The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Society of Music Friends in Vienna, also known as the Musikverein, Music Association), was founded in 1812 by Joseph von Sonnleithner, general secretary of the Court Theatre, Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. Its official charter, drafted in 1814, states that the purpose of the Society was to promote music in all its facets. The Society accomplished its goals by sponsoring concerts, founding the Vienna Conservatory in 1819, founding the Wiener Singverein

Wiener Singverein

The Vienna Singverein is the concert choir of the Vienna Musikverein with around 230 members. It is regularly requested by top orchestras and conductors for large and varied projects.- History :...

 in 1858, constructing the Musikverein building in 1870, and by systematically collecting and archiving noteworthy music-history documents. It is now one of the world's leading music archives.

The first music director was Carl Heissler

Carl Heissler

Carl or Karl Heissler was an Austrian violinist and violist.- Biography:He was studying with Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr., Matthias Durst and Joseph Böhm at the Academy of the Vienna music friends Society...

, who was followed by Anton Rubinstein

Anton Rubinstein

Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...

 (appointed in 1871), and Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...

 (appointed in 1872). Other notable music directors include Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...

 and Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...

. Membership in the Gesellschaft has included a who's who

Who's Who

Who's Who is the title of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biographical information on a particular group of people...

 of notable 19th- and 20th-century musical figures, including composers, conductors, and instrumentalists.

In early 1818, Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

was rejected for membership in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as a professional musician, something that might have furthered his musical career.

External links

• Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde official website
• Webseite Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde archives
• Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters / Selected and annotated by Styra Avins. — Oxford University Press, 2001. — P. 419.