Vienna: Jews and the City of Music by Leon Botstein, with CD

This book explores the influence of Jewish composers, performers, and patrons on the musical culture of Vienna and, more generally, their lasting contributions to the development of music. The essays collected here shed light on the Jewish-Austrian musical symbiosis which ended so brutally and tragically by the 1930s. Topics include the role of Jews in the founding of Vienna's most important classical music institutions; Jews and popular music; the fin de siècle conflict between the avant-garde and the reactionaries; and the so-called Vienna-Berlin axis.


The book concludes with a critical look at Vienna after 1945. Included in the book are two CDs; the first contains examples of Viennese classical music, with excerpts of works by Krenek, Schoenberg, Mahler, and others, while the second samples Viennese popular music of the era, with operetta excerpts and music from such Viennese composers as Kurt Weil and Max Steiner.