Richard Strauss’s contacts with Vienna spanned more than six decades, from the time of his brief stint as a university student in 1882 through the Allied air campaigns of 1944. This chapter focuses on the city of Vienna during the period of Strauss’s tenure as codirector of the State Opera from 1919–24, years defined by the founding of the First Austrian Republic and policies instituted by the Municipal Council in response to ongoing economic turmoil. While the situation was less dire than in Berlin, Vienna was nonetheless a city in crisis when Strauss arrived in early December 1919. Examination of “Red Vienna,” named for initiatives of the ruling Social Democratic Party, serves as context for the cultural life in which he participated as a well-respected and well-paid musical celebrity. Attention then shifts to Strauss’s life and work in Vienna with an emphasis on the institutions and figures comprising his private and professional orbit.

During his lifetime, Brahms accumulated a sizeable fortune. Although the early days were not without difficulties, his finances then accumulated steadily and virtually uninterruptedly. When he died in 1897, he left behind not only manuscripts of his own works, but also an extensive collection of other composers’ autograph manuscripts (including of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) as well as bonds worth over 181,000 Gulden.The size of the sum is evident when one compares the rent that he paid his landlady Coelestine Truxa between 1887 and 1897 for his three-room apartment in Vienna’s Karlsgasse, which amounted half-yearly to 347 Gulden and 25 Kreuzer.

Brahms grew up in the Hamburg‘Gängeviertel’, an area of workers, small-scale artisans and tradesmen in modest circumstances [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’]. Later on, when he could determine his own lifestyle, luxury still held no appeal.

The claim that the nineteenth century was the century of the bourgeoisie or middle class (Bürgertum) is undeniably a hot topic in research. This claim provokes questions not only about the wider definition of ‘bourgeoisie’ but also about the accuracy of this claim specifically for music history. Brahms rarely travelled outside German-speaking territories, apart from eight trips to Italy and concerts in the Netherlands. Within this region, the bourgeoisie did not consist of a single, homogenous group but could be described variously in social, political or behavioural terms, with overlaps between these. In terms of social class, the term primarily describes those who practised an established ‘craft’ in the broadest sense, as Brahms’s father did [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’]. In political terms, the middle class (Bürger) bore a degree of responsibility; however, even after the revolutions of 1848, their real power was still very restricted within a society which was still largely dominated by the aristocracy.