Introduction: Musical Life in Prague

The ideological debates discussed in chapter 3 reveal much of the vibrancy of the Prague musical community in the pre-independence era, and a discussion of the actual musical production of the day—concert life, musical styles, and the composers themselves—completes the picture. It is certainly true that the polemics of Nejedlý, Stecker, and others occasionally departed from contemporary experience, concentrating more on minutiae from decades past. As with the “Novák Affair,” however, these issues continuously had a direct effect on contemporary composition, helping to shape, for better or worse, the direction of Czech modernism and its relation to the rest of Europe. Public tastes, too, were affected by these print wars, since the programming of institutional concerts directly reflected the ideological and stylistic leanings of those in power.

If taken as a whole, concert life in turn-of-the-century Prague offered an astonishing array of choices. The possibilities were severely limited, however, if one's attendance followed national or linguistic lines, and concert and opera reviews published at the time seem to imply a strictly segregated audience, particularly with the approach of the First World War. Prague's German community, while increasingly in the minority (with the rise of Czech middle and lower classes in the suburbs), was still within the political majority of Austria-Hungary, and its programming choices reflected a desire to preserve its cultural status.