Despite such impecuniousness it was Leopold’s reign that witnessed the most lavish of all 17th century operatic extravaganzas. Originally commissioned to celebrate the emperor’s wedding to the Infanta Margherita of Spain in 1666, Antonio Cesti’s Il Pomo d’oro suffered various delays before eventually being produced at court on July 12 and 14 1668. With a cast list of over 50 named characters, a huge chorus, and no less than 23 sets, the gargantuan opera took over nine hours in performance across the two nights it was staged. In addition to Cesti’s music, the opera included ballet music by Johann Schmelzer and even a scene with music composed by the emperor himself. The cost of the production was a staggering 100,000 florins, a figure that can be placed in context by comparing it with the annual (and handsome by the standard of the day) salary of 2000 florins paid to Antonio Draghi on his appointment as Kapellmeister in 1682. Il Pomo d’oro, with its prologue glorifying the Habsburg empire and the emperor, was the apogee of court opera. If its lavishness was never repeated on the same scale, the celebration of the glory of pomp and majesty would remain a central platform of the court operas produced in Vienna over the next seventy years.

The reality of life in the Vienna of 1685 was rather different. A city of some 80,000 inhabitants mostly crammed inside its medieval walls, it was the most densely populated city in Europe. Only two years earlier a siege by the Turks, a perpetual thorn in the side of Habsburgs, had been lifted. Although the remaining years of the century would witness a gradual lifting of the threat from the east, the city was at this time surrounded by an open space on which building was forbidden in order to deny potential invaders cover from which to bombard the city. The seat of the court was the Hofburg, a sprawling complex of interconnected buildings, the oldest of which dated back to the 13th century. Cramped and consistently described by visitors as unbefitting of a great dynasty, Leopold’s own efforts to improve and expand the Hofburg by building a new wing were twice thwarted, firstly by fire, then by the Turks, who severely damaged the building during the siege of 1683. The modest size of the Hofburg meant that court life in Vienna differed greatly from that at Versailles, where the entire court was gathered under one roof. While the Habsburgs never maintained as large a court as their Bourbon rivals, the lack of accommodation dictated that many court officials be housed in the city. For this purpose the first floor of appropriate buildings in the city was sequestered. Unusually for Europe at this time, most of Vienna’s houses consisted of five or six stories, an early example of building upward to compensate for lack of space. Residency was based on a strict hierarchy—the lower your status, the higher up the building you lived. (It may be recalled that when the poverty stricken Haydn was expelled from the choir of St. Stephens Cathedral in 1749 he took up residence in a “miserable garret” below the eaves of a five story building in the Kohlmarkt.)

Musical life

Musical life in the city was centred entirely on the court, which reflected the musical interests of successive rulers by maintaining a large retinue of musicians. In 1705, the last year of Leopold’s reign, there were over 150 musicians on the court payroll, a figure which apart from a brief interlude can probably be taken as a reasonable average for the period. Given the emperor’s predilection, a substantial majority of court musicians were Italian. At the turn of the century the death of Draghi enforced changes that resulted in the promotion of his deputy Antonio Pancotti to the position of Kapellmeister and the introduction of another Italian, Marc’ Antonio Ziani as vice-Kapellmeister. Other Italian musicians prominent at the court at this time include Giovanni Bononcini, and Carlo Agostino Badia, who were joined in 1701 by Francesco Bartolemeo Conti, one of the greatest theorbists of the day and later the most favoured opera composer at court. In 1712 Ziani would also be promoted. Only with the appointment of Fux as Kapellmeister in 1717 would Italian domination of the post be broken.

The duties of this large and impressive retinue of musicians were threefold; the provision of music for the court chapel, the performance of opera and oratorios, and on Sundays and other special days to provide music to accompany formal public dinners. Although a large number of court operas date from the period under discussion, opportunities for presenting them were restricted to one work mounted for the Carnival season in January and February, and the birthdays and name-days of the emperor and his consort. The latter were performed in the Hofburg’s main theatre, a lavishly decorated venue which had been totally remodelled from the existing Tanzsaal at the end of the century by Francesco Galli-Bibiena, the founder of the hugely influential family of architects and scenic designers. It would be the Galli-Bibienas grandiose architectural stage sets, indissolubly linked with the rise of opera seria, which transformed the staging of opera in Vienna and throughout Europe. Such productions were, according to report, given “at the greatest expense, and performed with such magnificence, according to connoisseurs, as London and Paris had never seen”. Astonishingly, these performances on so-called “gala days” were given only once. A composer commissioned to provide a Carnival opera, which were given in the smaller Hofburg theatre, might expect his work to be seen and heard rather more widely, since they received several performances. Commissions for both Carnival and “gala day” operas were widely sought after and by no means restricted to composers attached to the court. Among them were several women composers, including the Roman Camilla de Rossi, four of whose oratorios were given during the reign of Joseph I. One, Il Sacrificio d’Abramo (1708), has been recorded. A few years later Maria Margherita Grimani’s Pallade e Marte (1713) became the first court opera by a woman to be produced in the Hofburg.

