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Vienna has one of the richest cultural histories of any city in [[Europe]], with a particularly impressive musical tradition - the First Viennese School of composers consisted of [[Haydn]], [[Mozart]], [[Beethoven]] and [[Schubert]], whilst later the [[Waltz|waltzes]] and operettas of [[Johann Strauss]] Jr. came to epitomize the city's imperial grandeur and elegance. Johannes [[Brahms]] also made his home in Vienna, whose streets he claimed to know inside-and-out from his long walks around the city. Anton Bruckner, the composer of nine symphonies, taught harmony at the Vienna Academy for Music and Dramatic Arts; his admirer  [[Gustav Mahler]] became conductor of the Vienna State Opera in 1897 and wrote his nine symphonies evoking Vienna's peculiar juxtaposition of the urban and the pastoral.

Vienna has one of the richest cultural histories of any city in [[Europe]], with a particularly impressive musical tradition - the First Viennese School of composers consisted of [[Haydn]], [[Mozart]], [[Beethoven]] and [[Schubert]], whilst later the [[Waltz|waltzes]] and operettas of [[Johann Strauss]] Jr. came to epitomize the city's imperial grandeur and elegance. Johannes [[Brahms]] also made his home in Vienna, whose streets he claimed to know inside-and-out from his long walks around the city. Anton Bruckner, the composer of nine symphonies, taught harmony at the Vienna Academy for Music and Dramatic Arts; his admirer  [[Gustav Mahler]] became conductor of the Vienna State Opera in 1897 and wrote his nine symphonies evoking Vienna's peculiar juxtaposition of the urban and the pastoral.

During the long reign of [[Kaiser]] Franz Joseph I, who occupied the throne from just after the revolution of 1848 to his death in 1916, Vienna enjoyed a golden age of culture. Franz Joseph was responsible, among other things, for taking down the city walls and commissioning numerous grand buildings on the "Ringstrasse," the name for the circular street which encompasses the city center. Among these numerous stunning examples of imperial architecture are the State Opera House, City Hall, the Musikverein (home of the Vienna Philhamonic), the symmetrical pair of museums known as the Museum of Historical Art and Natural History, the Parliament building, and the Votive Church (commissioned in neo-Gothic style as a thanks to God after a failed assassination attempt in 1853).

During the long reign of [[Kaiser]] Franz Joseph I, who occupied the throne from just after the revolution of 1848 to his death in 1916, Vienna enjoyed a golden age of culture. Franz Joseph was responsible, among other things, for taking down the city walls and commissioning numerous grand buildings on the "Ringstrasse," the name for the circular street which encompasses the city center. Among these numerous stunning examples of imperial architecture are the State Opera House, City Hall, the Musikverein (home of the Vienna Philharmonic), the symmetrical pair of museums known as the Museum of Historical Art and Natural History, the Parliament building, and the Votive Church (commissioned in neo-Gothic style as a thanks to God after a failed assassination attempt in 1853).

As the empire's power waned in the first two decades of the 20th century, new developments in art centered in Vienna showed undercurrents of unease and dread. In painting, the [[Expressionist]] works of [[Egon Schiele]] and [[Gustav Klimt]] seemed to foreshadow the city's decline. In music, the Second Viennese School comprising [[Arnold Schoenberg]], [[Alban Berg]], and [[Anton Webern]] stretched tonal dissolution and thematic complexity all the way past its breaking point, and after the First World War tried to put it back together again under new rules, in much the same way that Vienna was searching for her relevance after the fall of the empire.

As the empire's power waned in the first two decades of the 20th century, new developments in art centered in Vienna showed undercurrents of unease and dread. In painting, the [[Expressionist]] works of [[Egon Schiele]] and [[Gustav Klimt]] seemed to foreshadow the city's decline. In music, the Second Viennese School comprising [[Arnold Schoenberg]], [[Alban Berg]], and [[Anton Webern]] stretched tonal dissolution and thematic complexity all the way past its breaking point, and after the First World War tried to put it back together again under new rules, in much the same way that Vienna was searching for her relevance after the fall of the empire.