The first attempt to found a professional concert orchestra in Vienna dates back to Franz Lachner. Like Otto Nicolai, who successfully founded a lasting institution nine years later, Lachner was a composer and leader of the opera orchestra. The “Künstler-Verein,” or Society of Artists, which Lachner called into being from members of the opera orchestra, gave four subscription concerts in January 1833—however, due to faulty preparation, the undertaking was an economic failure.
“Kreuzdonnerwetter—Schwerenoth! Aufgewacht!”
Nicolai was the first to breathe life into the idea of a professional concert orchestra, with an energy and visionary pertinacity that could take on quite dictatorial traits. We have no record of the first orchestra meeting, but, miraculously, we do have the “Founders’ Decree” from Nicolai’s pen. It begins like a written, but very revved up, carnival manifesto: “Trin tin tin! Hark! Hark! The time has come, no more for musicians just to sleep, or play their violins in bed! Ye sons of Apollo, all together, unite, put your hands to work, on something great! Kreuzdonnerwetter—Schwerenoth! Aufgewacht!” (approximation: Hell and Damnation! Emergency! Wake Up!)
Then Nicolai gets to the point: “All Orchestra personnel of the Imperial and Royal Court Opera Theater and the Kärntnerthor-Theater, led by its good director Mr. Georg Hellmesberger, have united to give a concert under Kapellmeister N[icolai]’s direction, which will be unmatched in the annals of Viennese concerts.” After a short program sketch comes this self-confident concluding paragraph: “Bravo Nicolai! And may the public encourage you in this endeavor, so that from this seed perhaps a beautiful tree will bloom!”
A Prussian from Königsberg, Nicolai had become Kapellmeister at the k. k. Hofoperntheater for a second time (after a brief intermezzo in 1837/38) in 1841. He celebrated his “comeback” in May of 1841 with a highly acclaimed production of his opera Il Templario. (This operatic rarity was recalled and earned enthusiastic reviews in the Salzburg Summer Festival in 2016.) His contract called for him to produce a new opera in Vienna, but it did not happen. The self-confident, all-giving, but all-demanding artist left the city in 1847 following a disagreement with management and the orchestra. Nicolai conducted the premiere of his Merry Wives of Windsor in Berlin on March 9, 1849, and died there two months later. For this native Prussian, Vienna could not be replaced by anything, as he confided to his diary: “Berlin probably has more order, which I missed so dearly in Vienna—but the Viennese has more music in his blood […] The south just has more talent!”
The “Founding Decree” in Otto Nicolai’s hand
The Triad of Founders…
…of the Philharmonic, besides Nicolai, consisted of the Viennese writer and journalist August Schmidt (1808-1891) and the Manchester-born German Alfred Julius Becher (1803-1848). Schmidt was, among other things, a co-founder of the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung (1841), of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein (Vienna Men’s Choral Association, 1843), and the Vienna Singing Academy. It is to him we are indebted for writing down the motto which inspires the Philharmonic to this day, namely: “To give Philharmonic concerts in Vienna, whose purpose is to perform the best music with the best forces and in the best possible way.” Dr. Becher’s life and tragic end demonstrate that the founding of the Philharmonic also had a political dimension as a prerevolutionary democratic experiment: the composer and conductor became involved in the whirl of revolutionary events of 1848, became a public figure as the founder of the newspaper Der Radikale and was “executed by martial law” in Vienna on November 23.
Note that the Philharmonic idea was not imposed onto the opera orchestra from above but grew out of the collective body, which formed a committee to represent itself. Two dynamics were in play in the founding of the group: artistic necessity (to foster concert literature at the highest level, especially the Viennese Classicists Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) and economic distress. Despite the great demand for it in the theater, it was in no way financially solid and barely secured in the social sense—there was not even a pension fund. According to Clemens Hellsberg, the income of an orchestra musician lagged behind that of a middle school teacher, an office trainee, or a well-paid factory worker.
The way and the means of founding the orchestra can be expressed in one word: autonomy. The freedom of personal responsibility and the concomitant flexibility in artistic and economic questions are ideals to which the Philharmonic has remained true to the present day. The same is true for the double-track duties in both the opera and concert enterprises, which often enough conflict with one another. An employee in the opera house, while an entrepreneur in the concert world: it is from this very tension that the members of the orchestra drew and continue to draw strength for great artistic achievement.
The First Concerts
The opera orchestra of 1842 did not even have half as many players as today’s. While the State Opera in 2017 had 148 planned positions at its disposal, the number in Nicolai’s time was exactly 64, and 31 of them were strings. Nicolai had to fill out his orchestra with “temps” from the Burgtheater and the Court Orchestra in order to succeed in the Great Redoutensaal of the Hofburg.
The first program, given on the “Easter Monday the 28th of March 1842, Midday at 12:30” (out of consideration for the opera, the orchestra could only have midday concerts on rehearsal-free Sundays and holidays) by “all the orchestra staff of the k. k. Court Opera Theater,” started with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. This orchestra “came into being to fulfill Beethoven’s symphonic legacy,” as Hans Weigel asserted. In addition, the master’s first Leonore overture was played—not the third, as is noted on the program insert. Nicolai had already created a furore in the previous year with the third—the “great” Leonore overture: he had it performed between the two acts of Fidelio. “From now on, it will be impossible to perform Fidelio without it,” he noted proudly in his diary.
With the presence of singers from the opera theater (they sang Mozart and Cherubini) and the cello virtuoso Adrien-François Servais, this first “Philharmonic” (which of course was not yet called that) resembled the orchestra “academies” that were common at the time, giving concerts with long mixed programs. In any event, the success of the concert was considerable, both artistically and financially. It brought in “an extra profit” that “the majority of the orchestra members needed,” as Nicolai wrote to the opera director Carlo Balochino.
Nicolai continued on his path unflinchingly as the leader of the new concert undertaking and announced a “second Philharmonic Concert” for November 27, 1842 (the name was found, but would not be applied to the orchestra for a long time) in the Redoutensaal. Orchestral and vocal works by Mozart and Spohr were followed by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The co-founder of the Philharmonic, Dr. Alfred Becher, found prophetic words: “…It cannot fail to happen, with continued effort, that the Vienna orchestra will be the equal of the best in the world, and perhaps even superior to all the others.”
Program of the first Philharmonic concert
The first rules of order have not survived. Shown here are the rules of order from 1862.
On March 19, 1843, Nicolai took on the Ninth Beethoven Symphony, a repeat performance which became a moment of glory for him, thanks to the thirteen rehearsals which had been set for the demanding work: indeed, to some extent