Music I, 1895

Music was the most widely loved of the arts in Vienna at the turn of the century. Vienna was still regarded as the musical capital of the world. It was the city of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert and more recently of Brahms, the Strauss family, Bruckner and Mahler. In 1897 Gustav Mahler took over the direction of the Imperial Opera and brought something new to the musical life of Vienna in much the same way that the founding of the Secession did in the same year. Mahler’s provocative declaration, “Tradition is sloppiness” paralleled the more elegantly phrased motto, “To every age its art, to art its freedom” that adorned the façade of the new Secession building. Music I of 1895 is stylistically far in advance of Love painted in the same year. Indeed Music I was one of Klimt’s first exercises in the manner shortly to be dubbed the “Secession style”. A second version of three years later was paired with Schubert at the piano to decorate the music room of the Palais Dumba.