This chapter allows us to explore the relationship between the milieu of Vienna, and the music of famous composers whose lived experiences of the city seem to have been profoundly informed by its genius loci. Vienna is notorious for a high suicide rate. The author of this chapter looks for insight into this phenomenon by examining letters/correspondences, historical observations, and the musical compositions of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. What role does the milieu play in the characters of the composers, especially in their musical imaginations, either by direct inspirational source, or indirectly, as that which constitutes their experiences, providing the lived-horizon for their compositions? We cannot expect a definitive answer here, but we can become aware that a definitive answer is not possible on the basis of the intertwining of the perceptual and the imagined as a spatial enactment of meaning. Suicide and death, it is noted, seem to pervade the Viennese comportment, both in actuality and symbolically; there is seemingly a Viennese style of enactment that fixates on these finalities while at the same time obsessively motivating the artistic passion expressive of an intense dialectic between life (and its negation) and creativity, especially in the art of music.
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Ardito, L. (2009). Vienna’s Musical Deathscape. In: Backhaus, G., Murungi, J. (eds) Symbolic Landscapes. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8703-5_17
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