ticket-holder something nearer to that scale. The booking page says St Anne's has Baroque ambiance and acoustics it calls splendid, and Wikipedia gives its length as 35 metres and its width as 10. That is a room where a few strings can fill the space.

Read next: Is St Anne's concert worth it?

Who this isn't for

Do not book hoping for a particular piece. The booking page names the four composers and leaves the pieces open, so a quartet by Haydn on one date may be a Schubert work on another. If you want to hear the famous works by name, check the programme for your date, or choose a concert that states one.