Sacred music

Religious music occupied an even more important part in the life of the Hofburg, particularly during the reigns of the pious Leopold I and his second son, who became Charles VI in 1712. The entire court calendar was in fact structured around the Roman Catholic liturgical year, with every year witnessing the same sequence of religious celebration and devotions. Religious processions played an important role, contemporary observers noting that the imperial court even outdid Italy in this respect. The main focus of such devotions was centred around Easter, much to the disconcertion of some of the more worldly visitors to the Hofburg. In 1726 the Duc du Richlieu felt constrained to voice his discomfort after claiming to have spent more than a hundred hours in church with Charles VI between Palm Sunday and Easter Monday, a regime Richlieu felt to be suited only to “the sturdiest of monks”. Not surprisingly, it was during Lent that musical activity was at its most concentrated. Every Sunday during this period witnessed the performance of an oratorio or sepolcro, a genre that appears to have been peculiar to the Viennese court. The sepolcro dates back to the time of Ferdinand III, taking its name from the opening act of a religious drama in which Christ’s sepulchre was initially viewed covered in black velvet. During the orchestral introduction this was then removed to reveal the sepulchre, the remaining acts also being staged. Originally the cast lists of sepulcri consisted entirely of allegorical characters, but later biblical characters were also included, eventually taking over entirely as the form became increasingly indistinguishable from oratorio.

The musicians attached to the imperial court were thus kept well occupied, particularly since outside performers were rarely brought in. The principal posts were also by the standards of the day well-paid. When they were paid was quite another matter. The Habsburg rulers of the period may have loved music, but in common with other court officials and soldiers serving the empire the impecunious state of the imperial exchequer meant that the musicians who served them were frequently far in arrears with their stipends. Petitions for back pay are a consistent theme throughout the entire period. Occasionally it seems they had to go even further. A report dating from around 1690 claims that on occasions when payment was not received the musicians would go on strike.

Opportunities for supplementing arrears in wages outside the confines of the Hofburg were few. Indeed, one of the most curious aspects of the musical life of Vienna during this time is a near total lack of recorded musical activity outside the court. Despite an increasingly wealthy and powerful aristocracy, musical patronage appears to have been jealously guarded by the court. This may be at least partly due to the unique relationship between the nobility and the court that involved a mutual interdependence to a degree unparalleled elsewhere in Europe.

An architectural boom

While the empire’s aristocracy were apparently unwilling to tread on imperial toes when it came to musical patronage, such was far from the case when it came to architecture. In the wake of the lifting of the Turkish siege of 1683, the grand European alliance that helped achieve that objective went on to roll back Turkish influence ever further east. By 1690 the Habsburg empire had achieved a security it had not known in decades. The result was a new-found sense of confidence and national pride that manifested itself in one of the greatest building booms seen in pre-20th century Europe. Both inside and without the city walls the nobility, many of them flush with the spoils of war, vied with one another to build or rebuild ever grander and more magnificent palaces and country residences. This frantic orgy of building activity scarcely even paused for the War of Spanish Succession, which occupied most of the short reign of Leopold I’s elder son, Joseph I (1705-1711). Most spectacular of all was the Belvedere, built for Austria’s greatest military hero Prince Eugene of Savoy by Jean-Luca von Hildebrant (1668-1745), one of the two great architects who dominated the building of baroque Vienna. Originally planned in 1704 as a modest garden residence, the Belvedere grew in scale into two magnificent residences, the Lower Belvedere (built between 1714 and 1716), and the Upper Belvedere (1721-1722) reflecting the growing wealth and honour of their owner. That the cash-strapped monarchy, which had generously rewarded Eugene for his dazzling military successes, was unable to compete is illustrated by the history of Schönbrunn. Originally designed on a grandiose scale by Hildebrant’s great rival Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) as an imperial rival to Versailles, work on Schönbrunn was eventually started in 1696 on a more modest hunting lodge for Prince Joseph. Although Joseph enlarged the palace while he was emperor, it was abandoned by Charles VI and only completed after Maria Theresa came to the throne in 1740.

Joseph I’s death from smallpox in 1711 at the age of 33 brought to the throne another prince who had not expected to rule the Austrian branch of the dynasty. Indeed the Archduke Charles had every reason to believe that he would rule in Spain, an ambition in any event thwarted by the untidy outcome of the war. During the interregnum that followed Joseph’s death the empire was ruled by the dowager-empress Eleanora Magdalena, the mother of Joseph and Charles. Under her the court’s extravagance was curtailed, among her edicts being one that cut the number of musicians employed at court to more economical numbers. It was decided that 24 singers (six to each part) were sufficient to fulfil the court’s needs, the number of instrumental players also being reduced to 53 by the end of 1712. While suggesting that Charles VI seems to have adhered to his mother’s edict in the immediate aftermath of his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in December 1711, numbers gradually crept up again and by the 1720s were once more most likely well in excess of one hundred.

