Performing Historiography: The Viennese Music and Theatre International Exhibition 1892

Recently scholars have extended their attention beyond the constructions of nation to notions of internationalism and globalization. Simultaneously, there has been a move away from inscribed knowledge towards those embodied in ‘performance’. This project responds to these currents with a study of a highly-significant, but neglected event taking place in 1892; the Viennese International Exhibition of Music and Theatre. It will focus on reconstructing the visual, performative and sonic dimension of this event through the spatial mise-en-scène, the historical materials exhibited, and the music performed within the exhibition space. The objectives are to provide a research of this event from an interdisciplinary perspective, contributing to the evaluation of the role of inter-nationalisms in shaping historical narratives and methodologies of academic work, and investigating the impact of management on creativity and public expectations. The digital revolution and the advent of the internet have thrown “musical experience” models of 20th century into sharp relief; the time is ripe for fresh reconstructions of such experiences, which have been taken for granted and neglected by researchers.

The Vienna’s International Exhibition of Music and Theatre (Internationale Musik- und Theaterwesenausstellung) was the first and unique exhibition to make music and theatre its theme within a series of International Exhibitions held from 1851 onwards, based on new economic relations between countries within the framework of free trade policy. Vienna 1892 represents the crystallisation of a modern conception of music as an aesthetic object and marketing product which shaped musical experiences of the 20th century very profoundly. Creating an international ‘city’ in the Rotunde, a circular exhibition facility in the form of numerous different national pavilions radiating from a central international historical section, was to have a profound influence on subsequent discourses about musical and scenic arts, particularly those referring to ‘national idioms’ (overall responsibility for the historical aspects of the event was in the hands of Guido Adler, who is generally seen as the founder of modern musicology). Moreover, the exhibition received unprecedented attention from mass media around the world, with catalogues and travel guides being produced in every country involved in the event. Yet relevant academic literature is sparse. My project is thus path-breaking. It investigates how the 1892 exhibition can be understood as a cultural vortex within which both music and theatre performed nationalism, and a form of internationalism defined by empire.

At the turn of the XXth century, Vienna was the capital of a far-flung empire encompassing over a dozen nationalities, and had an extraordinary intellectual and artistic vibrancy. The 1892 exhibition reflected an overwhelming desire to present Austria to the whole world as a cosmopolitan and powerfully artistic country. Although the explicit objective of this pioneering meeting was the peaceful, nonpolitical display of the scenic arts of different nations, the result was a self-representation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s supremacy in the worlds of music and theatre. This exhibition was also very important at a diplomatic level, because the support of a number of royal families demonstrated the solidarity between European monarchies and hence the viability of the monarchical system. At the end of XIXth century the Habsburg emperor, Franz Josef I, already an old man who had been at the helm since 1848, still had his hand firmly on the rudder of the ship of state. This event served to represent the unity and majesty of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, yet behind this façade there were serious problems of poverty, and a cluster of nationalist movements that would in time trigger World War I, the breaking up of the empire and the birth of the nation states that make up Europe today.