Second Viennese School - First Viennese School

First Viennese School

German musical literature refers to the grouping as the "Wiener Schule" or "Neue Wiener Schule". The existence of a "First Viennese School" is debatable. The term is often assumed to connote the great Vienna-based masters of the Classical style working in the late 18th and early 19th century, particularly Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. Though Mozart and Schubert did not study with Haydn, Mozart and Haydn were fans of each other's work and evidence suggests that the two composers fed off the other's compositional craftsmanship. Beethoven, however, did for a time receive lessons from the older master, though he was not a pupil in the sense that Berg and Webern were pupils of Schoenberg.