Charles VI, an unexpected emperor

Unlike his brother, whose dissolute way of life and cultivation of free thinkers had threatened to break away from traditional Habsburg conservatism, Charles was far more like his father. His years in Spain had imbued him with the same spirit of the Counter-Reformation and his reign is marked by his clumsy handling of the Protestants whose lands lay within the boundaries of Habsburg power. Unpopular with many of his courtiers for his continued hankering after Spain, Charles VI has also been excoriated by historians for failing to tackle the hopelessly inefficient bureaucracy that so frequently led to problems within his realms. Yet under him Austria enjoyed what was largely a rare period of peace and stability that can boast such achievements as the addition to the Hofburg of the great Imperial Library and the impressive Imperial Stables, both to designs by Fischer von Erlach. Even before Charles VI came to the throne, Vienna finally gained it’s first public theatre. The theatre at the Kärntnerthor was built by the civic authorities between 1708 and 1709 near the Carinthian Gate. Although serving a variety of purposes, it was mainly used for German plays, becoming known as the German theatre. By an imperial decree of 1728, Italian opera was permitted, but only if intermingled with German comedy. ‘Pure’ Italian opera remained, as ever, the exclusive preserve of the court. In the 1730s the theatre came under the direction of the court singer Francesco Borosino and during this period one or more of Vivaldi’s operas was performed there. Interestingly, in view of Vienna’s subsequent history and what was happening elsewhere in Europe, no evidence of public concert giving in the city emerges until the 1740s.

Meanwhile musical life at the Hofburg continued with unabated vigour. Like his father, Charles VI was not only a composer (none of his music survives) but also an accomplished keyboard player and an efficient conductor capable of directing opera performances. Francesco Conti emerged as a clear favourite among the opera composers working at court. Between 1714 and 1732 no less than twelve of the operas commissioned for Carnival were composed by the theorbo virtuoso, who greatly improved his financial position by marrying the prima donna Maria Landini. Singers commanded substantially higher wages than instrumentalists, Landini’s salary of 4000 florins and her ownership of houses in the city and the fashionable suburb of Heiteldorf (a legacy from her first marriage) helping to elevate Conti to a position of considerable comfort. In the wake of the appointment of Fux and Caldara as Kapellmeister and vice-Kapellmeister respectively new faces arrived. The most prominent of these was not a musician, but the poet and librettist Apostolo Zeno, appointed poet and court historian in 1718 at the same salary as that earned by Maria Landini-Conti. Zeno, who had been first invited to the imperial court as early as 1705, was one of the leading poets of the day, a librettist who played a major role in the reform of opera and the creation of opera seria. Eleven years after his arrival in Vienna the name of Zeno would be succeeded by an even more famous name in the annals of Baroque opera, that of Pietro Metastasio, who was appointed court poet in 1729.

The great poet took accommodation in the same house on the Kohlmarkt that twenty years later would provide such humble accommodation for Haydn, remaining in the same dwelling until his death in April 1782. Metastasio’s first collaboration after his appointment in Vienna was with Caldara in the oratorio La Passione di Gesù Cristo, a partnership that would produce eight further operas and oratorios. Metastasio appears however to have had little time for Caldara’s music, recording some years later that he had been “a distinguished master of counterpoint... who showed far too little concern for expressiveness or giving delight”. Charles VI, however, never tired of Caldara’s music for precisely the reasons that Metastasio disliked it. True to his inherited Habsburg conservatism, the emperor did not like the new galant style, preferring solidly crafted music with strong contrapuntal interest. Significantly, Caldara had changed his style to conform to court taste after arriving in Vienna in 1717, writing in four or even five string parts instead of the three he had employed in Italy. Doubtless working with Fux played a key role; one of the unexplored topics concerning the music of the claustrophobic Viennese court is the symbiotic relationship that must have existed between the musicians it employed.

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

By the late 1730s the opulent era of Viennese court music was nearing its end. On 28 December 1736 Caldara died in poverty despite having been the recipient of considerable largesse from Charles VI. Less than two years later he was followed to the grave by Carlo Badia, who like the ageing Kapellmeister Fux had served three Habsburg emperors between the time of his arrival in Vienna in 1698 and his death. The penultimate chapter in the story came another two years on. Charles VI celebrated his 55th birthday at the Favorita on 1 October 1740. Less than two weeks later he has dead, the result of eating three helpings of a favourite dish, mushrooms stewed in Catalan oil. It is said that the final word he uttered was “Barcelona”, an appropriate epitaph for an emperor who had never ceased to hanker after his Spanish dominions. The faithful Fux survived him only through the winter, dying at the age of 80 on 13 February 1741. A great requiem mass was held for him in St. Stephens Cathedral, where he was buried. Among the choristers at the service was the eight year-old Joseph Haydn.