Around 1800, a fundamental change in musical life took place in Vienna. While the aristocratic music scene had dominated in the previous period, a development towards a commercialised concert scene and a bourgeois musical culture was noticeable. In the early 19th century, composers often organised their own academies at which they performed their own works. Later on, child prodigies and widely travelled virtuosos inspired audiences. Finally, in 1870, the Musikverein opened its first hall dedicated to concerts. In the meantime, private concert organizers were shaping musical life.

A particularly important part of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde's archive for music history is the so-called program collection. It offers nothing less than a journey through time into the history of concerts, allowing us to immerse ourselves in a long-forgotten world.

There were bombastic music festivals in the Biedermeier Redoutensaal or in the Winter Riding School of the Vienna Hofburg: hundreds of music lovers performed works such as Joseph Haydn's ‘Creation’. Small chamber concerts, the so-called Musical Evening Entertainments, featured illustrious performers such as Johann Nepomuk Nestroy as a bass. The young Clara Schumann captivated half the city at her Vienna debut. Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner and Antonín Dvořák conducted their own symphonies.

Everyone who was anyone gave Vienna the honour, aspiring prodigies, capricious divas, virtuosos and virtuosi. They performed in the “old” Musikverein building in the Tuchlauben, later in the “new”, present-day Musikverein, but also in other halls such as the Bösendorfer Hall in the long since demolished Palais Liechtenstein, which was renowned for its acoustics.

The concert program collection of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien probably contains over 80,000 pieces in total and documents Viennese musical life from 1771 onwards. The programs up to 1924 have now been digitized with their sequences, participants, composers and performed works and invite you to research – or to take a trip back to the time when Gustav Mahler's “Ninth” was first performed or when dissonant music by an avant-garde around Arnold Schönberg caused scandals, a time when the great composers conducted their own works and virtuosos such as Franz Liszt astonished the audience.

It is worth mentioning that there are not only program notes related to the society, but also from concert venues and promoters that have long since ceased to exist, including those from other parts of Europe, especially the monarchy, Germany and England.