Music at its most perfect
The era of Viennese Classicism

Viennese Classicism brings together the most famous composers. Even today, the term continues to define what we mean when we refer to “classical music”. In the 2025/26 season, the Berliner Philharmoniker's curated flex package focusses on this formative era – with works by Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert.

“Metastasio, the king of opera, has moved into lodgings opposite the imperial Hofburg. Haydn lives in the same building, Gluck teaches Maria Theresa’s children and Mozart calls on Haydn, while Beethoven visits Mozart. Alongside them are Salieri and Schubert, and after them come Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. There is not a single break in this one-hundred-and-fifty-year history, not a decade nor even a year when an imperishable masterpiece was not written in Vienna. No city has been more blessed by the genius of music than Vienna in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

We can literally sense the breathless euphoria of the writer Stefan Zweig rhapsodizing about the musical history of the city of his birth. And he was right: only in Vienna has there ever been such a concentration of famous composers. The term Viennese Classicism is normally taken to mean the period between Joseph Haydn’s breakthrough in around 1760 and Beethoven’s death in 1827. And it implies such a degree of perfection in music that even today it continues to give its name to the entire genre of classical music. But how did this come about? Why Vienna? And what defines this music? This final question can best be answered by subscribers who choose three, five or nine concerts from our flex package “Viennese Classicism”, embarking on a musical voyage of discovery in the Philharmonie in Berlin.

Haydn as the founder of the Viennese Classicism

The ground for Viennese Classicism had already been prepared by the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach in the field of instrumental music and by Christoph Willibald Gluck in opera. A new obsession with the aesthetics of ancient Greek and Roman culture contributed to the collective decision that the effusive ornamentation of Baroque music had had its day. Just as Baroque full-bottomed wigs made way for the smarter, shorter wigs that we associate with the Rococo period and with composers like Mozart, later being completely abolished during the French Revolution, so music became lighter and airier, less associated with official state occasions, and more guided by the immediacy of its audience’s emotions.

It was Joseph Haydn who created a compelling new style of music on the basis of the various offshoots of the Baroque, and in that way laid the foundations for Viennese Classicism. In fact there was practically nothing else for him to do, since he spent thirty years cut off from the world in the Hungarian provinces, where he was employed as the court composer to the prince of Esterházy: “There was no one in my vicinity to confuse me, so I was bound to be original,” he wrote.

One result of Haydn’s experiments was the symphony, in his time a novel and extremely daring combination of an operatic overture, a series of courtly dances and a virtuosic finale. Today, the symphony is the most prestigious of all the genres commonly performed in the modern concert hall. Its small-scale equivalent is the string quartet. Designed for more intimate performance spaces, the quartet was designed less to create a mass effect than to appeal to listeners who appreciated true profundity.

Music for a flourishing bourgeoisie

And then there were the audiences. By the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, music was no longer the exclusive preserve of aristocratic courts shut off from the rest of society; it was beginning to move into the world of a new middle class. Public concert halls and opera houses sprang up all over Europe, subscription concerts were introduced, arts associations were formed and festivals founded, regular ensembles came into being and artists began to tour internationally. At the same time, publishing houses sprang up like mushrooms, newspapers proliferated, and conservatories were established. A whole new world of business opened up. Instrument-makers had a field day. A piano on which it was possible for performers to play both loudly and quietly (“fortepiano”) replaced the less-flexible harpsichord, and wind instruments like the clarinet were invented or substantially improved. The modern orchestra was born.

In Vienna, the universal enthusiasm for music even overcame the divisions between the social classes, a point that the court official and part-time arts manager Ignaz von Mosel noted to his own amazement: “Here music works wonders on a daily basis, performing the sort of miracles that are normally associated with love. It levels all ranks. Members of the nobility and of the bourgeoisie, princes and their vassals, people in authority and those who work under them may all be seen sitting together in front of the same music-stands, and the harmony of the music lets them forget the disharmony of their social rank.”

Vienna as a centre of musical innovation

It is no wonder, then, that composers came flooding to Vienna. Mozart came from Salzburg, and was described by Haydn as “the greatest composer whom I know in person or by reputation”. The former child prodigy celebrated his greatest triumphs in the world of opera and with solo concertos, for which he created a new, prototypical form. His output was crowned by his Symphony no. 41, a work to which posterity was to give the sobriquet “Jupiter” after the father of the Roman gods. (This work will be performed at the concert on 6 December 2025 under Jordi Savall.) It may be added at this point that the suggestion that Mozart was driven to his death by his rival Antonio Salieri, as magnificently portrayed in the film Amadeus, is a comprehensively discredited myth. The two men were good friends. (You can check this out musically on 4 March 2026.)

The third of the Viennese Classical composers, Ludwig van Beethoven, wanted to study under Mozart, but following the latter’s tragically early death, he took lessons with Haydn and Salieri instead. He overtook his models in every possible regard, writing music that was more gripping, more intense and more uncompromising. Typical examples of his pioneering work are his Eighth Symphony, which may be heard on 27 October 2025, six of his fifteen string quartets performed by the fabulous Quatuor Ébène on 9 March and 11 May 2026 and his fifth and last Piano Concerto with Víkingur Ólafsson as the soloist on 28 May 2026. It is no wonder that a Titan like Beethoven cast such a long shadow over the music of the next century and a half, a shadow from which composers like Schubert and Brahms had to struggle to break free. Franz Schubert and his Symphony No. 3 represent a composer who, rooted in Classicism, opened the door to the emerging Romantic era (to be heard under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst on 11 June 2026).