h i s t o r y   o f   t h e   d e p a r t m e n t¹
 

The history of the Department of Composition Studies and Audio Production and its predecessors - and thus the history of institutionalised composition training in Vienna - goes back to the origins of the Vienna University of Music in 1832. The instructions for the conservatory founded by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde des österreichischen Kaiserstaates (Society of Friends of Music of the Austrian Empire) in Vienna already mention a "course in harmony, to which both students of the institute and other suitable individuals are admitted. It lasts one year."

Gradual consolidation 

While the beginning of this first developmental phase of (initially one-year) composition training seems very rudimentary from today's perspective, around ten years later, the relevant teaching content was summarised in a two-year subject called harmony and composition theory. One of the first renowned professors in this discipline from 1852 was Simon Sechter, who taught male students, while female students were taught by his assistant Selmar Bagge (after all, music theory and composition studies - unlike those for wind instruments or double bass, for example - was open to both male and female students, even though the two-year "female" curriculum had to make do with half the training time.²

In the mid-1860s, the threefold division of the subject into harmony, counterpoint and composition emerged - and with it a basic structure that was to remain binding for many decades.

Anton Bruckner – "only" taught music theory and voice leading

It may seem somewhat strange that in the course of the history of composition teaching in Vienna, the opportunity to retain the most outstanding composers of their time was repeatedly squandered (or deliberately avoided). In the case of Anton Bruckner, who succeeded his teacher Sechter in teaching harmony, counterpoint and organ playing from 1869 to 1890 and supervised more than 170 students during this period, it should be borne in mind that despite his own compositional achievements (which admittedly went far beyond the perspective of pupils), compositional teaching content was more closely linked to the compositional practice of the time than is the case today with the corresponding disciplines. – From the mid-1870s onwards, composition was taught by Richard Heuberger and the two professors Robert Fuchs and Hermann Grädener, who worked at the school for more than thirty years.

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[1] This outline of the institute's history was created on the basis of research by Dr. Severin Matiasovits MA and Mag.^a Olja Janjuš. We would like to thank the MDW archive for collecting and providing the underlying information.

[2] cf.Tittel, Ernst: Die Wiener Musikhochschule. Vom Konservatorium der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde zur staatlichen Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Vienna 1967 (= Publikationen der Wiener Musikakademie, Vol. 1), p. 27.