VIENNA

SCHOOL
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
19041AA091 | 19041AA092
VIENNESE SCHOOL
• Viennese school refers to a period of classical music history.
• It was roughly between 1750 and 1830
• The Viennese school is a term that captures the legacy of
three leading composers of the Classical and Early Romantic
period.
• The term was first used by Austrain musicologist Raphael
Georg Kiesewetter in 1834.
CLASSICAL
MUSIC
• Classical music is a term to
describe a wide range of
western music from the middle
ages to modern day.
• It includes : the Renaissance,
Baroque, Classical, Romantic,
20th century and contemporary
eras.
• Viennese classicism falls into the
classical era.
 • The classical era was a period in
western music history from
THE approximately 1750- 1830.
• The era was shaped by many cultural
CLASSICAL movements- such as the age of
enlightment and the French Revolution
ERA and was defined by a revival of the
Greco-Roman ideas of balance, order,
harmony and restraint.
 VIENNESE CLASSICISM
• Viennese classicism is a term referring
to a location-specific movement
within the classical era.
• The term is relatively interchangeable
with the First Viennese School.
• It was a movement shaped and
influenced by the Habsburg monarchs
and other wealthy patrons in Vienna.
• These benefactors supported the arts,
creating an artistic center that
attracted Europe’s top musicians.
• This period is why Vienna is still
considered the capital of classical
music.
 FIRST VIENNESE SCHOOL
• The First Viennese School describes a
transition in music history when the Classical
era of music gave way to early Romantic-era
music.
• Period- 18th century
• It describes an era when Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig
van Beethoven were the leading composers in
European classical music.
• The composers of the First Viennese School
had two major common characteristics. The
first was a connection to Vienna, Austria,
where all worked at one point in their careers.
• The second was an innovative spirit, which
transformed Baroque and early Classical-era
music and established new forms that remain
popular today.
SECOND VIENNESE
SCHOOL
• In the 20th century, a new generation of composers sought to take
music to the next logical step of compositional practice. They have
been called the Second Viennese School.
• Composer Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, Anton Webern, Alban
Berg and others, started to explore expressionism in music.
• Expressionism was a movement in the visual arts that sought to evoke
emotion through distortion.
• The traditional rules of perspective and color were left behind.
Schoenberg and his followers began to push the boundaries of music
towards new sounds that defied convention.
 VIENNA SECESSION
• The Vienna Secession was the name given to the group of artists,
architects and designers that broke away from the main
establishment of Viennese artists to form their own group.
• Formed in 1897, its radical period was brief yet its impact on the
cultural life of Vienna and beyond was immense and enduring.
• In 1897 a group of Artists, such as Otto Wagner and his gifted
students, Josef Hoffmann and Josef Olbrich, with Gustav Klimt,
Koloman Moser and others aspired to the renaissance of the arts
and crafts and to bring more abstract and purer forms to the
designs of buildings and furniture, glass and metalwork, following
the concept of total work of art and to do so they tried to bring
together Symbolists, Naturalists, Modernists, and Stylists.
• They gave birth to another form of modernism in the visual arts and
they named their own new movement: Secession.
• As the name indicates, this movement represented a protest, of the
younger generation against the traditional art of their forebears, a
"separation" from the past towards the future.
 VIENNA SECESSION
• The first chairman was Gustav Klimt.
• To pursue their goal they created their own exhibition
space: the Secession building just off Vienna's
Ringstrasse and the architect would be Josef Maria
Olbrich.
• But the Vienna Secession promoted their design
aesthetic with exhibition posters and its own journal,
Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring).
• The journal housed reproductions, poetry illustrations,
graphic art, decorative borders, object design, and
cutting-edge conceptions for layout.
 • Rejecting the revivalist styles endorsed by the
conservative academies, the group promoted an art
that would celebrate modernity.
• Like William Morris and the Arts and Crafts
Movement in Britain - which the members cited in
Secessionist their declarations - they favoured a
broader definition of art which would

Aims and include decorative art and a number of crafts, and

were of the opinion that art could play a central role
in social improvement.
Ideals • And this included all types of art, not just academic
disciplines.
• Like Les Vingt in Belgium, the group held
exhibitions to promote the latest international
developments in decorative design, as well as
painting, sculpture and architecture.
DEVELOPMENT OF VIENNA
SECESSION
• At first the Secessionists were affiliated with Art Nouveau
and Jugendstil
• Infact, in Austria, Art Nouveau was called Sezessionstil.
• An early boost to Secessionist architecture occurred in 1899
when Vienna's leading architect, Otto Wagner (1841-1918),
already established as an advocate of the Art Nouveau style
with his Karlsplatz Station (1894) and Majolica House
(1898), defected from the establishment to join the new
group.
• In 1905 there was a split in the Secession itself. The
Naturalists of the group wanted to focus on fine art. The
more radical artists, including Klimt, Hoffmann and Wagner,
wanted to promote the applied arts and seek closer ties with
industry. In the end they left to form a new group,
the Klimtgruppe.
INFLUENCE ON TODAY’S
ARCHITECTURE
• Klimt, Olbrich, Moser and Wagner had all died by 1918, though their influence persisted.
• The functionalist approach, geometric compositions and two-dimensional quality of much of
the early Vienna Secessionists' output anticipated and inspired many modernist movements
in art, architecture, and design, including the Bauhaus design school as well as
the International Style and Art Deco.
• The defence of artistic freedom symbolized by the group was also a powerful example for
supporters of emerging avant-garde art throughout Austria.
• The Vienna Secession itself continued as a group until 1939, when the growing pressures of
Nazism led to its dissolution.
• After World War II it reformed and has continued to sponsor exhibitions, both in the
(rebuilt) Secession building and elsewhere.
• Works reflecting the style of this art movement can be seen in some of the best art
museums in the world.